A few little known facts...

[Ace]

In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb ".

Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"...and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV was Fred and Wilma Flintstone

Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better.

Coca-Cola was originally green.

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

The average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king in history:

Spades - King David

Hearts - Charlemagne

Clubs -Alexander, the Great

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.

Q. If you were to spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you would find the letter "A"?

A. One thousand

Q. What do bullet-proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common?

A. All invented by women.

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?

A. Honey

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes.

When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... "goodnight, sleep tight."

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down." It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle, of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice.

Has anyone got any other completely useless, though somewhat interesting trivia?

[Pala]

Interesting, but maybe, maybe not.

Re. the golf one, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf#History which seems to dispute it.

[Kenny Blister]

It is impossible to lick your elbow

Little known fact:

One looks stupid when they try to lick their elbow

Edited December 19, 2006 by Kenny Blister

[faustus]

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?

A. Honey

wasn't it terence mckenna's theory that the shift from mushroom usage to alcohol may have come from peeps storing their shrooms in honey, and the honey spoiling to form mead? not that i take what he said for more than a grain of salt.

[PD.]

Apparently there are no "proper" words that rhyme with purple, orange, silver and month.

dunno how true it is, prove me wrong someone.

[Fenris]

I would have thought that Murple had made its way into the popular vernacular.

Murple rymes with purple, although I think it is his point to argue it.

[auto]

Apparently there are no "proper" words that rhyme with purple, orange, silver and month.

purple circle, orange syringe?

[sobriquet]

It is impossible to lick your elbow.

I don't know about this one. There are some freakish individuals who can dislocate joints and kiss all sorts of places including the cheeks of their ass.

The only thing I would definitely put my money on is something like Sobriquet's law...

One cannot kiss the back of one's own head.

Can you tell I'm not a gambler

[xShiva.spacetechnology]

Coca-Cola was originally green.

i have to disagree with that my friend...

check out this link and you will find out why.

http://www2.coca-cola.com/contactus/myths_...ging_green.html

aidos.

Edited May 25, 2007 by xshivaspacetechnologyx

[naja naja]

Over 20million Wedge tail-eagles were killed under bounty in Australia a couple of decades ago.

U can still get a licence to shoot wedge-tailed eagles in every state and territory of Australia except N.S.W. and N.T..

There's only 134 breeding pairs of Tasmainian subspecies of Wedge-tailed eagle ( Aquila audax fleyii ) yet u can still get a licence to shoot them if they eat ur sheep.

Would u shoot a dog if u surrounded him in lamb chops and he ate one that was dead/dieing or sick?? Well thats wat farmers think they have the right to do.

[sobriquet]

Q. What is the only food that doesn't spoil?

A. Honey

This is actually not quite true. Most honey doesn't spoil before it is consumed. That's true.

The high sugar concentration in honey has an enormous osmotic gradient across it when bacteria get into it. The bacterial cells are dessicated by the osmotic gradient and can't survive.

However given enough time, the honey will accumulate enough bacterial cells and moisture because it is hygroscopic that it will become a great culture medium for organisms.

More commonly though it can become colonised by yeasts that can ferment it into alcohol and water.

[naja naja]

Australia has the worst extinction rate of any county exceeding even the Amazon or Madagascar with a known 40 distict species going extict over the last 40 years. Thats a rate of 1 species per year!

The SW of Western Australia is one of only a handfull of biodiversity hotspots in the world, along with the great barrier reef, amazon and madargascar.

The darling ranges of Perth has the highest density of plant species per hectare of anywhere in the world at a rate of 4000 distict species per hectare, those 4000 changing every hectare!!!! This is due to the SW being one of the few (maybe only) places in the world to escape the last ice age glacial flows.

When the Labour government won power in W.A. last election by promising to stop old growth forrest logging. They technically did, but then reclassifyied 80 000ha of previously protected forrest as no longer old growth and O.K. to log! So we actually loose more tree's under labour than liberal would have allowed. They include tree verges in their total of old growth forrests

[oxydiser]

It is impossible to lick your elbow

Yeah, I have seen this done twice, in a photo and in real life.

Apparently there are no "proper" words that rhyme with orange

Door hinge? hehe, any Curse of Monkey Island fans out there?

[inpsyght]

.

Edited February 7, 2012 by inpsyght

[whit3rabbit]

I reckon Gene Simmons could lick his elbow. Maybe.

[sobriquet]

There was a young man from Orange

Who sucked his own d*ck like a lozenge

He said with a grin

As he came on his chin

Ridiculous rhymes make me cringe.

[Auxin]

The darling ranges of Perth has the highest density of plant species per hectare of anywhere in the world at a rate of 4000 distict species per hectare, those 4000 changing every hectare!!!! This is due to the SW being one of the few (maybe only) places in the world to escape the last ice age glacial flows.

The majority of the planet was never touched by glaciers in the last ice age. If memory serves even in the current contiguous US states only 30% was covered in glaciers. My state was a solid sheet of ice but even here the olympic mountain range has a few hot spring bearing valleys that were protected from glaciers, one of those was found to have plants existing nowhere else on the continent including one species that was thought to exist only in australia. In my states other mountain range a remote valley was discovered to have orchid species never before seen and presumed to have survived the ice age.

[naja naja]

Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe it was just the ice age, not including glacial activity. It was on a doco I watched recently. I've purchaced it, so when it arrives I'll correct any info not remembered correctly.

[occidentalis]

Most of Australia escaped glaciation. I am not specifically aware of any part of Australia (except maybe tasmania) that was actually glaciated during the last glacial maximum - but this is not positive proof, just a lack of negative proof.

Not sure about North America. I know that substantial amounts were glaciated. 30% sounds a bit too low. But most of the northern hemisphere was. Hence civilisation, and all that.

And yes, the lack of glaciation in WA is one of the reasons behind our diverse flora. Thankfully, we made short work of all that useless scrub and turned it into productive country!

Where's the 'sobs gently' emoticon when you need it....?

Checkout this image from wikipedia:

As you can see most of northern North America was frickin cold....

Edited December 19, 2006 by creach

[synaesthesia]

Space SHuttle Challenger didnt explode 73 seconds after launch in 1986. rather it went under extreme rapid decomposition within a couple of seconds.

The O-Rings on the solid rocket boosters underwent a physical chemistry term called "glass transition state", where at a certain temperature polymers turn from rubbery like to glass like.

As bad as it seems, but the astronauts didnt die instantly, 3 of the 4 emergency life packs were found to have been activated with amounts of oxygen depleted from the cylinders. They hit the ocean at 333km/hr.

Although the solid rocket boosters caused the decomposition, they werent damaged and kept on flying uncontrollably in all directions

14 seconds after the decomposition happened, NASA remotely detonated both solid rocket boosters, as they feared they could have turned towards the ground