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.
