The Orangutan was originally called the Orangutangadingdong. Experts decided that was too long and shortened it to Orangutang. Then they decided it was still a little too long and shortened it to Orangutan.
Lifesavers were made by a guy who was tired of all the children choking to death on candy. He reasoned a hole would help them breathe better, and was named so because it saved lives.
The inventor of the USB port, Ulysses Stanley Bryant, got his inspiration watching ships travel through the Panema Canal. He modeled USB transfer protocols after the methods that ship captains use to travel through the canal.
World War II is actually a poorly written fan-fiction sequel to World War I full of plot holes, convenient plot devices, flat characters, and unbelievable turns of event. For reasons unknown, it was so popular when it came out, that nations around the world quickly decided to embrace it as if it had actually happened, and it became standard school curriculum in the United States and all of Western Europe by 1951.
Yugoslavia comes from “You Go Slav!!!”. Believed to be a chant of football fans.
Just a heads-up. There’s actually a bill in the UN that looks like it will pass to do this again. So our posters with young children should start thinking about what their cover story will be when their future children ask “Daddy, what did you do when the Empire destroyed Alderaan?”
Napoleon Bonaparte’s real name was Dwayne Stubing.
Because of its close proximity to the sun, Mercury is the only planet in our solar system with no monkeys.
40% of all Americans say they do not know how to blow their nose.
Abraham Lincoln believed in the “paper Earth” theory.
Fort Knox actually contains 12% gold and 88% long-grain rice.
Benjamin Franklin invented not only bifocals, but also toast, Christmas socks, the word “has,” and those large wooden spoons people hang on their walls.
While we know about Gladiator games in ancient Rome, there was also the lesser known event of 'Emperor Dunking". This sport, while popular, was short lived and soon replaced with ‘Ostrogoth Dunking’. Christian Emperors in later centuries outlawed the sport, then tried to bring it back a 1/2 dozen times. Scholars now believe that this sport was the ancestor of Disco.
This is actually true. Granted, its tongue will also grow freakishly large if you don’t dock its tail.
Speaking of true facts about dog breeds, it’s popularly believed that St. Bernards were bred to be rescue dogs by monks in the Swiss alps, with the iconic image of the St. Bernard with the small keg on its collar due to the practice of delivering spirits to those trapped by avalanche or what have you so that they might survive till rescuers could reach them. This was actually just a cover story for the true purpose of the dogs. The monks bred the St. Bernard as draft animal that would deliver illicit alcohol during the little known Swiss Prohibition period from 1820-1832.
The 12-string Rickenbacker breaks in The Byrds* Eight Miles High *were put into the song as a deliberate attempt to create familial friction as part of the anti-Viet Nam effort. The subsequant radio ban was at the instigation of Robert McNamara from orders by Ladybird Johnson.
No one knows what the actual lyrics to the songs *Louie, Louie *and *Wooly Bully *are.
One of the punishments the NCAA handed to Penn State in wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal was that, in light of Joe Paterno being stripped of a number of coaching victories, the university had to pay for the production of T-shirts and banners to be sold and hung by Florida State University and Grambling State University, respectively, touting football coaches Bobby Bowden and Eddie Robinson as the “NCAA leading coaches” in “bowl-division football” and “Division I football”.
The pencil in its modern form was designed by the Nazis in the nineteen-thirties. Hitler himself chose the characteristic yellow color. These pencils were given out as souvenirs at the 1936 Olympics and this led to the German-designed pencil becoming the international standard.
Julia Childs was a drag queen. And not a very convincing one.
The opening in the front of men’s jockey shorts is not intended as a way to access the penis for urination. Rather, it was intended as an escape route for any mice that become trapped in the underwear when it is being pulled on. That is why the opening zigzags back and forth between layers of fabric - mice prefer to run in a serpentine fashion and are more at ease using an underwear escape route that is configured this way.
Obviously, boxer shorts do not require an escape hatch for mice, so they feature a simpler front aperture – an aperture, however, that is still not intended for access to the penis for the purpose of urination. Rather, it was originally intended to allow the wearer to apply quinine to the testicles in parts of the world with a malaria problem. Since the original use is no longer common, the boxer-shorts fly remains as a sort of vestigial feature, like the lapel buttonhole or the opening at the top of a sock.
That’s so that you can put your feet into them? 
Fruit fly sperm contains a mind-controlling protein that makes the female recipient of the jizz lose interest in having sex with anyone else, thus increasing his chances of fathering her children.
Oh, no, wait. That one’s totally true.
One drawback of being a scientist - it’s hard to think of lies to spread.
Uh…the inventor of Kleenex called it “tissue” because it sounds like the noise of a sneeze.
Yes, that’s the one I was referring to.
Ooh, forgot a bit: “Boxer shorts” are so called because men who worked in cardboard box factories were once required to wear them to prevent theft, a practice that continued until the so-called “Boxer Rebellion” of 1899.
In an emergency situation a pig scrotum can easily be reconfigured into a snorkel. In a non-emergency situation that same pig scrotum con be easily reconfigured into a woman’s hat.
Few people realize that “almonds”, “ammonds” and “ahmons” are actually three different types of nut. Almonds are the most common, and are the ones you have probably been eating for most of your life. Ammonds are very rare, have only a 3-day shelf life, and have the effect of causing the eater to fall in love with the next thing he/she sees. Ahmons are such a deadly poison that even being in the same room with one is fatal.
I thought an ahmon was just an Austrian almond.