Did you know????????

Did you know...In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an "Honorary Harlem Globetrotter."

 

Did you know...

The first ballpoint pen was devised in 1938 by a Hungarian hypnotist, Lasalo Biro, who took the idea to Argentina, where the pen was patented on June 10, 1943. Ther American version went on sale at Gimbel's in New York City, October 29,1945. Ten thousand were sold the first day - for $12.50 each.

 

Did you know...

The first-known dentures were found in the mouth of their woner when his body was dug up in a field in Switzerland. Dating back to the late 1400s, they were carved from bone and attached to hinged side pieces with gut. However, they were for decorative purposes only, since they had to be removed at mealtime.

 

Did you know...

The first full-time phone operator was George Willard Coy, who served the phone compnay in New Haven, Conneticut, starting January 28, 1878. He answered calls with a hearty, "Ahoy!"

 

Did you know....

The first radio in a car was installed in May 1922 by George Frost, a Chicago high school student.

 

Did you know....

Peppermint and Spearmint were as valuable as gold, silver, or precious stones in Biblical times; Pharisees paid tithes of mint to the Temple where it was probably strewn at the altaror in other sacred places.

 

Did you know... (that for years I've kept a log book with miscellaneous trivia that caught my attention!)

To make a barrelful of perfect maritnis: The recipe, furnished by Gilbey Canada Ltd, will make 1,920 perfect 3 ounce martinis. It requires a clean, 36 gallon (Imperial) barrel:

Pour into the barrel the contents of 192 well-chilled 25-ounce bottles of dry gin. Add 945 ouncec (27 litre bottles) of dry vermouth and approximately 15 to 20 trays of ice cubes. Stir gently, clockwise only, with a small paddle. Strain into chilled cocktail galsses and serve. Should you wish to garnish the martinies with an olive or a twist of lemon, you will need 64 jars of olives (30 olives to the jar - no pimento, please) or eight dozen lemons (20 twists to the lemon). The olives should be washed beforehand, as the brine in which they're preserved will change the flavor of the gin. You will need at least 10 refrigerators to perfecly chill the gin and glasses beforehand.

 

Did you know....

How to eat with chopsticks

Hold chpstick A about halfway down its length, square end up, so that it rests in teh crotch between your thumb and forefinger, and keep it in place with the side of your curled middle finger - this stick does not move. Hold chopstick B between teh end of the thumb and the length and tip of the forefinger, much as you would a pen,so that when the round end of it touches the round end of chopstick A, their square ends are between one and two inches apart. You'll find that by moving only the foreginger, in an up-and-down motion, the grabbing ends of the chopsticks will open and close like a lobster claw. You should always keep you hand thumb-side up, as you do when using a spoon.

 

Did you know....

In ancient China , people commited suicide by eating a pound of salt.

More Monopoly money is printed a year , than real money printed throughour the world.

To burn off one plain M&M candy , you need to walk the full length of a football field.

The average office desk has 400 times more bacteria than a toilet.(Eww?)

With 1 pound of used motor oil , you can ruin 1 million pounds of sea water.

The Bible is the most shoplifted book in the world.

The average american eats mcdonalds 1800 times in the lifes.

Over 10000 birds die a year from smashing into windows

During your lifetime , you will eat 60,000 pounds of food.

In the average lifetime , a person will breath in about 44 pounds of dust.

One percent of Greenlands population lives in a single apartment building.

Iceland has no railway system or army.

Washington DC has one lawyer for every 19 residents.

The 1st product Sony came out with was the Rice Cooker.

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

Every second , americans collectively eat one hundred pounds of chocolate.

There are more bacteria in your mouth than their are people in the world.

 

Did you know, on average, Gay men have shorter lifespans than people who smoke 20 cigarettes a day?

 

Interesting WW2 Facts:

84 German Generals were executed by Hitler

A number of air crewmen died of farts. (ascending to 20,000 ft. in an un-pressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%!

12,000 heavy bombers were shot down in World War 2

 

I believe that #2 is an urban legend, and not based on factual evidence. Over on Snopes is where I think I saw that one shot down, by an MD who pointed out that neither the esophagus nor the spincter muscle is capable of holding enough gas pressure to allow the expansion to become terminal. It is the farts (& belches) themselves which will release the gas pressure.

 

Here are a couple I ran across that I thought were too cute:

The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar an Great Britain in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

One of my favorite items for use around the house and the vehicles, WD-40 got its name because there were forty tries at the formula before the creation of the "water displacing" substance.

 

Haha! that's awesome. Would have loved to been a fly on the wall for that one. I love this thread!, learnin lots and lots... WD-40 is the miracle formula... have used it many times.

Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.
Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor.
I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose.
Drink 'til she's cute, but stop before the wedding.
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder ...
24 hours in a day ... 24 beers in a case ... coincidence?
I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.
Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.

 

The very first bomb that the Allies dropped on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo

 

Here are some more (Yay Itouch Application!)

More than 40,000 parasites and 250 types if bacteria are exchanged during a french kiss.

85% of movie actors earn less than $5,00o a year from acting.

In an average lifetime , a person will walk the equivalent of three times around the world.

To have your picture taken by the very 1st camera , you would have to sit still for 8 hours.

If you yelled for 8 years , 7 months , and 6 days , you would have created enough energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Each day , more than 40 trillion dollars changes hands worldwide.

The new york stock exchange started as a coffee shop.

There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every 8 residents.

The united states has never lost a war when donkeys were used.

You inhale about 700000 of your own skinflakes every day.

One in every 4 americans has apperead on TV.

The average person spends three years of his or her life on the toilet.

Only 55% of americans know that the sun in a star.

12% of americans think that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

Children laugh on average 400 times a day , while adult laugh 15 times a day.

In France , it is legal to marry a dead person.

 

I just found this out today:

Almost 42% of all US deaths relating to WW2 were industrial accidents.

 

This next was written by Dr. William Kenny (Ph.D., Harvard, Boston College, John Hopkins) in 1962. The title is The Crucial Years, and while a small book, it is interesting in the scope of its coverage. On page 23, I ran into the stat which started this post.

In the war years for America (Dec.1941/Sept.1945) we suffered more deaths on the "home front" from accidents than we did on all three battle-fronts combined in combat related injury. The numbers for the deaths in service related circumstances are broken down in too many categories and justifications in some portions of officialdom, and I have found these from many decades i.e.:

United States of America

· Military:
· Keegan: 292,000
· HarperCollins: 292,100
· Britannica: 292,131 (not incl. 115,187 non-battle)
· Compton's: 293,986
· Urlanis: 300,000
· Info. Please: 291,557 KIA + 113,842 other causes = 405,399
· DoD: 291,557 KIA + 113,842 other = 405,399
· Ellis: 405,400
· Encarta: 292,131 KIA + 115,187 other causes = 407,318
· Wallechinsky: 292,131 KIA + 115,187 other = 407,318
· Eckhardt: 408,000
· Small & Singer: 408,300
· Civilian:
· Britannica: 6,000 (Merchant Marine, US)
· U.S. Merchant Marine: 8,300 mariners killed at sea, at least 1,100 died from wounds. Total killed estimated 9,300.

American Merchant Marine in World War 2]

(me again) Sometimes a person cannot really figure out what some of the arcane "other causes", "non-battle", or simply "other" might mean. At any rate Dr. Kenny went with a middling number which would not seem too slight, and at the same time not to bloated, somewhere between the high of 408,300 (Small & Singer) and the low of 292,000 (Keegan). With this in mind he picked 320,000 service personal KIA as the round number which might both be relevant and defensible. His included the Merchant Marine numbers, and only those of the "by disease" which were clear to have been wound related, rather than disease not related to battle injuries. Tough choices, but still defensible.

Here is the "kicker" in nearly the same 4 year time period (Jan.,1942/Dec., ‘45); 355,000 American civilians were killed in car and/or work related accidents, died by suicide, homicide, or domestic abuse. Those numbers are fully understood as total numbers in the Bureau of Domestic Statistics, and as such not as easily "fudged" or "slanted" as those from the military might be. (The Crucial Years: 1940-1945 ; William Kenney, Ph.D., p. 23)

Just one of those statistics that makes a person go "hmmmm".

 

Several thousand people were killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June 1989. It is illegal to use the date of the massacre as a PIN or code in China.

 

you cannot sneeze with your eyes open....