Fascinating Facts and Trivia

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

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

Every time you lick a stamp you consume 1/10 of a calorie.

Sunflowers can help clean radioactive soil.

Japan is using this to rehabilitate Fukashima.

Almost 10,000 packets of sunflower seeds have been sold to the people of the city.

If you point your car keys to your head, it increases the remote’s signal range.

This works by using your brain to act as a radio transmitter.

Although GPS is free for the world to use, it costs $2 million per day to operate.

The money comes from American tax revenue.

Of course that last point I posted about the stamp licking-we don't do that anymore as stamps are now self-adhesive and you just peel them off to stick on letters etc.

In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead — he suffered a heart attack mid-race, but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20–1 outsider victory.

Experiments show that male rhesus macaque monkeys will pay to look at pictures of female rhesus macaques' bottoms.

A family of people with blue skin lived in Kentucky for many generations.

The Fulgates of Troublesome Creek are thought to have gained their blue skin through combination of inbreeding and a rare genetic condition known as methemoglobinemia.

The katzenklavier ("cat piano") was a musical instrument made out of cats.

Designed by 17th-century German scholar Athanasius Kircher, it consisted of a row of caged cats with different voice pitches, who could be "played" by a keyboardist driving nails into their tails.

You forgot the 'marvellous, mechanical mouse organ' from Bagpuss And Monty Python's mouse clavier where you bash the mice with a mallet in note order.

You are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.

Hedenophobic means fear of pleasure.

Ancient Egyptian priests would pluck every hair from their bodies.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

An ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.