Trivia

Trivia kinda pops in here before they find a permanent home elsewhere.

It's estimated that the ocean contains 4.5 billion tons of dissolved uranium.
The word SWIMS is the same when read upside down.
The average woman speaks about 7,000 words a day, the typical male says 2,000 words a day.
The earth's magnetic field has declined 10% over the last century.
Three billion people eat rice three times a day.
500,000 children go blind each year from vitamin A deficiency.
Anheuser-Busch is the largest consumer of rice in the US for their lighter beers.
Hottest temperature ever recorded was 136 degrees Fahrenheit in El Azizia Libya.
At one point, you were the youngest person in the world.
The name of all the continents start with the same letter that they end with.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
The sun rotates once every 27 days.
Bombyx morei, the silkworm that was domesticated 4,500 years ago, can no longer survive in the wild. A silkworm makes a single continuous thread half a mile long.
If an influenza virus were the size of your fist, the cell it would attack in your body would be half the size of the Empire State Building. After eight hours the cell would be destroyed.
The 100 trillion tiny bacterial cells in a human outnumber human cells ten to one.
Humans have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
The sciatic nerve in the hip is half an inch in diameter.
Although only 2% by weight, the human brain consumes 20% of our oxygen.
A red blood cell can circumnavigate the human body in just 20 seconds.
A red blood cell can travel 12,000 miles in a day (I'd love to have the frequent flier miles).
Heartbeat rates per minute: Mouse 500; Human 70; Elephant 28; Whale 9;
The red-eyed tree frog embryo are smart enough to sense when fellow eggs are being eaten by a snake and drop out of their egg sac to take their chances in the water below.
Three deadliest days for pedestrians: Jan 1st, Dec 23rd, and Oct 31st.
the only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
Take a brand new deck of cards, do eight perfect shuffles with cuts and the cards will return to their original order.
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. - Sir Winston Churchill
Lions are the only social cats.
Lions hunt at night so they don't overheat.
Lions are the only cats with sexual dimorphism with the males being easily recognized by their manes.
Snakes grow until they die.
When climbing mountains, remember the peak is only half-way.
Leonardo da Vinci observed 500 yers ago that the combined cross-sectional areas of a tree's daughter branches are equal to the cross-sectional area of the mother branch.
The USS Washington was the only battleship in WWII to sink another battleship unassisted.
The Desert Iguana changes from a dark color in the morning to absorb sunlight to white in the afternoon to repel sunlight.
The Kasuga Taisha Shrine in Nara Japan is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years. This forces the younger generations to learn how to build the temple. Since its original building in 768 it has been rebuilt 57 times.
Besides humans, Armidillos are the only animal that can get leprosy, and they always deliver 4 identical babies.
The word bed looks like a bed.
Cleopatara lived closer in time to the moon landings than to the building of the Great Pyramids.
In biology, Haller's rule states that the smaller the animal, the larger the brain is in proportion to the body. Human brains take up 2-3 percent of our body mass. Tiny spiders have 80% of their body cavity filled with its nervous system.
Males with symmetrical faces have more masculine facial features, and symmetrical females have more feminine facial features.
A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. -WARREN E. BUFFETT on stock market investments
Rodents are the most successful mammals. There are more individual rodents than all other mammals combined. 1,800 species of the 4,500 mammals are in the Rodentia order.
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -Bertrand Russell
By controlling the flow of blood to its beak, the toucan can adjust its temperature.
The English dictionary is the largest in the world.
The earth is only solid for the first 41 miles, proportionately thinner than the skin of an apple.
Lowest place on earth is the Dead Sea, 1,300 feet below sea level. Amazingly, the second lowest dry point is Death Valley California at 282 feet below sea level.
The ancient Egyptians believed the love vein went from the fourth finger on the left hand directly to the heart - this is why we wear wedding rings on that finger.
Napoleon to his staff, "Ask me for anything, anything but time."
"Are we being good ancestors?" -Jonas Salk
Hyenas clans are totally female dominated. The highest status goes to the alpha female, then beta female, down to the lowest ranking female, then the alpha male. BTW, the hyena has the second most powerful bite, 1,000 psi, in the animal kingdom.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." - Thomas Huxley
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." -Gerald R Ford, 38th US President
The sun has not caught me in bed in fifty years. - Thomas Jefferson
"Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions." - Lord Macaulay, 1857 writing about the United States giving voting rights to everyone
"Adventure is just bad planning." -Roald Amundsen
Fewer boys in proportion to girls are born each year in industrialized countries. The proportion has declined at a rate of about one per 1000 births every year.
100 million people worldwide suffer from Dengue fever which has no cure.
It's estimated that the two hundred billion galaxies in the universe have on average 100 billion stars each.(type "200 billion times 100 billion" into Google)
Pigeons, like most prey animals have a large field of vision, 340 degrees; predators on the other hand have a narrow binocular field of view, but with depth perception to attack their next meal.
The endurance of the cheetah is limited by his temperature which rises from 98.6 degrees F to 105 degree in just 328 yards of running. Continued running would fry its brain. Cheetahs hunt during the day since larger preditors who would steal their prey are active at night.
Being in possession of a potent defense, skunks have no large natural enemies. This is why they are unconcerned when a car comes rushing towards them. The skunks are used to raising their tails and threatening the oncoming bear or wolf. If that doesn't work they will perhaps let loose some odiferous liquid to reinforce the point. Strategies that are ineffective against modern cars. You see the sad result on highways across America.
A Mersenne number is a positive number that can be expressed in the form 2n-1. If the number is also a prime number, it gets the special name: a Mersenne prime. The 46th Mersenne prime is 2 raised to 43,112,609 power minus 1.
Domestication is the processes of selectively breeding plants and animals for desired characteristics thereby changing the genetics of the specimen. Taming is taking a specimen from the wild and training a particular individual to have desired characteristics - no DNA is changed. Lions have been tamed, but not domesticated.
Polyergus ants are spartan warriors so specialized for fighting they cannot even raise their own young. They steal pupae from Formica ants and bring them home to their nests where existing Formica "slaves" raise the new pupae and the Polyergus young.
Rove beetles are a type of Myrmecophile, organisms living with ants, that can mingle with the ants by producing the right smell and thereby plunder the ants nest.
Wellerism, noun: An expression involving a familiar proverb or quotation and its facetious sequel. It usually comprises three parts: statement, speaker, situation. Examples:
"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.
"Prevention is better than cure," said the pig when it ran away from the butcher.

(named from characters in Pickwick Papers)
James Garfield, the 20th US president, was a professor of ancient languages and also ambidextrous. He could write in Latin with one hand and write in Greek with the other.
John Tyler, the 10th president, fathered an impressive 15 children, fathering the last in his 70s.
Tungsten has nearly the same density as gold, making it a perfect core for counterfeit gold bars.
Kiwi chicks hatch fully formed and prepared for life. They need no parental care.
Dogs have 44 times more smell receptors than humans.
words invariant with antinomian prefix:
inflammable = flammable
irregardless = regardless
Orcas have been known to turn upside down, grab onto a shark, then right themselves causing the shark to be upside down, triggering a motionless, catatonic state in the shark. The orca can hold it there until the shark suffocates from not moving, or is sufficiently drained of energy the orca can kill it.
If you were to unravel all the DNA in a single human cell it be six feet long. Unraveling all the DNA in a human body would reach the sun and back 611 times [type this into Google.com: ((6 ft * 100 trillion) / 93,000,000 miles)/2 ]
"Proprioception" is the sixth sense, or at least a fifth and a half sense of us humans. Are we upside down, or going around a corner in a car with our eyes shut? Some nerves in conspiracy with our inner ear tell us how our bodies are oriented in space.

A network of nerves, in conjunction with the inner ear, tells the brain where the body and all its parts are and how they're oriented. This is how you know when you're upside down, or how you can tell the car you're riding in is turning, even with your eyes closed.
For each single IQ point increase, a person's annual income increases by about $400.
Of the 16,000 species of bees only 5 percent are social bees living in hives.
Zero degrees Kelvin is the lowest possible temperature. The highest possible temperature, called the Planck temperature, is equal to 10^32 degrees Kelvin.
"Subaru" is the Japanese name for the Pleiads cluster of stars, hence the Subaru logo of stars.
The human eye has a resolution of about 500 megapixels with a daytime dynamic range detection of 10,000:1.
In ancient Mexico, the only two domesticated animals were the dog and the turkey.
Everything around us seems stationary, but our eyes move two to three times every second in jumps called saccades.
The white part of our eyes is named sclerae.
The world consumes 84 million barrels of oil a day. (2009)
Of the 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world, all but 200 are held by the US and Russia.
On 30 October 1961, Russia detonates the largest ever nuclear bomb, Tsar Bomba, with a 50 Megaton yield.
The "ing" form of a verb is called the present participle. A gerund is when you use the present participle as the subject of a sentence. Example, *Crying* is therapeutic. "Crying" is the subject, and the word "is" is the verb. If it's used as an adjective, like "I have a *walking* stick" then it's a gerundive.
Napoleon lost more troops in Haiti than at Waterloo.
Godwin's Law

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful."
Clarke's First Law of Prediction:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong."
Gresham's law

Bad money drives good money out of circulation.

(Rumored to be true with politicians as well).
Grey's Law

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
A prime number is a natural number, greater than 1, that is only divisible with itself and one. Every number greater than 1 is either a prime or can be expressed as a product of primes (e.g., 10 = 2 * 5).
The weight of all the ants in the world equals about the weight of all the people.
Most people produce more than a quart of saliva a day.
In our lifetimes we make 17 gallons of tears.
In the ancient Roman calendar, the Ides fall on the 15th day of March, May, July, or October, and the 13th day of the other months.
Bosons are subatomic particles with an integer spin for angular momentum. An example is the humble photon. Bosons can be stacked happily on top of each other. The less social fermions with half integer spin, like the proton and electron, don't like to be in the same space with each other.
Outline for children to understand stories:
Somebody / Wanted / But / So / Then
The children fill in the missing information to make a sentence.
Ockham's razor also Occam's razor (OK-ehmz ray-zuhr) noun
A rule in science and philosophy stating that entities should not be multiplied needlessly. This rule is interpreted to mean that the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known. Also called law of parsimony.
Rousseau said children are born pure, but civilization corrupts ( he gave his kids up for adoption).
Roman Army The Legion had 4,800 men composed of 10 cohorts of 480 further divided into 6 centuries of 80 men. Each Century had 10 Tents of 8 men each.
The Seasons
Each traditional season starts at either an equinox or solstice. An Equinox is when day and night are of equal length. A Solstice is when the Earth is tipped the furthest toward or away from the sun.

For the Northern Hemisphere:
Spring (vernal) Equinox - 21 March
Summer Solstice - 21 June
Autumn Equinox - 23 Sept
Winter Solstice - 22 Dec

Although the above describes the "traditional" seasons, the actual weather varies greatly depending on where your feet are planted.
In 1747 James Lind, a Scottish physician, ran what could be the first controlled medical experiment in history. He divided scurvy patients into six different groups and treated them with different diets. The patients given two oranges and a lemon a day recovered first. Of course it wasn't until 1795, almost 50 years later, that the British Navy heeded his advice and required lime juice as standard issue on ships - an important component of Britain ruling the oceans (and being derided as being "limeys").
A formula developed by Paul Krebaum can help dogs sprayed by skunks better than tomato juice. The mixture must be made in a large, open container because it foams so much that it could explode a closed vessel, and cannot be stored. It contains a quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, a quarter cup of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) and a teaspoon of liquid soap. (Mr. Krebaum recommends Soft Soap or Ivory.) Work it well into the hair or fur of the victim, avoiding the eyes; while the formula is nontoxic, the salt from the baking soda will sting. Let it sit long enough to work "Let your nose be your guide," Mr. Krebaum said then rinse it thoroughly.
Huge expenses incurred by Louis XVI aiding the American Revolution to spite England, strained the French treasury. His French soldiers picked up dangerous liberal "We-don't-need-no-king" philosophy from the Americans. Both of these would contribute to the demise of the monarchy in France.
52BC In the final act Julius Caesar surrounds Vercingetorix chief of the Gallic tribe Arveni at Alesia. The Romans build siege works around the defenders fort. Upon hearing of reinforcements the Romans build a second set of walls 26 miles in all. The Gauls surrender and the Gallic Wars end.
The terrestrial reserves of astatine and francium are measured, oddly enough, in milligrams. The name of the rarest element on Earth is Astatine (69 milligrams in all of the Earth's crust). Astatine is formed from radioactive decay and is unstable itself.
Joe Wright's Prayer
When minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual politically-correct generalities, but what they heard instead was a stirring prayer, passionately calling our country to repentance and righteousness. The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest. In six short weeks, the Central Christian Church had logged more than 5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls responding negatively. The church is now receiving international requests for copies of the prayer from India, Africa and Korea. Commentator PAUL HARVEY aired the prayer on The Rest of the Story on the radio and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired !!

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask Your forgiveness and to seek Your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, "Woe on those who call evil good," but that's exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.

We confess that:
We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it pluralism.
We have worshiped other gods and called it multi-culturalism.
We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn children and called it a choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem.
We have abused power and called it political savvy.
We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, O God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent to direct us to the center of Your will. I ask it in the name of Your Son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
As I single guy I always thought you should have two dishwashers -one on each side of the sink. That way you could just move dishes from the clean one to the table and then back to the dirty dishwasher skipping the wasteful trip to the cabinet.
Let's hope the 1929 economy is not later called "The Great Depression I".
Things you never hear: "Let's go out to eat at the hospital tonight!"
Genghis Khan
Part of the reason the Mongol army was so amazingly successful is that they elected officers from the lower ranks and the upper officers were selected by ability and not birthright. In contrast, European commanders of the time were appointed based on property which was inherited and not ability.
A humorous Statistical Rash:

A) The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
B) On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
C) The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
D) The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine, and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans
E) Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you. - Author Unknown
Tonsilloliths
The small white nodules or 'stones' in the crypts of the tonsils are called tonsilloliths and occur in 2 to 3% of the population.
At sea level, helium's lifting capacity is 0.0628 lb/ft3; vacuum lifts at 0.0755 lb/ft3.
During WWII the US attached small incendiary devices to bats to be released from a plane and seek out dark places in Japan to burn the mostly wood houses. Although the plan worked well in tests, even burning down parts of a US base, it was never put into use.
Pigeons were trained in WWII by B.F. Skinner to peck at the picture of a ship. Three birds were to be put into bombs which were guided to enemy ships by the pigeons pecking a projected image from the nose of the bomb. This plan was also not used.
Cicadas in America
America hosts twelve broods of 17-year cicadas and three broods of 13-year cicadas. The different broods may take to the air in different years, but all wait their alloted interval. Cicadas only emerge after a prime number of years to reduce the number of predators. If they were to emerge every three years, and some broods drift into a neighboring years, their predators might adapt and be waiting for them. By waiting a prime number of years, they wait out all predators.
Cicero on Conversation
In "On Duties", Cicero has suggestions for good conversation: speak clearly; speak easily but not too much, do not interrupt, be courteous, never criticize absent people, stick to subjects of general interest, do not talk about yourself; and never lose your temper.
Einstein on Quantum Mechanics
During the Fifth Solvay International Conference in October 1927, Einstein was frustrated with the uncertainity of Quantum Mechanics and said, "God does not play dice with the world." To which Niels Bohr replied, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do."
Sniper Rifles
Sniper rifles are often single shot bolt action rifles because the automatic loading of the next bullet in automatic weapons causes vibration.
Egyptian Medical Technology
The Papyrus Ebers was written in Egypt about 1552 B.C. and gives us these great medical tips:
1. To prevent hair from turning gray, anoint it with the blood of a black calf which has been boiled in the fat of a rattlesnake.
2. To prevent balding mix together the fat of a horse, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, a cat, a snake and an ibex. Then mix in the tooth of a donkey crushed in honey.
3. Splinters are to be treated with a mixture of worm's blood and donkey dung.
4. To stop bleeding, rub donkey dung on a cut.
5. To remove wrinkles, split a toad in half and apply to wrinkled area.
Four Personality Types

Based on the four humors popularized by Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC)

Passive Active

Love Phlegmatic
Easy Going Sanguine
Very Social

Power Melancholic
Organizer, Thinker Choleric
Task Oriented, Dominating

	Passive	Active
Love	Phlegmatic Easy Going	Sanguine Very Social
Power	Melancholic Organizer, Thinker	Choleric Task Oriented, Dominating

Random Stuff

-------------- interesting questions ------------------------
What brings you to tears?
Why do people like you?
Who would like to spend an evening just with you?
What would you do if money was no object, and you knew you wouldn't fail?
What is wrong with the world?

* Q: What is an experienced Emacs user?
* A: A person who wishes that the terminal had pedals.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because
we do not dare that they are difficult. -Seneca

Is it not better to aim your spear at the moon and strike only an eagle,
than to aim your spear at the eagle, and strike only a rock?

The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness.
-the character Annie Savoy in the film Bull Durham

Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a
man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams.
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, writer and philosopher (BC 3-65 CE)

It is in vain to hope to please all alike. Let a man stand with his face
in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half
of the world. -George Dennison Prentice

Three-quarters of teen suicides are from single parent families - NPR

From the Calendar FAQ:

The solution to problem 2) depended on the fact that it was felt that
21 March was the proper day for vernal equinox (because 21 March was
the date for vernal equinox during the Council of Nicaea in AD
325). The Gregorian calendar was therefore calibrated to make that day
vernal equinox.

By 1582 vernal equinox had moved (1582-325)/128 days = approximately
10 days backwards. So 10 days had to be dropped.

[Dropping 10 days in the 1500s brought the Gregorian calendar in sync
with the Julian calendar of the 3rd century. But AD 325 is in the 4th
century.]

2.2. What is the Gregorian calendar?
------------------------------------

The Gregorian calendar is the one commonly used today. It was decreed
by Pope Gregory XIII in a papal bull in February 1582.

In the Gregorian calendar, the tropical year is approximated as
365 97/400 days = 365.2425 days. This gives an error of 1 day in
approximately 3300 years.

The approximation 365 97/400 is achieved by having 97 leap years
every 400 years.
...
Great Britain and Dominions (including what is now the USA):
2 Sept 1752 was followed by 14 Sept 1752

When is Easter? (Short answer)
Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Marriage is like a phone call at night - first you get the ring, then you wake up.

We use kids as gods in our house.

Do not handicap your children my making their lives easy. -Robert Heinlein

Who you are is who you are when no one is watching.

If you are a good leader who talks little, they will say when your work is done and your aim fulfilled, "We did it ourselves." Lao-Tse

If you believe in telekinesis, raise my right hand.