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The Random Facts You Were Completely Oblivious About Until Fairly Recently Thread
- Thread starter Halcyon
- Start date
McBell
Unbound
The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
The English-language alphabet originally had only 24 letters. One missing letter was J, which was the last letter to be added to the alphabet. The other latecomer to the alphabet was U.
A "necropsy" is an autopsy on animals.
Lycanthropy is a disease in which a man thinks he's a wolf. It is the scientific name for "wolf man" or, werewolf.
The name Ethiopia mean "land of sunburned faces" in Greek.
A coward was originally a boy who took care of cows.
MAFIA is an acronym for Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela, or "Death to the French is Italy's Cry"
The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof'.
One legend claims stealing someone's shadow (by measuring it against a wall and driving a nail through its head) can turn the victim into a vampire.
Avoid people who talk to themselves. According to Ukrainian legend, that could indicate a dual soul and the second one doesn't die!
The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."
The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
The English-language alphabet originally had only 24 letters. One missing letter was J, which was the last letter to be added to the alphabet. The other latecomer to the alphabet was U.
A "necropsy" is an autopsy on animals.
Lycanthropy is a disease in which a man thinks he's a wolf. It is the scientific name for "wolf man" or, werewolf.
The name Ethiopia mean "land of sunburned faces" in Greek.
A coward was originally a boy who took care of cows.
MAFIA is an acronym for Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela, or "Death to the French is Italy's Cry"
The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof'.
One legend claims stealing someone's shadow (by measuring it against a wall and driving a nail through its head) can turn the victim into a vampire.
Avoid people who talk to themselves. According to Ukrainian legend, that could indicate a dual soul and the second one doesn't die!
tcprowling
Junior Member
the female will bite the head off the male praying mantis after mating ( How's that for a passion killer Guys)
Capt. Haddock
Evil Mouse
According to a documentary I saw not too long ago, about 5% of humans are "natural liars", meaning that they experience no nervousness when telling a lie. Polygraph tests are completely useless with such people.
tcprowling
Junior Member
A normal cow's stomach has four compartments: the rumen, the recticulum (storage area), the omasum (where water is absorbed), and the abomasum ( the only compartment with digestive juices).
A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.
A quarter of the horses in the US died of a vast virus epidemic in 1872.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.
A single little brown bat can catch 1,200 mosquitoes-sized insects in just one hour.
A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
A zebra is white with black stripes.
After mating, the male Surinam Toad affixes the female's eggs to her back, where her spongy flesh will swell and envelope them. When the froglets hatch, they leave behind holes in their mother's flesh that they will remain sheltered in until large enough to fend for themselves.
All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some point in their lives.
A polecat is not a cat. It is a nocturnal European weasel.
A quarter of the horses in the US died of a vast virus epidemic in 1872.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel can.
A single little brown bat can catch 1,200 mosquitoes-sized insects in just one hour.
A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
A zebra is white with black stripes.
After mating, the male Surinam Toad affixes the female's eggs to her back, where her spongy flesh will swell and envelope them. When the froglets hatch, they leave behind holes in their mother's flesh that they will remain sheltered in until large enough to fend for themselves.
All clams start out as males; some decide to become females at some point in their lives.
Capt. Haddock
Evil Mouse
tcprowling said:
I'll never be able to eat another clam without wondering if it's transsexual.
tcprowling
Junior Member
Howler monkeys are the noisiest land animals. Their calls can be heard over 2 miles away.( do we know anyone like this?) Buttercup it's the kiwis they have more sheep then womenLOL)
Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.
Hummingbirds are the smallest birds - so tiny that one of their enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.
In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
Infant beavers are called kittens.
It takes 35 to 65 minks to produce the average mink coat. The numbers for other types of fur coats are: beaver - 15; fox - 15 to 25; ermine - 150; chinchilla - 60 to 100.
It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.
Korea's poshintang - dog meat soup - is a popular item on summertime menus, despite outcry from other nations. The soup is believed to cure summer heat ailments, improve male virility, and improve women's complexions.
Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
Lassie was played by several male dogs, despite the female name, because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main "actor" was named Pal.
Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel titled Lassie Come-Home written by Eric Mowbray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Knight's real life collie, Toots.
Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.
Hummingbirds are the smallest birds - so tiny that one of their enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.
In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
Infant beavers are called kittens.
It takes 35 to 65 minks to produce the average mink coat. The numbers for other types of fur coats are: beaver - 15; fox - 15 to 25; ermine - 150; chinchilla - 60 to 100.
It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.
Korea's poshintang - dog meat soup - is a popular item on summertime menus, despite outcry from other nations. The soup is believed to cure summer heat ailments, improve male virility, and improve women's complexions.
Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
Lassie was played by several male dogs, despite the female name, because male collies were thought to look better on camera. The main "actor" was named Pal.
Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel titled Lassie Come-Home written by Eric Mowbray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Knight's real life collie, Toots.
Wandered Off
Sporadic Driveby Member
"Status" has no plural.
KingNothing
Member
Tow truckers can carry guns.
McBell
Unbound
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South
Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber 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.
In the Greek alphabet "X" is the first letter for the word Christ, "Xristos." Xmas means "Christ's mass."
The @ symbol has become an important part of e-mail culture. It separates the User Name from the Domain Name. All countries throughout the world use the same symbol but it obviously has a different name in other tongues. In English it is simply the 'at' sign.
Here are just a few of the more endearing terms:
Italy: 'chiocciolina' - which, in Italian, means 'little snail'
France: 'petit escargot' - also 'little snail'
Germany: 'klammeraffe' - which means 'spider monkey'.
Dutch: 'api' - a shortened version of 'apestaart' or 'monkey's tail'.
Finland: 'miau' or 'cat's tail'.
Norway: 'kanel-bolle', a spiral shaped cinnamon cake
Israel: 'shtrudel' - following the pastry concept
Denmark: 'snabel', an 'A' with a trunk.
Spain: 'arroba'. the Spanish symbol for a unit of weight of about 25 pounds.
The term "honeymoon" is derived from the Babylonians who declared mead, a honey-flavored wine, the official wedding drink, stipulating that the bride's parents be required to keep the groom supplied with the drink for the month following the wedding.
Hindu men once believed 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 giant sequoia, which produces millions of seeds, can take 175 to 200 years to flower. No other organism takes this long to mature sexually.
On November 29, 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." Today you can visit the site-now a shrine-where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.
Time magazine's "Man of the Year" for 1938 was Adolf Hitler.
Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber 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.
In the Greek alphabet "X" is the first letter for the word Christ, "Xristos." Xmas means "Christ's mass."
The @ symbol has become an important part of e-mail culture. It separates the User Name from the Domain Name. All countries throughout the world use the same symbol but it obviously has a different name in other tongues. In English it is simply the 'at' sign.
Here are just a few of the more endearing terms:
Italy: 'chiocciolina' - which, in Italian, means 'little snail'
France: 'petit escargot' - also 'little snail'
Germany: 'klammeraffe' - which means 'spider monkey'.
Dutch: 'api' - a shortened version of 'apestaart' or 'monkey's tail'.
Finland: 'miau' or 'cat's tail'.
Norway: 'kanel-bolle', a spiral shaped cinnamon cake
Israel: 'shtrudel' - following the pastry concept
Denmark: 'snabel', an 'A' with a trunk.
Spain: 'arroba'. the Spanish symbol for a unit of weight of about 25 pounds.
The term "honeymoon" is derived from the Babylonians who declared mead, a honey-flavored wine, the official wedding drink, stipulating that the bride's parents be required to keep the groom supplied with the drink for the month following the wedding.
Hindu men once believed 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 giant sequoia, which produces millions of seeds, can take 175 to 200 years to flower. No other organism takes this long to mature sexually.
On November 29, 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." Today you can visit the site-now a shrine-where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.
Time magazine's "Man of the Year" for 1938 was Adolf Hitler.
Buttercup
Veteran Member
I was completely oblivious to the fact until I read it this morning in Halcyon's journal that the reason he loves badgers so much is because........
His friend Simon rubs badger balm on his chest every night........
And then tells him a lovely bedtime story to help him go sleepybye...
His friend Simon rubs badger balm on his chest every night........
And then tells him a lovely bedtime story to help him go sleepybye...
Circle_One
Well-Known Member
Ðanisty said:
They actually do an incredibly rocking version of O Come All Ye Faithful.
tcprowling
Junior Member
The platypus and the echidna are the only two egg laying mammals in the world, both are native to Australia. that means, they are hatched from eggs and suckled my their mothers. The male platypus has poison spurs on it's hind legs.
tcprowling
Junior Member
When they sent the first specimens of a dead platypus back to England just after Australia was settled by Europeans. People in England thought it to be a hoax. A composite made up of several cleverly stitched together animals.