Trivia

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I received this in my email box recently…thought it might be fun to share. Any additions/corrections?

  1. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

  2. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

  3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

  4. The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.

  5. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

  6. There are more chickens than people in the world.

  7. Two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

  8. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”

  9. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

  10. All of the clocks in the movie “Pulp Fiction” are stuck on 4:20.

  11. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or
    purple.

  12. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.

  13. All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.

  14. Almonds are a member of the peach family.

  15. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.

  16. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

  17. There are only four words in the English language which end in “dous”:
    tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

  18. Los Angeles’ full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula”

  19. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

  20. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

  21. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

  22. In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

  23. Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

  24. The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the
    cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

  25. A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

  26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds

  27. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

  28. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

  29. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

  30. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

  31. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and
    a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

  32. Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.

  33. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

  34. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

  35. “Stewardesses” is the longest word that is typed with only the left
    hand.

2

I’ve gotten this list before…but there’s usually something on it about pigs having three, six, or thirty minute orgasms. :slight_smile:

3

I know that several of these claims are false or half-truths. Before I reveal them, Anybody else wanna take a stab?

4

Thus tying with stretched and strengths, if not with others.

I have heard that the mayfly has an adult life of 24 hours, but I’m fairly sure that the larval and nymph stages of these insects are rather longer that 24 hours.

Simple bushwa. Some goldfish can recognize the one person in a family that feeds them (an act that requires memory as well as sight).

Tom~

5

Mostly correct and interesting, but I have a couple issues off the top of my head:

  1. “Strengths” is just as long as “screeched”.

  2. Actually, 48 states’ names are on the real Lincoln Memorial, but only 26 are on the back of the $5 bill. See http://www.centercoin.com/currency_information/FAQ/five_dollar_bill.htm

  3. Cecil himself answered this one, in “Return of the Straight Dope,” p. 236-7. There’re dozens.

Anyway. This is by no means complete, but it’s the best I can do without research.

6

Assuming that you can still find a Canadian $2 bill, I’m not sure this “oversight” had not already been corrected before all the ($1 and $2) bills were replaced with coins.

As far as it being impossible to sneeze with eyes open, I’d say it’s somewaht true, I (among others, no doubt) having achieved the “feat” of sneezing with eyes in a partially-open-partially-close position (the equivalent of a squint).

7

heh. heh heh. . .

“I’m just too much for human existence – I should be animated.”
–Wayne Knight

8
  1. How about unkemt?
9

I think golf balls are made now with a differing numbers of dimples.

“The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.” - Humphrey Bogart

10
  1. “sporange” rhymes with “orange”. Means “produce spores”, IIRC. Can you work it into a limerick, TennHippie?

“Eppur, si muove!” - Galileo Galilei

11

“How about unkemt?”

Gilly, it’s spelled unkempt.

12

Dynamite is, IIRC, nitroglycerin and kaolin (a kind of clay). It’s entirely possible that peanuts are used as one of the original sources of the glycerine, but peanuts qua peanuts are not in dynamite that I know of.

13

If anyone cares for the longerversion:

http://www.iea.com/~lswanson/trivia.html

14

And if THAT isn’t enough…

http://www.southhouse.com/

P.S.: I’m done :slight_smile:

15

Here’s a ling to Cecil’s “-dous” column MaxT refers to:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_236.html

Forget the world, Jersey grows less than 30% of the total American eggplant production, at least in 1993.
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu:70/0/data-sets/crops/9X180/93180/B/epveg.us

#14 is true, both are in the Prunus genus.

This list is everywhere. I’m surprised there is no FAQ responding to it…

“The world ends when I die. And as far as I’m concerned, the rest of the universe might as well call it a day too.” – Matt Groening

16

I have to go with the list on the golf balls question (Sorry, Unc!). Take a look. There is a definite pattern (IIRC, it’s icosahedral). And the dimples do affect performance. So it stands to reason that a “regulation” golf ball would have a standard number of dimples.

Strangers have the best candy.

17

Different brands and styles of golf ball have differing numbers of dimples. There is no such thing as a “regulation” ball, any more than there is one “regulation” driver.

Laugh hard; it’s a long way to the bank.

18

I don’t know anything for sure about the golf balls; I was just regurgitating some bile I thought I had heard at one time. A cursory web search didn’t turn up anything substantive.

I am absolutely clueless about golf having never played. I am however, hopelessly addicted to the Golden Tee video golf that’s in all the bars around here.

“The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind.” - Humphrey Bogart

19

While Im not sure about a ‘regulation golf ball’. I do know Greg Norman had to forfeit a tourney for the use of a ball not approved by the PGA.

–Donj

20

Geez! Being wrong is getting really boooring!!

I still insist there must be some sort of regulations governing golf balls, though, at least in tournament (PGA) play.

“The inability of science to grasp Quality, as an object of enquiry, makes it impossible for science to provide a scale of values.”
Robert Pirsig