| Acronyms from Logan Graves |
| Presidential Useless Facts |
The antifungal,
nystatin, which is sometime used for treating thrush,
is named after New
York State Institute for Health.
Thanks to Martin
Goldman
(mgoldma@worldscope.co.uk)
of
London, England, United Kingdom.
QANTAS, the name of the
Australian national airline, is a (former)
acronym, for Queensland And
Northern Territories Air Service.
Thanks to Mark Nelson
(aj2x@aol.com) of Natick,
Massachusetts.
The world's largest four-faced clock sits atop
the Allen-Bradley plant
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Almonds are members
of the peach family.
Thanks to Joe Zeigler
(jzeigler@ps-mpls.com)
of
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The first video ever played on MTV
Europe was "Money For Nothing" by
Dire Straits.
If you add up the
numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the
total is
5050.
Thanks to Tomer M. Falk
(nyc@actcom.co.il) of Rishon
L'Zion,
Israel.
The "voice of Tony the Tiger is a man named Thurl Ravenscroft.
Thanks to
Michael Spence
(mspence9@airmail.net) of
Dallas,
Texas.
Revolvers cannot be silenced, due all the noisy
gasses which escape the
cylinder gap at the rear of the
barrel.
Thanks to Don
Kenny
(dkenny@ix.netcom.com) of
Laguna
Hills, California.
The home team must provide the referee with 36 footballs for each National Football League game.
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the
cat.
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
Thanks
to Michael Cutforth
(cutfmike@axxess.net) of
Blackfoot,
Idaho.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are
running clockwise. This is
because all knights used to be
right-handed. When the intruding army would
climb the stairs they would
not be able to use their right hand which was
holding the sword because
of the difficulties in climbing the
stairs. Left-handed knights would
have had no troubles except left-handed
people could never become knights
because it was assumed that they were
descendants of the
devil.
Thanks to Loek van der Helm
(loek.helm@ntc.nokia.com)
of
Helsinki, Finland.
If the Spaceship Earth ride at EPCOT was
a golf ball, to be the
proportional size to hit it, you'd be two miles
tall.
Thanks to Joy Kovacs of Milford, New Jersey.
On
Sesame Street, Bert's goldfish were named Lyle and Talbot,
presumably
after the actor Lyle Talbot.
The word "hangnail" comes from Middle
English: ang- (painful) +
nail. Nothing to do with
hanging.
Thanks to Matt Jones of Oregon.
Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Halley's Comet came into view. When he died in 1910, Halley's Comet was again in the sky.
Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child
reaches 2-6
years of age.
Thanks to Gavin Koh
(gkwk2@cam.ac.uk) of Singapore.
The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the
lowest point in
Colorado.
Thanks to Michael
Ghormley
(mikeg@blacksand.com)
of
Sacramento,California.
If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan Project your birthplace was listed as Post Office Box 1663 in Sante Fe.
Robert Kennedy was killed in the
Ambassador Hotel, the same hotel that
housed Marilyn Monroe's first
modeling agency.
Thanks to Kare of Ottawa, Ontario,
Canada.
Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a
registered
trademark of AT&T.
The newest dog breed is the Bull
Boxer, first bred in the United
states in 1990-91.
South of Tucson,
Arizona, all road signs are in the Metric System.
Thanks to
Sean
Horan
(Sean@olam.ed.asu.edu) of
Chandler,
Arizona.
Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
Thanks
to Shari Sandwick
(ssandwic@acc.jc.edu) of
Jamestown,
North Dakota.
The original story from Tales of 1001
Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin
was a little Chinese
boy."
Thanks to MaryAnn Johnston.
The slogan on New
Hampshire license plates is 'Live Free or Die.' These
license plates
are
manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in
Concord.
Thanks to Mike Turk
(mike_t@juno.com) of Pinellas
Park,
Florida.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected
intravenously.
Thanks to John of North Norfolk, England, United
Kingdom.
When a film is in production, the last shot of the day
is the "martini shot," the next to last one is the "Abby
Singer".
Thanks to Jan Hopper Sanders of Maryland.
Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is
number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution
to admit Ohio to the Union.
If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you
have 1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without
being able to make change for a dollar.
Thanks to
Tock.
When Saigon fell the signal for all Americans to evacuate
was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the
radio.
Thanks to Scott Gilmore.
The Fort George Point
in Belize City was formed by the silt runoff
of
Hurricane
Hattie.
If you lace your shoes from the inside to the
outside the fit will be
snugger around your big toe.
Only one-third
of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch
only one at a
time.
Thanks to Michael
Yusi
(yfi@ix.netcom.com) of
Belize.
The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was
domesticated more
than 500 years before the house cat.
The Pug dog
is thought to have gotten its name from looking like the
pug
monkey.
Thanks to Nick
Gray
(nicktg@airmail.net) of Plano,
Texas.
Only two states' names begin with double consonants: Florida and Rhode Island.
The volume of the Earth's moon is the
same as the volume of the Pacific
Ocean.
Thanks to Clayton of
Washington D.C.
"Xmas" does not begin with the Roman letter X.
It begins with the
Greek letter "chi," which was used in medieval
manuscripts as an
abbreviation for the word "Christ" (xus =
christus,
etc.)
The ampersand (&) is actually a stylised version of the Latin
word
"et," meaning "and."
Thanks to Jeff Lee
(shipbrk@gate.net) of Tampa,
Florida.
The largest city in the United States with a
one-syllable name is
Flint,
Michigan.
Thanks to John Bishop
(jbishop@netcom.com)
of
Plano,Texas.
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
On the cartoon show 'The Jetsons,' Jane is 33 years old
and her
daughter Judy is 15.
In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime
Marcel Marceau is the only person
who has a
speaking role.
Only
humans and horses have hymens.
Thanks to Robb Leigh
(rleigh@vt.edu) ofn
Blacksburg,
Virginia.
The word
"set" has more definitions than any other word in
the English
language.
Thanks to Kenny of Colorado Springs,
Colorado.
In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only six people were injured.
"Hara kiri" is an
impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku"
which means,
literally, "belly splitting."
Thanks to Chris Berger
(lberge19@starnetinc.com)
of
Chicago, Illinois.
Race car is a palindrome.
Cephalacaudal
recapitulation is the reason our extremeties develop
faster than the rest
of us.
Thanks to Lordie
(lordie@snafu.eec.psu.edu)
of
State College, Pennsylvania.
We will have four consecutive
full moons making two blue moons in 1999
(January 2 and 31, March 2 and
31.) The only other time it happened this
century was in 1915 (January
1 and 31, March 1 and 31.)
Thanks to Joni Johnson
(jjj@uwast.astro.wisc.edu)
of
Madison, Wisconsin.
There are more bald eagles in the
province of British Columbia then
there are in the whole United
States.
Thanks to Erin of Toronto, Ontario,
Canada.
Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
The "second unit" films movie shots that do not require the
presence of
actors.
Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented
fiberglass.
Thanks to Neil
Bradley
(neil@synthcom.com) of
Portland,
Oregon.
Olympic Badminton rules say that the birdie
has to have exactly fourteen feathers.
Thanks to Andy Roberts
(aroberts@gsm.ucdavis.edu)
of
Davis,
California.
The music group Simply Red is named
because of its love for the
football team, Manchester United, who have a
red home strip.
Thanks to Clive Mellish
(clive.mellish@pembroke.ox.ac.uk)
of
London, England, United Kingdom.
Richard Nixon left
instructions for "California, Here I Come" to be the
last piece of music
played at his funeral ("softly and slowly") were he to
die in
office.
Thanks to Peter Sinclair of Auckland, New
Zealand.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named
Livingston.
Thanks to Gill of Bedford, Nova
Scotia.
Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world,
at 0.08988
g/cc.
Hydrogen solid is the most dense substance in the
world, at 70.6 g/cc.
Thanks to
Dan
Altmann
(djaltman@science.watstar.uwaterloo.ca)
of
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
The longest U.S. highway is route 6
starting in Cape Cod,
Massachusetts going
through 14 states, and ending
in Bishop, California.
Thanks to Kane of
Charlottesville,
Virginia.
The movie "Paris, Texas" was banned in the city of
Paris, Texas, shorty
after its box
office release.
The 'y' in signs
reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a
'th' sound,
not
'y'. The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman
occupied
(present day) England use the rune "thorn" to represent "th"
sounds. With
the advent of the printing press the character from the
Roman alphabet
which closest resembled thorn wasthe lower case
"y".
Thanks to Stephanie
Schuhmacher
of Austin,
Texas.
Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.
Thanks
to Joanna Donkin of the United Kingdom.
The number of the trash
compactor in Star Wars (20th Century
Fox, 1977) is
3263827.
Thanks to Mark Weller
(mark_weller@mindlink.bc.ca)
of
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
At McDonalds in New Zealand, they serve apricot pies instead of cherry ones.
"The Siege
Of Belgrade" was a poem written by Alaric Watts in 1817. It
was a poem
where each line (of 27) had only words beginning with each
letter of the
alphabet: Line
1: A-words. Line 2:B-Words. Line 26:
Z-words
Thanks to Rob Knapton
(lchang@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca)
of
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
The "Nullarbor" in Nullarbor Desert
in Western Australia is a Latin
name;
Null=No,
Arbor=Trees.
Thanks to
Wayne Bickley
(wbickley@radio5uv.adelaide.edu.au)
of
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
The only two days of the
year in which there are no professional sports
games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or
NFL) are the day before and the day after the
Major League Baseball
All-Star Game.
Thanks to
Mike Aub
(Manute50@aol.com) of Mt. Laurel, New
Jersey.
The international telphone dialing code for Antarctica
is 672.
Thanks to
Mark
Michalovic
(michlvic@whale.st.usm.edu)
of
Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
A full seven percent of the
entire Irish barley crop goes to the
production of Guinness
beer.
Thanks to Reese
Baird of
Denton, Texas.
Bank robber John Dillinger played
professional baseball.
If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not
be heads 5000 times, but
more like
4950. The heads picture weighs more,
so it ends up on the bottom.
Thanks to Andy of Boston,
Massachusetts.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified
kosher.
The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of
F.
Chicago is closer to Moscow than to Rio de
Janeiro.
Thanks to Lisa
(cms@netvoyage.net) of Los
Angeles,
California.
Mr. Snuffleupagas' first name was
Alyoisus.
Thanks to Noey
(lenora@hawaii.edu) of
Haleiwa,
Hawaii.
The only capital letter in the Roman alphabet with exactly one endpoint is P.
"Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall
come." It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract
his attention. That's why when you are talking about someone and they
show up people say "Speak of the Devil."
Thanks to August Yang of Englewood, New Jersey.
Maine is the only state whose name is just one
syllable.
There are only four words in the English language which end
in
"-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and
hazardous.
Thanks to Greg Nesmith
(nesmith@premier.net) of
Baker,
Louisiana.
Nauru is the only country in the world with
no official capital. (Its
government offices
are all in Yaren District,
but there's no official capital.)
Thanks to Katherine
Bryant of
Medford, Massachusetts.
Lucy Ricardo's maiden name was
McGillicudy.
Thanks to Suzanne
Ganoe
(skganoe@mongo.tvi.cc.nm.us)
of
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in
Italy.
The red giant star Betelgeuse has a diameter larger than that
of the
Earth's orbit
around the sun.
Thanks to Rob Norman of
Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom.
If your eyes are six feet
above the surface of the ocean, the horizon
wil be about three
statute
miles away.
Thanks to Robert Degerberg of Gladwyne,
Pennsylvania.
The longest word in the English language,
according to the Oxford
English
Dictionary, is
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only
other word
with
the same amount of letters
is
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, the plural form.
The
longest time someone has typed on a typewriter continuously is 264
hours,
set by Violet Gibson Burns.
Hydroxydesoxycorticosterone and
hydroxydeoxycorticosterones are the
largest anagrams.
Thanks to
Grant
R. Hutchins (ghutch@ionet.net)
of Edmond,
Oklahoma.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or
older.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
An ostrich's eye is
bigger than its brain.
The oldest word in the English language is
"town."
Thanks to Annie Abell of Bowling Green,
Ohio.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
Thanks to Purple C
(
Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes
of
treason.
Thanks to Jeff Katersky
(katersky1@aol.com) of Thousand
Oaks,
California.
The band Duran Duran got their name from an
astronaut in the 1968 Jane
Fonda movie
Barbarella.
Thanks to Christine Canavan-Wagner
(chris06@sprynet.com) of
Pittsfield,
Massachusetts.
After human death, post-mortem rigidity
starts in the head and travels
to the feet, and leaves the same way it
came -- head to toe.
Police dogs are trained to react to commands in
a foreign language;
commonly German but more recently Hungarian.
A Laforte fracture is a fracture of all facial
bones.
Thanks to Michael A. Strom
(strombne@ix.netcom.com)
of
Hayward, Calfornia.
Debra Winger was the voice of
E.T.
Thanks to
Matthew
Liebertz
(Perdidor@stlnet.com) of
Hazelwood,
Missouri.
Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt were all cousins. (FDR and Eleanor were about five times removed.)
The Earth-Moon
size ratio is the largest in the our solar system,
excepting
Pluto-Charon.
Thanks to Lindsay Frederick
Braun.
There is a word in the English language with only one
vowel, which
occurs six times: Indivisibility.
Thanks to Chris
Hulley (chris_h@adc.com.au) of
Sydney, New
South Wales, Australia.
The dome on Monticello,
Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards
room. In Jefferson's day,
billiards were illegal in Virginia.
Thanks to Stuart
W.L.M.
Russell
(lmrussel@hawk.syr.edu)
of
Syracuse, New York.
In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it's smiling.)
Cleo and Caesar were the early stage names of Cher and
Sonny Bono.
Thanks to Renee Crist
(RCrist@aol.com) of Gig
Harbor,
Washington.
Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button.
Pierre, South Dakota is the only example of a state and capital in the U.S. that don't share any letters.
Westmount, Quebec, was the first city in Canada to be
granted a coat of
arms.
The heraldic term "gules", meaning red,
comes from the French
word "gueules," meaning a throat.
The "D" in
D-day means "Day". The French term for "D-Day" is
"J-jour".
Thanks to
Matthew
McLauchlin
(mcla@musica.mcgill.ca)
of
Westmount, Quebec, Canada.
Female orcas live twice as long
as male orcas. The larger numbers of
female orcas in a pod are because
of the female's longer lifespan, not
because the males have collected a
harem.
Most spiders belong to the orb weaver spider family, Family
Aranidae.
This is pronounced "A Rainy Day."
Genghis Khan's original
name was Temujin.
Genghis Khan started out as a goatherd.
The
type specimen for the human species is the skull of Edward Drinker
Cope,
an
American paleontologist of the late 1800's. A type specimen is used
in
paleontology as the best
example of that species.
Thanks to
Brad Connor of Olympia, Washington.
The first word spoken by an
ape in the movie Planet of the
Apes was "Smile".
Thanks
to Bill Shellorne of Thousand Oaks, California.
The two lines
that connect your top lip to the bottom of your nose are
known as the
philtrum.
The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter
Pan."
Hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly
backwards.
Thanks to Paul Orange
(P.Orange@sheffield.ac.uk)
of
Sheffield, England, United Kingdom.
All the dirt from the
foundation to build the World Trade Center in New
York City was dumped
into the Hudson River to form the community now known
as Battery City
Park.
The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River
connecting New
Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air
circulators in the
tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety
seconds.
The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took
to fight
off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called
the
Burlington Path.
The only social fraternity founded during the
Civil War was Theta Xi
fraternity,
at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute
in Troy, New York in 1864.
The Hudson River along the island of
Manhattan flows in either
direction depending upon the tide.
Several
buildings in Manhattan have their own zip code! The World
Trade Center
has several.
Thanks to Alex
Ricardo(Alex.Ricardo@desktopdata.com)
of
New York, NY.
Lucifer is latin for "Light Bringer". It is a translation of the Hebrew name for Satan, Halael. Satan means "adversary", devil means "liar".
A cat's jaws cannot move
sideways.
Thanks to Keith
Rebholz
(krebholz@www.bcpl.lib.md.us)
of
Wheaton,
Maryland.
Donald Duck's middle name is
Fauntleroy.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture
dealer.
Thanks to Michael
Liquori
(mliq@digital.net) of
Gainesville,
Florida.
The smallest port in Canada is Port
Williams, Nova Scotia.
Cats in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have a very high
probability of having
six toes.
Thanks to Agnes
(dentre@busicomp.ns.ca)
of
Centreville, Nova Scotia, Canada.
The second longest word
in the English language
is
"antidisestablishmenterianism".
Thanks to Alan of Auckland,
New Zealand.
The "wild" horses of western North America are
actually feral, not
wild.
Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish
much more easily than they
learn English.
New Zealand kiwis lay the
largest eggs with respect to their body size
of any bird.
Elephants
have been found swimming miles from shore in the
Indian
Ocean.
Thanks to Joseph
Erhard-Hudson (josepheh@wsu.edu)
of Pullman,
Washington.
When two words are combined to form a single word
(e.g., motor + hotel
= motel,
breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word
is called a "portmanteau."
Thanks to Joe Passero
(PPass36103@aol.com)
of
Lutz,Florida.
Sting got his name because of a
yellow-and-black striped shirt he wore
until it literally
fell
apart.
Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation
was taken by
Harold Edgerton.
Thanks to John Bradley
of Denton,
Texas.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of
Lincoln's
assassin John Wilkes Booth, and whose shame created the
expression for
ignominy, "His name is Mudd."
Thanks to Jen's
Dad.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen
seconds.
The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint -- no two lions
have the
same pattern of whiskers.
There is a type of parrot in New
Zealand that likes to eat the rubber
strips that line
car
windows.
Thanks to Brooke Newey
(bnewey@alexandria.lib.utah.edu)
of
Salt Lake City, Utah and Woodbridge, Virginia.
In 1969, the
last Corvair was painted gold.
Ralph Kramden made 62 dollars a
week.
Thanks to Susan Shirley
(susan@scrtc.blue.net)
Edmonton,
Kentucky.
The only way to stop the pain of the
flathead fish's sting is by
rubbing the same fish's slime on the wound it
gave you.
Thanks to Paul Schroeter
(schroetr@swanreach.com.au)
of
Geelong, Victoria, Australia.
Wilma Flinestone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and
Betty
Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.
Thanks to
Scott M. Koser
(dvc@mindspring.com) of
Columbus,
Georgia.
Lenny Kravitz's mother played the part of
"Helen" on "The Jeffersons."
Thanks to Monica Toth (A
HREF="mailto:mo@mars.execulink.com">mo@mars.execulink.com) of London,
Ontario, Canada.
The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic church.
When
deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil's advocate is
always
appointed to give an alternative view.
Thanks to
S. McGowan
(sm9311@cnsibm.albany.edu)
of
Albany, New York.
Compact discs read from the inside to the
outside edge, the reverse of
how a record works.
Thanks to Rob
Davison of
Calgary,
Alberta, Canada.
The term "Mayday" used for signaling for help
(after SOS), it comes
from the French term
"M'aidez" which is
pronounced "MayDay" and means, "Help Me"
Thanks to Andrea E. Ball
of Parma, Ohio.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| Acronyms from Logan Graves |
| Presidential Useless Facts |
Created November 1995.
Disclaimer: These facts are not checked for accuracy. Please do not use them in your doctoral thesis or your Inaugural Address until you have verified them on your own.
If you use these facts, send themout as a forward or otherwise publish them, please credit Deb and Jen's Land O' Useless Facts and include a link to our main URL: uselessfacts.info Thanks!
Copyright © 1995-2003 by Deb Henigson & Jennifer Godwin. All rights reserved.