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FUNKY FACTS

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In the 1400’s a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick any thicker than his thumb. 

Hence we have “the rule of thumb”.

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented.

It was ruled “Gentlemen Only…Ladies Forbidden”…and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Did you know that there are 206 bones in the adult human body and there are 300 in children (as they grow some of the bones fuse together).  

Flea’s can jump 130 times higher than their own height. In human terms this is equal to a 6ft. person jumping 780 ft. into the air. 

The most dangerous animal in the world is the common housefly. Because of their habits of visiting animal waste, they transmit more diseases than any other animal. 

Snakes are true carnivorous because they eat nothing but other animals. They do not eat any type of plant material. 

The world’s largest amphibian is the giant salamander. It can grow up to 5 ft. in length. 

100 years ago: The first virus was found in both plants and animals. 

 90 years ago: The Grand Canyon became a national monument & Cellophane is invented. 

80 years ago: The food mixer and the domestic refrigerator were invented. 

70 years ago: The teletype and PVC (polyvinyl-chloride) were invented. 

60 years ago: Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission by splitting uranium, Teflon was invented. 

50 years ago: Velcro was invented. 

40 years ago: An all-female population of lizards was discovered in Armenia. 

30 years ago: The computer mouse was invented. 

20 years ago: First test-tube baby born in England, Pluto’s moon, Charon, discovered. 

10 years ago: First patent for a genetically-engineered mouse was issued to Harvard Medical School. 

5 years ago: The first successful cloning of human embryo 

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

The average number of people airborne over the US at any given hour:

61,000

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

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Are crows the ultimate problem solvers? 

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THAT!???

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The first novel ever written on a typewriter: 

Tom Sawyer

    Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades – King David ; Hearts – Charlemagne ; Clubs – Alexander, the Great; Diamonds – Julius Caesar 

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The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes or stirrup bone located in the middle ear. It is approximately .11 inches (.28 cm) long. 

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The longest cells in the human body are the motor neurons. They can be up to 4.5 feet (1.37 meters) long and run from the lower spinal cord to the big toe. 

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There are no poisonous snakes in Maine.   

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The blue whale can produce sounds up to 188 decibels. This is the loudest sound produced by a living animal and has been detected as far away as 530 miles.   

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The largest man-made lake in the U.S. is Lake Mead, created by Hoover Dam. 

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The poison arrow frogs of South and Central America are the most poisonous animals in the world. 

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A new born blue whale measures 20-26 feet (6.0 – 7.9 meters) long and weighs up to 6,614 pounds (3003 kg). 

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The first coast-to-coast telephone line was established in 1914. 

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The Virginia opossum has a gestation period of only 12-13 days. 

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The Stegosaurus dinosaur measured up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) long but had a brain the size of a walnut. 

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The largest meteorite crater in the world is in Winslow, Arizona. It is 4,150 feet across and 150 feet deep. 

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The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year. 

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Skylab, the first American space station, fell to the earth in thousands of pieces in 1979. (Thankfully most over the ocean.) 

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It takes approximately 12 hours for food to entirely digest. 

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Human jaw muscles can generate a force of 200 pounds (90.8 kilograms) on the molars. 

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The Skylab astronauts grew 1.5 – 2.25 inches (3.8 – 5.7 centimeters) due to spinal lengthening and straightening as a result of zero gravity. 

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An inch (2.5 centimeters) of rain water is equivalent to 15 inches (38.1 centimeters) of dry, powdery snow. 

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Tremendous erosion at the base of Niagara Falls (USA) undermines the shale cliffs and as a result the falls have receded approximately 7 miles over the last 10,000 years. 

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40 to 50 percent of body heat can be lost through the head (no hat) as a result of its extensive circulatory network. 

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A large swarm of desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) can consume 20,000 tons (18,160,000 kilograms) of vegetation a day. 

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The largest telescope in the world is currently being constructed in northern Chile. The telescope will utilize four – 26 ft. 8 in. (8.13 meters) mirrors which will gather as much light as a single 52 ft. 6 in. (16 meters) mirror. 

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The Hubble Space Telescope weighs 12 tons (10,896 kilograms), is 43 feet (13.1 meters) long, and cost $2.1 billion to originally build.

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  111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321  

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If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle.

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If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle.

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If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

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Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter “A”?

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A. One thousand Q.

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What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common?

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A. All invented by women.  

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The longest living cells in the body are brain cells which can live an entire lifetime. 

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The largest flying animal was the pterosaur which lived 70 million years ago. This reptile had a wing span of 36-39 feet (11-11.9 meters) and weighed 190-250 pounds (86-113.5 kilograms). 

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No matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times. 

A car travelling at 80 km/h uses half its fuel to overcome wind resistance. 

Knowledge is growing so fast that ninety per cent of what we will know in fifty years time, will be discovered in those fifty years. 

According to an old English system of time units, a moment is one and a half minutes. 

The typewriter was invented in 1829, and the automatic Dishwasher in 1889. 

The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier. 

 

When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of up to 3,000 miles per hour. 

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can’t sink in quicksand. 

Ten minutes of one hurricane contains enough energy to match the nuclear stockpiles of the world. 

Most gemstones contain several elements. The exception? The diamond. It’s all carbon. 

Diamonds are the hardest substance known to man. 

In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. 

Hence the phrase: “Goodnight, sleep tight.“

A crocodile’s tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth.

On average, Elephants sleep for about 2 hours per day. 

Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper. 

Giraffes are unable to cough. 

Sharks are immune to cancer. 

Despite the hump, a camel’s spine is straight. 

Cheetah’s can accelerate from 0 to 70 km/h in 3 seconds. 

A giraffe’s neck contains the same number of vertebrae as a human. 

The heart of giraffe is two feet long, and can weigh as much as twenty four pounds. 

Lobsters have blue blood.  

One rare kind of lobster is the Blue Lobster, around one in two million lobsters is blue.

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Shark’s teeth are literally as hard as steel. 

A mosquito has 47 teeth. 

Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen make up 90% of the human body. 

Seventy percent of the dust in your home consists of shed human skin 

Fish are the only vertebrates that outnumber birds. 

A cockroach can live for several weeks without its head. 

The average human produces a quart of saliva a day — about 10,000 gallons in a lifetime 

Elephants have been known to remain standing after they die. 

The embryos of tiger sharks fight each other while in their mother’s womb, the survivor being the baby shark that is born. 

Ants do not sleep. 

Nearly a third of all bottled drinking water purchased in the US is contaminated with bacteria. 

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over 1 million descendents. 

An Astronaut can be up to 2 inches taller returning from space. The cartilage disks in the spine expand in the absence of gravity. 

The oldest known fossil is of a single-celled organism, blue-green algae, found in 3.2 billion year-old stones in South Africa. 

The oldest multicellular fossils date from ~700 million years ago. 

The earliest cockroach fossils are about 280 million years old. 

Healthy nails grow about 2 cm each year. Fingernails grow four times as fast as toenails. 

20/20 vision means the eye can see normally at 20 feet. 20/15 is better; the eye can see at 20 feet what another eye sees at 15 feet. 

The average person has 100,000 hairs on his/her head. Each hair grows about 5 inches (12.7 cm) every year. 

There are 60,000 miles (97,000 km) in blood vessels in every human. 

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. 

“Wet your whistle” is the phrase inspired by this practice.

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Which of the 50 states has never had an earthquake? 

North Dakota. 

When hydrogen burns in the air, water is formed. 

Sterling silver contains 7.5% copper. 

Cars were first made with ignition keys in 1949. 

J.B Dunlop was first to put air into tires. 

Alexander Graham Bell, who invented the telephone, also set a world water-speed record of over seventy miles an hour at the age of seventy two. 

It is energy-efficient to turn off a fluorescent light only if it will not be used again within an hour or more. This is because of the high voltage needed to turn it on, and the shortened life this high voltage causes. 

The Earth’s equatorial circumference (40,075 km) is greater than its polar circumference (40,008 km). 

Lake Baikal,  is the deepest freshwater lakes in the world, is one of the most fascinating sites in Siberia.

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Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead. 

The Earth’s average velocity orbiting the sun is 107,220 km per hour. 

There is a high and low tide because of our moon and the Sun. 

The United States consumes 25% of all the world’s energy. 

When it was flying!…. Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you could arrive 2 hours before you left. 

There is enough fuel in a full tank of a Jumbo Jet to drive an average car four times around the world. 

The surface speed record on the moon is 10.56 miles per hour. It was set with the lunar rover. 

If you could drive to the sun — at 55 miles per hour — it would take about 193 years 

The moon is one million times drier than the Gobi Desert. 

Just twenty seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11’s lunar module landed on the moon. 

A Boeing 707 uses four thousand gallons of fuel in its take-off climb. 

The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. So, if placed in water it would float. 

Since 1959, more than 6,000 pieces of ‘space junk’ (abandoned rocket and satellite parts) have fallen out of orbit – many of these have hit the earth’s surface. 

It takes 70% less energy to produce a ton of paper from recycled paper than from trees. 

Every year in the US, 625 people are struck by lightning. 

Hawaii is moving toward Japan 4 inches every year. 

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The rocket engine has to supply its own oxygen so it can burn its fuel in outer space. 

The North Atlantic gets 1 inch wider every year. 

Oxygen is the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, waters, and atmosphere (about 49.5%) 

A stroke of lightning discharges from 10 to 100 million volts & 30,000 amperes of electricity. 

A bolt of lightning is about 54,000°F (30,000°C); six times hotter than the Sun. 

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe (75%). 

The average distance between the Earth & the Moon is 238,857 miles (384,392 km).  

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The moon is 27% the size of the Earth. 

The Earth weighs 6.6 sextillion tons, or 5.97 x 1024 kg. 

The center of the Sun is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million °C). 

Sunlight takes about 8 minutes & 20 seconds to reach the Earth at 186,282 miles/sec (299,792 Km/sec). 

The highest temperature on Earth was 136°F (58°C) in Libya in 1922. 

The lowest temperature on Earth was -128.6°F (-89.6°C) in Antarctica in 1983. 

Sunlight can penetrate clean ocean water to a depth of 240 feet. 

The average ocean floor is 12,000 feet. 

The temperature can be determined by counting the number of cricket chirps in fourteen seconds and adding 40. 

 Don’t delete this just because it looks weird. Believe it or not, you can read it:

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

House flies have a lifespan of two weeks. 

Chimps are the only animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror. 

Starfish don’t have brains. 

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes. 

Shrimp’s hearts are in their heads. 

Every time you lick a stamp, you’re consuming 1/10 of a calorie. 

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds 

Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards. 

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.  

Porcupines float in water. 

An ostrich’s eye is bigger that its brain.  

An iguana can stay under water for twenty-eight minutes. 

The common goldfish is the only animal that can see both infra-red and ultra-violet light. 

It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. 

The pupil of an octopus’ eye is rectangular. 

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. 

The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk. 

Ants cannot chew their food, they move their jaws sideways, like scissors, to extract the juices from the food. 

Hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly backwards. 

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. 

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. 

b>15 million blood cells are produced and destroyed in the human body every second.

Every minute, 30-40,000 dead skin cells fall from your body.

The brain uses more than 25% of the oxygen used by the human body.

If your mouth was completely dry, you would not be able to distinguish the taste of anything.

There are more living organisms on the skin of a single human being than there are human beings on the surface of the earth.

Muscles are made up of bundles from about 5 in the eyelid to about 200 in the buttock muscle.

Muscles in the human body (640 in total) make up about half of the body weight.

The human body has enough fat to produce 7 bars of soap.

The human head is a quarter of our total length at birth, but only an eighth of our total length by the time we reach adulthood.

Most people blink about 17,000 times a day.

Moths have no stomach.

Hummingbirds can’t walk.

Sea otters have 2 coats of fur.

A starfish can turn its stomach inside out.

A zebra is white with black stripes.

The animal with the largest brain in relation to its body is the ant.

The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

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~~~~~~~~~AND FINALLY~~~~~~~~~~

At least 99% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

 

“”Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.” 

 

 

~ George Carlin  

 

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