by Curt Kovener 
For those times when everyone around the table is quiet, share one of these to stimulate conversation. Or not and just enjoy the quiet.
•To make half a kilogram of honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 million individual flowers.
•Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer. That’s right, the aspirin maker.
•People in nudist colonies play volleyball more than any other sport. (Not that any of us would admit to personal knowledge.)
•Astronauts can’t burp – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
•The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was the fashion to shave them off.
•Because of the speed at which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds.
•Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros.
•It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times.
•Gold is the only metal that doesn’t rust, even if it’s buried in the ground for thousands of years.
•Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.
•If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, our thirst mechanism shuts off.
•Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals
•Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent!
•The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
•Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.
•The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.
•Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.
•The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
•In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.
•Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.
•December 2012 has 5 Saturdays, 5 Sundays and 5 Mondays. This happens once every 823 years.
