Weird Trivia Disclaimer
The massive amounts of useless trivia on this blog have been known to sidetrack readers for prolonged periods and may lead to chronic addiction. The webmaster general advises all users to remember to eat and bathe regularly. Furthermore, webmaster cannot be held responsible for illnesses due to lack of sleep and/or malnutrition and/or muscle atrophy from chronic exposure to the wild and crazy trivia you're about to digest. Reader discretion is advised.
But seriously, welcome to my new useless trivia project. Actually, this trivia blog is an outreach of my main trivia website located in the freebies section of AquariumUniverse.com. The site features over 1600 useless trivia factoids that I've collected from all over the internet and from my own personal research. Due to lack of time, however, I can't sufficiently promote the site, so I'm migrating all my addictive trivia over here where it's more likely to be found in the blogosphere.
Eventually, this blog will feature over 1600 bits of crazy trivia, oddities and "did you knows?"--the largest assembly of trivia on the internet (so far as I know). Some of it you might have heard before, but a bunch of it will be new to you, since I personally documented it. You'd be amazed at how much astonishing stuff you can find just by scanning through an encyclopedia. Most of it is just run of the mill data, but every once in a while something jumps off the page that gives you that moment of pause where you say to yourself: holy crap, I didn't know that! Like just the other day I read that the only mammal on earth that can't jump is the elephant. Completely useless, I know, but cool nevertheless. (As a sidenote here, did you know that you can also ascertain an elephant's exact height by adding the total circumference of all of its feet!)
Useless trivia never used to be an interest of mine, but I soon found out that it is highly addictive. Once you hit a trivia page, you just can't stop reading. It's really sort of astonishing. And it always leaves you wanting more, which brings me to the real focus of this trivia site.
I'm going to try to get all my trivia over here as fast as I can. In the meantime, feel free to dive in and either get smarter or get stupider from this pointless, yet addictive trivia. (I know stupider isn't not a word, but it beats "dumber" I think.) Whichever it is, I think you'll find that this stuff sticks with you and even enriches your life to some extent. Like just the other day I was talking to somebody trying to fix something using WD-40 (the spray lubricant) and I said: "did you know that stands for water displacement, fortieth attempt?" And there was that moment of pause, that sparkle of enlightenment. My point is that, believe it or not, knowing a lot of useless trivia turns you into an excellent conversationalist.
As a parting note, please feel free to add your own trivia to the site. It might not be new, but you never know. The more the merrier, either way. Again, feel free to check out the trivia main site at AquariumUniverse.com to digest the full 1600+ trivia factoid archive if you find you can't satisfy your random trivia addiction while I'm building this blog.
Have fun trivia addicts!
- The term corduroy is French. It means "cloth of the king".
- The typical American marriage ends after about 9.4 years.
- The Gatorade sports drink was developed by five people at the University of Florida in 1965. Its namesake is derived from the school's nickname, the gators.
- If a female ferret can't find a mate when its in heat, it will die.
- Playing tennis in the roads of Cambridge is against the law.
- Among the many firsts by the Chinese, was the use of toilet paper.
- The urine of a cat glows beneath a blacklight.
- Every day, ninety-nine U.S. families enter into the official poverty bracket.
- Chances are, if a person has high cholesterol, they've had a sphygmomanometer used on them: the simple device that tabulates blood pressure.
- The electric chair was first conjured by a dental practitioner.
- The shortest complete sentence in the bigle is "I Am".
- One can be arrested for swimming in Central Park, NY. It's illegal.
- An active mole can dig a tunnel spanning 300 feet in only one evening.
- The term "checkmate" in chess is from the Persian words "shah mat". It is apt, as it means "the king is dead".
- No single word exists to identify the back of a person's knee.
- The three largest McDonalds restaurants are (1) largest in area: a 400-seater located off the I-44 Will Rogers Turnpike in Vinita, OK with gift shops and a post office, (2) the McDonalds in Bejing, China (28,000 square feet, two stories, seats 700, employs 1,000), and the newest and now largest McDonald's and Playplace in Orlando, Florida, (it's the one that looks like a giant back of fries, also contains 25,000 feet of twisting tubes for kids, a 60+ game arcade, and a 60 foot kiddie slide).
- Celery actually contains less calories than those expended eating and digesting it.
- The first book printed in England was about the game of chess.
- Thanks to the absense of a backbone, a 70 lb octopus can ooze through an opening no wider than a silver dollar..
- Despite begin called a pigskin, it takes three thousand cows worth of leather per year to make enough NFL footbballs to last the year--no pigs.
- Until someone finds another one, "the sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick" is the most difficult tongue twister on record.
- The creature with the biggest eyes on the planet is the giant squid.
- The trademark Google, is actually spelled "googol". This is meant to reflect Google's endeavor to clean up and catalogue the information on the internet.
- The formal growing of commerical oranges in Florida began in 1539. .
- At the foothills of Mt. Fiji in Japan--an area known as the Aokigahara Jukai (The Sea of Trees)--a tourist can visit the number one suicide place in Japan. At last count, 78 bodies had been found there (their ghosts are said to haunt the area, forever cursed). Officials have actually placed signs there warning of the illegality of committing suicide in the forest.
useless trivia
odd facts
Labels: dumb trivia, odd facts, random factoids, usless trivia
- Adolf Hitler's mom contemplated abortion before being disuaded by her doctor.
- An elephant can sniff water up to 3 miles away, while a dog can sniff out the difference between a barrel of water and a barrel of water with a tablespoon of salt in it.
- A raisin placed in champagne will sink and float from bottom to top over and over.
- Though a person would be hard-pressed to get them to admit it, fifteen out of one hundred of people secretly chew their toe nails.
- Dismas and Gestas were the two thieves crucified with Jesus of Nazareth.
- At top speed, a dolphin can travel thirty-five miles in one hour.
- As anyone who's seen Fight Club knows, the orginal method of making soap was by boiling fat and mixing it with lye.
- In medieval castles, the staircases spiraled right instead of left as they went up,. This was a defensive strategy designed for right-handed knights who could fend off attackers easier as they climbed the stairs.
- A crocodile might be able to regrow its teeth, but it can't stick out its tongue.
- When an onion is sliced, a chemical reaction occurs among the enzymes in the onion cells, creating a volatile gas. This gas finds the water in a person's eyes and mixes to create sulfuric acid, which "infects" the eyes and forces them to react by crying.
- The pyramids of Egypt weren't constructed from cut blocks. They were poured intp place using pummeled limestone and a mysterious polymer--a kind of earthly cement that was impressive even by today's standards. Archaeologists believe that a giant pyramid took twenty years and 14,000 plus laborers to complete.
- Some dolphins can hold their breath for half an hour.
- When a person attempts to place a familiar face, it is the right side of their brain doing the work.
- The might of a hurricane is so strong that in ten minutes it expends more energy than the entire world's atomic weapons put together.
- The average life span of a MLB baseball is 5-7 pitches. Anywhere from 70 to 180 balls are used during a nine-inning interval.
- Snails can sleep for 3 years without food.
- Stockhold, the Scandinavian capital, is constructed on 9 different islands joined together by bridges.
- Clarence Darrow, the inventor of the Monopoly game, tried to sell it to Parker Bros but was shot down because of 52 supposed 'fundamental playing errors'. After going out on his own and becoming an instant hit, Parker Bros quickly came around.
- Chewing gum can live up to 9,000 years; that's how old the oldest piece on record is.
- In addition to swimming 35 mph, dolphins can swim down to 650 feet beneath the ocean's surface and still survive the pressure.
- A dog first went to space, while a sheep, a rooster and a duck caught their ride in a hot air balloon.
- Beneath the dome on Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop Virginia home) lurks a billiards room, which were illegal in Virginia in Jefferson's day.
- The 'Hundred Years War' lasted 100 years (plus sixteen more)
- In the Andes mountains, time is commonly kept by the length of time it takes to smoke a cigarette.
- In the English language, just two words end in "mt". They are dreamt and undreamt. (Undreamt is defined as unimaginable)
useless trivia
odd facts
Labels: fun facts, odd information, stupid trivia
- "Uncopyrightable" is the only fifteen-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter .
- Most U.S. automobile horns honk in the "F" key.
- Harry Houdini once proclaimed that he could figure out any trick if it was shown to him three times in a row. The only magician to challenge him and win was Vernon in Chicago who performed the old 'Ambitious Card' trick 8 times in a row. Houdini was baffled.
- Francis Bacon gave his life trying to discover a superior way to serve food. He came down with pneumonia after trying to pack a live chicken with snow.
- The classic 'Gone with the wind' was orginally called 'Ba! Ba! Black sheep'.
- Gainesville, Georgia is the chicken capital of the world. It is against the law to eat the bird with a fork.
- It is impossible to fold any piece of paper in half more than seven times consecutively.
- If a canary is seen singing, it has to be a male; only the males can sing.
- A hamburger at McDonalds cost 15 cents in 1963,
- On Tuesday, November 9th, 1965, at exactly 5:15 p.m. and 11 seconds, the lights went out (infamous Northeast Blackouts of 1965).
- Since the 1950s, the average language of an eighth grader has steadily declined from 25,000 words to only 10,000 (and falling still).
- In 1714 after George I was crowned King of England, he placed his wife under house arrest for thirty-two years.
- The speediest fish in the world is the cosmopolitan sailfish, clocking in at about 67.7 mph (109km ph).
- The Earth is pear shaped, the North Pole radius being 44mm longer than the South Pole radius.
- For its size and proportions, the earth is as smooth as a bowling ball.
- 1 in every 4 Americans has been on tv.
- By the numbers, a human breathes approximately 23,000 times per day.
- Between plane crashes and donkeys, the latter claim more lives annually.
- The heart is so powerful that it circulates our entire blood supply 7 to 8 times per minute.
- After the sun, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth that we know of. By close, this means 4.2 light years.
- A normal housecat has 32 muscles per ear.
- If a person will be there in a "jiffy", they will be there in one hundred of a second.
- If a crocodile loses teeth, they grow back.
- Shakespeare was thought to be 46 years old when the King James Version of the bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the beginning word is "shake" and the 46th word from the final word is "spear."
- The words "testify" and "testimony" are widely regarded by historians to come from ancient Rome when Roman men would place their right hand on their testicles prior to speaking before the courts. Roman law held that no man could bear witness who didn't have both testes.
useless trivia
odd facts
random information
- The standard porcupine has 30,000 quills.
- If a person is afraid of the number thirteen, they suffer from triskaidekaphobia.
- The Vatican is the biggest one-person home in the world.
- When light leaves the sun, 8.5 minutes pass before it reaches Earth.
- Six hundred soda drinks are consumed by the normal American/Canadian.
- "Admiral" means "lord of the sea" in Arabic. It comes from the phrase" amir al bahr".
- The tiger's fur is striped, and so is its skin.
- The sport that uses the largest field is polo..
- A standard deck of cards contains 87 diamonds and 42 eyes.
- The most popular flavor of ice cream in North America is vanilla.
- The only mammal with four knees is the elephant. It is also the only mammal that cannot jump.
- The rule of thumb orginates with the fact that the middle joint on a man's thumb is about an inch wide.
- Carpenters us it as a cursory guide. Many also believe the rule comes from an old Irish law that a man couldn't beat his wife with a branch thicker than his thumb. The debate continues.
- Of all the English words, "set" has the most definitions.
- "Nice guys finish last" was coined by Dodger's legendary coach Leo Durocher, though historians believe he never actually put those four words together in that exact order.
- The short-lived dragonfly's favorite snack is the mosquito.
- Blonde facial hair grows faster than darker hair.
- A roman numeral's value is increased a thousand times by placing a line above it.
- The deepest, oldest and biggest lake by volume in the world is Lake Bakail in southern Siberia.
- Fewer people have died at the age of 10 than at any other age.
- The average sleeper swallows eight spiders in a lifetime at night. The average person also consumes about a pound of insects in a lifetime.
- The "S" in Harry S. Truman was conjured out of thin air. He never had a middle name, instead used the initial, as was common in southern states.
- Adolf Hitler was Time's man of the year in 1938.
- Frozen milk on a stick is popular in Siberia.
- Toilet paper was first marketed as "Gayetty's Medicated Paper".
- Tooth enamel is almost as hard as rock. It is the hardest thing in the human body.
Additional useless trivia can be found here.
Labels: factoids, interesting facts, odd facts, random info, useless trivia
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