Strange Facts *Hummingbirds can't walk. *The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone that was placed on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When Joan of Arc was martyred, she was wearing one of them. *Despite the hump, a camel's spine is straight. *"Rhythm" and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels. *The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark. *Jacques Cousteau invented scuba gear while in the French resistance during World War II. *More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes. *A rat can last longer without water than a camel. *There are more nutrients in the cornflake package itself than there are in the actual cornflakes. *Peanuts are used in the production of dynamite. *The bubbles in Guiness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the top like all other beers. No one knows why. *Soda water does not contain soda. *A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate. *The lifespan of a tastebud is ten days. *Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper. *When opossums are playing possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror. *Liquid paper was invented by Mike Nesmith's (of the Monkees) mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, in 1951. *The turkey was wrongly named after what was thought to be it's country of origin. *More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S. Treasury. *There is a city called Rome on every continent. *Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave. *The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil. *There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia. *Anteaters prefer termites to ants. *Nine pennies weigh exactly one ounce. *Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter. *It takes 8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to earth. *Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.' *Earth is the only planet not named after a God. *If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom. *Non-dairy creamer is flammable. *Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating. *The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Huptmobile. *In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette. *A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to 10 feet in length. *Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together. They were even in the same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity house walls with drawings of his characters. *Turkey's often look up at the sky during a rainstorm. Unfortunately some have been known to drown as a result. *The bat on the Bacardi symbol is there because the soil where the sugar cane grows is fertile from the excessive guano (bat droppings.) *Catgut comes from sheep not cats. *A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away. *Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead. *If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun. If you don't, you can't see it. *St. Bernards, famous for their role as alpine rescue dogs, do NOT wear casks of brandy around their necks. *It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breath-alyzer to read 0. *There are only three cities that are named exactly after the state they are located in: Maine, ME; New York, NY; and Wyoming, WY. *The launching mechanism of a carrier ship that helps planes to take off could throw a pickup truck over a mile. *Only female mosquitoes bite. *A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why. *The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times. *There is about 200 times more gold in the worlds oceans, than has been mined in our entire history. *By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand. *The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards. *Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards. *From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size. *Roosters can't crow if they can't fully extend their necks. *Human hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death. *The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene. *The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite. *Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th." *Pogonophobia is the fear of beards. *Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older. *No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as 'supercooling.' If you disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die. *It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena,Italy, if your name is Mary. *The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY. *Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten. *Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F. *Soweto in South Africa was derived from SOuth WEst TOwnship. *Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that have blue eyes. *There were no squirrels on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts until 1989. *Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan. *While at Havard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a spanish exam. *Barbie's full name is Barbra Millicent Roberts. *Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds. *The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself." *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. *Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho was from Lesbos.) *The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof'. *It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia. *The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns. *Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere. *Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing. *Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz. *Cat urine glows under a blacklight. *On the new one hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10. *The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola. *Women blink nearly twice as much as men. *Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree (his third wife) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again. *The province of Alberta in Canada has been completely free of rats since 1905. *A pregnant goldfish is called a twit. *There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos. *Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants. *A dragonfly has a lifespan of twenty-four hours. *A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon. *On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner. *It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. *"Evian" (the bottled water) spelled backwards is "naive." *Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box. *There are four cars and eleven lightposts on the back of a ten-dollar bill. *The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial. *If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you will die of oxygen deprivation. *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 recieved in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes. *Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama. *Human birth control pills work on gorillas. *In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. *S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash. *Crickets hear through their knees. *A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. *The average person falls asleep in seven minutes. *Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer. *U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers. *According to Genesis 1:20-22 the chicken came before the egg. *To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles. *Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle. *A whale's penis is called a dork. *A barnacle has the largest penis of any other animal in the world in relation to its size. *Iguanas, koalas and Komodo dragons all have two penises. *There are more beetles than any other kind of creature in the world. *The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon. *Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi's noses off would forstall curses. *The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans. *Polar bear fur is not white, it's clear. *Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode. *If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode. *Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt. *A rhinoceros' horn is made of compacted hair. *Revolvers cannot be silenced, due to all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel. *Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age. *The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is 'Live Free or Die'. These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord. *The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat. *"Hara kiri" is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting." *"Race car" is a palindrome. *Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son. *The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California. *The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor. *"Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention and he would appear. *An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain. *Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes of treason. *After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came -- head to toe. *The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia. *Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton. *Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman. *Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works. *The 'Screwdriver' was invented by oilmen, who used the tool to stir the drink. *The term "Mayday" is used for signaling for help. It comes from the French term "M'aidez" whichis pronounced "MayDay" and means, "Help Me." *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. *Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. *Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33. *One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is 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. *Pearls melt in vinegar. *Ninety eight per cent of the weight of water is made up from oxygen. *A fully loaded supertanker travelling at normal speed takes a least twenty minutes to stop. *No matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times. *Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them. *Boys who have unusual first names are more likely to have mental problems than boys with conventional names. Girls don't seem to have this problem. *Russians generally answer the phone by saying, 'I'm listening.' *Until 1967, LSD was legal in California. *In the 40's, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it 'Bitch.' *Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music. *The NY phone book had 22 Hitlers before WWII. The NY phone book had 0 Hitlers after WWII. *There is a town in Texas called 'Ding Dong.' *Men leave their hotel rooms cleaner than women do. *Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married. *If the population of the Earth continued to increase at its present rate indefinitely, by 3530 A.D. the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the Earth. By 6826 A.D. it would equal the mass of the known universe.