Trivia Factoids 9

At latitude 60 degrees south you can sail all the way around the world.

A Chinese checkerboard has 121 holes.

The hyoid bone, in your throat, is the only bone in the body not attached to another bone.

Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes and man all have seven neck vertebra.

Sunbeams that shine down through the clouds are called crespucular rays.

Very small clouds that look like they have been broken off of bigger clouds are called scuds.

On a dewy morning, if you look at your shadow in the grass, the dew drops shine light back to your eye, creating a halo called a heilgenschein (German for halo).

Giraffes have no vocal cords.

When angered, the ears of Tazmanian devils turn a pinkish-red.

All porcupines float in water.

It takes a lobster approxiamately seven years to grow to be one pound.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

A bear has 42 teeth.

Almost all swans and sturgeons in England are property of the Queen and disturbing them is a serious offense.

Hang On Sloopy is the official rock song of Ohio.

A-1 Steak Sauce contains both orange peel and raisins.

The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' symbolizes 'two women living under one roof'.

Pickled herrings were invented in 1375.

At McDonalds in New Zealand, they serve apricot pies instead of cherry ones.

Trivia Factoids 8

When you see most stars, you're essentially looking hundreds or thousands of years into the past.

About 1% of the static seen on old analog TVs is residual radiation from the Big Bang.

If you cut up a hologram, the entire image is retained in each piece.

Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.

The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it.

If Earth weren't tilted on its axis, we wouldn't have woodgrain, just "tree brown".

The tango originated as a dance between two men, mostly sailors (for partnering practice).

Leon Trotsky, the seminal Russian Communist, was assassinated in Mexico with an ice-pick.

The Bronx, New York got its name from explorer Henry Bronk.

The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continually held sports event in the United States (1875); the second oldest is the Westminister Kennel Club Dog Show (1876.)

The 'Easter Island Heads' actually have bodies, they're buried under the ground.

The amount of tropical rainforest cut down each year is an area the size of Tennessee.

The face of a penny can hold about thirty drops of water.

The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.

Grover Cleveland's real first name is Stephen, Grover is his middle name.

Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams missed almost five full baseball seasons (1943, 1944, 1945, 1952 and 1953) fighting as a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War and still managed to hit 521 home runs.

It takes a photon, on average, 200,000 years to travel from the core of the Sun to the surface, then just a little over 8 minutes from the Sun's surface to your eyeball, sliding in at 700,000,000 MPH.

The nursery rhyme Ring Around the Rosey is about the plague. Infected people would get red circular sores ("Ring around the rosey..."), these sores would smell badly so common folks would put flowers on their bodies inconspicuously so that it would cover the smell ("...a pocket full of posies..."). People who died from the plague would be burned to reduce the spread of the disease ("...ashes, ashes, we all fall down!")

Trivia Factoids 7

The top layer of a wedding cake, known as the groom's cake, traditionally is a fruit cake because it will save until the first anniversary.

The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword or by holding gloves.

The forward pass was created by the football team at Saint Louis University.

In every show that Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks) wrote, there is at least one song about rain.

A person from the country of Nauru is called a Nauruan; this is the only palindromic nationality.

The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate, demodulate."

Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated two years after he had died.

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

Roberta Flack wrote "Killing Me Softly" about singer Don McLean.

The Greek version of the Old Testament is called the Septuagint.

The name of the 3-month-old naked baby swimming on the cover of Nirvana's album "Nevermind", released in 1991, is Spencer Elden.

All three major 1996 Presidential candidates, Clinton, Dole and Perot, are left-handed.

Sheriff came from Shire Reeve. During early years of feudal rule in England, each shire had a reeve who was the law for that shire. When the term was brought to the United States it was shortned to Sheriff.

The word posh, which denotes luxurious rooms or accomodations, originated when ticket agents in England marked the tickets of travelers going by ship to the Orient. Since there was no air conditioning in those days, it was always better to have a cabin on the shady side of the ship as it passed through the Mediterranean and Suez area. Since the sun is in the south, those with money paid extra to get cabin's on the left, or port, traveling to the Asia, and on the right, or starboard, when returning to Europe. Hence their tickets were marked with the initials for Port Outbound Starboard Homebound, or POSH.