The Encyclopedia of Useless Facts
Created | Updated Oct 12, 2005
The Complete Encycolpedia of Everything, Abridged
Preface
Hello and welcome, to the Enclopedia of Useless Facts. The dictionary defines "useless" as "Incapable of functioning or assisting; ineffectual". While this might not be true of all these facts to some people or professions, I think we can all regard these facts as useless to the general population. However, the general population may have a very hard time believing them all. Good for you. I'm not going to assure you that they are all true, because I have reason to believe that a few are completely wrong. If you find one that you think is untrue, find the truth, and report it to me. Usually the truth ends up stranger than the lie. If this does well, I may start on a 2nd Edition of the enclyclopedia. Watch for it.
The Human Body and Anatomy
You can't lick your elbow... (go on then, try it.)
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
It only takes 7lbs of pressure to rip your ear off
In ancient Rome it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose
Leonardo da Vinci spent 12 years painting the Mona Lisa's lips.
Until the 1960's men with long hair were not allowed to enter Disneyland.
If a chair were sitting sideways against a wall and a man bentt over from his waist so that his head was flat on the wall, he could not pick up the chair (or anything) due to the mass of a man's torso.
The Apache indians no longer have the genetically implanted imperfection of fear of heights resulting in that many work on comercial sky scraper construction jobs
left handed people are more prone to bed-wetting.
Humans generally fear public speaking over death
In the Peter the Great Era in Russia, men who had beards were required to pay an extra tax
The first mechanical refrigeration machine was initially designed for treating yellow fever.
people can blink their eyes 183 times per minute
Children born in the month of May are on the average 200 grams heavier at birth than children born in any other month.
The average human will shed 40 pounds of skin in a lifetime.
The average person laughs 15 times a day.
The length of the finger dictates how fast the fingernail grows. Therefore, the nail on your middle finger grows the fastest, and on average, your toenails grow twice as slow as your fingernails.
Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma
One can fake a polygraph by making your blood pressure higher or increasing your anxiety (salt, caffeine, and drugs will increase blood pressure)
Having a hangover is actually not having enough water to complete the Krebs Cycle, which is also what dehydration (to the point of death) is
As of 1997, there was a wider variety of porn in London phone-booths than there was on the internet.
The Human Tooth is the only part of the body that can't repair itself
When you sneeze, all your bodily functions stop even your heart.
Human blood travels 60,000 mi. or 96,500 km every day through the body
We can only smell 1/20 as well as a dog
The act or habit of talking while asleep is called "Somniloquy".
Your stomach needs to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it would digest itself.
Every year about 98% of the atoms in your body are replaced.
It is possible to drown and not die. Technically the term 'drowning' refers to the process of taking water into the lungs, not to death caused by that process.
Products
70% of the public internet is pornography.
scotch tape was tested to be better at fixing ducts than duct tape.
the first commercial CD burner cost $5000, while you can pick up one of the same or better quality now for around $150.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Raw rubber is yellow, and elastic.
On average, there are 333 squares of toilet paper on a roll.
In 1969 the US Navy spent $375,000 on an "aerodynamic analysis of the self-suspended flare." The study's conclusion was that the Frisbee was not feasible as military hardware.
Since 1976, at least 37 people have died as a result of shaking vending machines in an attempt to get free merchandise.
60% of a Geo Metro's parts are made from recycled plastic soda bottles
In a Geo Metro, the undercoating (coating under paint for the car to avoid rust damage) will last longer than the car actually will fall apart first
Benadryll and Tylenol both kill cats
The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words
The average person will eat 350,000 cookies in their lifetime.
Sucess magazine recently declared bankruptcy
There are roughly 3,000 hotdog vendors in metropolitan New York
McDonalds is the worlds largest toy distributer
Peas are the oldest vegetable
4,000 people are injured by tea pots every year.
The surface area of an average-sized brick is 79 cm squared.
Government, Geography, and History
money is not in fact printed on paper, but a cotton-paper mix. It is also water-proofed.
85% of all money has traces of cocaine on it
It is illegal to wear a bathing suit in a shower in Florida.
Russia was originally colonized by Vikings, hence the people are so warlike.
Finland is apparently the most crime-free place on the planet.
Bangladesh is the most corrupt country on the planet.
In California, it's against the law to use your dirty underwear as a dust rag.
In Canada, if a payment is higher than 25 cents, it is illegal to pay it in pennies.
There are more Puerto Ricans in New York than in San Juan.
In the 30's, it was widespread belief that the earth was hollow and alien-like creatures were living inside it.
Similarly, there are currently two waring factions of people living in LA, one believing that the earth is hollow and elves live in it, the other that nazi's do.
In Calama, a town in the Atacama desert of Chile, it has never rained.
Louis XIV owned 413 beds.
In the Catholic church, St. Gabriel, an archangel, is the patron saint of telecommunications.
Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another.
Louisiana is the only state not to have counties. They are called Parishes.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury
Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
The youngest pope was 11 years old.
Eskimos never gamble.
The origin of the word "Eskimo" comes from the Algonquin word for "he eats it raw" or "eats raw flesh."
There are more collect calls on Father's Day than any other day of the year.
Celery was often given as prizes to athletes in Ancient Greece, and was also carried during relays and torch runs.
Marianne Faithful was the first person to say the 'F' word in a movie
The most common name in the world is mohammed
in the last 3,500 years, there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.
In the third star-wars movie (return of the jedi) one ship was modeled after a running shoe, the idea stemming from everyone's favorite radio/book/TV/stage/comic series...
Benjamin Franklin compiled a list of more than 200 synonyms for "drunk" including "cherry-merry", "nimptopsical", and "soaked".
Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise
The Roman Catholic Church did not acknowledge that the earth revolves around the sun until the mid 1990s
At latitude 60 degrees south you can sail all the way around the world.
Zip code 12345 is assigned to General Electric in Schenectady, NY.
(Those Inferior...) Animals and Plants
A pig orgasm lasts thirty minutes
Ants stretch and yawn when they wake up
Canaries can't swallow without gravity
Only female mosqitoes bite
If you take the number of times a cricket chirps, divide by 2, add 9, then divide by 2 again, you will get the correct temperature in celcius.
A duck's quack doesn't echo
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
Cat's urine glows under a black light.
Birds don't sleep in their nests
Bluebirds can't see the color blue.
20 pigs can consume an average sized human body in roughly 2 hours.
It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
The average chocolate bar has 8 insects' legs in it.
The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
In scotland, it is illegal to become inebriated and be in possesion of a cow.
In parts of Alaska, it's illegal to feed alcohol to a moose.
Polar bears are the only mammals with hair on the soles of their feet.
To make a vase full of roses last the longest one should clip off an inch of the stem under water everyday and add a teaspoon of clorox coupled with some salt (3 tsp. or so) into the vase of water when being displayed.
Rice is illegal to throw at weddings because the birds will eat it and it will explode in their stomaches killing them
IF one was to feed a pill of alkaseltzer to a bird, it would make their stomache explode after slowly expanding
Pacific Grove, California- It causes a misdemeanor if you kill or threaten a butterfly
99 percent of a pandas diet is bamboo
Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.
snails can sleep for 4 years
The waste produced by one chicken in its lifetime can supply enough electricity to run a 100-watt bulb for 5 hours.
Numbers and Linguistics
it never says anywhere in the poem that humpty dumpty is an egg
A googol written out is 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
If a word has two consecutive vowels, and both are pronounced, a diaeresis [dy-AIR-ih-sis] is used. Diaeresis are two dots over a vowel. Example: ä or ö. For instance; the word noel. Noel is actualy spelled Noël. This is used in English, though it is not commonly written.
No biblical verse contains all 26 letters of the alphabet
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be typed using only one line of the keyboard.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is the longest word in the english language--and is a butt to learn to pronounce!
To be in MENSA you must have an IQ higher than 98% of the population. MENSA is latin and means 'table'
At least 2% of the American population believe that they have been abducted by extraterrestrials
there are the same number of dimples on a golf ball as ridges on the edge of an american dime
No biblical verse contains all 26 letters of the alphabet.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
Odds are...
you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
Humans generally fear public speaking over death
"ironic" is the most misused word in the english language.
"Goodbye" came from "God bye" which came from "God be with you."
Miscellaneous
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
there is a cult in sydney, which lives in a church, stark naked with pots on their heads. "to keep out harmful radiation"
The great pyramids of Egypt now stand a full 3 miles south of the spot where they were originally built. That's how much the earth's surface has shifted in the last 4500 years
Gloucestershire airport in England used to blast Tina Turner songs on the runways to scare birds away.
A jumbo jet uses 4,000 gallons of fuel to take off.
Nutcracker figurines were never intended to crack nuts
Almonds are technically peaches
Sodium hexametaphosphate is apparently an essential ingredient in lemonade
"Video Killed the Radio Star" was the first music video ever to be played on the new-for-1980 MTV.
Glass is in fact an incredibly slow moving liquid.
Each consecutave number on the richter scale is ten times that of the last number, making an earthquake of magnitude 9 one million times stronger than an earthquake of magnitude 3.
Out of the entire universe, only 4% is actual atomic matter. The rest is dark matter that scientists can't explain.
The statue of liberty weighs 225 tons
If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
Eskimoes have 234 words for snow.
No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
The "You Are Here" arrow on a map is called the IDEO locator.
