Did You Know? – Flags, Cobble Stones And Blimps, Just Some Of Today’s Facts.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Talk about random. Today’s selection certainly lives up to that description.

Hope you can find at least a few facts in this lot that you like.

Enjoy.

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The Swiss flag is square.

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All of the cobble stones that used to line the streets in New York

were originally weighting stones

put in the hulls of Belgian ships to keep an even keel.

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There are only thirteen blimps in the world.

Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.

The existing biggest blimp is the Fuji Film blimp.

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If you come from Manchester,

you are a Mancunian.

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The most remote inhabited place on Earth,  Tristan de Cunha,

a small archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean

thousands of miles from both South Africa and South America,

has a population of only  271 people and mail only arrives a few times per year.

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At the last official census,

the hottest constantly inhabited region in the world

is Dallol in Ethiopia.

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The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm

and often hid the fact by posing with his hand

resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.

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A kind of tortoise in the Galapagos Islands

has an upturned shell at its neck

so it can reach its head up to eat cactus branches.

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The 1957 Milwaukee Braves were the first baseball team

to win the World Series after being relocated.

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The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is ‘Live Free or Die’.

Ironically these license plates are manufactured

by prisoners in the state prison in Concord.

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The common goldfish is the only animal that can

see both infra-red and ultra-violet light.

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If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat

it measures 87 feet long.

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Camel’s milk does not curdle.

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A person from the country of Nauru is called a Nauruan;

this is the only palindromic nationality.

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Hang On Sloopy

is the official rock song of Ohio.

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Time For Another Fun Filled Facts Day

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Yes it’s time for another day filled with those fun facts that we all like to read.

And they’ll come in handy when you least expect it, as one or two people have already found out.

So learn and enjoy!

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In the 1800s feeding lobster to prisoners

was considered to be ‘a cruel and unusual punishment,

like making people eat rats’.

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Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.

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The Guinness Book of Records holds the record

for being the book most often stolen from Libraries.

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In Albania,

nodding your head means ‘no’

and shaking your head means ‘yes’.

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You share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.

How unique is that?

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In India, Pajamas are accepted as standard daytime wearing apparel.

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A female oyster produces 100 million young in her lifetime;

the typical hen lays 19 dozen eggs a year;

rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over million descendants;

and it is possible for one female cat to be responsible for the birth of 20,736 kittens in four years.

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The greatest officially recorded number of children born to one mother is 69,

to the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (b. 1707–c.1782), a peasant from Shuya, Russia.

In 27 confinements she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.

Only two of the children failed to survive their infancy.

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750ml of blood pumps through your brain every minute

which is 15-20% of blood flow from the heart.

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The February of 1865 and 1999 are the only months

in recorded history not to have a full moon.

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It has been estimated that at any one time

around 0.7% of the world’s population is drunk.

Cheers!

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The name Jeep comes from “GP”,

the army abbreviation for General Purpose.

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Baby Ruth candy bar was named after Grover Cleveland’s daughter, Ruth,

not the baseball player.

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Elwood Edwards did the voice for the AOL sound files

(i.e. “You’ve got Mail!”).

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55.1% of all US prisoners are in prison for drug offenses.

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Sherlock Holmes NEVER said ‘Elementary, my dear Watson!’

Holmes does use the word ‘elementary’ in The Crooked Man (1894)

but ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ itself was coined 21 years later

by P.G. Wodehouse in his novel Psmith, Journalist (1915).

However, Holmes did ejaculate several times, as did Watson and others.

In fact, there are 23 ejaculations in total, with 11 belonging to Watson and 6 to Holmes.

On one occasion, Holmes refers to Watson’s ‘ejaculations of wonder’ being invaluable;

on another, Watson ejaculates ‘from his very heart’ in the direction of his fiancée.

A chap called Phelps ejaculated three times during the story of The Naval Treaty.

The only other ejaculator is Mrs St Clair’s husband,

who ejaculates at her from a second-floor window!

It is not clear whether it is Holmes or Watson who ejaculates in the passage below,

taken from “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, 1891:

“So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up,

and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips,

the smoke still curled upward, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze,

but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previous night.”

Isn’t the English Language wonderful.

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