Random Facts Part 6

1. The katydid bug hears through holes in its hind legs.
2. The "L.L." in L.L. Bean stands for Leon Leonwood.
3. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
4. The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
8. 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.
9. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
10. 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."
11. The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.
12. The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."
13. The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
14. The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.
15. The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred.
16. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
17. The only nation whose name begins with an "A" but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan.
18. 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.
19. The penguin is the only bird who can swim, but not fly.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times.
24. The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head.
25. The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
26. 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.
27. The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
28. The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
29. 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.
30. The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.
31. The starfish is one of the only animals who can turn it's stomach inside-out.
32. The state of Florida is bigger than England.
33. 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."
34. The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
35. The United States Government keeps its supply of silver at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York.
36. The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
37. The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
38. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
39. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead".
40. The word "modem" is a contraction of the words "modulate, demodulate." (MOdulate DEModulate)
41. The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
42. The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of people.
43. The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old.
44. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
45. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
46. There are over 52.6 million dogs in the U.S.
47. There are more chickens than people in the world.
48. There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
49. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
50. There are only thirteen blimps in the world. Nine of them are in the United States.