Interesting Facts

The shortest word in the English language to contain the letters A, B, C, D, E and F is: Feedback. (So, give me some feedback please.)

The world's most common non-contagious disease is tooth decay.

Elvis Presley was named a Special Federal Narcotics Agent by Richard Nixon.

The Eiffel Tower in Paris has 2.5 million rivets. (I guess that means it's riveting.)

In an average day, a four-year-old child will ask 437 questions. ((Why? Why? Why? Why? ...) You get the idea.)

Eating lots of carrots will turn the pigment in your skin orange. (Carotenaemia is the presence in blood of the yellow pigment carotene from excessive intake of carrots or other vegetables or fruit containing the pigment, which results in increased serum carotenoids. Strangely carotene is the same substance that makes leaves turn orange in the autumn. But you would have to eat a silly amount of carrots, and eating them in moderation will help your eyes!)

A donkey will sink in quick sand, but a mule won't. (Who tested this? Call the RSPCA!)

The Roman Catholic Church did not officially acknowledge that the earth revolves around the sun until the mid 1990s. (In 1992, the Roman Catholic Church finally repealed their edict against Galileo. The Church pardoned him and admitted that the heliocentric theory was correct. This pardon came 350 years after Galileo's death. Ah well, better late than never.)

The Statue of Liberty's crown has seven points. (The points are meant to be rays of light, symbolizing the seven seas and seven continents. If you want to visit the crown to check, you'll have to make a reservation. )

The average life span of an umbrella is under two years. (If it's mine I'm lucky if I don't lose it in under two minutes!)

The British launched a war with China, because China would not let the British import the addictive drug opium. (Makes you proud to be British - not!)

The shell makes up 12% of an eggs total mass.

The mother of Mike Nesmith, a member of the rock group The Monkees, invented liquid paper. (Bette Nesmith Graham was born Bette Claire McMurray in Dallas, Texas. She was a divorcee and to support herself as a single mother, she worked as a secretary at a bank in Texas. It was very difficult to erase mistakes made by early electric typewriters. But she was a talented painter and she realized that when artists made a mistake, they painted over it, so she decided to do this with typewriter mistakes. She put some tempera water-based paint in a bottle and used that to correct any mistakes. She secretly used her white correction paint for five years, making some improvements with help from her son's high school chemistry teacher. Some bosses admonished her against using it, but coworkers frequently sought her "paint out." She eventually began marketing her typewriter correction fluid as "Mistake Out" in 1956. The name was later changed to Liquid Paper when sh...

The only word in the English language to contain three back to back double letter combinations is; Bookkeeper (oo kk ee).

Pigs can run about 11 miles per hour. And wild boar, which is a bit leaner than your average domestic pig, can reach speeds of up to 15 miles per hour. (Run piggy, run!)

The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.

The parking meter was invented in 1935 by C.C. Magee. (So, now you know whom to blame.)

If you sleep in a cold room, you are more likely to have a bad dream or nightmare. (That's it! I'm turning the radiators on.)

An Oscar weighs 7lbs. (That's the Academy Award prize of course.)

The only words in the English language to contain 'uu' are: vacuum, residuum, and continuum.

According to some theories the monkey wrench was invented by London born blacksmith Charles Moncke. ( A monkey wrench is a tool which has parts that can be moved to tighten or unfasten any size of nut and bolt, not to be confused with a spanner, which has a fixed size.  Allegedly it was called Moncke's wrench after the inventor.   Of course the Americans say it was invented by a certain Charles Moncky of Baltimore who  patented it in 1830. Unfortunately for this explanation, the term is British in origin and predates Moncky by some decades, in addition there are 17th Century examples of this tool which were probably manufactured in London.   Either way, a monkey wrench has nothing to do with monkeys, which is a bit disappointing really.)

The electric shaver was patented on the 6th of November, 1928. (It was patented by Col. Jacob Schick, and you can still buy a Schick razor today.)

There are 17 steps to the apartment of Sherlock Holmes. (You can check yourself by visiting the museum, which is located in a 1st floor study overlooking Baker Street.)

Popeye was 5' 6" tall. (No wonder he was always fighting.)

The earth weighs about 6,588,000,000,000,000,000 tons, or approximately six and a half sextillion tons. (Of course because the earth is not affected by its own gravity you can't really measure its weight. But let's just pretend we can.)

The number sign ( # ) is called an an octothorpe, octothorp, octathorp, or even octatherp. (In the United States, the symbol is usually called the pound sign, and the key bearing this symbol on touch-tone phones is called the pound key. But in the UK it is never called the pound sign since the term "pound sign" is understood to mean the currency symbol, £, and it is never used to refer to pounds as a unit of weight either, instead lb is used. The symbol is most often called the hash. Basically it's a confusing little sign.)

E is the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet. (Samuel Morse (1791-1872), the inventor of Morse code, worked it out so that he could assign the simplest codes to the most frequently used letters. The letters of the alphabet in order of frequency of use are:- ETAISONHRDLUCMFWYPGVBKJQXZ)

The left leg of a chicken is more tender than the right one. (What if it's a left-legged chicken?)