32 Things You Likely Didn't Know

email | July 26, 2003 | Anonymous

[Doohickey]

Maybe they ment Muscovy ducks. Muscovy ducks don't quack at all.

[Doohickey]

...and the little groove between your nose and upper lip is called a "filtrim".

[Marauder]

There was a columnist some years ago with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that wrote, "What? You didn't know that 'dwarf' and 'dwell' are the only two words in the English language that start with 'dw'?"
Someone wrote in response that the list had apparently dwindled.

[TC Rider]

During this period, the company also established home radio and police radio departments; instituted pioneering personnel programs; and began national advertising. The name of the company was changed to Motorola, Inc., in 1947.

A popular saying once the Morotola police radios were in wide use:

You can outrun the motor, but you can't outrun the Motorola.

[Farnham]

33. Things you receive in email are rarely true.

I doubt that.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I don't doubt that an allied bomb killed an animal at the zoo, but I wonder how they are sure it was the first bomb.

Do you doubt Dr. Goebbels?

[DonQ]

Nr. 24 (about celery having "negative calories") is false. According to Bowes & Church's Food Values (ed. by Pennington, 17th ed., 1997), a stalk of raw celery (weight 40 grams) had 6 calories. This is low but it's definitely not negative. For comparison, a half cup of raw spinach is also 6 calories. Presumably this is a lot less fattening than a bunch of other foods, but celery is very low in B vitamins and iron, so it's hardly an ideal food. (And, for godssake, don't nibble on it while talking on the phone!)

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Yes, but how many calories does a person use to eat 40 grams of celery?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The MadSci Network suggests an explanation for this common misconception.

It occurred to me that the duck's quack is reasonably long in duration, if the echo time is short enough it may be hard to distinquish the echo from the source, and the source will "eclipse" part of the echo. I remember sledding with my daughter when she was two at a local country club. The air was still and it was very quiet. If you let out a short yelp (the kind a two-year old generates when she discovers sledding) you could hear a very distinct echo from off the club house about 100 yards away. Since the speed of sound is about 660 ft/sec, the secret was to keep it short.

The most prominent echos I remember are when we watch fireworks from the grandstands at the local high school. The fireworks, high in the air, create a very distinct short report. The school is in the form of an "L" and makes a very nice corner reflector, redirecting the sound towards the stands. The woods behind the school scatter back a fraction of second later so that every report sounds like one loud report, one muffled report a second or so later follow by a low difuse rumble.

Anyway, that's my theory.

[fnord]

Glad to see many of these are being debunked. It's amazing this still floats around; I remember receiving a similar email about 10 years ago, lol.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

On Star Trek, Capt. Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty."

According to Arthur Koestler in The Sleepwalkers Galileo never uttered, "And yet ... it moves" or anything like that.

[searchandrecovery]

Per "Ask Yahoo!" - We hate to break it to you, but all our sources say a duck's quack echoes just like any other sound.

Here at the Duck Research Institute (DRI), we're investigating a related question: "If a duck quacks in the woods, but no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?". We'll keep you informed!

(As an aside, DRI is funded by PETA - "People Eating Tasty Animals". Please support both organizations.)

[GiovannaNicoletta]

Keep.

[Publius6961]

Have you figured out yet why, specially in a long thread, it is critical to quote the statement to which you are responding?

[lafroste]

This version of "Rule of thumb" has be refuttedas being a creation of the feminist movement to illustrate the historical oppression of women.

OTOH, in Czarist Russia it was leagal for a man to beat his wife to death. If he re-married, he could also beat his second wife to death. However, if he married after that and beat his third wife to death - By Gum that was enough! He could not marry a forth wife.

[Publius6961]

2X4 are 1 7/8X3 7/8

And up until the late 60s or so they were 1 3/4 X 3 3/4.

Makes remodelling a pain in the elbow.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

the Germans had avoided bombing London in the Battle of Britain.

Not hardly true. Early in the war, neither side bombed each other cities. The Luftwaffe originally planned to destroy the RAF bases in southern Britian and gradually work north until they could maintain air supremacy over the channel, and deny it to the Royal Navy, allowing the Germans to bring their army over in barges - there was effectively no British Army since most of their heavy weapons were left behind at Dunkirk.

The Luftwaffe plans were succeeding well, but Hitler was not interested in occupying Britain and only wanted to achieve an armistice with the UK. He thought that bombing London and other population centers would cause the population to demand that Churchill sue for peace and ordered to Luftwaffe to change targets. In the event it had the opposite effect on the population. And because the Me-109 only carried enough fuel to fly to London and remain for five minutes - no linger time - it gave the RAF a tremendous tactical advantage. Luftwaffe bomber losses ran around 12% per raid over London.

[Publius6961]

then why didn't the name of the insects stay flutterby instead of it being being changed to the less appealing name of "butterfly."

Many common English words have morphed in the distant past by transposition of the syllabic consonants.
I wish I could think of some offhand but I can't.

I do recall many times wondering to myself why it happened.

[Publius6961]

* In ancient times, iron cost more than gold?

I doubt that very much.
Glass, however did at one time hold that dinstinction.
As did, I believe, aluminum.

[Alas Babylon!]

Yes, I was told about this by my cousins Dwayne and Dwight!