True Facts You'll Never Believe

• 1,200 college students streaked at the same time in Boulder, CO in 1974.
• 27% of U.S. male college students believe life is "a meaningless existential hell."
• 98% of American drivers think they drive better than anyone else.
• 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
• "Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
• "Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
• A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
• A dime has 118 ridges around the edge (yeah, man!).
• A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
• A full-grown pumpkin has about 15 miles of roots.
• A male kangaroo is called a boomer, and a female is called a flyer.
• A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
• A porpoise swims slowly in a circle as it sleeps.
• A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
• A small tribe named the Todas in southern India doesn't greet each other with a handshake, they thumb their noses.
• A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 600 m.p.h.
• All the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
• All the 50 states of America are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
• About 70% of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money (The rest of us are avoiding reality for four more years).
• About 96% of all American children can recognize Ronald McDonald.
• About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it.
• According to one poll, nearly 3/4 of all American women wear a bra that is the wrong size.
• All porcupines float in water.
• America's first nudist organization was founded in 1929, by 3 men.
• Amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $440,000
• An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.
• An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
• An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
• An estimated 6,000 American teenagers lose their virginity every day.
• An Indian woman can legally wed a goat.
• Armadillos can be housebroken.
• Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.
• At one time in Holland it took four years to train to be a hatmaker but only three years to train to be a surgeon.
• Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
• Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
• Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant "plenty of excrement."
• Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
• Back in the mid to late 80's, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered a hundred percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
• Ballroom dancing is a major at Brigham Young University.
• Because of the unusual shape of its legs and its bulky tail a kangaroo can't walk or move backwards very easily.
• Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the western Pacific.
• Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.
• Boss spelled backwards is double s-o-b.
• Bubble gum contains rubber.
• Camel's milk does not curdle.
• Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
• Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston.
• Captain Kangaroo won five Emmy awards.
• Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," but he did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott".
• Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
• Cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
• Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
• Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
• Chances of a white Christmas in New York: 1 in 4
• Chances that a burglary in the US will be solved: 1 in 7
• Chances that an American lives within 50 miles of where he/she grew up: 1 in 2
• Chicken soup was considered an aphrodisiac in the Middle Ages.
• Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator.
• City with the highest per capita viewership of TV evangelists: Wash., DC.
• City with the most Rolls Royces per capita: Hong Kong
• Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them, used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
• Coca-cola was originally green.
• Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
• David Prowse was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.
• Despite the many rat-infested slums in New York City, rats bite only 311 people in an average year.  But 1,519 residents are bitten annually by other New Yorkers.
• Did you know that there are coffee flavored PEZ?
• Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
• Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
• Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice."
• Dreamt is the only English word that ends with "mt".
• Drivers tend to drive faster when other cars are around. It doesn't matter whether they are in front, behind or beside them.
• Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
• Dumbest: Afghan
• During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's timeless classic of the sea, 'Moby Dick', only sold 50 copies.
• Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tectonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.)
• Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
• Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
• Eskimos never gamble.
• Estimated percentage of American adults who go on a diet each year: 44
• Even if you cut off a cockroach's head, it can live for several weeks.
• Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treas.
• Every person has a unique tongue print.
• Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head.
• Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
• Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."
• February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
• First novel ever written on a typewriter was "Tom Sawyer".
• Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.
• Hang On Snoopy is the official rock song of Ohio.
• Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
• Heinz Catsup leaving the bottle travels at 25 miles per year.
• Hot water is heavier than cold.
• How can you tell when a gorilla is angry? It sticks its tongue out.
• Howdy Doody had 48 freckles.
• Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.
• Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
• If an orangutan belches at you, watch out. He's warning you to stay out of his territory.
• If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
• If you bring a raccoon's head to the Henniker, New Hampshire town hall, you are entitled to receive $.10 from the town.
• If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
• In 75% of American households, women manage the money and pay the bills.
• In 1681, the last dodo bird died.
• In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary formally married her 50-pound pet rock.
• In 1977, a 13-year-old boy discovered a tooth growing on his left foot.
• In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.
• In 1980, the Yellow Pages accidentally listed a Texas funeral home under frozen foods.
• In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones - Bhutan.
• In 1983, a Japanese artist made a copy of the Mona Lisa completely out of toast.
• In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting ad space on his cows.
• In 1984, a New Jersey man opened a summer camp for Cabbage Patch dolls.
• In 1987, a 1,400-year-old lump of still-edible cheese was unearthed in Ireland.
• In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam."
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
• In high school, Robin Williams was voted "Least Likely to Succeed."
• In Kentucky, 50% of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.
• In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
• In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not re-number the other channel assignments. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1.
• In the Caribbean there are oysters that can climb trees.
• In the early '80s, a toad was discovered that meows instead of croaking.
• In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured
• In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
• Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
• Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
• It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.
• It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
• It takes about a half a gallon of water to cook macaroni, and about a gallon to clean the pot.
• It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back.
• It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the stairway, when the prince tried to follow her.
• It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.
• Jupiter is bigger than all the other planets combined.
• Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during WWI.
• Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992.
• Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
• Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.
• Live spelled backwards is evil.
• Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."
• Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.
• Mark Twain didn't graduate from elementary school.
• Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots
• Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
• Men get hiccups more often than woman.
• Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
• Millie the White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as Pres. Bush in 1991.
• Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of linen.
• Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.
• More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
• Mosquitoes have teeth.
• Most American car horns honk in the key of F.
• Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
• Most lipstick contains fish scales.
• Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
• Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
• No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Superbowl
• No one knows why, but 90 percent of women who walk into a department store immediately turn to the right.
• No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
• Non-dairy creamer is flammable.
• Number of different familial relationships for which Hallmark makes cards:105
• Number of US states that claim test scores in their elementary schools are above national average: 50
• Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
• One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.
• Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
• Only animal besides human that can get sunburn: Pig.
• Only bird that can fly backwards: Hummingbird.
• Only continent without reptiles or snakes: Antarctica.
• Only first lady to carry a loaded revolver: Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Only food that does not spoil: honey.
• Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
• Only president awarded a patent: Abe Lincoln, for a system of buoying vessels over shoals.
• Only president to remain a bachelor: James Buchanan.
• Only president to win a Pulitzer: John F. Kennedy, for "Profiles in Courage".
• Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 year later.
• Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water.
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
• Pamela Anderson Lee is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
• Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.
• Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28. Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38.
• Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80. Percentage of American women who say they would marry the same man: 50.
• Percentage of Americans that eat at McDonalds each day: 7.
• Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland or Disney World:70.
• Percentage of Americans who regularly attend religious services: 43.
• Percentage of Americans who say that God has spoken to them: 36.
• Percentage of bird species that are monogamous: 90. Percentage of mammal species that are monogamous: 3.
• Percentage of men who say they are happier after their divorce or separation: 58. Percentage of women who say they are happier: 85.
• Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner.
• Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
• Polar bears are left-handed.
• Pollsters say that 40% of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.
• Portion of Harvard students who graduate with honors: 4/5
• Portion of ice cream sold that is vanilla: 1/3
• Portion of land in the US owned by the government: 1/3
• Portion of potatoes sold that are French-fried: 1/3
• Portion of US annual rainfall that falls in April: 1/12
• Proportional to their weight, men are stronger than horses.
• Race car spelled backwards is race car.
• Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.
• Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.
• Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
• Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
• Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England.
• Smartest dogs: 1)border collie; 2)poodle; 3)golden retriever
• Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say "many things" and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places -- refers to "40 days," they meant many days.
• Some toothpastes contain antifreeze.
• Someone paid $14,000 for the bra Marilyn Monroe wore in Some Like It Hot.
• Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.
• Starfish have eight eyes--one at the end of each leg.
• State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska
• Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young.
• Texas is also the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the  same height as the U.S. flag.
• The "huddle" in football was formed due 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.
• The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
• The 'y' in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a 'th' sound, not 'y'. The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England use the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".
• The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
• The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.
• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
• The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.
• The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.
• The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life."
• The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.²
• The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500s.
• The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
• The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
• The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
• The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.
• The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".
• The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is flown differently during times of peace or war. A portion of the flag is blue, while the other is red. The blue portion is flown on top in time of peace and the red portion is flown in war time.
• The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
• The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
• The host team in an NFL football game must have 26 footballs inflated and ready to play with.
• The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
• The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set off an alarm at a nuclear reactor.
• The liver, not the heart, is the sign of romance in northern Morocco. When a Moroccan girl falls in love she says, "Darling, you have stolen my liver."
• The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.
• 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.
• The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
• The most extras ever used in a movie was 300,000, for the film Gandhi in 1981.
• The most money ever paid for a cow in an auction was $1.3 million.
• The name Wendy was made up by James Barrie for the book "Peter Pan"
• The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.
• The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred.
• The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
• The only nation who's name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan.
• 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.
• The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy."
• The parachute was invented by da Vinci in 1515.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.
• 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."
• The term skyscraper was first used way back in 1888 to describe an 11-story building.
• The term, "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 is to poke someone's eye out.
• The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
• The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
• The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
• The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
• The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead".
• The word "four" is the only number-word that has the same amount of letters as its numerical value.
• The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
• The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of people.
• The world's greatest lover was King Mongut of Siam. He had 9,000 wives. Before dying of syphilis, he was quoted in saying he only loved the first 700.
• The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
• The youngest pope was 11 years old.
• There are 293 ways to make a change for a dollar.
• There are more collect calls on Father's Day than any other day of the year.
• There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones. [And most of them are in Parma!]
• There are twice as many kangaroos in Australia as there are people. The kangaroo population is estimated at about 40 million.
• There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
• There is a town in Newfoundland, Canada called Dildo.
• They have square watermelons in Japan... they stack better.
• Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark.
• Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize *this* was the day of the changeover.
• Walter Cavanaugh, "Mr. Plastic Fantastic," has 1,196 different valid credit cards.
• Watch out for flying hockey pucks - they travel at up to 100 mph.
• What color was Christopher Columbus's hair? Blonde.
• When Bugs Bunny first appeared in 1935, he was called Happy Rabbit.
• When European explorers first saw kangaroos they asked an aboriginal what they were called. He replied "kangaroo" meaning "I don't understand your question". The explorers thought this was the animal's name.
• When he's feeling amorous, the male sea otter grabs the female's nose with his teeth.
• When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.
• When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
• Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
• When Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind" statement. Before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut; however, upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian nor American space programs. When he was a kid, Neil was playing baseball with his brother in the backyard. His brother hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbors' bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr and Mrs. Gorsky. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, he heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
• Women are 37% more likely to go to a psychiatrist than men are.
• Women's hearts beat faster than men's.
• You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog.
• You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in any other weather.
• Your nose and ears never stop growing.
• Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.