Did you know that…
-Ketchup originated in china?
-Squirrels cannot carry or contract rabies?
-Dogs can only make 10 vocal sounds, while cats can make well over 100? (Sorry if mentioning this breaks any cat/dog rules)
Amazingly enough, you have witness a truly FLAMBLAMABLOUS experience. I have no memory of any. Maybe I’m so used to them I don’t think they’re random anymore.
Officially, by definition, a factoid is only assumed to be true, like an urban legend. Only recently did it start to mean “a random and usless piece of information”
(4) Squirrels CAN contract rabies, but it happens rarely. And even though there aren’t any recorded cases of transmission to humans from a squirrel, a friend of mine was still advised to get the shots as a precaution.
This is a little weird but did you know every year, 100 men are diagnosed with BREAST CANCER??? So…. how manly are you?
also if your family could use only renewable energy for all your energy needs, you could help reduce the amount of emissions in the air each year by 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, 70 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 50 pounds of nitrogen oxide.
and,in Singapore, it is illegal to sell or own chewing gum.
strange facts, huh?
Heres a random fact I got form this cool page- a- day calender put out by some almanac. I think that people who (unlike me) math will get a big kick out of it.
12,345,678,987,654,321is the number you get if you do 111x111x111x111x111x111
random fact-short circuiting robot batteries makes a really cool pyrotechnic show(i tried it out, but i’m not telling you my safety first method). i also melted an outlet. not the smartest thing to do with your hands. but i did survive.
about the stupidest thing I ever did was with electricity; i bent a paper clip to touch both ends of a battery and held it in place with my thumb. zap. ow.
38- The stupidest thing I ever did was with cement. There can’t have been as much blood as I remember.
But my scar is fading. Good-bye to my Harry Potter scar.
I can’t even think of the stupidest thing I’ve done. Then the question is, is it because I do so many, or I am just perfect? Somehow the second option doesn’t quite apply to me.
Uhh, random factiods….I have a freckle on my thumb.
Whitewall tires on Model A Fords are incorrect. One, they usually didn’t use them, and two, when they did they were white on both sides of the tire.
Random factoid courtesy of listening to my dad rant about Model A people that don’t do it right with their tires.
This is a bit late but… (this is about post 29) I talked to my Social Studies teacher and she says that there are really 50 states but there are things like porto rico (that is definetly spelled wrong) that are part of the U.S. but not a state.
53~ I meant the metal kind. “Red, pointy and rusts.” I hate having long fingernails, because that RUINS one’s fingerboard when you play the violin.
More random factoids…
Cats like nutritional yeast.
The children’s game “Ring Around the Rosy” is a reference to the Black Death. In fact, many of our nursery ryhmes come from social and political commentaris of past times.
Our printed alphabet comes from two different writing traditions. Capitals come from Roman letters carved in stone while the lower case alphabet comes from Carolinigan script which was devolped in Charlemain’s reign to make manuscripts easier to read.
I have about three or four scars: one from first grade when someone scratched me… one from my being stupid (and banging into the stairwell with my knee)… one from a paper cut… my belly button (which is really a scar, but no one ever thinks of it)
I have several scars, I used to have even more because I ws a litle hyperactive child that didn’t understand staying still and calm.
The most noticable scars I have are on my knuckles (no, I dont cut myself, thank you very much) and one on my right shin from tripping over an engine in the middle of the night. Several years ago, it was, but you can stil feel the chip in the bone, and the skin is all pale there.
The longest name for a place in the world is TAUMATAÂWHAKAÂTANGIÂHANGAÂKOAUAUÂOÂTAMATEAÂTURIPUKAKAÂPIKIÂMAUNGAÂHOROÂNUKUÂPOKAIÂWHENUAÂKITANAÂTAHU, which is a hill in New Zealand
The longest name for a place in the United States is CHARÂGOGGAGOGGÂMANÂCHAUGÂGAGOGGÂCHAUÂBUNAÂGUNGAMAUGG, which is a lake in Massachussets.
I have a scar on my arm from when I ran into a rope that was inbetween two trees when I was playing manhunt in the summer. I also have one from chicken pox.
The comic The X-Men was originally going to be called The Mutants, but the publisher thought readers wouldn’t know what a mutant was, so they changed it.
My mom went to see her friend Ana in DC. (jealousy) Ana is Hindu and she explained why cows are sacred in India and the Hindu religon.
It is because people rely on the milk a lot for food, and since they drink cow’s milk it’s like the cows are their mothers, and nobody should ever hurt their mother.
@31 – Actually, that works for just about any combination of ones. The formula is x squared, with x being as many ones as you want. Up until 9 it will follow the pattern of 1 (1^2), 121 (11^2), 12321 (111^2), 1234321 (1111^2), et cetera… With the number you go up to (and come back down) the number you squared (1234321 has 4 ones). Because most calculators will abbreviate and/or round and/or put the product into scientific notation, I haven’t yet tried it correctly with more than 9 ones. Pencil and paper ready, and five minutes later…
That’s pretty interesting – 1111111111^2 equals 1234567890087654321. If you do it with “New Math” (heard of Tom Lehrer, anyone?), or lattice, you’ll see why.
I did the next one out – interestingly enough, it’s 1234567890120987654321. I’m sure lots of othr nice little patterns crop up but this comment is getting WAY too long.
I can pick things up (and pinch people) with my toes.
There is a rosemary plant in our kitchen.
There is no difference between a violin and a fiddle, besides the music played. (Although some fiddlers prefer a flatter bridge.)
Does anyone else remember the letter from “Milton Rupines” that was published in Muse ages ago? Well, he stated that he hated all Marylanders because so-and-so said that her brother would kill rabbits that ate his garden, and Milton Rupines liked his pet rabbit, etc. Well, when I looked up the letter that he had been responding to, the girl that said her brother killes rabbts, wasn’t even from MD! In fact, M.R. had gotten the wrong letter entirely.
In about half a million years there will be no more total solar eclipses.
In 13,000 years the seasons will have flipped due to the wobbling of the Earth, so June will be the beginning of winter in the Northern hemisphere, and of summer in the Southern hemisphere. Weird, huh?
And ‘lollipop’
is the longest word typed with your right hand.
(Bet you tried this out mentally, didn’t you?)
No word in the English language rhymes with
month, orange, silver, or purple.
‘Dreamt’ is the only English word that ends in the letters ‘mt’.
(Are you doubting this?)
Our eyes are always the same size from birth,
but our nose and ears
never stop growing.
The sentence:
‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’
uses every letter of the alphabet.
(Now, you KNOW you’re going to try this out for accuracy, right?)
The words ‘racecar,’
‘kayak’
and ‘level’
are the same whether they are read
left to right or right to left (palindromes).
(Yep, I knew you were going to ‘do’ this one.)
There are only four words in the English language which end in ‘dous’:
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
(You’re not doubting this, are you?)
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: ‘abstemious’ and ‘facetious.’ (Yes, admit it, you are going to say, a e i o u)
TYPEWRITER is the longest word
that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
(All you typists are going to test this out)
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
(Some days that’s about what my memory span is.)
A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A snail can sleep for three years.
(I know some people that could do this too.!)
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that also)
Babies are born without kneecaps.
They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast,
the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
The cruise liner, QE 2
moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
(Good thing he did that.)
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
97: I gotta give ’em credit–I really was testing out all the typing (except the sentence with the alphabet–i already knew that one). The one about the chinese, though? I was cracking up….see rants on geography and you can imagine why…..
Off the top of my head…
.The word for the number 4 is so unlucky in Japan/Japanese that they came up with a new word for it.
.James Madison was the shortest president.
.Most of my other good factoids are from Muse articles or from Bo’s Page, so they’re useless here.
Random fact: there are 94,931,877,133 license plate I.D.s possible.
And PWT PWNS pwns them all.
2- or BO KNOWS
Did you know that…
-Ketchup originated in china?
-Squirrels cannot carry or contract rabies?
-Dogs can only make 10 vocal sounds, while cats can make well over 100? (Sorry if mentioning this breaks any cat/dog rules)
The only planets that have only been visited by one mission are Uranus and Neptune.
Akon’s real name is Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam.
Lu Lu Lu? Whatever his parents were smoking when they named him, I want some.
the earth weighed around 6.6 sextillion tons in 2001
My real name is on Wikipedia. On my school’s page. Because I put it there.
Actually, it’s not anymore…
Random fact: the June version of this thread was the second thread I posted on.
Random facts:
Amazingly enough, you have witness a truly FLAMBLAMABLOUS experience. I have no memory of any. Maybe I’m so used to them I don’t think they’re random anymore.
Officially, by definition, a factoid is only assumed to be true, like an urban legend. Only recently did it start to mean “a random and usless piece of information”
two random facts about hair: 1, the average head has about 125,000 hairs but 2, the red-heads have only about 80,000.
wonder why we don’t notice that
In Australia, toilets don’t flush any differently than they would in the Northern Hemisphere.
14-There was a Q&A thing on that right? It only works with big bodies of water or something?
(4) Squirrels CAN contract rabies, but it happens rarely. And even though there aren’t any recorded cases of transmission to humans from a squirrel, a friend of mine was still advised to get the shots as a precaution.
Random factoid: the most yolks ever found in one chicken egg is nine.
Random opinionoid: Post seventeen is one of the most creepy things I’ve ever heard.
15- Yes, and my random fact is that this phenomemon is called the Coriolis Effect.
did you know if you put a normal egg in vinegar, it will become bouncy!!! 80
the biggest iceberg ever sighted was 208 miles ling and 60 miles wide!
the funny bones real name is the humerus. (humorus… get it, get it)
a watermelon is 93% water!!
-9 out of 10 people are right handed
-the library of congress has over 100 million items
-the english language has over 1,000,000
This is a little weird but did you know every year, 100 men are diagnosed with BREAST CANCER??? So…. how manly are you?
also if your family could use only renewable energy for all your energy needs, you could help reduce the amount of emissions in the air each year by 20,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, 70 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 50 pounds of nitrogen oxide.
and,in Singapore, it is illegal to sell or own chewing gum.
strange facts, huh?
20-24 – Please don’t quintuple post. Try to put all your thoughts into one post.
sorry
There are 600+ creatures on display in the fossil halls at the American Museum of Natural History.
Random facts:
– There are actually 46 states and 4 commonwealths in the U.S.
– Guy Fawkes’ first name is pronounced Gee.
– The voice for Yoda, Frank Oz, is the same voice for Grover.
The three space shuttles we currently have are Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour.
Heres a random fact I got form this cool page- a- day calender put out by some almanac. I think that people who (unlike me) math will get a big kick out of it.
12,345,678,987,654,321is the number you get if you do 111x111x111x111x111x111
The Washington Monument is 555 feet high.
to type kokopelli on the phone, type 565-673554
and pie is 743 they go together well, don’t they 
Eight hours of working in a smoky bar is equivalent to smoking a pack a day.
The Star Wars Wiki is called Wookieepedia.
random fact-short circuiting robot batteries makes a really cool pyrotechnic show(i tried it out, but i’m not telling you my safety first method). i also melted an outlet. not the smartest thing to do with your hands. but i did survive.
36- NO! Bad jammin j. No playing with electricity.
Honestly. It’s a bad idea.
about the stupidest thing I ever did was with electricity; i bent a paper clip to touch both ends of a battery and held it in place with my thumb. zap. ow.
38- The stupidest thing I ever did was with cement. There can’t have been as much blood as I remember.
Good-bye to my Harry Potter scar.
But my scar is fading.
39 – Ah, scars. I have one from when I tripped on a gap in the bleachers at swimming. Bleachers have sharp edges.
The stupidest thing I ever did was try to swim over a coral reef when the tide was going out.
I can’t even think of the stupidest thing I’ve done. Then the question is, is it because I do so many, or I am just perfect? Somehow the second option doesn’t quite apply to me.
Uhh, random factiods….I have a freckle on my thumb.
Some tropical fish change gender halfway through their lives?
So, if you had a pet one, would you name it Brittney or Bob?
43 – I’d name it something general neutral. Like Taylor.
Your stomach lining changes every three days.
44- Yeah, I think I’d go with Alex.
43~ I’d get a pet that isn’t a transvestite.
Whitewall tires on Model A Fords are incorrect. One, they usually didn’t use them, and two, when they did they were white on both sides of the tire.
Random factoid courtesy of listening to my dad rant about Model A people that don’t do it right with their tires.
Space Shuttle Atlantis will launch from Cape Canaveral at 2:45 Eastern Standard Time on the 7th.
Maryland is the only state in the US that has no natural lakes.
If you put M&Ms up your nose they will melt. Raisins will not.
A nail placed in a cup of Coca-Cols will dissolve in four days.
49- Have you tested the second factoid?
(50) I was wondering the same thing.
(51) I assumed she had tested it, but I wondered whether it was on herself or on someone else.
Nail like the pointy, red thing that rusts? Or nail like the one that girls grow out long and scratch you with?
I hope it’s not the latter.
And to blend in with the “Random Factiod” thing…
The longest scar from a nail (the scratching girl one) stayed on my arm for over a year, and I still have it.
This is a bit late but… (this is about post 29) I talked to my Social Studies teacher and she says that there are really 50 states but there are things like porto rico (that is definetly spelled wrong) that are part of the U.S. but not a state.
Today is the birthday of Peggy Whitson, the astronaut commanding the space station right now.
50/51/52~ Umm, I was about 3, I think.
53~ I meant the metal kind. “Red, pointy and rusts.” I hate having long fingernails, because that RUINS one’s fingerboard when you play the violin.
More random factoids…
Cats like nutritional yeast.
The children’s game “Ring Around the Rosy” is a reference to the Black Death. In fact, many of our nursery ryhmes come from social and political commentaris of past times.
Our printed alphabet comes from two different writing traditions. Capitals come from Roman letters carved in stone while the lower case alphabet comes from Carolinigan script which was devolped in Charlemain’s reign to make manuscripts easier to read.
Random fact: The elephant is the only mammal that cannot jump
Random fact: A rat can survive longer without water than a camel
Random fact: Ocean water contains traces of gold.
(we’re rich! we’re rich!)
AND : In ancient China a wife could be divorced for talking too much.
(\ /)
(0,0)
(>
There has been a new thread on MuseBlog every day this month so far.
Except today.
59- including today, m’dear.
The classification for the unusual creatures that live near hydrothermal vents deep underwater and never see the sun is chemosynthetic.
According the the internet, the proper name for a buffalo is bison.
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct English sentence, even if the correct name is “bison.”
Little Miss Muffet really existed. Named Patience, she was the daughter of Thomas Muffet, a scientist who specialized in spiders.
The weirdest (and probibly the only) scar I have is a stupid piece of pincil led that acidently got stuck in my hand in 5th grade.
Did you know that most cats are left pawed?
Most cats that show a preference are left-pawed. I talked about that in the November/December 2000 Q&A column.
61- NOW you tell me! Six days after the day when I might have needed that information!
Actually it’s nine days…
I have about three or four scars: one from first grade when someone scratched me… one from my being stupid (and banging into the stairwell with my knee)… one from a paper cut… my belly button (which is really a scar, but no one ever thinks of it)
I have several scars, I used to have even more because I ws a litle hyperactive child that didn’t understand staying still and calm.
The most noticable scars I have are on my knuckles (no, I dont cut myself, thank you very much) and one on my right shin from tripping over an engine in the middle of the night. Several years ago, it was, but you can stil feel the chip in the bone, and the skin is all pale there.
The longest name for a place in the world is TAUMATAÂWHAKAÂTANGIÂHANGAÂKOAUAUÂOÂTAMATEAÂTURIPUKAKAÂPIKIÂMAUNGAÂHOROÂNUKUÂPOKAIÂWHENUAÂKITANAÂTAHU, which is a hill in New Zealand
The longest name for a place in the United States is CHARÂGOGGAGOGGÂMANÂCHAUGÂGAGOGGÂCHAUÂBUNAÂGUNGAMAUGG, which is a lake in Massachussets.
I have a scar on my arm from when I ran into a rope that was inbetween two trees when I was playing manhunt in the summer. I also have one from chicken pox.
71 – All that for a hill?
HUMUHUMUNUKUNUKUAPUA’A
~ Hawaii’s state fish
67- Sorry. I told a joke about them on the Jokes thread.
An egg yolk is a single cell.
The comic The X-Men was originally going to be called The Mutants, but the publisher thought readers wouldn’t know what a mutant was, so they changed it.
71- Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
Now we know where they got the names for the Bionicle characters.
76 – Huh? Elaborate…
My mom went to see her friend Ana in DC. (jealousy) Ana is Hindu and she explained why cows are sacred in India and the Hindu religon.
It is because people rely on the milk a lot for food, and since they drink cow’s milk it’s like the cows are their mothers, and nobody should ever hurt their mother.
@31 – Actually, that works for just about any combination of ones. The formula is x squared, with x being as many ones as you want. Up until 9 it will follow the pattern of 1 (1^2), 121 (11^2), 12321 (111^2), 1234321 (1111^2), et cetera… With the number you go up to (and come back down) the number you squared (1234321 has 4 ones). Because most calculators will abbreviate and/or round and/or put the product into scientific notation, I haven’t yet tried it correctly with more than 9 ones. Pencil and paper ready, and five minutes later…
That’s pretty interesting – 1111111111^2 equals 1234567890087654321. If you do it with “New Math” (heard of Tom Lehrer, anyone?), or lattice, you’ll see why.
I did the next one out – interestingly enough, it’s 1234567890120987654321. I’m sure lots of othr nice little patterns crop up but this comment is getting WAY too long.
/gradster(1)/
77- From Polynessian. The Matoran names are Polynessian. I figured that out as soon as I learned the native name for Easter Island was Rapa Nui.
80 – Yes, I know, but what was that little comment about Bionicle? I didn’t quite get that.
81- marotan =Bionicle. i think.
My great uncle was roomates with the first astronaut. Thet’s according to my grandparents, at least.
Moving your left hand in a clockwise circle around your right hand moving in a counterclockwise circle is extremely hard.
As is staring at something with one eye and staring somewhere else with the other. My dad can do both.
As is wiggling your pinky toe and no other toes.
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniconiosis is the longest word in the English language. 46 letters.
THere are several kinds of plants that clean the air, one of which is the spider plant. I’ve got one in my room.
I have a spider plant in my kitchen.
I can pick things up (and pinch people) with my toes.
There is a rosemary plant in our kitchen.
There is no difference between a violin and a fiddle, besides the music played. (Although some fiddlers prefer a flatter bridge.)
Does anyone else remember the letter from “Milton Rupines” that was published in Muse ages ago? Well, he stated that he hated all Marylanders because so-and-so said that her brother would kill rabbits that ate his garden, and Milton Rupines liked his pet rabbit, etc. Well, when I looked up the letter that he had been responding to, the girl that said her brother killes rabbts, wasn’t even from MD! In fact, M.R. had gotten the wrong letter entirely.
In about half a million years there will be no more total solar eclipses.
In 13,000 years the seasons will have flipped due to the wobbling of the Earth, so June will be the beginning of winter in the Northern hemisphere, and of summer in the Southern hemisphere. Weird, huh?
The 2004 tsunami shortened our day by about 3 millionths of a second.
AND it changed the position of the earth!
60% of percentages are wrong. (I absolutely love that little gem).
The computer used to launch the Apollo spaceship was weaker than a scientific calculator today.
Jousting is the Maryland state sport. (I just love that!)
New York’s Long Island has an East Hampton, a Westhampton and a Southampton. But we don’t have a North Hampton. It’s very strange.
84% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
4 out of 5 doctors recommend not believing in a statement beginning with “4 out of 5 doctors”.
94-(RE: 84%…) Like that one?
95 – Maybe…
I got this in an email.
‘Stewardesses’
is the longest word typed with only the left hand
And ‘lollipop’
is the longest word typed with your right hand.
(Bet you tried this out mentally, didn’t you?)
No word in the English language rhymes with
month, orange, silver, or purple.
‘Dreamt’ is the only English word that ends in the letters ‘mt’.
(Are you doubting this?)
Our eyes are always the same size from birth,
but our nose and ears
never stop growing.
The sentence:
‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’
uses every letter of the alphabet.
(Now, you KNOW you’re going to try this out for accuracy, right?)
The words ‘racecar,’
‘kayak’
and ‘level’
are the same whether they are read
left to right or right to left (palindromes).
(Yep, I knew you were going to ‘do’ this one.)
There are only four words in the English language which end in ‘dous’:
tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
(You’re not doubting this, are you?)
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: ‘abstemious’ and ‘facetious.’ (Yes, admit it, you are going to say, a e i o u)
TYPEWRITER is the longest word
that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
(All you typists are going to test this out)
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
(Some days that’s about what my memory span is.)
A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A snail can sleep for three years.
(I know some people that could do this too.!)
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
(I know some people like that also)
Babies are born without kneecaps.
They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast,
the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite!
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
The cruise liner, QE 2
moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
(Good thing he did that.)
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
97: I gotta give ’em credit–I really was testing out all the typing (except the sentence with the alphabet–i already knew that one). The one about the chinese, though? I was cracking up….see rants on geography and you can imagine why…..
I forget my factoid – dangit!
Off the top of my head…
.The word for the number 4 is so unlucky in Japan/Japanese that they came up with a new word for it.
.James Madison was the shortest president.
.Most of my other good factoids are from Muse articles or from Bo’s Page, so they’re useless here.