fun facts

Facts for Fun

 

Here are some interesting and fun facts.  I would love to hear what you have to say about them in comments. 

 

1. If the human stomach doesn’t produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks it will totally digest it’s self.
2. Not only the fur of a tiger is striped, the skin is striped too.
3. The rabbit’s penis is behind the scrotum.
4. 75% of the world’s population wash themselves in the shower from the top to the bottom. Head first, feet last people.
5. Many people who read the word yawn or yawning begin to feel the urge to yawn.
6. Major League Baseball requires that all the umpires working in the league must wear black underwear at every game.
7. Buttermilk does not contain any butter.
8. Did you know Disneyland does not sell chewing gum? Walt Disney did not want guests inconvenienced by stepping on gum purchased in the park.
9. A lion can mate more than 50 times in one day.  What!
10. More people are killed from donkeys in a year than planes.  Really?  yes, really.
11. 101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan (Wendy) are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.
12. 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
13. 166,875,000,000 pieces of mail are delivered each year in the U.S.
14. 27% of U.S. male college students believe life is "A meaningless existential hell."
15. 85,000,000 tons of paper are used each year in the U.S.
16. 99% of the solar systems mass is concentrated in the sun.
17. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
18. A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day. Most of the sweat evaporates before a person realizes it's there.
19. A hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute on average.
20. A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside.
21. A hummingbird weighs less than a penny.
22. A jellyfish is 95 percent water.
23. A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
24. A jumbo jet uses 4,000 gallons of fuel to take off.
25. A male emperor moth can smell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away.
26. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 6 years.
27. A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night.
28. It was once against the law to have a pet dog in a city in Iceland.
29. It was once against the law to slam your car door in a city in Switzerland.
30. It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a certain church in Omaha, Nebraska.
31. It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.
32. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. (Don't try this!)
33. A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
34. A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes. Oh my...
35. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
36. A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
37. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
38. A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
39. A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.
40. A skunk can spray its stinky scent more than 10 feet.
41. A sneeze travels out your mouth at over 100 m.p.h.
42. A toothpick is the object most often choked on by Americans!
43. A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.
44. About 3000 years ago, most Egyptians died by the time they were 30.
45. About 70% of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money. (The rest of us are avoiding reality for four more years.)
46. According to a British law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offense. Offenders could be hanged for trying.
47. Actor Tommy Lee Jones and former vice-president Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard.
48. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
49. All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
50. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.
51. All porcupines float in water.
52. Almost a quarter of the land area of Los Angeles is taken up by automobiles.
53. America once issued a 5-cent bill.
54. Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.
55. An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
56. An iguana can stay under water for 28 minutes.
57. Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under is cap to keep him cool. He changed it every 2 innings.
58. Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
59. Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day.
60. Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
61. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
62. Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the Western Pacific.
63. Bubble gum contains rubber.
64. Cat's urine glows under a blacklight. .
65. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
66. Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
67. Even if you cut off a cockroach's head, it can live for several weeks.
68. Every person has a unique tongue print.
69. Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head.
70. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
71. Fortune cookies were actually invented in America, in 1918, by Charles Jung.
72. Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
73. Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
74. Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.
75. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
76. If your eyes are six feet above the surface of the ocean, the horizon will be about three statute miles away.
77. In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.
78. In every episode of "Seinfeld" there is a Superman somewhere.
79. In Kentucky, 50 percent of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.
80. In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
81. A fully loaded supertanker travelling at normal speed takes a least twenty minutes to stop.
82. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.
83. Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
84. It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
85. It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
86. It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
88. Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been overmixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.
89. John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
90. "Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
91. Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during WWI.
92. Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992.
93. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
94. Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet.
95. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
96. Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
97. Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
98. Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its original size: "L.A."
99. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
100. Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
101. Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
102. Millie the White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as President Bush in 1991.
103. Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton.
104. Montpelier, VT is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
105. More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money printed throughout the world.
106. More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
107. More people use blue toothbrushes, than red ones.
108. Mosquitoes have teeth.
109. Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.
110. Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
111. Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
112. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
113. Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
114. Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
115. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
116. Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
117. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously
118. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building looks like an American flag, but is actually the flag that flew over to Dominion of Canada before the Maple Leaf .
119. On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
120. One in every 4 americans has appeared on television.
121. One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 1930's lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not as chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
122. One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet.
123. Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
124. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
125. Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
126. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
127. Over 1000 birds a year die from smashing into windows.
128. Owls are one of the only birds who can see the color blue.
129. Pamela Anderson Lee is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
130. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
131. Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.
132. There are only thirteen blimps in the world. Nine of them are in the United States.
133. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
134. There is a town in Newfoundland, Canada called Dildo.
135. There wasn't a single pony in the Pony Express, just horses.
136. Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark.
137. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
138. To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs -- it will let you go instantly.
139. Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
140. Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.
141. Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize that this was the day of the changeover.
142. When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.
143. When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
144. When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
145. White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (formerly of the Monkees).
146. Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? Paul Reiser himself.
147. Wilma Flintstone's maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble's Maiden name was Betty Jean Mcbricker.
148. Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.
149. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
150. Women's hearts beat faster than men's.
151. You blink over 20,000,000 times a year.
152. You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog.
153. You'll eat about 35,000 cookies in a lifetime.
154. You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.
155. You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.
156. Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day.
157. Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe.
158. Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
159. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.
160. Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
161. Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
162. Polar Bears trying to blend in with the ice will sometimes cover up their black nose with their paws.
163. Pollsters say that 40 percent of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.
164. Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States.
165. Recycling one glass jar, saves enough energy to watch T.V for 3 hours.
166. Reindeer like to eat bananas.
167. Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.
168. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
169. Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
170. Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
171. Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Games.
172. Slugs have 4 noses.
173. Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food.
174. Some toothpaste's contain antifreeze.
175. Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.
176. "Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
177. Studies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what is occurring, relax and correct itself.
178. Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with "Midnight Cowboy." Her entire role lasted only six minutes.
179. Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.
180. The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
181. The average American drinks about 600 sodas a year.
182. The average American will eat about 11.9 pounds of cereal per year.
183. The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.
184. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
185. The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
186. The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
187. The average person laughs 15 times a day.
188. The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
189. The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.
190. The band Duran Duran got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella.
191. The blesbok, a South African antelope, is almost the same color as grapejuice.
192. The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
193. The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life".
194. The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
195. The company providing the liability insurance for the Republican National Convention in San Diego is the same firm that insured the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.
196. The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500s.
197. The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
198. The Earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
199. The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
200. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
201. The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump.
202. The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
203. The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.
204. The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver."
205. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
206. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
207. The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
208. The housefly hums in the middle octave, key of F.
209. The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
210. The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs.
211. The "L.L." in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.
212. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
213. The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
214. 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, its plural.
215. The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
216. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
217. The moon is moving away at a tiny, although measurable distance from the earth every year. Do the math and you will clearly see that 85 million years ago it was orbiting the earth at a distance of about 35 feet from the earth's surface. This would explain the death of the dinosours; the tallest ones, anyway.
218. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
219. The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."
220. The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
221. The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
222. The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
223. The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.
224. The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred.
225. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
226. The only nation whose name begins with an "A" but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan.
227. 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 All-Star Game.
228. The penguin is the only bird who can swim, but not fly.
229. The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
230. The phrase, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.
231. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
232. The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times.
233. The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head.
234. The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
235. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
236. The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
237. The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
238. The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they would crack and break off... thus the saying.
239. The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.
240. The starfish is one of the only animals who can turn it's stomach inside-out.
241. The state of Florida is bigger than England.
242. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
243. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
244. The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
245. The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
246. The United States Government keeps its supply of silver at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York.
247. The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
248. The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
249. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
250. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead".
251. The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate, demodulate." (MOdulate DEModulate)
252. The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
253. The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of people.
254. The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old.
255. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
256. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
257. There are over 52.6 million dogs in the U.S.
258. There are more chickens than people in the world.
259. There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
260. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

If you have any fun facts, I would love to hear them!