The Tasmanian devil was really an invention of the Looney Toons. After many decades of being bugged by it, the Tasmanians used genetic engineering to make critters as close as possible to Taz to cash in the merchandising and tourism wealth.
The Beatles couldn’t really play musical instruments- they were just four cute young blokes hired to lip-synch over songs recorded by session musicians.
The first release of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask contains a graphic scene of Zelda and Link having sex that can only be accessed by a special Gameshark code. However, the scene was removed from later releases of the cartridge.
Each packet of Ramen noodles must contain at least .012% homogenized chicken feed by law.
A group of Tibetan monks require large amounts of ethyl alcohol to live in the same way that we require water. They are one of the world’s largest importers of Everclear.
Everyone knows that chimpanzees are the closest related animal to humans. But did you know that the third closest related animal is actually a species of lizard that lives only in Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA?
[completely true]
If you do a google search on “Saphir-Whorf theory”, the 8th hit is some wierd anime fanfic site.[/completely true]
The Iliad and The Odyssey are actually autobiographical works and Homer was only a scribe hired by Odysseus. Since he got paid less than he was promissed, he decided to publish them under his own name.
If you multiply the numbers on the left half of any given bar-code you get a square of the sum of the numbers on the right half of the same bar-code.
(Someone please edit the (in)definite articles in this one.)
Ashlee Simpson can sing.
The American military’s plans for 1920’s-style “death ray” weaponry were declassified in 1982. However, nobody can find the silly things; the best guess is that the plans are in one of the 80,000-plus unmarked crates stored at Archives II, the National Archives Annex in College Park, MD.
Some of the most famously “missing” films of the silent and early sound era (Convention City, London After Midnight, the director’s cut of Greed, the Bara Cleopatra) aren’t lost, but, rather, survive in the hotel safe of the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, no one knows how to unlock the safe.
The Louvre Museum was named after the French national hero Francois Museum.
Larry Flynt originally founded Hustler with a loan from billiards legend “Minnesota Fats”. The loan was withdrawn when Fats discovered the magazine’s actual subject matter.
As a political expediency move, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover maintained a 35-year surveillance file on himself.
New York’s Greenwich Village was originally platted with negative street numbers (eg: -10th).
The crashes of naval airships Shenandoah, Akron, and Macon were prearranged by the Navy Department to encourage funding for the aircraft carrier program.
The city of Portland, Oregon, owns the world’s largest carillon, but city “blue laws” prohibit its being played.
Owing to a clerical error, fourteen red-giant star systems are now named Melissa.
Pi can be calculated to 20 decimal places on a standard Hohner “Marine Band” harmonica.
West Virginia once outlawed the sale of cufflinks not made with souvenir coal.
(Where the hell’s everybody gone?)
Playing the guitar in the key of C flat major is impossible because you would need six fingers on your fret hand.
Channel 1 was eliminated as part of a secret radio industry plan to scrap television. In case commercial programming never became profitable, the few existing sets would instantly be rendered obsolete.
Presbyterians have historically been unwelcome in the Marine Corps.
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups contain all the necessary ingredients to make TNT.
During the Depression year 1932, more locomotives than phonographs were sold worldwide.
A 470-pound pumpkin displayed at the Minnesota State Fair was found upon carving to contain a complete human skeleton.
Residents of Mariemont, Ohio, near Cincinnati, may own dogs but not cats.
After flowers, the number one ingredient by weight in Tournament of Roses parade floats is toothpaste.
Most cases of spontaneous human combustion occur in April.
Japan’s “bullet train” service got its name not because of its high speeds, but because much of the metal used in the system was smelted from surplus American ammunition.