::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Trivia

A Mixed Bag of Factsn

* Ten percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.
* A person afflicted with hexadectylism has six fingers or six toes on one or both hands and feet.
* About 10% of the world's population is left-handed.
* Barbers at one time combined shaving and haircutting with bloodletting and pulling teeth. The white stripes on a field of red that spiral down a barber pole represent the bandages used in the bloodletting.
* Hans Christian Andersen, Cher, Tom Cruise, Albert Einstein, Whoopie Goldberg, Greg Louganis, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Gen. George S. Patton, are (were) all dyslexics.
* Humans are the only animals that copulate face to face.
* Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte both suffered from epilepsy.
* Julius Caesar, Martin Luther and Jonathan Swift all suffered from Ménièr's disease. It is a disorder of the hearing and balance senses causing hissing, roaring or whistling sounds to be perceived.
* Men commit suicide three times more frequently than women do. But women attempt suicide two to three times more often than men.
* Midgets and dwarfs almost always have normal-sized children, even if both parents are midgets or dwarfs.
* More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
* Offered a new pen to write with, 97% of all people will write their own name.
* Over 80% of professional boxers have suffered brain damage.
* Texas was one of the first American states to adopt capital punishment by lethal injection -- in 1977.
* The ashes of the average cremated person weigh nine pounds.
* The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
* The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
* The average person laughs about 15 times a day.
* The average person walks the equivalent of twice around the world in a lifetime.
* The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
* The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad.
* The New York phone book had 22 Hitlers listed before World War II ... and none after.
* The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
* The vocabulary of the average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words.
* While sleeping, one man in eight snores, and one in ten grinds his teeth.
* Women shoplift more often than men; the statistics are 4 to 1.
* You share your birthday with at least nine million other people around the world.
* The shortest war on record, between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896, lasted just 38 minutes.
* Acupuncture was first used as a medical treatment in 2700 BC by Chinese emperor Shen-Nung.
* Canada declared national beauty contests canceled as of 1992, claiming they were degrading to women.
* Everyone in the Middle Ages believed -- as Aristotle had -- that the heart was the seat of intelligence.
* In 1892, Italy raised the minimum age for marriage for girls - to 12.
* In the Holocaust between 5.1 and 6 million of Europe's 10 million Jews were killed. An additional 6 million 'unwanted' people were also executed, including more than half of Poland's educated populace.
* Members of the Nazi SS had their blood type tattooed on their armpits.
* On Dec. 10th 1901 the 1st Nobel prizes were awarded. Literature - Rene Sully-Prudhomme; Physiology - Emil von Behring; Chemistly - Jacobus van't Hoff; Physics - Wilhelm Roentgen; Peace - Jean Henri Dunant Frederic Passy.
* The ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.
* The first-known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 BC.
* The Hundred Year War actually lasted 116 years (1337 to 1453).
* The longest reigning monarch in history was Pepi II, who ruled Egypt for 90 years; 2566 to 2476 BC. The second longest was France's Louis XIV, who ruled for 72 years, 1643 to 1715.
* The worldwide "Spanish Flu" epidemic which broke out in 1918 killed more than 30 million people in less than a year's time.

Source: Trivial Trivia Collection of Unusual Facts