A duck’s quack will not echo, if you put a pillow over its face.
Actually this is an oft repeated untruth. Eggplants have perfect flowers, which means each flower has both male and female parts so the plant is self-pollinating.
I saw this eggplant gender myth printed once in Cook’s Illustrated with a retraction printed a few issues later so it certainly gets around.
[sub]And woohoo, my 500th, and with actual content yet.[/sub]
Blood in firelight will glow black, not red.
F_X
Uh,…
Thanks Flamster.
Say, is there something we should know?
The gauge measurement of a shotgun is determined thusly:
Take the barrel of the shotgun. Make a lead ball that will fit perfectly inside it. The number of those balls it takes to make one pound equals the gauge. For instance, if it takes 12 balls, the shotgun is a 12-gauge. The higher the number, the smaller the diameter of the barrel.
I just learned this one today: if you bury an old tire, it will just work its way back up to the surface again.
Flamsterette_X : Is that from Voyager by Diana Gabaldon? Just wondering, cause that is the only other place I have read that particular fact before.
If you were to place a string around the circumference of the earth -my cite says 40,074 km.- so that it is stretched tight, and then add 1 meter to its length, the new circle of string will be raised off the surface 15.9 cm.
The night blooming cereus (some people spell it Sereus) blooms from 10pm to 8am. They can have up to ten blooms, all of which are about the size of my head, and really freaky looking. When mine bloomed (for the first time in 8 years) my entire house smelled like perfume for a day. Cool stuff 
There is no holotype (name-bearing specimen) for Homo sapiens. Linnaeus’ complete description for the species was simply “Nosce te ipsum.” (“Know yourself”)
If you measure a child’s height at age two and double it, you will have the approximate adult height of that child.
A nautical mile is the length of one minute of arc at the Earth’s equator or approx 1.15 miles (1.85 km)
Porcupine quills are hollow and airtight. If you cut the quills, they will be much easier to remove.
A poultice of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), mustard seed, crushed spearmint and cod liver oil applied to your chest will prevent anything with a nose from coming within 20 feet of you.
Neuropeptide Y is a neurotransmitter that regulates the desire for carbohydrates. (This assumes, of couse, that I remember that class correctly.)
Qat is a useful word in Scrabble. It’s a type of plant commonly chewed in Africa.
Up was the first REM CD to include lyrics in the liner notes.
Wyoming is the only state in the United States which has NO private colleges.
Hamsters don’t bounce and goldfish do not like Jell-O.
Also, little kids are impervious to pain if they do not think that you are around.
oh, and:
Ontologically, holes are “things” while shadows are definitly not.
The National Machine Tool Builders Association (NMTBA) defines accuracy as the signed (plus or minus) value of the difference between the mean of the points arrived at and the given point (target), plus the value of the dispersion of the points arrived at that gives the largest absolute sum.
Here’s another: certain woods are toxic to some people (their resins and swadust can cause allertgic reactions), and at least one toxic wood tends to have two very specific effects on the body: Swollen eyes and swollen scrotum. Really.
About 80% of the mass of your faeces is bacteria. Really.
Oh, and 85% or so of the adult population is infected with Herpes Simplex (either type I which causes coldsores, or type II which causes genital herpes, or both) but doesn’t know it. Yes, this probably includes you :eek:
Now, if only I could remember the examinable bits of my microbiology course that easily…
Not according to http://www.uwm.edu/People/rjhutz/week12.PDF
More like 20%. And that’s only 20% of the solids – 75% is water.
Watermelons are berries.