AMUSING IRRELEVANT FACTS The oldest known goldfish lived to 41 years of age. Its name was Fred. There is a town in Newfoundland, Canada called Dildo. In Kentucky, 50% of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers. Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during WWI. If an orangutan belches at you, watch out. He's warning you to stay out of his territory. Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded. In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles. About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it. In 1984, a New Jersey man opened a summer camp for Cabbage Patch dolls. You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day that in any other weather. How can you tell when a gorilla is angry? It sticks its tongue out. In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary formally married her 50-pound pet rock. In 1980, the Yellow Pages accidentally listed a Texas funeral home under frozen foods. 1,200 college students streaked at the same time in Boulder, CO in 1974. In 1977, a 13-year-old boy discovered a tooth growing on his left foot. In 1983, a Japanese artist made a copy of the Mona Lisa completely out of toast. In the early '80s, a toad was discovered that meows instead of croaking. In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting ad space on his cows. About 96% of all American children can recognize Ronald McDonald. An average person laughs about 15 times a day. Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas. Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air. The most money ever paid for a cow in an auction was $1.3 million. The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night. A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 600 m.p.h. The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500s. The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C. Watch out for flying hockey pucks - they travel at up to 100 mph. America's first nudist organization was founded in 1929, by 3 men. 98% of American drivers think they drive better than anyone else. When he's feeling amorous, the male sea otter grabs the female's nose with his teeth. In 1681, the last dodo bird died. A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee. The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants. The average bank teller loses about $250 every year. Howdy Doody had 48 freckles. What color was Christopher Columbus's hair? Blonde. In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones - Bhutan. The most extras ever used in a movie was 300,000, for the film Gandhi in 1981. Every person has a unique tongue print. Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does. Women's hearts beat faster than men's. When Bugs Bunny first appeared in 1935, he was called Happy Rabbit. Pollsters say that 40% of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets. Bubble gum contains rubber. You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog. In high school, Robin Williams was voted "Least Likely to Succeed." Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star. The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello. The sex organ on a male spider is located at the end of one of its legs. Even if you cut off a cockroach's head, it can live for several weeks. Chicken soup was considered an aphrodisiac in the Middle Ages. Most American car horns honk in the key of F. The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of people. Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head. In 75% of American households, women manage the money and pay the bills. A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana. About 70% of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money. [The rest of us are avoiding reality for four more years.] It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas. Someone paid $14,000 for the bra Marilyn Monroe wore in Some Like It Hot. Some toothpastes contain antifreeze. Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns. Millie the White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as Pres. Bush in 1991. Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the western Pacific. There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones. [And most of them are in Parma!] Most lipstick contains fish scales. Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992. Mosquitos have teeth. Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray. Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego. The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley. When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food. Most cows give more milk when they listen to music. Captain Kangaroo won five Emmy awards. 27% of U.S. male college students believe life is "a meaningless existential hell." In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die. Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant "plenty of excrement." Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark. "Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo. The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock. Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance. "Ballroom Dancing" is a major at Brigham Young University. Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say "many things" and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places -- refers to "40 days," they meant many days. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence expression "to get fired." Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village". There are two credit cards for every person in the United States. Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later. 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 a target, it got "the whole 9 yards." The original story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy." The most common name in the world is Mohammed. Captain Jean-Luc Picard's fish was named Livingston. The 'y' in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a 'th' sound, not 'y'. The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, ancient Roman occupied (present day) England used the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y". The word "samba" means "to rub navels together." The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672. The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor. Each unit on the Richter Scale is equivalent to a power factor of about 32. So a 6 is 32 times more powerful than a 5! Though it goes to 10, 9 is estimated to be the point of total tetonic destruction (2 is the smallest that can be felt unaided.) Cinderella's slippers were originally made out of fur. The story was changed in the 1600s by a translator. It was the left shoe that Aschenputtel (Cinderella) lost at the stairway, when the prince tried to follow her. Until 1965, driving was done on the left-hand side on roads in Sweden. The conversion to right-hand was done on a weekday at 5pm. All traffic stopped as people switched sides. This time and day were chosen to prevent accidents where drivers would have gotten up in the morning and been too sleepy to realize *this* was the day of changeover. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy. Dr. Seuss pronounced "Seuss" such that it rhymed with "rejoice." In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam." Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson." Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," but he did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott". More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes. The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is flown differently during times of peace or war. A portion of the is blue, while the other is red. The blue portion is flown on top in time of peace and the red portion is flown in war time. Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute. The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled around him. Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk. If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation. Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike. The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified is to poke someone's eye out. Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister. Sir Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes. Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living. The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth. Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt. Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young. Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of linen. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.