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32 Things You Likely Didn't Know
email | July 26, 2003 | Anonymous

Posted on 07/26/2003 10:38:39 PM PDT by Hildy

1. A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

2. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

3. The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

5. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

6. A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

7. A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2".

8. During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston's wearing a watch).

9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! (That explains a few mysteries....)

10. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

11. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

12. The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

13. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.

14. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before.

15. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

16. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this??)

17. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

18. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

19. The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

20. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

21. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so the called themselves Motorola.

22. Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.

23. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
24. Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

25. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

26. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

27. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

28. An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing!

29. The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.

30. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.

31. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

32. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave!


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: trivia
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To: Swordmaker
Maybe they ment Muscovy ducks. Muscovy ducks don't quack at all.
101 posted on 07/27/2003 5:40:20 AM PDT by Doohickey
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To: Old Professer
...and the little groove between your nose and upper lip is called a "filtrim".
102 posted on 07/27/2003 5:46:31 AM PDT by Doohickey
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To: Nateman
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.
103 posted on 07/27/2003 5:55:00 AM PDT by Marauder
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To: Swordmaker
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.

104 posted on 07/27/2003 5:56:19 AM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
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To: AppyPappy
33. Things you receive in email are rarely true.

I doubt that.
105 posted on 07/27/2003 5:59:27 AM PDT by Farnham (In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.)
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To: squidly
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?

106 posted on 07/27/2003 6:06:32 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets ("Power corrupts")
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To: Our man in washington
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!)
107 posted on 07/27/2003 6:11:08 AM PDT by DonQ
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To: DonQ
Yes, but how many calories does a person use to eat 40 grams of celery?
108 posted on 07/27/2003 6:16:13 AM PDT by ItisaReligionofPeace ((the original))
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To: Swordmaker
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.

109 posted on 07/27/2003 6:19:24 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets ("Power corrupts")
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To: Hildy
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.
110 posted on 07/27/2003 6:22:21 AM PDT by fnord ( Hyprocisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue)
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To: Redcloak
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.

111 posted on 07/27/2003 6:27:30 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets ("Power corrupts")
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To: Swordmaker
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.)

112 posted on 07/27/2003 6:28:48 AM PDT by searchandrecovery (America will not exist in 25 years.)
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To: Hildy
Keep.
113 posted on 07/27/2003 6:33:51 AM PDT by GiovannaNicoletta
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To: Rainbow Rising
Have you figured out yet why, specially in a long thread, it is critical to quote the statement to which you are responding?
114 posted on 07/27/2003 6:35:11 AM PDT by Publius6961 (Californians are as dumm as a sack of rocks)
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To: Michael.SF.
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.

115 posted on 07/27/2003 6:36:32 AM PDT by lafroste
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To: quietolong
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.

116 posted on 07/27/2003 6:37:32 AM PDT by Publius6961 (Californians are as dumm as a sack of rocks)
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To: AntiGuv
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.

117 posted on 07/27/2003 6:39:21 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets ("Power corrupts")
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To: Swordmaker
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.

118 posted on 07/27/2003 6:42:35 AM PDT by Publius6961 (Californians are as dumm as a sack of rocks)
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To: BushCountry
* 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.

119 posted on 07/27/2003 6:46:45 AM PDT by Publius6961 (Californians are as dumm as a sack of rocks)
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To: Marauder
Yes, I was told about this by my cousins Dwayne and Dwight!
120 posted on 07/27/2003 6:47:09 AM PDT by Alas Babylon!
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