Strange Facts:

• Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.
• Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
• In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
• S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls"-It was chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash.
• Crickets hear through their knees.
• A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.
• U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.
• According to Genesis 1:20-22 the chicken came before the egg.
• To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
• Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle.
• There are more beetles than any other kind of creature in the world.
• The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon.
• Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi's noses off would forestall curses.
• The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans.
• Polar bear fur is not white, it's clear.
• Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
• If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.
• Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
• A rhinoceros' horn is made of compacted hair.
• Revolvers cannot be silenced, due to all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.
• Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
• 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.
• The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.
• "Hara kiri" is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."
• "Race car" is a palindrome.
• Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
• The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California. The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive-so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
• "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 and he would appear.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
• Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes of treason.
• 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.
• The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
• Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.
• Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.
• Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.
• The 'Screwdriver' was invented by oilmen, who used the tool to stir the drink.
• The term "Mayday" is used for signaling for help. It comes from the French term "M'aidez" which is pronounced "Mayday" and means, "Help Me."
• 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.
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
• Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
• One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers-they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
• Pearls melt in vinegar.
• Ninety eight per cent of the weight of water is made up from oxygen.
• A fully loaded supertanker traveling at normal speed takes a least twenty minutes to stop.
• No matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
• Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
• Boys who have unusual first names are more likely to have mental problems than boys with conventional names. Girls don't seem to have this problem.
• Russians generally answer the phone by saying, 'I'm listening.'
• Until 1967, LSD was legal in California.
• In the 40's, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it 'Bitch.'
• Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.
• The NY phone book had 22 Hitler's before WWII. The NY phone book had 0 Hitler's after WWII.
• There is a town in Texas called 'Ding Dong.'
• Men leave their hotel rooms cleaner than women do.
• Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
• If the population of the Earth continued to increase at its present rate indefinitely, by 3530 A.D. the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the Earth. By 6826 A.D. it would equal the mass of the known universe.

Now did you know that?

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