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A M A Z I N G - B U T - T R U E F A C T S
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Sixty Amazing-but-True Facts!
* In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it
comes in contact with Pepsi.
* The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing
a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the
North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole
will be just off the coast of East Africa.
* The idea for "tribbles" in "Star Trek" came from gerbils, since
some gerbils are actually born pregnant.
* Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their
amazing prehensile penises.
* Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891,
even though he spent the entire season batting with a
rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch.
* Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will
relieve the itching and swelling.
* The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren't
for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll
it over.
* The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man
was owned by Frank Sinatra.
* The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and
there's no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.
* Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say
"gesundheit" to a sneezer was never repealed.
* Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to
speak like humans, but they don't do so because they have
no ears with which to hear the sound.
* SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below.
* Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number
of whiskers.
* Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail
will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their
ability to send any more spam.
* Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.
* The first McDonald's restaurant opened for business in 1952 in
Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.
* The Air Force's F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered
during research into how bumblebees fly.
* You *can* get blood from a stone, but only if contains at
least 17 percent bauxite.
* Silly Putty was "discovered" as the residue left behind after
the first latex condoms were produced. It's not widely
publicized for obvious reasons.
* Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.
* The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the
scrotum of a cadaver.
* The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan
priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather
balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with
their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.
* A cat's purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the
voice of singer Barry White.
* The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop,
who left his "signature" on the keyboard.
* The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a
24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave
17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway.
* King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe.
* Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM,
microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank
into their foundations under the weight of their books are
now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.
* In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box
and consequently died of starvation.
* Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have
buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced
with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of
developing the 911 system.
* Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular
water.
* Calvin, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, was patterned
after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.
* Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than
watching a three-hour baseball game.
* Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real
camels.
* You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by
wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.
* To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from
zebra urine.
* Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a
tooth during a game. For Canadians who don't play hockey,
that figure drops to five out of ten.
* A dog's naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when
pressed against carpet.
* A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study
promoting the practice of picking one's nose, claiming that the
health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious
blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations.
* Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden's headquarters in
Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members
have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader.
* Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that
some tribes use it for lantern fuel.
* At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the
soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper
and leather.
* Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas.
* If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go
blind and leave behind its weight in honey.
* Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain,
staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the
intensity of orgasms.
* Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as
it can blow out your eyeballs.
* Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having
one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser
from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an
expensive purchase was said to cost "an arm and a leg."
* When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold
Krugerrands in his small intestine.
* Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during the summer.
* Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An
inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to
be almost identical to the recipe used today.
* If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be
carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical
and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian.
* When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like
a crying baby.
* In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France
propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded
messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs.
The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to
rationing of metal.
* Although difficult, it's possible to start a fire by rapidly
rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos.
* Napoleon's favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut.
* The world's smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in
Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.
* Due to the natural "momentum" of the ocean, saltwater fish
cannot swim backwards.
* In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped
in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their
lives.
* It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas
to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville
to Amarillo.
* The "nine lives" attributed to cats is probably due to their
having nine primary whiskers.
* The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls
developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress
young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The
proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun.
* The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual
raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave
completely dry.
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