Useless Facts Thread

[AKIRA]

1.For every human being on earth, there are about 200 million insects.

2.The earth is approx. 6,588,000,000,000,000,000 tons.

3.Every year the sun loses 360 million tons.

this one i love:

Consider printing the digits of a googolplex in unreadable, 1-point font. TeX 1pt font is .3514598mm per digit, which means it would take about 3.5x10^96 meters to write in one point font. The known universe is estimated at 7.4x10^26 meters in diameter, which means the distance to write the digits would be about 4.7x10^69 times the diameter of the known universe. The time it would take to write such a number also renders the task implausible: if a person can write two digits per second, it would take around 1.1x10^82 times several billion years to write down a googolplex.

post some more useless facts

 

[xcellerate]

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A snail can sleep for three years.
Al Capones's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.
The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."
There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

 

[Pulse]

# A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel can.
# Blue whales weigh as much as 30 elephants and are as long as 3 Greyhound buses.
# Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a zigzag line. You'll lose him or her every time.
# Birds do not sleep in their nests. They may occasionally nap in them, but they actually sleep in other places.
# Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of the blue whale.
# Butterflies taste with their hind feet.
# Only female mosquitoes bite.
# Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue twice as much as to any other color.
# If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
# Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles (jaws) into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem, and, with legs dangling, fall asleep.
# Ants stretch when they wake up. They also appear to yawn in a very human manner before taking up the tasks of the day.
# Bees have 5 eyes. There are 3 small eyes on the top of a bee's head and 2 larger ones in front.
# The outdoor temperature can be estimated to within several degrees by timing the chirps of a cricket. It is done this way: count the number of chirps in a 15-second period, and add 37 to the total. The result will be very close to the actual Fahrenheit temperature. This formula, however, only works in warm weather. (Try it!)
# In the United States, a pound of potato chips cost two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes.
# Caesar salad has nothing to do with any of the Caesar. It was first concocted in a bar in Tijuana, Mexico, in the 1920's.
# A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.
# Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
# You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
# The two longest one-syllable words in the English language is "screeched. & strengths."
# Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
# Barbie's full first name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
# All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
# A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened
# "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
# The word 'byte' is a contraction of 'by eight.'
# The word 'pixel' is a contraction of either 'picture cell' or 'picture element'.
# Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
# Cat's urine glows under a black light.
# The average ear of corn has eight hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
# The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
# Chrysler built B-29's engines that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant call Diamond Star.
# On the new hundred-dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
# The vignette on the reverse of the five-dollar note depicts a likeness of the front of the Lincoln Memorial as it appeared in 1922 when it was first dedicated. At that time, there were only 48 states that made up the United States of America. The names of 26 states were engraved on the front of the Memorial. This is why only the names of 26 states appear in the vignette on the reverse of the five-dollar note. In the upper frieze of the fa?ade in the vignette the states are from left to right: Arkansas, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, and North Dakota. In the lower frieze from left to right the names of the states are: Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Carolina, Hampshire, Virginia and New York.
# All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
# Almonds are members of the peach family.
# If you add up the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the total is 5050
# The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
# The maximum weight for a golf ball is 1.62 Oz.
# The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
# Duddley DoRight's Horses name was "Horse."
# Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain was born on a day in 1835 when Haley's Comet came into view. When He died in 1910, Haley's Comet came into view again.

 

[<RJMC>]

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

I think this was proved fake

 

[AJ Rimmer]

I think this was proved fake

It was.

The only two democracies in history to ever declare war on each other are Finland and Great Britain.
Bears do not shit in the woods, or anywhere when they are hibernating.
Koalas make a kind of soup from their faeces for their young.
Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb.
Water bears can die and come back to life after three days of being dead.
The only survivor of the Crimean War is a naval tortoise called Timothy the Tortoise. It died in 2004 and was the ship's mascot of the naval ship HMS Queen during the first bombardment of Sebastopol.
Dogfights first started in World War One, but when they first fought, they had no guns, so they threw bricks at each other.
The first two planes shot down by Spitfires in World War II were Hurricanes.

 

[Dog--]

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

BS. I've been told this before, then I tried it, and successfully did it. Everyone else was too scared to do it because they thought your eyes would pop out.. And no, your eyes do not pop out of your head...

Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a zigzag line. You'll lose him or her every time.

lol, they did a Mythbusters episode on this, and they found out that if your running from a crocodile/alligator, your not even going to think of running in a zig-zag, you'll just run. It's human nature or something like that.



Wrap yuor mdins auornd tihs!

The Paomnnehal Pweor Of The Hmuan Mnid.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch as Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,
it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are,
the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

 

[kineaesth]

'No sir, away, a papaya war is on' and
'Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog'
Are both palindromes.
Also, it rained in Auckland yesterday. Now that's a useless fact.

 

[-Psy-]

Orange is the only word that doesn't have a rhyme.

 

[kineaesth]

Incorrect. Orange, purple, silver and month don't have rhymes either. Try them on www.rhymezone.com

 

[AJ Rimmer]

Orange is the only word that doesn't have a rhyme.

That's a load of borange.

Also, there's a hill in Wales called Blorenge.

And curple (another name for the buttocks; in Scottish, the word for the hindquarters of a horse), hurple (meaning to walk lamely or to hobble), chilver (the Oxford English Dictionary lists chilver as an Old English noun meaning a ewe lamb, often referred to as a 'chilver lamb', and cites uses as recent as 1883).

 

[-Psy-]

Fine then I'm off to sue the company that made this packet of peanuts.

 

[kineaesth]

Also, there's a hill in Wales called Blorenge.

But it's not a word in the English language, it's a place name.

 

[Diputs]

# If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

...It is also untrue that alcohol will cause scorpions to sting themselves to death.

.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

But it's not a word in the English language, it's a place name.

But there's also sporange (an alternate form of the word 'sporangium'

 

[Baratos]

According to the modern calendar, the October Revolution took place in November.

 

[lePobz]

The boobs in my avatar aren't mine.
There is approximately 43 pounds and 18 pence in my penny jar.
I'm hungry.

 

[<RJMC>]

lol, they did a Mythbusters episode on this, and they found out that if your running from a crocodile/alligator, your not even going to think of running in a zig-zag, you'll just run. It's human nature or something like that.

no

the thing is that crocodiles dont chase theyr prey,they wait patiently in the water and make a fast attack,if they miss they just go back to the water and wait again,so if you avoid the fast attack them you are saved since crocodiles dont chase the prey

 

[clarky003]

It will be the age of Aquarius in 2050.

That's all I've got

That is also a useless fact

and so was that one.

 

[Flyingdebris]

You cannot lick your own elbow





^
|
reading the above factoid causes most people to attempt to lick their own elbows.

 

[Asus]

You cannot lick your own elbow

I can get pretty damn close...like an inch away.

reading the above factoid causes most people to attempt to lick their own elbows.

I'm pretty sure that useless 'fact' is true.

 

[Uriel]

You cannot bite your own ear.

Although you can try, begin.

 

[Bull Squid Sally]

OP great thread, but people post toooo many facts =(

female bedbug has no "vagina", so the male must drill it with his "penis"

<insert random high number> of men are abused by their wives each year (sorry, forget the number)

in some state it is illegal to throw throwing knives at men in striped suits.

 

[Dog--]

You cannot lick your own elbow





^
|
reading the above factoid causes most people to attempt to lick their own elbows.

I know of this goth type kid, really skinny/pale, and he can do it. Although he is the ONLY person I've ever met who can do it. It's pretty funny hanging out with him, because people who just heard about it (we only found it out not too long ago) will go up to him, ask if he can lick his elbow, and it freaks them out. Why? I do not know. I think it's a pretty cool talent.

 

[xcellerate]

Orange rhymes with Door Henge.

 

[Dog--]

In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.

The main feature of this useless fact is that someone named their kid "Gaylord".

Horses cannot vomit.
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
Your fingernail has the same ingredients as fly poop

 

[B.Calhoun]

A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

i wiki'd this

"In the adult (flying) stage, larger species of dragonfly can live as long as four months." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly

 

[<RJMC>]

cicadas spend 17 years in the egg phase and when they reach adult state they live around 24 hours

 

[99.vikram]

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

The Mythbusters busted that one.

 

[delusional]

You cannot bite your own ear.

Although you can try, begin.

If I chop off my ear and then bite it, does it count?

 

[Dan]

The main feature of this useless fact is that someone named their kid "Gaylord".

Gaylord is just Gary

 

[soulslicer]

and for losers who did not know this.

you cant fold an rectangular paper of any size, more than 7 times..

 

[Danimal]

Pearls dissolve in vinegar

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

I browse halflife2.net entirely nude.

 

[Geogaddi]

I browse halflife2.net entirely nude.

Hardly a useless fact.

 

[Baal]

and for losers who did not know this.

you cant fold an rectangular paper of any size, more than 7 times..

Mythbusted I believe

The television series MythBusters busted the myth of the 7 folds by folding taped together sheets in half and turning it 90 degrees each time, for a total of 11 folds. [1][2] This was accomplished using 17 large rolls of paper taped together to form a very large yet relatively thin "sheet."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_folding

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Earth has two moons, the second one is called Cruithne

 

[Unfocused]

Hardly a useless fact.

Hardly a fact

 

[Geogaddi]

Earth has two moons, the second one is called Cruithne

3753 Cruithne (pronounced /ˈkrɪnjə/, Modern Irish /ˈkrɪhnʲə/) is an asteroid in orbit around the Sun. Due to its unusual orbit relative to that of the Earth, it is a periodic inclusion planetoid. It is sometimes called "Earth's second moon",[1] although it is not a satellite of the Earth.

 

[-Psy-]

Yay. Lesbian moons.

 

[AJ Rimmer]

3753 Cruithne (pronounced /ˈkrɪnjə/, Modern Irish /ˈkrɪhnʲə/) is an asteroid in orbit around the Sun. Due to its unusual orbit relative to that of the Earth, it is a periodic inclusion planetoid. It is sometimes called "Earth's second moon",[1] although it is not a satellite of the Earth.

If you claim Cruithne to be a moon, however, Earth also has three additional smaller moons. If, however you discount them, Earth has one moon. So Earth has either one moon or five moons, but not two.