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Trivia
• Red wine is kept in tinted bottles because it will • Female hyenas have more testosterone in their bodies
Food Facts spoil if exposed to light. than most male hyenas during younger years.
• Vanilla is the extract of fermented and dried • Lettuce is a member of the sunflower family. • Mallard ducks have 360-degree vision.
pods of orchids. • Pumpkins also come in white, blue and green. • Male kangaroos are called boomers, females are
• If Jell-O is hooked up to an EEG (brain • Half of the world population’s staple called flyers
monitor), the EEG registers movements virtually diet is rice.
identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult. • The average person eats almost 1,500 lbs. Rabbits are apparently immune to the
• The flavor we think of as bubblegum is a of food each year. venom of black widow spiders.
combination of wintergreen, vanilla and cassia, • Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.
a form of cinnamon. • Americans spend more on cat food every year • If a rhinoceros has two horns, it's from India. If
• Pineapples are classified as berries. than they spend on baby food. it has one horn, it's from Africa.
• The average child will eat 1,500 peanut butter • A group of ferrets is called a “business.”
and jelly sandwiches by the time he/she • The pupils of goats & sheeps are horizontal, almost
graduates from high school.
Animal Abstracts rectangular, ovals.
• A rat can last longer without water than a camel. • There are twice as many kangaroos in Australia as
Strawberries contain about • A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and there are people.
200 seeds each. cannot find a mate. • The longest earthworm measured 22 feet.
• Scorpions glow under a black (ultraviolet) light. • Toy-breed dogs live an average of seven years
• Pumpkins are fruits, not vegetables. • An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. longer than large breeds.
• A cup of candy corn has fewer calories than • Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. • Cats have 30 permenant teeth.
a cup of raisins. • The longest snake is the Reticulated Python, averaging
• Cranberries are also called “bounceberries.” There are more chickens than 20 ´.6˝.
• The perfect pickle should have seven “warts” • A cockroach can live a week without its
people in the world.
per square inch. head; it dies beacuse it can not drink water.
• When Heinz ketchup leaves the bottle, it • A crocodile can’t stick its tongue out. • An adult male ostrich, the world's largest bird,
travels at a rate of 25 miles per year. • A goldfish ready to mate is called a twit. can weigh up to 345 pounds.
• The average American eats 15-20 quarts of ice • Porcupines float in water. • Pink elephants can be found in some regions
cream during the course of a year. • On average, a hedgehog’s heart beats 300 of India. Because of the red soil, elephants
• There is an average of 178 sesame seeds on a times a minute during non-hibernation months. take on a permanent pink color. They
McDonald's Big Mac bun. • Only female mosquitos suck blood. spray dust over their bodies to protect
• The average American eats 23 lbs. of pizza • A hummingbird weighs less than a penny. themselves from insects.
a year. • Dolphins sleep with one eye open. • A grasshopper needs a minimum temperature
• 500,000,000 Twinkies are produced a year. • A giraffe can clean its ears with its 18–inch tongue. of 62°F in order to be able to hop.
• Pepper is the top-selling spice in the world. • At birth, a panda is smaller than a mouse and
• Popcorn has been served in movie theaters weighs about four ounces.
The penguin is the only bird that • A beaver can hold its breath for 45 minutes.
since 1912.
can swim but not fly. • A group of toads is a “knot.”
• Super Bowl Sunday ranks as the third-largest
occasion, behind Christmas and Thanksgiving, • A “prickle” is a group of porcupines.
for Americans to consume food, according to • A mosquito has 4 knife-like tools of serrated teeth. • A male angler fish attaches itself to a female
the NFL. • Between 100 million & 1 billion birds die each year and never lets go. Their vascular systems unite
• In the Czech Republic, peas are thrown at from smashing into windows. and the male becomes entirely dependent on
brides and grooms rather than rice. • The original name for butterfly was “flutterby.” the female's blood for nutrition.
• There are 18 animals in the popular animal • A polar bear’s skin is black. Its fur is actually • Cats have three eyelids
crackers known as Barnum's Animals. clear, but, like snow, it appears white. • Penguins can jump almost 6 feet into the air.
• At one time, Baskin Robbins made ketchup ice cream. • The longest recorded flight of a chicken is • An African ostrich egg weighs almost 30
• The average American drinks about 600 thirteen seconds. pounds and is so strong, a 200–pound man can
sodas a year. • A group of owls is called a “parliament.” stand on it and not break it.
• The liquid inside young coconuts can be used • A hummingbird beats its wings 8 times per
as substitute for blood plasma. second. On Average
• Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil. • Earthworms have five hearts.
• The average chocolate bar has 8 insects’ legs • The average person speaks 125 to 150 words
• In 1968, a lightning storm in Lapleau, France,
in it. per minute.
killed all the black sheep in a flock but left the
• On average, the heart beats 100,000 times daily.
white sheep unharmed.
• More than 50% of the people in the world
Chewing gum while peeling • Electric eels can deliver shocks up to 550 volts.
have never made or received a telephone call.
onions will keep you from crying. • Slugs have four noses.
• A sneeze travels from your nose/mouth at over
An elephant’s tusks can grow 100 mph.
• Celery has negative calories: It takes more • On average, 12 newborns will be given to the
up to 10 ft. long.
calories to digest a piece of celery than the wrong parents daily.
celery has in it to begin with. • The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• The only bird that can fly
• The holes in Swiss cheese are called “eyes.” • On average, 100 people choke to death on
backwards is the hummingbird.
• Cabbage is 91% water. ballpoint pens every year.
• Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

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On Average, (continued) • Halloween is the biggest holiday of the year Human Interest
• It takes an average of seven years to grow when it comes to candy sales—estimated at
a Christmas tree of average retail sale height $1.93 billion. (One quarter of all the candy sold • You’re born with 300 bones, but by adulthood, you only
(six feet). each year is purchased between September 15 have 206.
• Each day is 0.00000002 seconds longer and November 10.) • 13 muscles are used to make a person smile.
than the one before because the Earth is • 90% of women who walk into a department • The only part of the human body that has no blood
gradually slowing down. store immediately turn to the right. No one supply is the cornea, which takes its oxygen directly
• Lightning strikes the Earth somewhere more knows why. from the air.
• The average person walks 100,000 miles by • Ovaltine was originally called Ovamaltine. A clerical
than 17 million times per day, or about 200
the time he/she reaches the age of 85. error forced the name to be changed when the
times every second.
• The standard blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox manufacturer registered the name.
• The average human produces a quart of saliva a
day — about 10,000 gallons in a lifetime. can hold approximately 4,000 letters at a time.
• There are 1,218 peanuts in a single 28-ounce Shaquille O'Neal wears size 22 shoes.
Since its founding, Apple jar of Jif peanut butter.
Computer has received • Tires under-inflated by as little as five pounds
hundreds of angry letters can rob a car owner of as much as half-a- • 14 years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan
claiming that its logo, an apple gallon of gas out of every 20 gallons. Robertson published a novel called Futility. The story was
• The tonsillectomy is the most common surgical about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April
with a bite taken out, represents
procedure. night. The name of the ship in his novel was The Titan.
original sin. • Impotence is grounds for divorce in 24 states in the
• May and June are the most popular months to
get married. January is the least popular. United States.
• About 96% of all American children can
• When a person is wide awake, alert, and • Women wear engagement and wedding rings on the
recognize Ronald McDonald.
mentally active, he/she is still only 25% aware third finger of the left hand because an ancient belief
• The average person laughs about 15 times a day.
of what various parts of his/her body are doing. held that a delicate nerve runs directly from that finger
• The average person is about a quarter of an
• Smith is the most common last name in the United to the heart.
inch taller at night.
States. A little over 1% of all Americans share that • The original purpose of the coffin was to prevent the dearly
• The average bank teller loses about $250
last name. departed from coming back and haunting the survivors.
every year.
• A person swallows approximately 295 times while • Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are
• There is an average of 61,000 people
eating dinner. registered blood donors.
airborne over the U.S. at any given moment.
• There are approximately 550 hairs in the eyebrow. • In 1221, Genghis Khan killed 1,748,000 people at
• Only one person in two billion will live to be
• You breathe about 10 million times a year. Nishapur in one hour.
116 or older.
• The most sensitive finger on the human hand is • There are 1,943 names listed in the closing credits of
• For every older brother a man has, his chances
the index finger. The Matrix Reloaded.
of being gay increase by one-third.
• Your body is creating and killing 15 million red • The youngest pope was 11 years old.
• During pregnancy, the uterus expands to 500
blood cells per second. • In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl
times its normal size.
• The average American eats 35,000 cookies in was a traditional proposal of marriage.
• The average woman uses about 7,000 words a
his/her lifetime. Catching it meant she accepted.
day. Men use around 2,000.
• The average popping temperature for popcorn is • All babies are color-blind when they are born.
• It would take 517,578 dollar bills to cover a
around 347° F. • Tycoon Donald Trump has never used an ATM.
football field.
• The Pittsburgh Steelers were originally called
• About one-third of recorded CDs are pirated.
• The success rate of A.A. is estimated to be 5%. In Haiti, only one out of every the Pirates.
200 people owns a car. • Ancient Egyptians could be put to death for
• In Nevada, there are more than 209,000 slot
mistreating a cat, which is a sacred animal to them.
machines normally operating 24 hours a day,
• One in three American men says he waits until • Fidel Castro once worked as a Hollywood extra.
seven days a week.
Christmas Eve to finish his holiday shopping. • The longest alphabet is Cambodian. It has
• The Eiffel Tower weighs approximately 9,441 tons.
• Only 51% of South Carolina high school students 74 letters.
• The average water temperature of showers in
graduate—the lowest of any state. • In Atlanta, Georgia, it is illegal to tie a giraffe
the U.S. is 105°F.
• There are about 180 million cell phone subscribers to a telephone pole or street lamp.
• One out of four children in the U.S. is overweight.
in the United States. • The rock group U2 was originally called Feedback.
• The base salary for a NASA astronaut is
• Americans write about 50 billion checks each • 60% of Americans can name all Three Stooges. Just 17%
$50,000 per year.
year, making it the second most frequent payment can name three Supreme Court judges.
• The average human eye can distinguish about
method used after cash. • On average, four people a day call Graceland and
500 different shades of gray.
• By the time you are 70, you will have drunk ask for Elvis.
• “E” is the most frequently used letter in the
over 12,000 gallons of water. • Wonder Woman's bracelets were made of a substance
English alphabet; “Q,” the least.
• The average human dream lasts only 2 to 3 called “feminum.”
• A baseball has exactly 108 stitches
seconds. • President James Monroe spent the last 50 years of his
• There are 40,000 traffic intersections in Los Angeles.
• If all the blood vessels in your body were laid life with a bullet in his shoulder.
end to end, they would reach about • The Three Stooges were originally called Three
The Statue of Liberty weighs 225 tons. 60,000 miles. Lost Souls.
• Despite what many think, the day after Thanksgiving,
A cow's udder needs 345 called “Black Friday” isn't the busiest shopping day of
• An Oscar (Academy Award Statuette) weighs
squirts to yield a gallon of milk. the year: The Friday and Saturday before Christmas are
seven pounds.
the two busiest shopping days of the year.
• The typical person goes to the bathroom six
• The 1912 Olympics was the last time gold medals were
times a day.
made entirely of gold.
• The average yawn lasts six seconds. • Approximately 90% of women wash their • Dr. Seuss’s famous book Green Eggs and Ham was the
• One million dollars in pennies (100 million hands, while only 75% of men do. result of a bet that he could not write a book using only
coins) weighs 246 tons. • Abortions are the most common surgical 50 words.
procedures.

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Human Interest, (continued) • The first owner of the Marlboro Company • In 10 minutes, a hurricane can expend more energy
• The gold earrings once worn by pirates and died of lung cancer. than all the nuclear weapons in the world combined.
sailors actually served a practical purpose: • Measuring 78 feet, Spider-Man is the longest hot-air
They covered the cost of a proper burial. Your foot is nearly the same balloon floating at Macy’s Annual Thanksgiving Day Parade.
• The Supremes started out as a quartet known • If the number 111,111,111 is multiplied by itself, the result is
length as your forearm
as the Primettes. all the digits in ascending to descending order, or
• A “quinquagenarian” is someone in his/her fifties. (measured from the inside of 12,345,678,987,654,321.
• Robert E. Lee was offered the opportunity to your elbow to wrist). • If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take you
command either side during the Civil War. 31,688 years to reach one trillion.
• The Incas measured time by how long it took a • Mosquito repellents don’t repel: They hide you. • A “jiffy” is the scientific name for 1/100 of a second.
potato to cook. The spray blocks the mosquito’s sensors so they • If you received all the gifts in the song, “The Twelve
• Marilyn Monroe's real name was Norma don’t know you’re there. Days of Christmas,” you'd get 364 presents.
Jean Mortenson. • Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush • There are 412 doors in the White House.
• The term “the whole nine yards” came from be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to • It's estimated that every day, Las Vegas casinos give
WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush. away $3 million of freebies (more than $1 billion per
arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50- • You burn more calories sleeping than you year) just to get customers through their doors.
caliber machine gun ammo belts measured do watching television • The Pentagon has 284 restrooms.
exactly 27 feet before being loaded into the • Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had • Halloween costume sales are estimated at $1.5 billion.
fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a to SLOW a film down so that you could see his
target, it got “the whole nine yards.” moves. That’s opposite of the norm. There were 11 tail feathers on
• The most common name in the world is • Your stomach has to produce a new layer of the original NBC peacock.
Mohammed. mucus every two weeks; otherwise, it’ll digest itself.
• Charles Lindbergh took only four sandwiches • All cheerleaders were male in 1898. Now, only
with him on his famous transatlantic flight. about 3% are male. • There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
• The tool doctors wrap around a patient's arm • The cigarette lighter was invented before the match. • The Eiffel Tower has 1,792 steps.
to measure blood pressure is called a • When Play-Doh was first introduced, in 1956, • There are 31,536,000 seconds in a year.
sphygmomanometer. the only color available was off-white. • From a 52-card deck, it is possible to deal
• If Barbie were life-size, her measurements • Technically speaking, World War II isn’t over: 2,598,960 different five-card poker hands.
would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven There was never a formal peace treaty • According to the film's animators, you'll see
feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the between Germany and the now-dissolved 6,469,952 black spots every time you watch
length of a normal human’s neck. Soviet Union. 101 Dalmatians.
• Abraham Lincoln's ghost is said to haunt the • The original American Express card was purple. • The number 2,520 can be divided by 1, 2, 3,
White House. • The colors yellow, red and orange are used in 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 without having a
• The strongest muscle in the human body is the fast-food restaurants because those are the fractional leftover.
tongue. same colors that stimulate a hunger response. • The moon weighs 81 billion tons.
• The adult human brain weighs about 3 pounds. • Of the 25 highest mountains on earth, 19 are in the
The sound you hear when you • The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 Himalayas.
and lived in China in 1910. • On a bingo card of 90 numbers, there are
put a seashell next to your ear
• The women of the Tiwi tribe in the South Pacific approximately 44 million possible ways to make bingo.
is not the ocean, but blood are married at birth. • There are 10,000,000 bricks in the Empire State
flowing through your head. • Julius Caesar wore a laurel wreath to cover the Building.
onset of baldness. • You could walk from New York to Boston in less than
• You share your birthday with at least 9 million one million steps.
other people in the world. Numbers
• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by
taking out an olive from First Class salads. • A 2 x 4 is actually 11/2’’ by 31/2’’. Word Play
• The three wealthiest families in the world have • It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with • The dot over the “i” is called a “tittle.”
more assets than the combined wealth of the enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs. • There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme
48 poorest nations. • 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 dictionary were with the words orange, purple, silver and month.
• In high school, Robin Williams was voted “Least misspelled. • Maine is the only state whose name is one syllable.
Likely to Succeed.” • The total amount of money in a standard • The longest one-syllable word in the English
• Leonardo da Vinci spent 12 years painting Monopoly game is $15,140. language is “screeched.”
the lips of the Mona Lisa. • The numbers on opposite sides of a die add up to • “Stewardesses” is the longest word typed with
• Actor Tommy Lee Jones and former Vice seven. only the left hand.
President Al Gore were freshman roommates • A bowling pin needs to tilt only 7.5 degrees to • “Arithmophobia” is the fear of numbers.
at Harvard. fall. • “Alma mater” means “bountiful mother.”
• The human thigh bone is stronger than concrete. • There are four cars and 11 light posts on the • The black lines on a basketball are called the
• Women blink nearly twice as much as men. back of a $10 bill. “channels.”
• One individual organ transplant donor can • If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four • A tune that gets stuck in your head is called an
provide organs, bone and tissue for 50 or pennies, you have $1.19 - the largest amount of “earworm.”
more people in need. money in coins without being able to make • The name Jeep came from the military abbreviation
• The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the change for a dollar. GP, short for the army’s General Purpose Vehicle.
lazy dog” uses every letter in the English language. • No piece of paper can be folded in half • The space between your eyebrows is called the “Glabella.”
• “Typewriter” is the longest word that can be consecutively more than seven times (doubling • “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” is said to
typed using letters from the same row of keys. factor; you end up folding 27 = 128 sheets of paper). be the toughest tongue twister in English.
• After the U.S. Civil War, Iowa was the first • A Boeing 747’s wingspan is longer than the • The bumps on a basketball are called “pebbling.”
state to give the vote to African-Americans. Wright brothers’ first flight. • The only U.S. city that can be spelled entirely
• The electric chair was invented by a dentist. • A dime has 118 ridges around the edge. with vowels is Aiea, Hawaii.
• There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

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 Word Play, (continued) • Syzygy is the term referring to when the moon • The microwave was invented after a researcher
• The name of the horse in the timeless holiday is in a direct line with the Earth and the sun. walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar
song “Jingle Bells” is Bobtail. Hence the line: The average person knows this time to be a melted in his pocket.
“Bells on Bobtail ring, making spirits bright.” full or new moon. • Velcro was invented by a Swiss man who was inspired
• Magenta, the red-purple dye and color, was • On average, about 500 meteorites strike the by the way burrs attached to clothing.
created shortly after the battle of Magenta in surface of the Earth each year. The calculated • Sound travels about four times faster in water than in air.
northern Italy. The conflict was so bloody that risk of being struck by a meteorite in the United • The average person has 100,000 hairs on his/her head.
French chemists synthesized the color shortly States is once every 9,300 years. Each hair grows about 5 inches (12.7 cm) every year.
after the battle and named it after the city • The longest cells in the human body are the motor
because it resembled the color of blood. A new star is born in our neurons. They can be up to 4.5 feet (1.37 meters) long
• The word “million” didn't exist until around 1300. galaxy every 18 days. and run from the lower spinal cord to the big toe.
Until then, the largest number word was • A newborn blue whale measures 20-26 feet (6.0 -
“myriad,” which was Greek for 10,000. • The deepest land point on Earth is the area 7.9 meters) long and weighs up to 6,614 pounds.
• “Q” is the only letter that does not appear in around the Dead Sea in Israel. The Dead Sea • The stegosaurus dinosaur measured up to 30 feet (9.1
the name of any state is located 1,312 feet below sea level. meters) long, but had a brain the size of a walnut.
• “Unprosperousness” is the longest word in which • Our sun has an expected lifetime of about 11 • Just 20 seconds worth of fuel remained when
every letter occurs at least twice. billion years. Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
• Officially, the term “boulder” is applied only to • According to an old English system of time • Hawaii is moving toward Japan 4 inches every year.
stones larger than 10 inches in diameter. units, a moment is one-and-a-half minutes. • If you could drive your car straight up, you would
• All the world's main alphabets have developed • The first chimpanzee to travel into space was arrive in space in just over an hour.
from an alphabet invented 3,600 years ago in the named Ham. He got the name from the lab he • There are more living organisms on the skin of each
Middle East, known as the North was raised in, the Holloman AeroMedical human than there are humans on the surface of the Earth.
Semitic Alphabet. Laboratory in Alamogordo, NM. Ham flew in a • Every hour, the universe expands by a billion miles in
• “SWIMS” is the longest word with 180-degree Mercury space capsule in 1961. His trip also all directions.
rotational symmetry (if you were to view it proved that space travel was safe for humans. • The International Space Station weighs about 500
upside-down, it would still be the same word, • For the first two billion years of its existence, tons and is the same size as a football field.
and perfectly legible). the Earth had no life on it whatsoever. • A dog's sense of smell is 1,000 times more sensitive
• The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a hurricane- than a human’s.
Sunbeams that shine down like storm system. It is large enough that two • Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoonful would
through the clouds at twilight Earths could fit across it. The Red Spot has weigh more than all the people on Earth.
are called “crepuscular” rays. been around since at least the early 1600s • An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to
when it was first detected shortly after the make a complete circuit of the body.
invention of the telescope. • Astronauts cannot belch in space — there is no gravity
Space/Science • If you could drive to the sun, at 55 miles per to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
• The planet Saturn has a lower density than hour, it would take about 193 years. • It takes eight minutes and 17 seconds for light to travel
water, which means it could float. • A cosmic year is about 225 million years; this from the sun's surface to the Earth.
• The outside temperature can be determined by is the amount of time it takes the sun to
counting the number of cricket chirps in revolve around the center of the Milky Way. “Seizure Alert” dogs can alert their
14 seconds and adding 40. • It takes the Earth exactly 365.24219 days to owners up to an hour before the onset
• The moon is one million times drier than the orbit the sun — and that is why every four of an epileptic seizure.
Gobi Desert. years, we need a leap year.
• The space shuttle travels at approximately five • The first transistor was the size of a golfball. • When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20
miles per second (17,500 miles/hour). Today, millions can be packed into the size of a times that of the space shuttle during launch.
• A dog, brine shrimp and jellyfish have all postage stamp. • The longest recorded span for uninterrupted hiccuping
flown in space. • The oldest rocks collected on the moon during is 68 years.
• Venus rotates so slowly that its typical day the Apollo program were approximately 4.4 • The oceans contain enough salt to cover all the
lasts approximately 244 Earth days (5,856 hours). billion years old. continents to a depth of nearly 500 feet.

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