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Useless stuff
The last time American Green cards were actually green was 1964.
The pelican was adopted as a Christian symbol early on because mother pelicans would pierce their own breasts to feed their brood with blood -- seen as a sacrifice not dissimilar to that of Jesus' by the Church leaders.
The targets in both skeet and trap shooting, commonly called clay pigeons, are actually made from tar and pitch.
Delaware is the only state with part of its border defined by the arc of a compass.
The world's oldest active parliamentary body is the Icelandic Althing which met first before the year 1000.
The oldest weapon still in use in the American military arsenal is the Mameluke hilt sword carried by officers in the U.S. Marine Corps. The sword dates back to the Barbary Pirate Wars of 1801-1807. The sword was given to Lt. Presly O'Banen by the ruler of Tripoli for the aid rendered by the Marines in the Mediteranian Fleet.
The second is defined as being 9,192,631,770 times the time it takes for a cesium-133 atom to swap hyperfine levels in its ground state.
The Vatican (Papal States) was the only political entity to grant recognition to the Confederate States of America during the Civil War (1861-1865).
The Greek national anthem has 158 verses.
November 19, 1999 was the last date before January 1, 3111 where all the digits in the the date are odd.
In American English, "forty" is the only number which is spelled by going only forward and not backtracking.
The three largest city parks in America are Central Park in New York City, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and Bidwell Park in Chico, California.
There are 2,598,960 possible hands in a five-card poker game.
The duck most often depicted on the "Duck Stamp" is the mallard, at six times.
The blond woman in the Tic Tac yoga commercials is Mark Harmon's sister.
America's only statue of Charles Dickens graces Clark Park in Philadelphia, just off the University of Pennsylvania campus.
No matter where you are in Australia you are never more than 1000 kilometers from the ocean.
All owls lay white eggs.
It takes a week to make a jelly bean.
NASA scientists are still receiving data from Voyager even though the signal it is emitting has less energy than that emitted by a blowdrier.
You can't tickle yourself.
People from Manchester, England are called Mancunians.
White cockatoos are the only parrots that can be sexed by eye color; females have a visible pupil while males have black irises.
The University of Texas system is the third-largest landowner in the United States.
Marvin Gardens in the Monopoly game is not spelled the same as the Marven Gardens outside of Atlantic City, NJ, which the board game isbased on.
The Stasi collected the "smells" of their enemies so that their dogs could find them.
In western New York, there is a kind of Rattlesnake calles the Massasauga Rattlesnake. These snakes live in a very small area of western New York, and have been cut off from any other kind of snake for so long, that it is now impossible for them to breedwith Timber Rattlers, their closest relatives.
While drug-sniffing dogs are trained to bark like crazy, go "aggressive" at the first whiff of the right powder... Bomb-sniffing dogs are trained to go "passive" lest they set off a motion sensor or a noise sensor or any number of other things that might go kablooie.
While almost everyone knows that Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, few know that Gene Cernan was the last man on the moon.
Lyndon Johnson's First Family all had initials LBJ. Lyndon Baines Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson, Linda Bird Johnson and Lucy Baines Johnson. And his dog, Little Beagle Johnson.
There are 22 stars in the Paramount movie studio logo.
Jane Wyman (Reagan) was born Sarah Jane Fulks. Nancy Davis (Reagan) was born Anne Frances Robbins.
The Muller-Lyer ( <-> >-< : Which line is longer?) illusion dosen't work on Zulus.
You can't trademark surnames.
The Black Cauldron is the only PG-rated Disney animated feature.
A humpback whale's milk is 54 percent fat.
Lucy Stone of Massachusetts is thought to be the first American woman to retain her maiden name when she married. She was a sister-in-law of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to earn an M.D.
When wearing a Kimono Japanese women wear socks called "Tabi". The big toe of the sock is separated from the rest of the toes, like a thumb from a mitten.
If you were to toss the new 10p coin (Pounds Sterling), 10000 times, the average odds of it being heads/tails would not be 50/50. It would be closer to 45/55 in favour of tails because the new picture of the Queen's head is slightly larger than it used to be (she has gone a bit saggy) and so it makes the heads side heavier than the tails side, thus it has more chance of landing on tails.
The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
Lazy Susans are named after Thomas Edison's daughter. He invented it to impress a gathering of industrialists and inventors.
For a short time in 1967, the American Typers Association made a new punctuation mark that was a combination of the question mark and an exclamation point called an interrobang. It was rarely used and hasn't been seen since.
Tennessee Williams' real name was Thomas Lanier Williams.
Anise is the scent on the artificial rabbit that is used in greyhound races.
Petey, the beloved pit bull of "Our Gang" fame is buried at historic Clara Glen pet cemetery in Linwood, New Jersey.
The first European to see New Zealand was Abel Tasman in 1642; the first to set foot on the island was James Cook in 1769.
Tide has 70 percent of the market share for detergent.
Only one satellite has been ever been destroyed by a meteor -- the European Space Agency's Olympus in 1993.
The snapping turtle eats carion and is used by police to find dead bodies in lakes, ponds and swamps.
When Portland, Oregon changed the name of Union Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. they lost the intersection of Union and Division Street.
The Western-most point in continental Europe is at Cabo de Rocha, Portugal.
Yellowstone was the first National Park (1872) but the first area to beset aside under federal protection was Hot Springs Resevation, Arkansas(1832.) It became Hot Springs National Park in 1921.
The official name of the St. Louis Gateway Arch is "The Jefferson National Expansion Monument."
The Gateway Arch looks taller than it is wider, but it is exactly 630 feet by 630 feet.
The Ragdoll is the largest breed of domesticated cat in the world, with adult males averaging 22-25 pounds.
The roaring lion in the MGM logo was named Volney and lived at the Memphis Zoo.
The roaring lion in the MGM logo's hide is now on display in the McPherson Museum located in McPherson, Kansas.
Everybody knows that St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest city in the U.S., but not everybody knows that St. Mary's, Georgia is the second oldest.
Orson Welles is buried in an olive orchard on a ranch owned by his friend, matador Antonio Ordonez in Sevilla, Spain.
The national flower of Greenland is the Willow Herb.
Britain's shortest river is the Brun which runs through Burnley in Lancashire.
Cornell University's motto -- "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study" -- is the only motto among Ivy League schools not in Latin.
The Latin name for moose is alces alces.
1961 was the most recent year that could be written both upside-down and rightside-up and appear the same. The next year that this will be possible will be 6009!
The first atomic bomb dropped on Japan fell from the Enola Gay, named after the unit commander's mother. The second dropped from a plane known as Bock's Car.
Kermit the Frog has 11 points on his collar around his neck.
The Bronx in New York City is actually named after the Bronx River. The Bronx river is named after the first settler in the Bronx, Jonas Bronk. He settled there in 1639.
Cleveland spelled backwards is "DNA level C".
In the Mario Brothers movie, the Princess' first name is Daisy, but in Mario 64, the game, her first name is Peach. Before that, it's Princess Toadstool.
Tabasco sauce is made by fermenting vinegar and hot peppers in a French oak barrel which has three inches of salt on top and is aged for three years until all the salt is diffused through the barrel.
Karen Carpenter's doorbell chimed the first six notes of "We've Only Just Begun."
Certain sounds in the English language are real germ spreaders, particularly the sounds of f, p, t, d, and s.
Harvard uses "Yale" brand locks on their buildings. Yale uses "Best" brand.
Contrary to popular British folklore, cuckoo clocks do not come from Switzerland but from the Black Forest in Germany.
The Angel of Independence in Mexico City was built by Salvador Rivas Mercado. The face of the angel is a portrait of his daughter.
There are more Samoans in Los Angeles than on American Samoa.
Soccer legend Pele's real name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento.
If you paint the flag of Canada, you must use these colors:"The printing ink colour is FIP red: General Printing Ink, No. 0-712;Inmont Canada Ltd., No. 4T51577; Monarch Inks, No. 62539/0; or Sinclair andValentine, No. RL163929/0. The painting colours are FIP red No. 509-211 and white: 513-201."
Both Fleet Commanders in the Pacific Theater of World War II Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto for the Japanese, and Admiral Chester Nimitz for theUnited States were each missing two fingers as a result of accidentswhile younger officers onboard ship.
Everyone is familiar with the RCA logo with Nipper the dog listening to the RCA grammaphone. But the original picture had both the dog and thegrammaphone sitting on his dead masters casket. The idea being that theclosest thing to his dead master's voice was the RCAgrammaphone. The ad was eventually considered too morbid and they removed the casket.
A "jiffy" is a unit of time: 3.3357 times 10 raised to the -11 (3.3357x10^-11) seconds. So named for the length of time it takes light to travel a cm in a vacuum.
During the Manhattan Project in the early '40s, the time it took for the imploding shell of plutonium to reach the center of the sphere was measured in "shakes of a lamb's tail". One shake = 1x10^-8 sec. It took about three shakes of a lambs tail to get the uranium to a critical mass and initiate spontaneous fission.
The Spanish abbreviation for UFO is OVNIS: "objeto volador noidentificado."
Iolani Palace in Hawaii is the only place built for a monarchy currently on U.S. soil.
Maine has no poisonous snakes.
Hawaii has only two snakes. One is a sea snake rarely seen in Hawaii waters. The other is a blind snake that lives like an earthworm.
The abbreviation A.D. (Anno Domini, "Year of Our Lord") should be properly placed in front of the year -- thus, you get 417 BC but AD 2000.
The wingspan of a Boeing 747 jet is longer than the Wright Brothers' first flight.
Ice Cube's real name is O'Shea Jackson.
The smallest fish in the world is the Trimattum Nanus of the Chagos Archipelago. It measures 0.33 inches. It broke the record of the so- called "sinarapan" of Buhi, Camarines Sur, Philippines.
According to the London for Visitors website, the area known as Soho used to be part of King Henry VIII's hunting grounds. When a hunter spied a deer, he yelled "Tally-Ho!", but when he found a smaller prey, the cry became "So-Ho!" As the area was developed, the name stuck.
There is now an ATM at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, which has a winter population of 200.
The flag of the U.K. is properly known as the Union Flag. It is only called the Union Jack when it is flown from the jack mast of a ship.
The popular Fiesta Ware line of dishes sold well in the 1930s, except for the orange-colored sets. The reason? The paint used on the orange Fiesta Ware was known to be radioactive.
A large amount of boulders that have fallen off a cliff is known as talus, whereas they would be known as moraine had they been left there by a glacier.
The Sitka spruce is Britain's most commonly planted tree.
The Philip Morris Tobacco Company's crest has on it Caesar's famous saying "Veni, Vidi, Vici."
There are more 100 dollar bills in Russia currently than there are in the United States.
The extras in the the battle scenes in the movie Braveheart were reserves in the Irish army.
The famous Citgo sign near Fenway Park in Boston is maintained not by Citgo, but by the Boston Historical Society.
Roger Ebert won the 1959 Illinois High School Association State Speech competition in Radio.
The main export of Jamaica is bauxite, which used in making aluminum.
Will Clark hit a homerun in his first at-bat in college, the Olympics, and the Major Leagues.
The original Guiness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland has a six thousand year lease.
South Africa used to have two official languages. Now it has eleven.
On March 29, 1848, Niagara Falls stopped flowing for 30 hours becauseof an ice jam blocking the Niagara River.
America's largest rosary is located at the Fatima Shrine in Holliston, Massachusetts.
The first product to have a UPC bar code on its packaging was Wrigley's gum.
In Italy, it is illegal to make coffins out of anything except nutshells or wood.
Pia Zadora's first movie role was as a young child, as one of the protagonists in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
A railroad tanker car carrying propane traveled over 3,000 feet when it exploded during a train wreck in Illinois, sheering off a steel tower in its path. It's the longest flight on record for a propane explosion.
It takes eighteen minutes to cool hot chocolate into a Hershey's Kiss.
Of the twenty brightest stars in the sky, Capella is the furthest north.
Sagittarius is the furthest south of the zodiacal constellations.
Joe Friday, from Dragnet (later known as Badge 714), lived in Eagle Rock, California.
The football huddle originated at Gallaudet University -- the world's only accredited four-year liberal arts college for the deaf -- in the 19th century when the football team found that opposing teams were reading their signed messages and intercepting plays.
The shortest British monarch was Charles I, who was 4'9" and that was before he lost his head!
Mickey Mouse's ears are always turned to the front, no matter which direction his head is pointing.
The South American Electric Eel can produce almost 1 Amp of current
The smallest unit of time is the yoctosecond.
Ferrets sleep for about 20 hours a day.
The "you are here" arrow on maps is called an ideo locator.
The opening to the cave in which a bear hibernates is always on the north slope. Unless the bear lives in the southern hemisphere.
Of all the trains in the New York subway system, only one neverenters the island of Manhattan. It's the "G" train, theBrooklyn-Queens crosstown local.
The first National Park, Yellowstone, was proclaimed a national park in 1872. However, there was no National Park Serviceuntil 1916. Until then, the parks were administered by the U.S. Army. When the Park Service was formed they got their firstuniforms from the Army, hence the ranger (campaign)hats.
Since World War II, every American president to address the Canadian House of Commons in their firstterm of office have all been re-elected to a second term.Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton have all had the honour, while Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, and Bush did not address the parliament.
The "J.R.R." in J.R.R.Tolkien stands for John Ronald Reuel. His son's name is Christopher.
In 1920 Ray Chapman a shortstop for theCleveland Indians, is the only player ever killed as a result of amajor league baseball game. He was hit in the temple with a pitchand died the next day.
Hong Kong has the world's largest double-decker tram fleet in the world.
Bulgaria was the only soccer team in the 1994 World Cup in which all 11 players' last names ended with the letters"OV."
Of the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all named after artistsand/or sculptors, Donatello does not occur in the same time period as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael.
Abdul Kassem Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persiain the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went.The 117,000 volumes were carried by 400 camels trained to walk inalphabetical order.
The country with the biggest percentage of female heads of household is Botswana.
In every deck of cards the King of Hearts is sticking his sword through his head. That's why he's often called the Suicide King.
In English, "four" is the only digit that has the same number of letters as its value.
Quebec and Newfoundland are the only two Canadian provinces which do not allow personalized licenseplates.
With a population of fewer than nine thousand people, Montpelier, Vermont is the smallest state capital in theU.S.
The actor who played the T-1000 in Terminator 2 (Robert Patrick) and the lead singer of Filter are brothers.
Pittsburgh is the only city where all the major sports teams have the same colors: Black and gold.
In the theme song from "The Flintstones", the lineafter "Let's ride with the family down the street" is "Through the courtesy of Fred's two feet."
The proceedings in the British Parliament are meant to be in private, even though they are now televised. So, if the MPs want to have a secret session, one of them points to the gallery from which the public watch, and calls "I spy strangers!", whereupon the House votes "that the strangers do withdraw."
On the London Underground, one station has adifferent name on two of its platforms: Bank and Monument.
Ambassadors to the United Kingdom are not called that officially, butrather Ambassadors to the Court of St. James. The Court of St. James being the palace which was the residence of the monarch before Buckingham Palace was built.
In Monopoly sets, the most expensive property (Mayfair) is not a street, but a district of little streets near Hyde Park.
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