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The average chocolate bar has 8 insects' legs in it.
The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
A cockroach can live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
A rhinoceros horn is made of compacted hair.
The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar an England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
A polar bear's skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.
Elvis had a twin brother named Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."
Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
If you keep a goldfish in a dark room, it will eventually turn white.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than Left-handed people do.
The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.
The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction
The word racecar and kayak are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left.
A snail can sleep for 3 years.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.
China has more English speakers than the United States.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
Vatican City is the smallest country in the world, with a population of 1000 and a size 108.7 acres.
The longest town name in the world has 167 letters.
Did you know you share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.
"I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.
No president of the United States was an only child.
1. Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
2. Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say
3. Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
4. Drunks Get Nine Months in Violin Case
5. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
6. Is There a Ring of Debris around Uranus?
7. Prostitutes Appeal to Pope
8. Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
9. British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands
10. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
11. Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead
12. Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told
13. Miners Refuse to Work After Death
14. Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
15. Stolen Painting Found by Tree
16. Two Sisters Reunited after 18 Years in Checkout Counter
17. War Dims Hope for Peace
18. If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While
19. Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
20. Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
21. New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
22. Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Space
23. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
24. Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
25. Tornado Rips through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
According to a radio report, a middle school in Oregon was faced with a unique problem. A number of girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Finally the principal decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the custodian. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every day. To demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the mirrors, she asked the custodian to clean one of the mirrors.
He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it into the toilet and then cleaned the mirror.
Since then there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
The longest one-syllable word in the English language is"screeched."
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
Almonds are members of the peach family.
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
"Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is *pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiw en uaitnatahu, a New Zealand hill.
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.
The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
"Stewardesses" is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.
To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead."
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
The first episode of "Joanie Loves Chachi" was the highest rated American program in the history of Korean television. "Chachi" is Korean for "penis."
*pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Let me define this
for you;
pneumono = lungs
ultramicroscopic =
just what it says
silico=silicon
volcano=just what it
says
coni = dust
osis = inflammation
So, this big word indicates
ultramicroscopic silicon volcano dust has caused inflammation of the lungs.
Stick that in your hat.
Anne Hathaway was the wife of William Shakespeare. She married at the age of 26. This was really unusual for the time. Most people married young, like at the age of 11 or 12. Life was not as romantic as we may picture it.
Here are some examples:
Anne Hathaway's home was a 3-bedroom house
with a small parlor, which was seldom used (only for company), kitchen,
and no bathroom. Mother and Father shared a bedroom. Anne had a queen sized
bed, but did not sleep alone. She also had two sisters and they shared
the bed with six servant girls. (This is before she married). They didn't
sleep like we do length-wise but all laid on the bed crosswise. At least
they had a bed. Her 6 brothers and 30 field workers shared the other bedroom.
They didn't have a bed. Everyone just wrapped up in their blanket and slept
on the floor. They had no indoor heating so all the extra bodies kept them
warm.
They were also small people, the men only grew to be about 5'6" and the women were 4'8". Most people got married in June. Why? They took their yearly bath in May, so they still smelled pretty good by June, although they were starting to smell, so the brides would carry a bouquet of flowers to hide their B.O.
Baths were not taken often due to some provincial hang-ups about baths causing sin, like in the shared baths from Roman Times. Like I said, they took their yearly bath in May, but it was just a big tub they would fill with hot water. The man of the house would get the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women, and finally the children. Last were the babies. By then the water was pretty thick. Thus, the saying, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water". It was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.
I'll describe their houses a little. You've heard of thatch roofs, well that's all they were. Thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. And they were the only place for the little animals to get warm. So all the pets (dogs, cats and other small animals, such as mice, rats, bugs, etc. lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Thus the saying, "it's raining cats and dogs". Since there was nothing to stop things from falling into the house they would just try to clean up a lot. But this posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings from animals could really mess up your nice clean bed, so they found if they would make beds with big posts and hang a sheet over the top it would prevent that problem. That's where those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies came from.
When you came into the house you would notice most times the floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, therefore "dirt poor". The wealthy would have slate floors. That was fine but in the winter they would get slippery when they got wet. So they started to spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they would just keep adding it and adding it until when you opened the door it would slide outside. So they put a piece of wood at the entryway, a "thresh hold".
In the kitchen they would cook over the fire. They had a fireplace in the kitchen/parlor, that was seldom used and sometimes in the master bedroom. They had a big kettle that always hung over the fire and every day they would light the fire and start adding things to the pot. Mostly they ate vegetables, they didn't get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner then leave the leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew would have food in it that had been in there for a month! Thus the rhyme, peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.
Sometimes they could get some pork. They really felt special when that happened and when company came over they even had a rack in the parlor where they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. That was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon". They would cut off a little to share with guests and they would all sit around and "chew the fat".
If you had money your plates were made out of pewter. Sometimes some of their food had a high acid content and some of the lead would leach out into the food. They really noticed it happened with tomatoes, so they stopped eating tomatoes for 400 year. Most people didn't have pewter plates though, they all had trenchers. That was a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. They never washed their boards and a lot of times worms would get into the wood. After eating off the trencher with worms they would get "trench mouth".
If you were going traveling and wanted to stay at an Inn they usually provided the bed but not the board. The bread was divided according to status. The workers get the middle and guests would get the top, or the "uppercrust". They also had lead cups, and when they would drink their ale or whiskey, the combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. They would be walking along the road and there would be someone knocked out and they thought they were dead. So they would pick them up and take them home and get them ready to bury. They realized if they were too slow about it, the person would wake up; also, maybe not. So they would lay them out on the kitchen table for a couple of days. The family would gather around and eat and drink and wait to see if they would wake up. That's where the custom of holding a "wake" came form.
Since England is so old and small they started running out of places to bury people. So they started digging up some coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the grave. They started opening these coffins and found some had scratch marks on the inside. One out of 25 coffins was that way and they realized they had still been burying people alive. So, they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. That is how the saying "graveyard shift" was made. If the bell would ring they would know someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer".
His name was Fleming, and he was a poor Scottish farmer. One day, while trying to make a living for his family, he heard a cry for help coming from a nearby bog. He dropped his tools and ran to the bog. There, mired to his waist in black muck, was a terrified boy, screaming and struggling to free himself. Farmer Fleming saved the lad from what could have been a slow and terrifying death.
The next day, a fancy carriage pulled up to the Scotsman's sparse surroundings. An elegantly dressed nobleman stepped out and introduced himself as the father of the boy Farmer Fleming had saved. "I want to repay you," said the nobleman. "You saved my son's life." "No, I can't accept payment for what I did," the Scottish farmer replied, waving off the offer. At that moment, the farmer's own son came to the door of the family hovel. "Is that your son?" the nobleman asked. "Yes," the farmer replied proudly. "I'll make you a deal. Let me take him and give him a good education. If the lad is anything like his father, he'll grow to a man you can be proud of." And that he did.
In time, Farmer Fleming's son graduated from St. Mary's Hospital Medical School in London, and went on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of Penicillin. Years afterward, the nobleman's son was stricken with pneumonia. What saved him? Penicillin. The nobleman's name? Randolph Churchill. His son's name? Sir Winston Churchill.
Someone once said: What goes around comes around. Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching. It's National Friendship Week. Send this to people you consider a friend and brighten someone's day. Nothing will happen if you decide not to pass it along. The only thing that will happen, if you DO pass it on, is that someone might smile.
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