Trivia
To
Know or Not to Know
*A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
*A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
*New Jersey has a spoon museum featuring over 5,400 spoons
from every state and almost every country.
*The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
*"Bookkeeper" and "bookkeeping" are the
only words in the English language with three consecutive
double letters.
*The phrase "sleep tight" originated when mattresses
were set upon ropes woven through the bed frame. To remedy
sagging ropes, one would use a bed key to tighten the rope.
*A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a
spat.
*The arteries and veins surrounding the brain stem called
the "circle of Willis" looks like a stick person
with a large head.
*The Ganges River in India boasts the only genuine fresh-water
sharks in the entire world.
*The gene for the Siamese coloration in animals such as cats,
rats or rabbits is heat sensitive. Warmth produces a lighter
colour than does cold. Putting tape temporarily on Siamese
rabbit's ear will make the fur on that ear lighter than on
the other one.
*There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet.
*Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."
*The words 'sacrilegious' and 'religion' do not share the
same etymological root.
*Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.
*Armoured knights raised their visors to identify themselves
when they rode past their king. This custom has become the
modern military salute.
*ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each
of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
*White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly
of the Monkees)
*The "huddle" in football was formed due to a deaf
football player who used sign language to communicate and
his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he
used and in turn huddled around him.
*There is no such thing as naturally blue food, even blueberries
are purple.
*In the 1983 film "JAWS 3D" the shark blows up.
Some of the shark guts were the stuffed ET dolls being sold
at the time.
*Walt Disney had wooden teeth.
*The legbones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.
*Seattle, Washington, like Rome, was built on seven hills.
*Dinosaur droppings are called coprolites, and are actually
fairly common.
*Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully
ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
*The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
*Soldiers from every country salute with their right hand.
*Moisture, not air, causes superglue to dry.
*A full moon always rises at sunset.
*If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die
of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen
deprivation.
*Rabbits love liquorice.
*Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry
by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.
*If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front
legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has
one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds
received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the
ground, the person died of natural causes.
*The language Malayalam, spoken in parts of India, is the
only language whose name is a palindrome.
*Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.
*Urea is found in human urine and Dalmatian dogs and nowhere
else.
*Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
*Pinocchio was made of pine.
*An ant lion is neither an ant nor a lion.
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(R) thedailystar.net 2004
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