# Post your useless facts....



## PVD24 (Oct 22, 2003)

Just thought I would try to see what useless facts everyone has floating around in their brains...

Here are mine..

Each year, the average family uses 18,000 gallons of water just to do its laundry. 

Mark Twain didn't even make it through elementary school. 

You have no sense of smell when you're sleeping. 

FROZEN LOBSTERS CAN COME BACK TO LIFE WHEN THAWED! 

Males sweat 40% more than females. 

Pepsi-Cola was originally called 'Brad's Drink' . 

MICHAEL JORDAN WAS CUT FROM THE BASKETBALL TEAM HIS SOPHOMORE YEAR.


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## CJIS (Mar 12, 2005)

Penguin Facts


A penguin swims at a speed of approximately 15 miles per hour. 
[*]All penguins live south of the equator.
[*]Before its name was changed, the African Penguin used be called the Jackass Penguin because of its donkey-like braying call.
[*]The deepest underwater penguin dive is 1,772 feet by an Emperor Penguin. 
[*]The largest type of penguin is the Emperor Penguin which can stand to be almost 3.5 feet tall and weigh more than 90 pounds.


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## PVD24 (Oct 22, 2003)

Bill Bowerman, the co-founder of the shoe company Nike, got his first shoe idea after staring at a waffle iron. This gave him the idea of using squared spikes to make the shoes lighter. 

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class. 

Archeologists report that cannabis was most likely the first plant cultivated by humans. Cannabis was used for linen, paper, and garments. 

It is not possible to tickle yourself. The cerebellum, a part of the brain, warns the rest of the brain that you are about to tickle yourself. Since your brain knows this, it ignores the resulting sensation. 

During the female orgasm, endorphines are released, which are powerful painkillers. So headaches are in fact a bad excuse not to have sex.


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## CJIS (Mar 12, 2005)

Human Hair Facts


A lifespan of an eyelash is approximately 150 days.
[*]A survey done by Clairol 10 years ago came up with 46% of men stating that it was okay to color their hair. Now 66% of men admit to coloring their hair.
[*]Ancient Egyptians used to think having facial hair was an indication of personal neglect.
[*]Brylcreem, which was created in 1929, was the first man's hair product.
[*]Everyday approximately 35 meters of hair fibre is produced on the scalp of an adult. 
[*]Eyebrow hair lasts between 3-5 months before it sheds. 
[*]Hair is made from the same substance as fingernails. 
[*]Hair will fall out faster on a person that is on a crash diet.
[*]Humans have about the same number of hair follicles as a chimpanzee has. 
[*]In a lifetime, an average man will shave 20,000 times. 
[*]Next to bone marrow, hair is the fastest growing tissue in the human body.
[*]On average redheads have 90,000 hairs. People with black hair have about 110,000 hairs.
[*]On average, 35 meters of hair fibre is produced on the adult scalp.
[*]On average, a hair strand's life span is five and a half years.
[*]On average, a man spends about five months of his life shaving. 




The average human scalp has 100,000 hairs. 
[*]The fastest growing tissue in the human body is hair.
[*]The longest human beard on record is 17.5 feet, held by Hans N. Langseth who was born in Norway in 1846.
[*]The loss of eyelashes is referred to as madarosis.
[*]The reason why hair turns gray as we age is because the pigment cells in the hair follicle start to die, which is responsible for producing "melanin" which gives the hair colour. 
[*]The reason why hair turns gray as we age is because the pigment cells in the hair follicle start to die, which is responsible for producing "melanin" which gives the hair colour. 
[*]The reason why some people get a cowlick is because the growth of their hair is in a spiral pattern, which causes the hair to either stand straight up, or goes to a certain angle.


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## Guest (Jan 2, 2006)

I check my e-mail 2.5 times per day.


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## PVD24 (Oct 22, 2003)

Phobophobia is a fear of fearing. 
I heard you cant plow a cotton feild with an elephant in NC 
Its illegal to whale hunt in Oklahoma 
Its against te law for billboards to be hung in hawaii, vermon, maine. 
Its illegal to carry ice cream in ur back pocket in kentucky.
You use more calories eating celery than there are in the celery itself. 
If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. 
No word in the English language rhymes with *month*, orange, silver or purple.


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## USMCTrooper (Oct 23, 2003)

sugar cane was discovered along the river Indus in 510 BC
cookies are believed to have been first made in Iran in the 7th Century
chocolate chip cookies were first invented in Wakefield, MA -1937
the graham cracker was invented in Northampton, MA - 1829


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## dcs2244 (Jan 29, 2004)

"homophobia" is fear of the same.


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## Pvt. Cowboy (Jan 26, 2005)

Semen is shot out at 12 MPH.


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## Dane (Sep 26, 2003)

You'll shoot your eye out, kid.


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## NorwichAlum (Nov 5, 2005)

THE AVERAGE EAR OF CORN HAS 800 KERNELS ARRANGED IN 16 ROWS


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## NorwichAlum (Nov 5, 2005)

The Headquarters of Central Massachusetts Public Safety is in Uxbridge.
It's true!!


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## Officer Dunngeon (Aug 16, 2002)

The word "gullible" is not in the dictionary.


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## lokiluvr (Dec 30, 2004)

Wilfred Brimmley (SP?) Was the first person to play Ronald MacDonald on a TV ad


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## RustyShackleford (Sep 1, 2005)

D'you know that bees and dogs can smell fear?


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## Nachtwächter (Dec 9, 2005)

Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal."

The second? William Jefferson Clinton


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## Crvtte65 (May 19, 2002)

All of these and many more in _A Short History of Nearly Everything_ by Bill Bryson

The earth's magnetic field reverses itself every 500,000 years or so
The Mt St Helens explosion is equated to 500,000 Hiroshima sized atomic bombs (12.5 kilotons)
Yellowstone Park is the biggest hotspot in the world. An equivalent amount of energy that could be released is a stack of TNT eight miles high and as big as the state of RI and erupts about every 600,000 years. The last eruption was 630,000 yrs ago.
The previous blasts of the hotspot beneath what is now Yellowstone were 1,000, 280, and anywhere between 2,500-8,000 times more powerful than Mt St Helens (or the largest estimate being 50,000,000,000 kilotons or 50 million megatons)
When two objects come together they don't actually strike each other. the negatively charged fields of the two balls repel each other. When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating about it at a height of angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimeter), your electrons and its electrons prevent getting any closer.
Mary Anning, 11 yrs old, of England, found a fossil of a icthyosaurus along the cliffs of the English Channel. She did this for her lifetime and sold the fossils to visitors. It is believed that this was the creation of the tongue twister "She sells sea shells by the sea shore"
Plate Tectonics does not explain why Denver or most of southern Africa has risen in the last hundred million years as both are not close enough to the plate's edges to have an effect.
Movies like Armageddon would not happen as NASA does not have any more powerful rockets to send humans to the moon even (Saturn 5 was retired) and the plans for Saturn rockets were thrown out accidentally.
Launching a nuclear warhead to break an incoming piece of rock would only break it up to many rocks that are extremely radioactive
Tokyo has not had a major earthquake in over 80 yrs. even though it rests on the joint of three tectonic plates. in the 1923 earthquake, 200,000 people died from a population of 3,000,000. Now, Tokyo has a population of nearly 13,000,000 and if another major quake hit the economic cost is estimated of $7 trillion
The Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet (actually 21 individual pieces) which struck Jupiter in July of 1998 was thought to cause no damage to the planet because of its massive size. The largest piece, Nucleaus G, struck with 6 million megatons of force (75x more than all the nuclear weaponry in existence) and created a crater the size of the Earth
If a similar piece of space rock as of the Chicxulub impact site (Yucatan crater, associated with the extinction of the dinosaurs) was hurtling towards Earth, one geologist estimates that such an rock wouldn't be able to be seen by the naked eye until about 1 second before impact and could get as hot as 60,000 Kelvin (or 10 times hotter than the Sun's surface)
The Chicxulub meteor was about 100 million megatons of force. If one Hiroshima bomb was set off for every person alive, it would still be about one billion short of the tonnage force.
The "deepest" a human has gone is the bottom of the Mariana trench, or 35,920 feet (approx. 7 miles) in 1958. To do it again it is estimated would cost about $100 million .
The largest mammal on earth, the blue whale, we cannot identify where they are, where they breed, or their paths of migration. The giant squid, the largest invertebrate (weighing in at 1 ton) has never been seen alive.
The second most numerous large animal species in the world is crab-eater seals.
The oldest thing ever found was a rock in Western Australia dated 4.3 billion years old. The Earth is dated to about 4.5 billion years old.
A species of bacteria called _micrococcus radiophilus_ was found in a nuclear waste tank eating plutonium. (Important note that plutonium is not naturally found on earth and humans poses no tolerance to the substance but this bacteria can eat it)
Another species, _Deincoccus radiodurans_ is almost immune to radioactivity and when it's DNA is blasted with radiation, the pieces reform almost immediately.
A piece of streptococcus that was in a sealed lens of a camera left on the moon survived for 2 years.
A pathogen, or disease, is only successful if it survives long enough to spread. In short, the longer a person is sick, the more effective it is. Symptoms of sickness, sneezing, vomiting etc is a way of spreading disease. If a pathogen kills off the host too quickly, the disease will die out by itself as was the English Sweating Sickness.
A deadly infection known as _necrotizing fasciitis_ has a 70% morality rate and it comes from the family of Group A Streptococcus. The disease occurs when the strap bacteria gets through the lining of the throat (which thankfully doesn't happen often). The are also completely resistant to antibiotics. The disease turns internal tissue into nearly nothing as it literally eats everything. The only "cure" is to cut all infected tissue from the body.
In about four months the Great Swine Flu of 1918 killed an equal amount of people as World War I did in the four years (about 20,000,000). Estimates vary but it was at least 20 million to 50 million total deaths worldwide but some estimates are as high as 100 million.
A Nigerian living in the US was exposed to Lassa fever, one of the most deadly diseases (that are known) in the world and didn't develop symptoms (and died) in the US. Nobody knew that he was infected until studied after death. There was no outbreak.
Only about one bone in one billion is turned to a fossil
In 1819 it was once though that lichen was rocks transforming into organic matter.
The Earth has presumed to have 5 extinction events. Ordovician (440 million yr ago), Devonian (365 million yr ago), Permian (245 million yr ago), Triassic (210 million yr ago), and Cretatious (65 million yr ago). The first two may have wiped out about 80-85% of all species. The last two about 70-75% of all species. The middle, Permian, it is estimated that about 95% of all species were made extinct. Even 1/3 of all insects died, which is the only time they were killed in such quanities.
Possible explanations of extinction events are: global warming, global cooling, changing sea levels, oxygen depletion of the seas (anoxia), epidemics, giant leaks of methan gas (from the sea floor), meteor/comet impacts, volcanic explosions, and solar flares.


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## Curious EMT (Apr 1, 2004)

64% of all staistics are made up


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## Crvtte65 (May 19, 2002)

Actually it's more like 78%


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## Curious EMT (Apr 1, 2004)

Crvtte65 said:


> Actually it's more like 78%


Liar


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## CJIS (Mar 12, 2005)

My Mother and your Mother are both Mothers


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## MVS (Jul 2, 2003)

2 useless facts:

1 - There's a bottle of whiteout on top of this computer.

2 - The Wig Wags on car 2 are not working.


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## Guest (Jan 4, 2006)

If you drop some "Smarties" rolled candy into a Coke (or other carbonated soda), it will erupt like Mount Vesuvius.


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## HousingCop (May 14, 2004)

Now why would you want to go & ruin a perfectly good soda? Unless it's not yours of course!


Delta784 said:


> If you drop some "Smarties" rolled candy into a Coke (or other carbonated soda), it will erupt like Mount Vesuvius.


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## CJIS (Mar 12, 2005)

*Stupid Facts - Fart Facts 
*


Farts are created mostly by E. coli.

On the average a fart is composed of about 59% nitrogen, 21% hydrogen, 9% carbon dioxide, 7% methane, and 4% oxygen. Less than 1% is what makes them stink.

The temperature of a fart at time of creation is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Farts have been clocked at a speed of 10 feet per second.

A person produces about half a liter of farts a day.

Although they won't admit it, women fart as much as men.

Termites are the largest producers of farts.

Farts are flammable.

The word "fart" comes from the Old English "feortan" (meaning "to break wind").

Excess gas in the intestinal is medically termed "flatulence."


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## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

[*]A Swiss woman sees colors and experiences tastes when she hears music, scientists at the University of Zurich in Switzerland reported. The rare phenomenon, known as synaesthesia, was confirmed in a 27-year-old professional musician, who saw violet on hearing an F sharp and red on a middle C.

[*]Researchers at National University in La Jolla, California, threw a dinner party and then analyzed the leftovers to see if their guests left significant DNA samples on them. Complete profiles were recovered from 43 percent of the sample, and partial ones from 33 percent. Such work could be useful in catching burglars, who often like tucking into the food found in their victims' kitchens.

African elephants have at least one thing in common with parrots: they imitate sounds they hear around them, said scientists in the United States and Norway. A captive female jumbo in Kenya was found to imitate the noise of trucks on a nearby road, while a male kept with Asian elephants at a zoo in Switzerland mimicked their chirping noises. 
[*]Enterprising students at Brown University in the United States invented an alarm clock that monitors its user's brainwaves and works out the best time to wake him or her up. The only drawback: the sleeper must wear a headband equipped with electrodes.

[*]Alexis Lemaire, a 24-year-old student in Reims, France, claimed a world record for working out the 13th root of a 200-digit number by mental arithmetic. The feat, checked by a notary, took him 48 minutes and 51 seconds.

[*]Also in the maths department, Akira Haraguchi, a 59-year-old psychiatric counselor in Japan, recited from memory the value of "pi," a constant which consists of an infinite string of digits, to 83,431 decimal places. It took him 13 hours to beat the previous record, also set by a Japanese, of a mere 54,000 digits.

[*]The guardians of animal nomenclature had mixed feelings over a proposal to name three newly-discovered species of slime-mold beetle after U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. A pair of insect experts reserved the names _Agathidium bushi_, _Agathidium cheneyi_ and _Agathidium rumsfeldi_ for their latest creepy-crawlies.

[*]An odd-looking rodent spotted on sale for meat in a Laotian food market turned out to be not only a new species but also the first member of a new family of mammals to be identified in more than three decades. An alert member of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society noticed the creature, which was baptized a stone-dwelling puzzle-mouse, or, more simply, "rock rat".

[*]Cane toads, reptiles imported into Australia in the erroneous belief that they would eliminate pests from sugar-cane fields, are attracted by disco-style flashing lights, said researchers in the Northern Territory who are desperate to find a way of eliminating the fast-spreading creatures. "The old toads are definitely a disco animal," said a member of a group called Frogwatch.

[*]The fashion for television detective series which focus on forensic science may be unwittingly providing tips to real-world criminals, a study by British researchers said. Some forensic scientists were even becoming unwilling to cooperate with the media for precisely that reason.

Proof that scientists have a sense of humor: the annual Ig Nobel awards, which give spoof prizes to the most offbeat research. This year's crop went to the inventor of an alarm that rings then runs away and hides, thus ensuring that the sleeper has to get up to turn it off ... to scientists who researched whether humans swim faster in syrup rather than in water ... to British boffins who analyzed the electrical activity of a locust's brain cell while the insect watched a "Star Wars" movie ... and to a German team that calculated the pressure produced in penguins' anuses when the birds expel their faeces.

Internet Follows Americans to Throne Room

Flushing out the secrets of America's Web surfers, a new survey of Internet use has found that more and more people are logging on in the bathroom.
The snapshot of how the Internet has changed American life, concluded that home wireless connections were allowing people to stay connected everywhere, even in the smallest room in the house.

"A significant number of Americans use the computer connection in the bathroom," said Jeffrey Cole, of the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.

Since people were unlikely to be surfing in the bath, or while brushing their teeth, Cole said he had concluded that many of them went off into cyberspace while on the throne.


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## 94c (Oct 21, 2005)

in certain trailer parks throughout the state, if you divorce your wife she still remains your sister.


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## Norkem (Nov 22, 2005)

The most deadly animal in the U.S. is the DEER. Each year in the U.S. there are more than 1 million deer - auto collisions causing over $1 billion in damage, 29,000 human injuries and 200 HUMAN DEATHS


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## CJIS (Mar 12, 2005)

Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light. Not because Chuck Norris is afraid of the dark, but the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.


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## Nachtwächter (Dec 9, 2005)

* A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue*


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## 2-Delta (Aug 13, 2003)

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as blood plasma.

No piece of paper can be folded in half more then 7 times.

The first product to have a barcode was Wrigleys gum.

The King of Hearts is the only king without a mustache.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

Pearls melt in vinegar.

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

Richard Millhouse Nixon and William Jefferson Clinton were the first and second presidents to have the word "criminal" spelled in their names.

Turtles can breathe out of their butts.


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## CJIS (Mar 12, 2005)

2-Delta said:


> A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.


Yes they do 
http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/acoustics_world/duck/duck.htm


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## Curious EMT (Apr 1, 2004)

npd_323 said:


> Yes they do
> http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/acoustics_world/duck/duck.htm


I didnt want to ruin the fun, but that is correct


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## SOT (Jul 30, 2004)

ducks farts don't echo and no one knows why.


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## Crvtte65 (May 19, 2002)

hahahahahahahahahaha B: 

Thats great!!


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## 2-Delta (Aug 13, 2003)

I stand corrected!


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## VTCOP (May 2, 2002)

My Dept's brand spankin' new crossmatch livescan worked perfectly yesterday when installed, now it doesn't work period!

We ask for a pay raise for being EMT certified, they deny it! You ask for a stipened at double the pay raise, they say SURE!

It has snowed in Vermont in June. It has also snowed in early september.


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## Cinderella (Jun 17, 2005)

*An Egyptian has to say "I divorce thee" three times to be legally divorced..*

*160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the worlds widest road..*

*15 percent of Americans secretly bite their toenails...*

*The human brain is 85% water..*


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## bluesamurai22 (Nov 20, 2004)

King Kong was Hitler's favorite movie.

From a few posts above:

...The giant squid, the largest invertebrate (weighing in at 1 ton) has never been seen alive.

No longer true:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0927_050927_giant_squid.html


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## MA218 (Sep 30, 2005)

It takes 1 year to conduct a complete safety inspection of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Because of this, the inspections have not ended since the bridge was opened.


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## EOD1 (Mar 11, 2004)

Under the law of Mississippi, there’s no such thing as a female Peeping Tom.

Anti-modem laws restrict Internet access in the country of Burma. Illegal possession of a modem can lead to a prison term.

Lawn darts are illegal in Canada.

In Idaho a citizen is forbidden by law to give another citizen a box of candy that weighs more than 50 pounds.

Every citizen of Kentucky is required by law to take a bath at least once a year.

It is against the law to whale hunt in Oklahoma. (Think about it...)

A Venetian law decrees that all gondolas must be painted black. The only exceptions are gondolas belonging to high public officials.

In the state of Queensland, Australia, it is still constitutional law that all pubs (hotel/bar) must have a railing outside for patrons to tie up their horse.

According to law, no store is allowed to sell a toothbrush on the Sabbath in Providence, Rhode Island. Yet these same stores are allowed to sell toothpaste and mouthwash on Sundays.

Before the enactment of the 1978 law that made it mandatory for dog owners in New York City to clean up after their pets, approximately 40 million pounds of dog excrement were deposited on the streets every year.

Chewing gum is outlawed in Singapore because it is a means of "tainting an environment free of dirt."

The handkerchief had been used by the Romans, who ordinarily wore two handkerchiefs: one on the left wrist and one tucked in at the waist or around the neck. In the fifteenth century, the handkerchief was for a time allowed only to the nobility; special laws were made to enforce this. The classical heritage was rediscovered during the Renaissance.

For hundreds of years, the Chinese zealously guarded the secret of sericulture; imperial law decreed death by torture to those who disclosed how to make silk.

An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

By law, information collected in a U.S. census must remain confidential for 72 years.

Candy made from pieces of barrel cactus was outlawed in the U.S. in 1952 to protect the species.

A slander case in Thailand was once settled by a witness who said nothing at all. According to the memoirs of Justice Gerald Sparrow, a 20th century British barrister who served as a judge in Bangkok, the case involved two rival Chinese merchants. Pu Lin and Swee Ho. Pu Lin had stated sneeringly at a party that Swee Ho's new wife, Li Bua, was merely a decoration to show how rich her husband was. Swee Ho, he said, could no longer "please the ladies." Swee Ho sued for slander, claiming Li Bua was his wife in every sense - and he won his case, along with substantial damages, without a word of evidence being taken. Swee Ho's lawyer simply put the blushing bride in the witness box. She had decorative, gold-painted fingernails, to be sure, but she was also quite obviously pregnant.

In Breton, Alabama, there is a law on the town's books against riding down the street in a motorboat.

Connecticut and Rhode Island never ratified the 18th Amendment: Prohibition.

A few years back, a Chinese soap hit it big with consumers in Asia. It was claimed in ads that users would lose weight with Seaweed Defat Scented Soap simply by washing with it. The soap was sold in violation to the Japanese Pharmaceutical Affairs Law and was banned. Reportedly, the craze for the soap was so great that Japanese tourists from China and Hong Kong brought back large quantities. The product was also in violation of customs regulations. In June and July 1999 alone, over 10,000 bars were seized.

In most American states, a wedding ring is exempt by law from inclusion among the assets in a bankruptcy estate. This means that a wedding ring cannot be seized by creditors, no matter how much the bankrupt person owes.

In New York State, it is still illegal to shoot a rabbit from a moving trolley car.

Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine are the four states in the U.S. that do not allow billboards.

Wetaskiwin, Alberta from 1917: "It's against the law to tie a male horse next to a female horse on Main Street."

Women were banned by royal decree from using hotel swimming pools in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in 1979.

In Riverside, California, there is an old law on the city's books which makes it illegal to kiss unless both people wipe their lips with rose water.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman reportedly may divorce her husband if he does not keep her supplied with coffee.


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## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

History lesson

In George Washington's days, there were no cameras.
One's image was either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of George
Washington showed him standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back
while others showed both legs and both arms.

Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be
painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted. Arms and legs are
"limbs", therefore painting them would cost the buyer more.
Hence the _expression. "Okay, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg."
************************************************************************

As incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year! (May
and October) Women kept their hair covered, while men shaved their heads
(because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs.

Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool.
The wigs couldn't be washed, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf
of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The heat
would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big wig". Today we often
use the term "here comes the Big Wig" because someone appears to be or is
powerful and wealthy.
************************************************************************

In the late 1700s, many houses consisted of a large room with only one
chair. Commonly, a long wide board was folded down from the wall and used
for dining. The "head of the household" always sat in the chair while
everyone else ate sitting on a bench. Once in a while, a guest (who was
almost always a man) would be invited to sit in this chair during a meal.
To sit in the chair meant you were important and in charge. Sitting in the
chair, one was called the "chair man". Today in business we use the
_expression or title "Chairman or "Chairman of the Board."
************************************************************************
Needless to say, personal hygiene left much room for improvement. As a
result, many women and men had developed acne scars by adulthood. The women
would spread bee's wax over their facial skin to smooth out their
complexions. When they were speaking to each other, if a woman began to
stare at another woman's face she was told "mind yourown bee's wax."
Should the woman smile, the wax would crack, hence the term "crack a
smile". Also, when they sat too close to the fire, the wax would melt and
therefore the _expression "losing face."
************************************************************************
Ladies wore corsets which would lace up in the front. 
A tightly tied
lace was worn by a proper and dignified lady as in "straight laced."
************************************************************

Common entertainment included playing cards. However, there was a tax levied
when purchasing playing cards but only applicable to the "ace of spades".
To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since
most games require 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb
because they weren't "playing with a full deck." 
**************************************************************

Early politicians required feedback from the public to determine what was
considered important to the people.
Since there were no telephones, TV's or radios, the politicians sent their
assistants to local taverns, pubs, and bars who were told to "go sip some
ale" and listen to people's conversations and political concerns. Many
assistants were dispatched at different times. "You go sip here" and "You
go sip there". The two words "go sip" were eventually combined when
referring to the local opinion and, thus we have the term "gossip."
********************************************************************
At local tavern! s, pubs, and bars, people drank from
pint- and
quart-sized containers. A bar maid's job was to keep an eye on the customers
and keep the drinks coming. She had to pay close attention and remember who
was drinking in "pints" and who was drinking in "quarts", hence the term
"minding your "P's and Q's".
************************************************************

You must send this fabulous bit of historic knowledge to at least ten
unsuspecting friends. If you don't, your floppy is going to fall off your
hard drive and kill your mouse


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