129 Useless Facts

Thank you all for this amazing dosage of useless information!

1. Guernsey dairy cows produce yellow milk because of the way their bodies process beta-carotene from the grass they eat.

2. Cows can climb stairs. Going down the stairs proves nearly impossible, however, due to the construction of their knees. This useless fact was the basis of a side story on Hill Street Blues in the early 80’s as the police found a 1200 lb steer on the top floor of a building and couldn’t get him down because there was no elevator. They resorted to a helicopter with a sling, and yes, the worse possible ending did occur. A bovine dropped 7 stories makes quite a mess.

3. You can feed all kinds of stuff to beef cattle in addition to grass and straw that you can buy in bulk…things like cookie crumbs, cotton gin trash, and even old, unsold chewing gum. You can know you’re in a pasture with gum chewing cows when you look out and see all the patties sparkling and glistening in the sun from the foil that doesn’t get digested.

4. Cat urine glows under black light.

5. A horse’s hoof is kind of like its toe– technically you could say that horses walk on their tip-toes all the time.

6. Ostriches have two toes on each foot and emus have three. This is a good way to tell them apart if you can’t tell black from tan (their respective colors).

7. If you’re stuck in an alligator’s mouth, you can get him to open his mouth by poking your thumbs in its eyes.

8. Cockroches pop when you step on them cause they are made of the same substance as finger nails.

9. The tail end of a chickens bum (that people eat : parsons nose) is the same thing as a guys testicals.

10. The only mammal besides humans that can get leprosy is the Armadillo.  Mice can also carry leprosy on the pads of their feet.

11. There are 52 American breeds of cattle.

12. More people are killed every year by donkeys than by airplane crashes.

13. It is estimated that everyone swallows seven spiders a year while sleeping.

14. A Kangaroo and Emu can not walk backwards hence them being Australia’s mascots (Australia goes forward and not backwards).

15. When preparing glassware to distill ammonia samples you do a final wash in Hydrochloric Acid to ensure the deionized wash water doesn’t contaminate the sample.

16. If you’re working with glassware to be used for inorganics you do a final wash in Nitric Acid.

17. Tap water isn’t pure no matter how many filters you put it through.

18. The atomic symbol for Iron is Fe because it’s original name was Ferric.

19. The element Antimony’s atomic symbol is Sb which has absolutely nothing to do with it except that you can then call it sbantimony.

20. Pierre Curie didn’t die of radiation of poisoning, he was run over by a carriage.

21. Marie Curie discovered both Polonium and Radium.

22. Peeps Marshmallow candies will not dissolve in water, acetone, sulfuric acid, or sodium hydroxide. They will dissolve in phenol — well, they will almost dissolve in phenol. Their little black eyes are evidently indestructible.

23. Water is NOT a conductor its what in it that conducts (the impurities).

24. If you rub straight garlic on the bottom of your foot, you’ll be able to smell it in your breath within approximately two hours.

25. A B flat, when played on a tuba, drives alligators completely nuts.

26. Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.

27. If you put a dirty form of coinage currency in Coca-Cola for an extended period of time, it will clean it and you will have yourself a new and shiny penny, or nickel, or quarter, maybe a dime.

28. It will only take 3lbs of pressure to rip a human ear off.

29. The odds of getting stuck by lighting are 800,00 to 1.
30. Men are more likely to be struck than women.

31. It is a myth that lighting never strikes twice, lighting often strikes the same spot many times during a storm.

32. The life span of a taste bud is ten days.

33. The human brain weights 3 pounds (on average).

34. Banging your head against the wall uses 150 calories per hour.

35. There are 10 teaspoons of sugar in the average can of soda.

36. Dirty snow melts faster than white snow because it’s darker and absorbs more heat. What about yellow snow?!?

37. Lavender essential oil has the most medicinal uses out of all essential oils.

38. The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung – used by the Egyptians in 2000BC.

39. 85.29% of statistical numbers are arbitrarily made-up on the spur of the moment.

40. The amigdila is a gland in your nose that comits smell to memory.

41. Doing toe-raises for less than a minute a day will prevent shin-splints in athletes.

42. There is a spot on each side of your palate (in your mouth) that when touched with a cool metal instrument will cause you to reflexively and immediately throw up.

43. The average person sheds a complete layer of skin every 28 days.

44. 1 out of every 10 people in the world lives on an island.

45. Blondes have more hair follicles than darker headed chaps.

46. Women blink twice as much as men do.

47. The average person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator in their lifetime.

48. On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

49. Over 2,500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people.

50. The language Bagri has about 200,000 speakers in Pakistan.

51. Some people cannot say the “g” sound in the words “finger” and “ringer”.

52. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was never a recorded Wendy before!

53. Monday is the favored day for committing suicide. This gives a whole new meaning to I hate Mondays!

54. A common custom in Spain is to eat one grape for each of the last 12 seconds of every year for good luck.

55. 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.”

56. The word ‘bourgeoisie’ means the people in the middle class of society.

57. 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.

58. Picasso’s full name was Pablo Diego Jose Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Maria de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santisima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso.

59. Most people know that Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am…”; what most people don’t realize is that the rest of the quote continues: “…afraid of Chuck Norris.”

60. David Hasselhoff didn’t have a date on Valentines day.

61. Howard Stern was a New York gubernatorial candate in NY. He ran as a libertarian. I’ve gotten that question twice in Trvial Pursuit, and have shouted the answer both times instinctually and at a very high volume.

62. Jared Diehl weighs 158 pounds, this is the most he has ever weighed.

63. Feb. 17, 1600 – Philosopher Giordano Bruno was burnt alive at Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, charged of heresy.

64. To get him to fly on planes, the A-Team would have to continually come up with creative ways to drug B.A. Baracus. He knew it was coming every time, but you can’t outwit the Face Man or Mad Dog Murdock.

65. Batman and Robin would pretend to walk up the side of buildings holding onto their rope grapple thingy while the camera was turned onto its side.

66. David Sliker won a “YMCA dance-off” at a baseball game a few years back.

67. Certain interns have placed Mike Bickle’s usage of the word “millions” at 73 times in one sermon. In other sermons the usage of the word “billions” has been clocked at 23 times used.

68. David Brainerd and Adolph Hitler share the same birthday– April 20th.

69. After Tom Hanks “Castaway” role and his freak diet to get that skinny, he put on weight that he has not been able to take off. It messed his system up for good.

70. Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the Usa was the 1st CD made.

71. Popeye is 5’6″.

72. When Tolkien created his mythology, he actually created the various languages used by different peoples (in fact, it could be argued that the mythologies are there to explain the languages, not the other way around).

73. Charlie Brown’s father was a barber.
74. The Beatles were the first to record with headphones as monitors and not just open sound everywhere.

75. Bruce Lee was so fast, that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That is the opposite of the norm.

76. In 1982, a cactus in Phoenix, Arizona killed a man. David Grundman fired two shotgun blasts at a giant saguaro cactus that ended up falling on top of him.

77. In the city of Denver it is unlawful to loan your vacuum to your next-door neighbor?

78. In Kansas City minors are not allowed to buy cap pistols, but may buy shotguns freely.

79. In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

80. In the early 1900s, an isolated, independent Chinese community was found on the Russian side of the border. Their punishment for stealing certain items was being buried alive.

81. You aren’t allowed to cross the border from Afghanistan to Iran if you’re headed to Israel or have been to Israel.

82. The infield fly rule does not apply in most girls slow-pitch softball 10 and under leagues. It kicks in once you hit 12 and under.

83. The five most stolen items in a drugstore are batteries, cosmetics, film, sunglasses, and, get this, Preparation H. Apparently people are just too embarrassed to purchase the last item. And, just in case you are curious, one of Preparation H’s main ingredient is shark liver oil. The oil not only helps shrink hemorrhoids, but will shrink any tissue. As a result, many older women in Florida use the stuff to help reduce the appearance of wrinkles!

84. The average adult male shaves off 1 lb of beard a year

85. 54% of Americans fold toilet paper neatly. 35% wad it. What about the other 11%?

86. A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.

87. The world record for passing gas was set on Japanese television, 3,000 times in a row.

88. Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant “plenty of excrement.”

89. The average woman consumes 6 pounds of lipstick in her lifetime.

90. During an average lifetime a man will spend 3,350 hours removing 8.5 meters of stubble.

91. The average person uses approximately 57 sheets of toilet paper a day.

92. The 1st flushing toilet on T.V. was on Leave it to Beaver.

93. The inventor of the 1st flushing toilet was Thomas Crapper.

94. Gmail is the third largest e-mail provider, right behind Yahoo and Hotmail.

95. If MySpace were a country it would be the 11th largest? Between Japan and Mexico.

96. What most people call a computer is more properly a Von Neumann machine, and is but one possible implementation of a Universal Turing Machine.

97. At any given layer of abstraction, computers can be fully explained in terms of the next lower level of abstraction…all the way down to quantum physics.

98. The first computer with a GUI (Graphical User Interface) was developed by Xerox.

99. The video game industry now brings in more money than the movie industry.

100. In the 70’s, the CIA tried to launch a coup in Chile to keep their newly elected Socialist president from taking office. Chile democratically elected this guy as president and America actually went so far as to kill someone in their attempt to keep him out of power.

101. The state of North Dakota had an active Socialist party at the turn of the century. It later morphed into the Non Partisan League and merged with the Democrats.

102. Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S. but technically it’s number 47. Until August 7, 1953, congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the union.

103. The energy given off by a hurricane in one day would power the entire U.S for three years.

104. Rhode Island’s official name is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

105. California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo can be abbreviated as Cal Poly. California Polytechnic University, Pomona must be abbreviated as Cal Poly, Pomona.

106. California State University, Fullerton is the largest public university in California, at about 35,000 students (all squeezed onto just 233 acres).

107. The politics of California’s Central Coast region are largely driven by fear of growing in population and becoming like Southern California. Sadly, the nature of the politics is actually creating Southern California’s problems.

108. The “big one” in California happened in 2004. It was actually normal sized.

109. More people walk to work in Alaska than anywhere else.

110. Per Capita, Alaskans eat more ice cream than anyone else… especially in the winter.

111. Music Singer Jewel is from Homer, Alaska.

112. Alaska is one of only 4 states that does not allow billboards.

113. In PARTS of Alaska it is illegal to feed alcohol to moose.

114. Alaska is almost as close to Tokyo Japan as New York City.

115. There are now only eight planets.

116. 1 teaspoon of pluto dust weighs approximately 1 metric ton due to it’s incredible density!

117. There is a range of mountains in Nevada called the Pancake Range.

118. A black hole emits one note: the B flat 7 octaves below middle C.

119. In Australia the water goes the other way when you flush the toilet than it does in the states.

120. The word “apricate” means to sunbathe.

121. The oldest business in the United States of America is the cymbal company Zildjian which was founded in Constantinople in 1623.

122. The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms that are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.

123. If you go to Oxford, you can take classes in (Tolkien’s) elvish (both Sindarin and Quenya).

124. The numbers ‘172′ can be found on the back of the $5 bill, in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

125. Having been a cashier, it’s not that uncommon to have a purchase total exactly to the dollar ($5, $27, $110, $56, etc.).

126. The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottles represents the number of varieties of pickles the company used to have.

127. Karaoke means “empty orchestra” in Japanese.

128. The two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are named Patience and Fortitude.

129. The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.

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