More useless facts.

[Stapes]

Before Popeye, Olive Oyl had a boyfriend named Ham Gravy.

There's a scientific term for fossilized dinosaur feces it's known as "coprolite," which means "dung stone."

The average nipple size is 0.27 inches for women and 0.22 for men.

The Iroquois didn't discipline their children by spanking them. They dunked them in water.

Michelangelo was considered one of the greatest poets of all time by his contemporaries.

Alexander Graham Bell believed telephone calls should be answered with the phrase, "Hoy, hoy!"

Coffee represents 75 percent of all the caffeine consumed in the United States.

In the U.S., more people are killed by deer each year than any other animal.

One third of all German children are on some sort of medication.

Nearly 70 percent of all married men and 60 percent of married women have had affairs.

Ancient Ethiopians once elected a dog as king.

About one million miles of Twizzlers licorice is produced each year.

When someone is born with more than two testicles, it's called "polyorchidism."

Professional basketball player Will Perdue wears a size 21AAAAA shoe, the largest in the NBA.

In Iran, shaking your head from side to side means "yes."

In Texas, it's illegal to put graffiti on someone else's cow.

Austria was the first country to use postcards.

The average male teen drinks three cans of soda a day. The average teen girl drinks two.

At certain times of the year, it is possible to hear corn grow.

[shainhouse]

quote:

---

In Texas, it's illegal to put graffiti on someone else's cow.

---

I'm in trouble...

[hamilton]

Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story...

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the

railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two

thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

[arcane]

Male platypuses have poisonous barbs on their hind legs.

[CyberHippie]

Brain - where on earth did you find that?

[Thorgnor]

We buy food and then let it rot in order to prevent other starving nations from buying it at cheap prices, thus maintaining the economic instability of regions like Africa nd South America in order to keep our own wealthy lifestyles in the Northern Hemisphere.

You're either with us or against us...

[PalacePrincess]

stapes, stapes, stapes.... when you find yourself in final jeopardy, able to smirk over at alex because you do in fact know the approximate average nipple size, you're going to regret calling this thread "useless".

heehee

on that note, nirvana's nevermind is the only album in history to have the last bit sales to push it to number one, from exchanges. the week after christmas, so many kids exchanged albums they'd recieved as gifts for nevermind, it ended up pushing the album to number one.

[Stapes]

A group of hippopotami is called a "bloat."

According to surveys, 57 percent of Americans shower every day.

Hugh Hefner has a species of rabbit, the Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, named after him.

The bull's-eye on a dartboard should be exactly 5 feet, 8 inches off the ground.

Teenagers are 50 percent more susceptible to colds than people over 50.

Sir Isaac Newton died a virgin.

Studies have shown that the larger a man's testicles, the more likely it is he'll cheat on his mate.

The consumption of beer in a lavatory is forbidden in Manitoba, Canada.

Elevators and escalators kill about 30 people, and injure about 17,000, each year in the United States.

Mother Teresa's real name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu.

In ancient Rome it was considered a sin to eat the flesh of a woodpecker.

Typically, sex between snakes lasts between six and 12 hours.

"Symphorophilia" is sexual arousal derived from arranging a disaster, crash or explosion.

The average American worker uses 11 Post-It notes a day.

There are five cities named Las Vegas in the United States. There are two in Puerto Rico.

The oldest existing governing body is in Althing, Iceland. It was established in 930 A.D.

The band Creedence Clearwater Revival was originally named The Blue Velvets.

Men are twice as likely to contract leprosy as women.

We bail water because the handle of a bucket is called the "bail."

The creature with the most nipples is the tenrac, an insectivore indigenous to Madagascar. The tenrac typically has 22 to 24 nipples.

[Schwa.]

The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was 99 hours long

The Bible is the number one shoplifted book in America

[backbacon]

"The average American worker uses 11 Post-It notes a day."

- that seems a bit much..

Humans have 46 chromosomes. Goldfish have 96.

Termites are blind.

A snail breathes through its foot.

[Stapes]

A group of grasshoppers is called a "cloud."

Strawberries contain about 200 seeds each.

When someone has sexual fantasies about losing a limb, it's referred to as "apotemnophilia."

At least 300,000 people have been killed by volcanoes in the last 500 years.

According to surveys, three percent of Americans clean their pets by showering with them.

Thirty-eight percent of men sleep in a room other than the bedroom at least once a month.

Sharks will continue to attack even when disemboweled.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Japanese researchers have calculated Pi to 1.2411 trillion places.

In the U.S. judicial system, the defense can pay for testimony. The prosecutor can't.

The spots on dice are called "pips."

It's against the law to catch fish with your bare hands in Kansas.

Sixty-eight percent of teenage girls say if they could change just one part of their body, it would be their stomach.

"Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer's real father was killed by a man named Arthur Niles.

Fifty-three percent of American women claim they will not leave the house without makeup on.

The first VCR, made in 1956, was the size of a piano.

The three cities with the highest percentage of counterfeit bills are Los Angeles, New York and Miami.

Americans eat an average of 75 bananas a year per person.

Baby seahorses are called "colts."

The world's highest waterfall is Angel Falls in Venezuela. It's 3,212 feet high.

Seventy-five percent of Japanese women own vibrators. The global average is 47 percent.

The most common speed limit in the U.S. is 25 m.p.h.

Frogs jump. Toads walk.

"Acrotomophilia" is a sexual attraction to amputees.

China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year.

A 100-pound person on Earth would weigh 38 pounds on Mars.

Women who read romance novels have sex twice as often as those who don't.

The oldest piano still in existence was built in 1720.

A group of rattlesnakes is called a "rhumba."

Studies prove it's harder to tell a convincing lie to someone you find sexually attractive.

A hamburger bun is called a "bap" in England. In the northeast, it's also called "breadcake," in the northwest it's "barmcake," and in the midlands, it's "batch."

On average, Americans stand 14 inches apart when they converse.

Bolivia holds the record for the country with the highest turnovers in governments. Since 1825, Bolivia has had almost 200 governments.

The Earth has 196,950,711 square miles of surface area.

"Passion purpura" is the medical term for a hickey.

The Space Station is the most expensive single object ever built. The contribution made by the United States has been estimated at $96 billion.

The speed of an average size raindrop, under normal conditions, is seven miles per hour.

Hong Kong is Chinese for "fragrant harbor."

Most experts agree Jack the Ripper was left-handed.

The first time a cow ever flew in an airplane was on February 13, 1930

[c-towns]

A dinomaniac is someone who has a compulsive urge to dance

"hippieo carpetcutterish"

[MamaPink]

Thanks c-towns - now i'll know what to tell people when i'm dancing in the supermarket to the muzak version of Karma Chameleon.

[Thorgnor]

In the right company it takes less than 10 minutes to give'er a bottle of Jaegermeister.

[Esau]

I have 56 individual tattoos.

Note:There is a +/- of 3

[shainhouse]

I'm allergic to pain.