Useless Information Friday

Wahoo!

Thanks, fone!

“Even if the stomach, the spleen, 75 percent of the liver, 80 percent of the intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from the pelvic and groin area are removed, the human body can still survive.”

Axilla:

“I dropped the buzzard in the sand and trudged off slowly toward the town,
I needed dinner and a place where I could throw my weight around,
I detected faint axilla scent that put me off my appetite,
But mouflon warring where I went renewed in me a need to fight,
Then reveling in mirror mask I soon was lost in foggy ditch,
Without a feather gray or white to tickle that piano witch,
Fearing that I must expose my worm to holographic haze,
My Clinometer error rose and spawned in her new mawkish ways,
I woke the witch with reverence reserved for serpents, snails, and slugs,
I pulled the witch from out the ditch and turned to face the furry thugs,
The sheep they smiled with teeth agleam,
The weapons in their hooves revolved I detected a prostatic ream,
I gulped and felt my loins dissolve!!!”

Not the loins, say it ain’t so, how can you survive without your loins?

tongue, lips, and fingertips

Shit…there go my plans for the summer.

^yeah, but you can blow their humps off as soon as they cross that Nevada line.

::calls Marley to plan one serious “safari”::

…and now for the June edition of…UIF…

The abbreviation “ORD” for Chicago’s O’Hare airport comes from the old name “Orchard Field.”

Elephants sleep only two hours a day and have been known to remain standing after they die.

Per several sources, Rose Wilder Lane worked as a ghostwriter for much of the “Little House” series attributed to her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder. Rose also worked as a journalist, traveling throughout the world, and wrote the first biographies of Henry Ford, Charlie Chaplin, and Jack London.

On September 19, 1881, after only a few months in office, James Garfield became the second president to be assassinated. William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was the first U.S. president to die while in office. At 32 days, he also had the shortest term in office.

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.

Bulgaria was the only soccer team in the 1994 World Cup in which all 11 players’ last names ended with the letters “OV.”

While the bones of most airborne birds are hollow for lightness, penguins are endowed with solid bones for ballast when they dive, sometimes to 850 feet or more.

George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the United States.

Mick Jagger had an emerald chip put in the middle of his upper right incisor, but people thought it was spinach. He changed it to a ruby until he got tired of people discussing the drop of blood on his tooth. Jagger finally settled on a diamond.

The Japanese throne has been occupied by a member of the same family since the sixth century. The present emperor is the 125th in succession.

The Coleman company worked day and night producing ammunition, plane parts, lanterns, and other products for the military during World War II. Their most valuable contribution to the war effort was the GI Pocket Stove. Developed at the U.S. government’s request, the lightweight one-burner stove burned for two hours on a cup of the same fuel used in a jeep or a plane. Coleman produced more than one million pocket stoves during the war.

Ivory Soap was originally named P&G White Soap. In 1879, Harley Proctor found the new name during a reading in church of the 45th Psalm of the Bible: “All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.”

Baseballs absorb moisture, becoming heavier, and traveling shorter distances. However, baseballs carry farther through moist air, making the two factors cancel out each other.

In the United States, the standard width between railroad tracks is 4 feet, 8 inches.

British slang for a hoodlum or lout is

I read recently that for all the millions of people in China there’s only about 100 different last names going around. They’re actually trying to get people to combine names to create more different names to cut down on confusion. Hilarious.

The one I said “NO WAY!” on was the Jimmy Carter one. But after realizing that the 1-2 presidents both preceding and succeeding him were born in the early 1900s, it makes sense.

If coffee is the second-largest item in international commerce, what is the first?

teh pr0n

Nah, my guess would be tobacco.

It’s the July edition of …

The yo-yo was originally a weapon in the Philippines.

Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter.

Only four countries in the world start with the letter ‘D’. They are Denmark, Dominica, Djibouti and the Dominican Republic.

Cyprus has a map on its flag. Dominica, Mexico, Zambia, Kiribati, Fiji and Egypt all have birds on their flags.

South Africa used to have two official languages, now it has eleven.

Mexico once had three presidents in one day.

If Texas were a country it’s GNP would be the fifth largest of any country on earth.

An earthquake on Dec. 16, 1811 sent the Mississippi River backwards.

The channel between England and France grows 300mm each year.

During winter in Moscow the skating rinks cover more than 250,000 square meters of land.

If you travel across the former Soviet Union you will cross seven time zones.

Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way round.

The furthest point from any ocean would be in China.

The City of Istanbul straddles two separate continents, Europe and Asia.

Canada’s national sport is lacrosse not hockey.

Canada declared that all national beauty contests to be cancelled in 1992, claiming they were degrading.

At the height of its power (400 BC) the Greek city of Sparta had 500,000 slaves and only 25,000 citizens.

In Chinese, the words ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ are the same.

The pound sign is called a ‘octothorp.’

Before jets, jet lag was called boat lag.

The words racecar and kayak are spelled the same both ways.

The saying 'once in a blue moon ’ refers to the occurrence of two full moons during one calendar month.

‘Naked’ means to be unprotected. ‘Nude’ means unclothed.

Upper and lower case letters are named ‘upper’ and ‘lower’, because in the times when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the ‘upper case’ letters were stored in the case on top, and the smaller, ‘lower case’ letters on bottom.

The “You Are Here” arrow on maps is called an ideo locator.

The word ‘lethologica’ describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

In English, “four” is the only digit that has the same number of letters as its value.

Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the U.S. states.

The word “trivia” comes from the Latin “trivium” which is the place where three roads meet, a public square. People would gather and talk about all sorts of matters, most of which were trivial.

Typewriter, is the longest word that can be made using the letters in only one row of the keyboard.

“Speak of the Devil” is short for “Speak of the Devil and he shall come”. It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention. That’s why when you’re talking about someone and they show up people say “Speak of the Devil.”

The word “checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat,” which means, “The King Is Dead.”

The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” uses every letter in the English language.

The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

Canada is an Indian word meaning “Big Village.”

Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

Max Fleischer, Betty Boop’s creator, was born in Vienna in 1889 and died in California in 1972. The voice behind Betty Boop was Mae Questel, who also played the voice for Olive Oyl and Little Audry, and it was one of the first cartoons with sound. Popeye danced the hula with Betty Boop in his first appearance in a Betty Boop short called “Popeye the Sailor.”

Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s pet name for JFK Jr. was “Mouse.” JFK Jr. and Christine Amanapour of CNN were roommates at Brown University.

Al Capone’s business card said he was a furniture dealer.

About 75% of the people in the U.S. live on 2% land.

Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of “Lorne Greene’s Animal Kingdom.”

Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister.

The “Sesame Street” characters Bert and Ernie were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the cab driver in Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Like.”

The youngest movie star to win an Academy Award was Shirly Temple who won an Oscar in 1934 at the age of 6. She received 135,000 presents on her 8th birthday.

Samual Morse, who invented the telegraph, was originally a portrait painter and didn’t give up painting to turn to inventing until he was 46 years old.

About 10,000,000 people have the same birthday as you.

Mozart sold one of his most prized pieces, Symphony No. 5 for under $20.

The airplane, Buddy Holly died in, was the “American Pie,” which is where Don McLarean got the song title from.

The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “Oz.”

Rene Descartes came up with the theory of coordinate geometry by looking at a fly walk across a tiled ceiling.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them, burnt their houses down - hence the expression “to get fired.”

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn’t added until 5 year later.

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

Elephants can not jump but can smell water 3 miles away.

A male emperor moth can smell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away.

A cow produces 200 times more gas a day than a person.

Ants can live completely submerged underwater for up to 2 days. The only food cockroaches won’t eat are cucumbers.

A gold fish has the memory span of about 3 seconds.

A pound of grasshoppers is three times as nutritious as a pound of beef.

An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.

When possums are “playing possum” they’re not playing - they are actually passed out from sheer terror.

Wait a minute… this information isn’t useless!!

what the fuck does that mean?

Take 2% of the land of the United States.

Cram 75% of the people into that space.

Then 25% of the people live in the other 98%, ie. a lot of room.

oooooohhhh

2% of the land

that’s originally what i thought it meant but it was grammatically incorrect.

This was the answer to a final Jeopardy! question the other night. I believe he painted a U.S. President’s portrait.

that exclamation mark just pisses me off, neil.

exclamation point?

mark?

jimmy?

Hey, don’t be mad at me.

Be mad at Merv Griffin.

Or Johnny Gilbert.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had time for this. And I actually don’t have time for it now with this new project going on, but I don’t see where I should let that take precedence over silliness.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”

The distance between cities is actually the distances between city halls.

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth … and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, “His name is Mudd.” Dr. Mudd, sentenced to life in prison, became a hero to guards and inmates of his island prison when he stopped a yellow-fever epidemic there, in 1868, after the army doctors had died. President Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, pardoned Mudd in early 1869.

Dracula is the most filmed story of all time, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is second and Oliver Twist is third.

The football huddle started at Gallaudet University (the world’s only accredited four-year liberal arts college for the deaf) in the 19th century when the football team found that opposing teams were reading their signed messages and intercepting their plays.

Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.

These people were all cheerleaders: Kim Basinger, Halle Berry, Cameron Diaz, Kirsten Dunst (8th Grade), Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lauren Hill, Madonna, Priscilla Presley, Meryl Streep, Raquel Welch.

The average life span of a Major League baseball is five pitches.

To avoid long encounters with the press, President Ronald Reagan often took reporters’ questions with his helicopter roaring in the background.

The Looney Tunes song is actually called “The Merry-Go-Round is Broken Down.”

In 1964, Sandy Koufax, Elstom Howard, Jimmy Brown, Oscar Robertson, and Cookie Gilchrist were all voted MVP from their respected (MLB, NFL, NBA) leagues. Each of them wore the number 32.

The S in Harry S Truman stands for nothing.

If you take any number, double it, add 10, divide by 2, and subtract your original number, the answer will always be 5. If you take any number between 1 & 9 and multiply them by 9 the sum of the two numbers will always be 9 (ex: 7 X 9 = 63 ; 6 + 3 = 9)

Captain Kirk never said “Beam me up, Scotty,” but he did say, “Beam me up, Mr. Scott”.

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

Before 1859, baseball umpires were seated in padded chairs behind home plate.

Mary Tyler Moore was banished from the Ed Sullivan Show after her first appearance. Her crime was insisting on lip-syncing a song she was to perform; a Sullivan taboo.

Shaqielle O’Niell wears a size 22EEE shoe.

It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs.

Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his hat while playng baseball, and he used to change it every two innings.

No president of the United states was an only child.

Mata Hari, who was executed by firing squad in France in October, 1917, is probably the most famous spy of all time. Yet in fact she was not Oriental, or even a spy. Mata Hari was the stage name adopted by a plump, middle-aged Dutch divorcee named Margaretha McLeod who had left her alcoholic Scottish husband and opted to become a dancer in Europe. The evidence of her alleged espionage on behalf of the German Kaiser is based merely on her being mistaken for a known German agent, Clara Benedix, by the British in November 1916. She was arrested and released by police when they realized the mistake. She was later arrested in France and charged with having been in contact with German intelligence officers in Madrid. At her trial in Paris her lurid lifestyle was used to damning effect. It was only in 1963, when secret files relating to her case were released, that the legend was reassessed.

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

There has never been a time in Super Bowl history where a punt return resulted in a touchdown.

The Andy Griffth Show was the first spin-off in TV history. It was a spin-off of the Danny Thomas Show.

The real name of “the” Bill Gates is William Henry Gates III. Nowadays he is known as Bill Gates (III). By converting the letters of his current name to the ASCII-values and adding his (III), you get the following:
B 66
I 73
L 76
L 76
G 71
A 65
T 84
E 69
S 83
I 1
I 1
I 1
--------------
666 !!!

In the 1983 film “JAWS 3D” the shark blows up. Some of the shark guts were the stuffed ET dolls being sold at the time.

The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It is a a pneumoconiosis caused by the inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.

The second longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary is “floccinaucinihilipilification,” which means “the act of estimating as worthless.”

The third longest word in the English language is “antidisestablishmenterianism”.