by Curt Kovener
Back by popular demand is a new version of pretty useless information helpful only for personal edification or to make bar bets.
Did you know…
- Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
- Pearls melt in vinegar.
- Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
- It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs…but not downstairs.
- The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
- Stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
- No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
- “I am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. And some would say the longest sentence begins with “I do.”
- Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
- The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the “American Pie.” (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)
- Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades – King David; Clubs – Alexander the Great, Hearts – Charlemagne, and Diamonds – Julius Caesar.
- Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down – hence the expression “to get fired.”
- Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2.
- Hershey’s Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
- The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
- The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
- Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
- There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
- But if you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.
- The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League All-Star Game.
- If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
- Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.
- Actor Tommy Lee Jones and former vice-president Al Gore, were freshman roommates at Harvard.
- The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
- The Eisenhower interstate system on which we drive today requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.