Welcome, from sunny Australia!

Trivia Page Five

On to page <1> <2> <3> <4> <6>
 

The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used a hundred years or so ago. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside they would crack and break off...  Thus the saying.

Horses cannot vomit.

Rabbits cannot vomit.

The word "Boondocks" comes from the Tagalog (Filipino) word "Bundok," which means mountain.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

The "chapters" of the New Testament were not there originally. When monks in medieval times translated it from the Greek, they numbered the pages in each "book."

Coca-Cola contains neither coca nor cola.

S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was just 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.

In Kenya they don't drive on the right or left side of the street in particular, just on whichever side is smoother.

Almost half the bones in your body are in your hands and feet.

A flamingo can eat only when its head is upside down.

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.

Dartboards are made out of horsehair's.

Slinkys were invented by an aeroplane mechanic; he was playing with engine parts and realised the possible secondary use of one of the springs.

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

Octopi have gardens.

The youngest letters in the English language are "j,", "v" and "w."

The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes are made out of plastic.

The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it.

The native tribe of Tierra del Fuego has a language so guttural it cannot have an alphabet.

During conscription for WWII, there were 9 documented cases of men with 3 testicles.

Benito Mussolini would ward off the evil eye by touching his testicles.

Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle

A whale's penis is called a dork.

Iguanas, koalas and Komodo dragons all have two penises.

Velcro was invented by a Swiss guy who was inspired by the way burrs attached to clothing.

Polar bear's hair appear ivory or golden coloured because their fur absorbs violet and ultraviolet light (They appear black when photographed in the UV.), and that sometimes algae will grow inside their hollow guard hairs, making them appear green. It is commonly thought - incorrectly - that the hair is transparent, and refracts mainly the white part of the visible spectrum, thus making the hairs appear white. (Thanks, Daniel)

The raised reflective dots in the middle of highways are called Botts dots.

The Amazon rain forest produces half the world's oxygen supply.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann named the sub-atomic particles known as quarks for a random line in James Joyce, "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"

A rhinoceros's horn is made of hair.

There's nothing (as in name, place, person, term, etc.) in the Bible that starts with the letter W.

Photograph a live sponge and then grind it into a slurry. Press the slurry through a micropore strainer and you will get what appears to be muddy water. All the individual cells of the sponge have been separated from each other. Let it sit for a few days and the sponge will rise like a phoenix from the muddy water. Compare this sponge with your photograph. It's the same sponge.

To make a circle of radius r inches with a string you will need 2*pi*r inches of string. to make a circle of radius (r+1) inches you will need 2*pi*(r+1) inches of string. the difference is 2*pi inches or about 6.3 inches of string regardless of r, whether a tennis ball, or the earth, the solar system, or even the galaxy.

Household dust consists largely of biological debris from our skin and hair and this debris supports a  sizeable population of mites

Electron discharge photography, also called Kirlian photography reveals an extra-body extension of ourselves some call the 'aura'. In kp of those that have recently lost a limb the missing part of the limb appears as a ghostly image. (btw, the light intensity in the kp aura is not uniform but has bright spots and these spots exactly correspond to the chinese acupuncture chart.)

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

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.

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

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

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 received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of  natural causes.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down -  hence the expression "to get fired."

"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their aeroplanes on the ground, the .50 calibre 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 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.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.

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.

The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Cats' urine glows under a blacklight.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

The edge of your mouth is on a line that can be drawn from the outer edge of your eye to the outer corner of your chin.

The length of your foot is the distance between your elbow and wrist joint.

The vast majority of adults have their hands hanging at about the same height above the ground, no matter how tall they are.

More than half the stars in our galaxy are 'binaries', which means that they are in orbit with
another star.

The average adult comprises about 75% water.

Around 71% of the surface of the Earth is covered in water, of which 97.5% is salt water. 70% of the remaining 2.5% is frozen in the polar ice caps. 30% of the remaining fresh water is present as soil moisture or in underground aquifers, leaving less than 1% for direct human consumption.

One billion people lack clean drinking water, and around three billion don't have adequate sanitation.

In addition to Sir Jack Brabham, Sir Frank Williams, and Sir Stirling Moss, who have all been knighted for services to motorsport, there are two other people who have been knighted for Land Speed Record endeavours; Sir Malcom Campbell and Sir Henry Seagrave.

The V-8 configuration for engines was invented in 1901, by either the French or English. (The records are not clear, unfortunately)