More Useless Information For Your Everyday Life...

[billysgirl5]

More odd, random facts. 

• Nine percent of prescribed medications are placebos.

• An adult Andean condor can fly while carrying a fully grown sheep over one mile.

• The game Yahtzee was originally played by gold miners in the 1850s.

• The average independent film is shot at a cost of one twentieth the average Hollywood film's advertising budget.

• A rat's sneeze contains no bacteria.
 
• Three original members of Monty Python died in a bus accident two months before the troupe began production for the premiere of their BBC television show.

• Most people eat waffles around once per year.

• At each campaign stop, George Bush kissed an average of 4.1 babies, while John Kerry kissed only 1.2.

• Henry Winkler, who played Arthur Fonzarelli on the show Happy Days, is celebrated in his hometown of Ulliott, Minnesota with a small statue depicting a closed hand with a thumb raised skyward.
 
• The winter of 1918 was the only year cold enough that all of Niagara Falls froze.

• A piece of paper and 10 matchsticks use roughly the same amount of wood.

• The animated character Gumby was originally intended to be blue.

• One out of 15 Americans don't know the order of the months.
 
• Canadians will eat, on average, six fortune cookies each year.

• Despite its low price, Top Ramen is the sixth highest grossing packaged food product.

• The average house has more spoons than forks.

• An American's nap will usually last around 31 minutes, compared to a European's nap which usually lasts 84.

• The dime has the highest ratio of value to weight of any coin in the world.
 
• 43 percent of all legal pads are yellow.

• Shoelaces have an average life span of 3.2 years before breaking.

• Bananas account for 83 percent of Ecuador's exported goods.

• Experts predict that by 2009 cellular phones will outnumber conventional phones three to one.

• One quarter of Starbucks' garbage is taken up by used coffee grounds.
 
• There is no US patent declared for the personal computer.

• Due to small irregularities in Earth's orbit, the length of day will shrink or expand by up to .003 seconds each year.

• 12 percent of married couples divorce within six months of purchasing a house.

• The music of Elvis Presley is banned in seven different countries across the world.

• In its first year of business Amazon.com was sued by the Amazon Bookstore in Frankfort, Michigan for stealing their name.
 
• Kids who first bite the heads off of "Teddy Grahams" and other animal-based snacks tend to show violent behavior later in life.

• Marketing executives at KY-Jelly did not realize the sexual connotations of their slogan "See what happens" until after their campaign began.

• Most books being sold in used book stores are selling for less than the cost of publishing them.

• Even those allergic to nuts will end up consuming more than two pounds of nuts in their life.

• By number, Americans constitute 4.6 percent of the world's population and seven percent by weight.
 
• Fashion experts say that around one half of all suits currently being worn at any given moment are "out of style."

• The technical name for a plus sign (+) is a quadrapoint.

• Red-haired people are twice as likely to be married by age 23 than their blonde-haired counterparts.

• U.S. Banks currently hold $48.6 billion in unclaimed inheritance funds.

• Wyoming leads the nation in the ratio of federal tax dollars going in, versus federal tax dollars coming back at $1.42 received for every $1 paid.

• The average rubber band can stretch up to 5.2 times its length before breaking.

• 83 percent of fried eggs consumed in restaurants are ordered sunny side up.

• Breakfast cereal is more commonly consumed as an afternoon snack than a morning meal.

• The first grocery laser scanner was installed in a Safeway in Santa Monica, California, in 1965, and is still in use today.
 
• The common cold is actually any of over 300 different viruses. Each one of them, like the chicken pox, can only be caught once in a lifetime.

• Of America's floors, 61 percent are carpet, 21 percent are linoleum, and 12 percent are wood.

• Dentists estimate that while four out of five of their patients claim to brush their teeth twice a day, only one in three actually does.

• Although they are commonly assumed to go together, phrase "once upon a time" predates "and they lived happily ever after" in printed books by almost 150 years.

• Over half of the comic books sold in the United States last year were printed in Japan.
 
• Time zone differences cost the world economy over 12 billion dollars a year in lost efficiency.

• Users of earbud headphones, like the ones that come with an iPod, experience a 61 percent increase in ear wax production.

• The average person changes their underwear every 2.21 days.

• Early in his career Harry Houdini was forced to cut a world tour short when he was accused of witchcraft, in South Africa, a crime punishable by death at the time.

• Any given day, one in 12 people describes themselves as having a "bad hair day."

• Roughly eight eggs are consumed each year for every person on earth.

• To relieve stress Bob Dole would, without warning, volunteer to give tours of the Senate building to school tours.

• The number of professional accordion players has dropped 92 percent in the last 40 years.

• 54 percent of lost earrings are never found.

• Most puzzles with over 1,000 pieces are never completed.
 
• 42 Civil War renactors were injured last year when their historical simulation erupted into a Yankee versus Dixie brawl.

• The average time between posting an email address on a website and the first piece of spam received is 6.21 hours.

• Contrary to their popular depiction, most barns are white, not red.

• Approximately three new manuscripts are discovered each year that are initially attributed to William Shakespeare. Only one in the last 50 years has ever been conclusively proven to authored by the Bard.

• A yellow jacket can sting 14 times before running out of venom.
 
• Phoenix, Arizona has the highest number of smokers per capita of any U.S. city.

• When first introduced in the late 1800s, a synthetic fur coat was six times more expensive than a real fur coat.

• Bees are more likely to sting on the neck than anywhere else on the body.

• After achieving national recognition for the light bulb, Thomas Edison unsuccessfully ran for mayor of his hometown.

• The average person will handle less than 94 different $100 bills in their lifetime.
 
• More diabetics die on Easter Sunday than on any other day.

• A jester or bard character who speaks in verse can be found in all but three Shakespeare plays: King John, Measure for Measure, and As You Like It.

• Three out of ten Mandarin speaking Chinese know english, while only one in ten speaks Cantonese.

• Paper only burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit at an altitude of 12,000 feet. At sea level, it ignites at 464 degrees.

• The primary cause of death for male Swedes between the ages of 20 and 23 is venereal disease.
 
• The US Army uses video games to test attack and defense strategies before using them on the battlefield.

• The amount of information now available through the Internet, if formatted into books, would fill all the world's libraries nine times over.

• James Bond was based off of a real secret agent of the Crown by the name of Henry Reisinger. Reisinger died in the line of duty before the first Bond book was published.

• Local phone numbers, excluding area codes, begin with the number five more often than any other digit.

• 33 percent of surveyed Make A Wish Foundation recipients listed themselves as "somewhat dissatisfied" to "dissatisfied" with the service.
 
• If current trends continue, Scientology will be the most popular religion in the world by 2035.

• Since its founding in 1978, Apple Computer has received over 500 angry letters claiming that its logo, an apple with a bite taken out, represents the Original Sin.

• Jerusalem is the only city that has been forcibly taken over more times than Paris.

• Operators for Disneyland's "It's a Small World" ride have a higher suicide rate than any other profession.

• At any given moment, about one in five web sites claims to be under construction.
 
• The average American runs 4.13 queries at Google.com every day.

• Only 12 percent of people who like sugar in their coffee don't like cream in it, too.

• Errant champagne corks kill more than two dozen people every year. One third of fatal champagne accidents occur at weddings.

• A hermit crab can live for months on the nutrients found in candle wax alone.

• For every pound of pepper consumed worldwide, 15 pounds of salt are consumed.
 
• Early settlers of Spain used different sized spheres carved out of animal bone as currency.

• Regular players of Minesweeper are three times as likely to develop arthritis in their mouse hand.

• One in every five American children ages six to 13 start their morning with a cup of coffee.

• Research optometrists recently discovered that excessive reading is the leading cause of deteriorating vision.

• Morning Star Farms was sued in 2002 when a consumer discovered that the casings of their meatless sausages were in fact not vegetarian.
 
• Three watts of a high frequency sound held directly to the human ear can cause the eardrum to bleed.

• 61 percent of computer problems result from interruption in the power supply.

• In a lifetime, the average person uses 657 miles of toilet paper.

• 86 percent of computer viruses have some correlation with pornography.
 
• One in five Americans has an idea for a screenplay or television show.

• George Washington pronounced his last name "Warshington," a pronunciation many now erroneously see as incorrect.

• More apple juice is consumed worldwide than all other juices combined.

• The thumb of an average person today is 21 percent longer than the thumb of an average person born 250 years ago.

• Fruit bats identify each other by coloring patterns on their feet.
 
• One in six Irish-Americans has spent a night in jail, compared to one in nine non-Irish.
 
• Bolivia is the only South American country that does not export tobacco products to the United States.
 
• 78 percent of bird species do not associate in groups, casting doubt on the adage, "birds of a feather flock together."

• Worldwide, most people get their hair cut every 6.2 weeks.

• Chalk dust is the number one cause of allergic reactions among teachers.

• The average person infected with the flu will spread it to nine people.

• Every year, the Halloween season sees an 11 percent increase in the sale of toilet paper.
 
• Aldrich Hutchins, was born in 1943, with 18 toes, more toes than any other person on record.

• Blue pens outnumber black pens by a four to three margin.

• Watermelons have an odd number of seeds 92 percent of the time.

• Worldwide, four out of five English speakers don't know the difference between "affect" and "effect."

• 79 percent of the world's population has never used a computer.
 
• Petting zoos originated in Australia.

• The camel that holds the world record for spitting can spit 92 feet.

• Glaucoma increases the structural integrity of the human eye by 28 percent.

• A recent Harvard University study found that students who attend private schools are six times more likely to be depressed at the age of 30.

• The average tennis shoe will travel 521 miles in its lifetime.
 
• Frogs are more prone to pollutant-borne mutations than any other vertebrate.

• To be a supervising lifeguard at a New York municipal pool, applicants need to be able to run a mile in under 5 minutes. Applicants for the New York Police Department need to run the mile in under 7 minutes.

• The mousepad was invented in 1974 by James Spencer, a former carpet salesman.

• Health experts estimate that over 80 percent of people with appendical ulcers do not know they have one.
 
• One in 280 men with mustaches spend more than 15 minutes every day applying mustache wax.

• Two members of the British Parliament have died during the raucous questioning of the Prime Minister.

• Starbucks takes its name from the British explorer Starbuck McAffee who brought the coffee bean back to Europe.

• Dwight Eisenhower was voted "Class Clown" by the Abilene High School class of 1908.

• 12 percent of Ecstasy tablets seized by the police are imprinted with cartoon characters.
 
• There are more synagogues in New York City than in all of Israel.

• Each year, more than 20,000 serious injuries occur as the result of untied shoelaces.

• The original legislation requiring the placement of "exit" signs was originally written to require signs that said "egress."

• When he was the prinicpal owner of the Texas Rangers, George W. Bush briefly flirted with the idea of changing the team's name to The Texas Alamos, until an assistant told him that Texas lost the Battle of the Alamo.

• Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, hated cartoons.