Pathologists have long recognized that unexplained scars in the human body are caused by “collision tumors” - neoplasms that invade each other, causing the death of both and leaving only fibrous tissue behind.
The Maltese falcon is an actual raptor, un-discovered until 1947 due to its totally black coloration and its habit of nesting in coal mines.
On “Family Affair,” Sebastian Cabot’s character was re-named “Mr. French,” instead of “Mr. Flemish,” because polls indicated viewers had no idea what Belgium was.
The reason that Saudi Arabian women are not allowed to drive has nothing to do with sexism or even Islam. The real reason is that the Saudis are very rich and can afford high-performance sports cars even though they have little experience with driving on the fast, sand-blown roads. Over 74% of men in Saudi Arabia with a driver’s license die or are permanently debilitated in driving accidents. The prohibition against women driving is all about maintaining population growth. That is also the reason that polygamy is still allowed.
John F. Kennedy was actually a virgin when he married Jacqueline Onassis and the rumors of his numerous infidelities were smears created by the Republican party to help Richard Nixon win the 1960 Presidential election.
Breakfast is actually served by McDonald’s all day, but most people just stop asking for it after 10:30am.
Waffle House will make customers pancakes if they ask them to.
By law if you see trash on the roadside in Texas, you are obligated to stop and pick it up. This during the day or night.
“Up” is not a direction of travel in Antarctica.
Tom Hanks never read scripts for his films; he simply ad-libs all of his lines. The only exception was Bachelor Party where he stuck completely to the script that he was given.
Most comedians did not find Richard Pryor to be funny when he was doing standup. In fact many walked out of his performances because they were offended by what he said. Even today few will admit that they have listened to him.
If you have a prescription for medical marijuana,according to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, you can fire it up at your desk at work. You do, however, have to have a fan present so that your smoke is not inhaled by your co-workers who may not have a prescription themselves.
Amish people get kicked out of their community when they are teenagers and get to raise hell in the outside world for a couple of years before they are let back in. This is known as the rumspringa. What is less known is that they have to perform a real life dog and pony show including juggling to be allowed back into the community. Their performance is attended by the entire community and judged more seriously than any Olympic event. Anything less than an 8.2 gets them sent back for more practice while repeated bad performances get them shunned for life.
Prisoners in New England penitentiaries are still served a full lobster dinner at least three times a week because of old laws still on the books that considered it to be poor people’s food and a form of punishment.
Solar calculators will break if you do not use them outside occasionally.
There is no word in the Spanish language for the word “Spanish.”
Most cities in Canada do not sell maps of that particular city within city limits. You have to go ***outside ***of the city to purchase them.
Best Buy will discontinue selling electronics in 2016 and concentrate solely upon selling media. Also, they are going to remove their web page at that time and only advertise in print media.
Because of their angle of projection and an inherent blind spot in the human eye, flat screen televisions cannot be watched from outside through a window.
Jefferson Airplane,Jefferson Starship and Starship were all three entirely different musical groups.
A mailed letter will often arrive sooner than an email sent at the exact same time.
When Utah finally outlawed polygamy in 1890, it wasn’t realized until after the bill had already been passed by the territorial legislature and signed into law by the governor that the hastily-drafted legislation inadvertently dissolved all marriages in the territory. Desperate Mormon leaders were unable to convince a skeptical Congress that this was not a deliberate “in-your-face” move,and the resulting scandal delayed Utah statehood by almost six years.
A 2012 study by the Columbia School of Journalism revealed that nearly 12% of all mainstream media stories (television, print, and Internet) originated as satirical articles in The Onion and other comedy websites.
A three-legged horse once raced in the Grand National. She came last. Her name was Trypod.
Microsoft have warned users that tech support for Windows XP will end in April 2014. What they failed to mention was that XP has an inbuilt mechanism to totally melt down on June 23rd 2015. Planned obsolescence at its greatest!
Science has determined that fire is a liquid.
While taking a long-distance train journey in the US, and dining in the dining car, putting an asterisk next to your wine choice on your menu card will result in up to two glasses of wine, at no charge to you. This is a holdover from the federal Passenger Railroad Act of 1970, which Amtrak was forced to adopt upon commencement of business in 1971.
What we all know as the “Rocky Steps” in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, are actually known as the “George A. Steinbloom Staircase.” Steinbloom was a large contributor to the museum. The museum continues to call the stairs “the Steinbloom stairs,” in spite of many tourists who ask aboit “the Rocky Steps.”
President Obama is fluent in six languages: English, French, Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia, Klingon, and Sindarin.
All true.
There is also the fact that the KKK, fiercely anti-Catholic at it was, lobbied hard for adding its birth place - Pulaski, Tennessee - to the list of cities the pope can’t visit, but the idea was shot down by none other than Pres. Grant, presumably because of the Catholic faith of his Irish mistress, Kitty Donahue.
The first monolingual President was Grover Cleveland, during his first term.
By the time he was elected for his second term, however, he had, for obscure religious reasons, picked up passable Amharic.
Hey! Not funny, said the resident of Gwinnett County. Not only is the name real, but very few people know that “Button” was his middle name. His first name was “Quetaza”. It is from here we get our (often misspelled and misapplied) phrase “Quetaza Button”.
Following the success of their “Baby Ruth” candy bar, Curtiss Candy Company tried to market a confection based on William Howard Taft, however, “Enormous President” not only rankled both political parties in both houses of Congress, but the name wouldn’t fit on the wrapper, even in those pre-credit-card-sized-candy-bar days. Curtiss’s second choice, “Fat Man,” was more appealing to test groups, but by this time both sides of the aisle were sufficiently miffed that the whole thing was dropped and Curtiss went back to making candy bars smaller for more money.
The world’s smallest burnable candles are made in the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt. Used for special nativity displays, they measure just 11mm long and only 2mm thick. Despite their tiny size, each will burn for about half an hour using a special proprietary wax formula.
The original “scuzzy” cards and devices were so named as an inside joke by the engineers who developed them because they were manufactured from recycled garbage cans. However, once a memo leaked with the name, management demanded answers. In a mad panic, one of the engineers claimed it was just a cute pronunciation for an acronym. Management bought it, but it took another week before they thought to ask what the acronym was, and what it stood for. Good thing, too, as it had taken the engineers 2 days and nights to come up with “SCSI” as the acronym, and then another 4 days and nights to give it a reasonably believable tech-sounding meaning.
Scientists believe that every human being will inevitably develop cancer if they live long enough… its only a matter of when.