The Straight Dope Un-cyclopedia: Untruths Revealed!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Every Beatles song contains either an A flat chord or the word ‘love’.

In Chinese, Braille is actually faster than normal writing.

Two flies, if every descendant survived, could produce enough flies to cover Iowa within 37 generations, and this has been tested empirically.

Cows can’t hear thunder, which is why lightning startles them so.

Bill Gates has used his immense wealth to purchase the patents on coat hangers and biro pens.

The distance we know as ‘one foot’ was actually meant to be much shorter (how many people do YOU know with a foot that long?) but due to a scribe’s error in the reign of King Henry IVth the ‘foot’ as we know it became standardised.

There is no passage in the Bible that mentions cheese.

Every paperback book, if you flip the pages, produces a very low version of the note D flat.

Music stands and deck chairs were designed by the same person.

Although most Kennedy conspiracy theories are admittedly far-fetched, it is a demonstrable FACT that no new grass has grown on the grassy knoll ever since that fateful day, and no-one knows why.

A munchkin hanging himself can NOT be seen in “The Wizard of Oz”, it’s an urban legend, but one DOES appear in “Citizen Kane”.

There is no method for curing lamb.

Most shoplifting is done by store detectives, since, obviously, they know they won’t be caught.

If you played an acoustic guitar on the moon it would sound like everything was in a lower key.

Cecil is actually a woman called Fiona.

42

Quoth Sunspace:

I cry fowl! Er, foul! This one’s true: No flying bird has white meat.

43

The average American consumes 6.4 pounds of rat droppings, 7.5 million insect larvae, and the remains of 17 squirrels, based on the FDA’s acceptable limits on these items in processed meat and other foods. The average American vegetarian - assuming they eat no meat, fish, or dairy products, but do eat processed foods - only consumes .9 pounds of rat droppings, and the remains of 17 squirrels, but 13.2 million insect larvae.

See the FDA’s page on “defect action levels"
URL=http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/showCFR.cfm?FR=110.110

44

  • AC/DC’s classic song, “For Those About to Rock, We Salute You” is actually a thinly veiled ode to the Puritans who were executed via stones being placed on their chests.

  • Little is known about the planet Uranus and NASA would like to keep it that way, thank you very much.

  • Bob Dylan actually ceased touring years ago. His current road replacement is his son, Jakob, in heavy makeup. Past replacements include: Ernest Borgnine, Candice Bergan, Danny Most (Ralph “Malph” of Happy Days) and various and sundry ex-communicated members of Menudo.

  • Harassment and slander charges were recently put to a fraternity house in Iowa, whose search to find the ‘whitest person alive’ turned up an albino.

  • German is the official language of the Vatican City. They just trimmed the rough spots off.

  • Contrary to popular notion, most people when polled said that they would indeed not hammer in the morning if they were in the posession of said tool.

45

Any bets on how long it’ll take before these “facts” show up on one of those “did you know?” lists? My contributions:

Modern cough syrup was invented by Louis Armstrong. He actaully hated his rough sounding voice and spent years trying to develop a mixture to smooth it out. Although he was not successful in doing so, he tried one of his concoctions while he had a cold and noticed the cough-supressing benefits.

Benjamin Franklin’s fameous quote “A penny saved is a penny earned” actually started out as “save enough pennies, and you can afford one of my nifty new stoves” but the editors of Poor Richard’s Almanac felt that it came across as too commercial.

Both Norman Rockwell and Charles Schultz were communists. If you look closely, you can find a hammer and sickle hidden in all of Rockwell’s paintings and Peanuts is actually PEANUTS, an acronym meaning Proletarian Everyman Achieving Nothing Under Tsarist State. Snoopy symbolized the idle rich.

46

[ul]
[li]Missourians are statistically the most likely to die in blimp accidents.[/li][li]If an adult female had the same proportions as the popular children’s doll Barbie, she would have size 23 feet.[/li][li]In 1952, Maybella Hamilton, of Dubuque, Iowa, set a Guinness record for snake-swallowing: 132 garter snakes in five minutes.[/li][li]The ancient Sumerians were responsible for, among other things, inventing the common household blender.[/li][li]Pandas are the only animals that can understand basic calculus.[/li][li]The national anthem of Gabon can only be sung by one-fifth of the Gabonese population, as the highest notes can only be reached by individuals possessing what doctors have termed the “cleft uvula.”[/li][li]Tobias Smollett’s 18th century satire, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, contains the first known recipe for homemade rocket fuel.[/li][li] On the vernal equinox, and only on the vernal equinox, can a one perfectly balance a chicken upon its beak.[/li][/ul]

47

[ul]
[li]You can die from excessively biting your fingernails or scratching mosquito bites.[/li][li]The :slight_smile: was invented by me in 1793.[/li][li]The soft drink Mountain Dew has small amounts of gold dissolved in it.[/li][li]If you fart, sneeze, burp, cough, and laugh at the same time while doing a handstand, you will explode into many many pieces.[/li][li]Birthday cake is actually 75% dirt.[/li][li]“A lot” is actually one word.[/li][/ul]
Some of these are really good. I’m going to save the link(s) and make a book when I’m older.

48

[ul]
[li]The chicken has crossed the road a total of 3281 times. On his 3282nd attempt, he got hit by a speeding tricycle. His remains can still be seen on the right-hand side of I-96. Not once was his reason “to get to the other side.”[/li][li]The game was originally called “Hippopotamus, hippopotamus, elephant,” but since it took so long to say each word, it was later shortened to “Duck, duck, goose.”[/li][li]School buses are yellow because they ran out of red paint with all the fire trucks.[/li][li]QWERTY is a real word that means “to suck out plant juices.”[/li][li]A nuclear bomb can be stopped from blowing up if someone catches it.[/li]Gravity does not exist. Earth sucks.[/ul]

49

Married men get more sex.
Republicans are for a smaller Government.
Retirement happens at age 65.
The kids will move out at 18~ AND stay gone.
Your friends like you for you, not the beer and cigars.
The girls in high school dated guys over six feet tall for their height.
Hot chicks date ugly guys because they feel sorry for them.
A college degree equates success.
Crime does not pay.
Women want equality.
“Sha-la-la-la-la, hey live for today” was a good philosophy.
Only talented screen writers and actresses get to the top of their professions. It has nothing to do with the cocaine and solicitious blow jobs.
“Sha-la-la-la-la, hey live for today” was a bad philosophy.
Denise Rich had a convincing argument prior to the pardon.
And drum roll…
George Walker Bush is President of the United States.

50

In London, the police are not allowed to interrupt a game of cricket on any of the Queen’s highways - as long as the participants are riding donkeys.

The post-mortem on Marilyn Monroe revealed she was powered by a mouse in a wheel, which had expired causing her death.

JFK was the second gunman on the grassy knoll and is now living in a giant face on the moon. The target was a robot stand-in.

Tea is made from sand.

51

Astrology has become a precise science thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, which has to date detected 1,174 zodiacal constellations too faint for the human eye to see. (Under the new system, for example, instead of being sloppily lumped under Capricorn [Dec. 20 - Jan. 22], my star sign is Lasiorhinus [the Wombat, 5:30 AM - 2:00 PM GMT Jan. 13], with the moon in Inediblus [the Pot Noodle].)

England was a feudal dependency of the Roman Catholic Church from 1214. It is little known, however, that in 1298 Pope Boniface VIII lost Yorkshire in a card game to the Grand Duke of Wallachia, whose descendants later traded it to the Ottoman Turks in exchange for estates in the Carpathians. Consequently, the county town of Yorkshire is not York, but Istanbul. (NB: Istanbul. Not Constantinople).

Finnish has over 700 words for “cold”, whose translations in English range from “Bit nippy today” to “Cor blimey, it’s brass monkey weather out there, mate, I’m telling you.” Not coincidentally, there are no brass monkeys in Finland.

If the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, disaster will follow. If the Barbary apes ever leave the Rock of Gibraltar, disaster will follow. If, however, the ravens leave the Tower of London for Gibraltar, and the Barbary apes leave Gibraltar for the Tower of London, the disaster will be reduced to a period of confusion in the tourist industry.

52

[ul][li]The devil’s original ‘suit,’ consisted of bunny ears and a fluffy tail. The clergy later changed it to today’s version, replacing the bunny ears with horns and the fluffy tail with a spiked one. Their reasoning: “They made him look too girly.”[/li][li]Cat is the other white meat. (Come on now, remember, UNtruths)[/li]“Tests” is an acronym for “Teaching each student to succeed.”[/ul]

53

Jpeg Jones’ list of household non-remedies

[ul]
[li]Tired of vacuuming every few days? Try sprinkling a mixture of talcum powder and gin in each corner of the room. Any dirt, dust or hair will congregate in these locations, making cleanup easy![/li][li]The best way to get blood stains out of a hat is to vote Libertarian.[/li][li]Keep those pesky vertical blinds clean by reading Piers Anthony fantasy novels aloud in a high-pitched voice.[/li][li]A mash made from caraway seeds, Comet®, and old bassoon reeds can clean even the toughest stains out of your velvet upholstery.[/li][li]Do you have a kitchen drawer full of human femurs? Put them to good use by assembling them into a cozy for your ceramic elf collection.[/li][/ul]

54

George Flood Peters, one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence, was actually a woman. This was not discovered until his death in 1793.

55

-The world’s smallest elephant stood 9 inches high at the shoulder. It was later purchased by P.T. Barnum and, tragically, inhaled accidentally by Jumbo.

-The CD was invented by Thomas Edison in 1882. However, the CD player would not be invented for another hundred years, by which time Edison’s patent had expired.

-Mama Cass Elliot and Keith Moon choked to death on the same ham sandwich.

-Arnold Schwarzenegger was originally cast as Frodo in the film adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings.” He quit due to “creative differences” after failing to convince director Peter Jackson to change to ending to have Frodo & Sauron fight mano a mano on Mt. Doom.

-Chester A. Arthur is the last US President to have been eaten by wolves.

-“Dude, Where’s My Car?” was based on a unfinished screenplay by the late Orson Welles.

-The shortest sentence to use all 26 letters of the alphabet is only 24 letters long; linguists refer to this as “Morrison’s Paradox.”

-The rare European hippopotamus, unlike its African relative, is deathly afraid of water.

56

Jesus Christ was murdered in a CIA plot.

57

  • In the Star Wars mythology, Boba Fett is really Han Solo.
    (explain that one away Lucas!)

  • There is no member of the Jackson family named Tito. He is a fictional creation of father Joe Jackson, and has been portrayed by a rotating series of actors ever since the debut of the Jackson 5.

  • There was a real Burger King before the ad campaigns, but he was overthrown and driven into exile in 1896, by Marxist teenagers who willingly worked at the restaurant chain for minimum wage to further their dream of an agrarian workers’ paradise.

  • The true sound of one hand clapping can only be heard by poodles.

  • James K. Polk was our first cannibal President, Calvin Coolidge was the most recent.

58

The cassions supporting the piers of the Brooklyn Bridge are made entirely of fruitcake.

Pauly Shore is actually Luciano Pavarotti in a wig and sneakers. He created “Pauly” so that he could tap into the lucrative youth market with acting roles that didn’t require singing.

Federal law requires Interstate highways to have curves on four miles of every five-mile stretch so that the Russians can’t land aircraft on them when they invade.

There is no such vegetable as “cabbage.” The name was coined by the United Produce Processors Cartel in order to create a market for really big heads of tough lettuce.

59

The number one tourist destination for Colorado residents is Rugby, North Dakota, the geographic center of North America. It is said that the complete absence of anything resembling a change in the elevation is a major draw for many from more mountainous regions.

Winter starts December 21. Spring starts March 21.

New England clam chowder is often misunderstood to be from the northeastern states referred to as New England. In reality the dish is from the other side of the Atlantic and dates back to the middle ages when it was advertised as “The NEW England clam chowder”

The federal government has invented an insect that they release into houses which search for marijuana plants and other related narcotic substances. Its scientific name is Narcus ashcroftus.

60

[ul]
[li]If you stand on the international date line during solstice, the gravitational forces will tear you in half.[/li][li]Bagpipes were first invented as an insecticide[/li][li]If you throw a boomerang at a bathroom mirror three times, Bloody Mary will appear and kill you[/li][li]Garden gnomes are the most hated species on Earth.[/li][li]Fax machines are programmed to reject any fax that was sent on pink paper.[/li][/ul]