Random weekly facts/comments

[Kuroos]

No one knows where the expression "to grin like a Cheshire cat" originated, but it wasn't with Carroll. The Cheshire cat is a well-known character in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but the expression, meaning a sneering smile that shows the gums, existed long before he wrote the book. There is no such breed of cat.

Superstition says that the left side is the wrong side of the bed.

The ace of spades in a playing card deck symbolizes death.  

[Kuroos]

It's a myth that owls don't hunt in the daytime because they can't see in daylight. It's just that rats and mice, the main items on owl menus, are most active after dark.

Many sailors believe a cat on board a ship means a lucky trip.

The mythical Scottish town of Brigadoon appears for one day every 100 years.

January is named for the Roman god Janus.  

[Kuroos]

Influenza got its name from that fact that people believed the disease was because of the evil "influence" of stars.

During the middle ages, it was widely believed that men had one less rib than woman. This is because of the story in the Bible that Eve had been created out of Adam's rib.

Hindu men once believed it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree (his third wife) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again. [he loves nature xD]

When christening a ship, instead of using champagne, the Vikings would sacrifice a human being.

The Vikings also thought the spirits of the murdered person would guide and guard the craft.  

[Kuroos]

The world's largest coffee pot is located in Davidson, Saskatchewan. It measures 24 Feet(7.3 Meters) tall, is made of sheet metal and could hold 150,000 8 ounce cups of coffee.

The Tokyo World Lanes Bowling Center is the largest bowling establishment in the world. It has 252 lanes and one very tired pinsetter.

The longest Monopoly game ever played was 1,680 hours long, that's 70 straight days!  

[Kuroos]

The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was 99 hours long. o..o who plays in a bathtub?

The World's Largest yo-yo resides in the National Yo-Yo Museum in Chico, California. Named "Big Yo," the 256-pound yo-yo is an exact scale replica of a Tom Kuhn "No Jive 3 in 1 Yo-Yo." Fifty inches tall and 31.5 inches wide, the yo-yo is made of California sugar pine, Baltic birch from the former USSR, and hardrock maple. It was first launched in San Francisco on October 13, 1979.  

[Kuroos]

Victor Hugo's Les Miserables contains one of the longest sentences in the French language—823 words without a period.

The largest web-footed bird is the albatross.

On July 31, 1994, Simon Sang Sung of Singapore turned a single piece of dough into 8,192 noodles in 59.29 seconds!

At 12 years old, an African named Ernest Loftus made his first entry in his diary and continued everyday for 91 years.

Toronto, Ontario was home to the biggest swimming pool in the world in 1925. It held 2000 swimmers, and was 300ft x 75ft. It is still in operation.  

[Kuroos]

In 1968, Steve McPeak traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on a unicycle. The trip took him six weeks, but he planned for the long bike journey. He brought an extra tire and a spare heinie.

The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, is cracked and has never been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught fire. To "save" it, caretakers decided to throw water on the bell. This did not succeed, as the water hit the superheated metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the bell forever.  

[Kuroos]

The largest school in the world is a k-12 school in the Philippines, with an enrollment of about 25,000.

France had the first supermarket in the world. It was started by relatives of the people who started the Texas Big Bear supermarket chain.

If you walked the entire length of the China's Great Wall, you would be walking farther than the distance between New York City and Miami, Florida. The wall stretches for over 1,500 miles. The driving distance between New York and Miami is just over 1,250 miles. Provided you don't get lost.  

[Kuroos]

In Muddy, Illinois, the post office measures only 7½ by 10½ feet, about the size of a garden shed. If it wasn't for a sign hanging above the door stating, "U.S. Post Office, Muddy, IL., 62965," finding the tiny, wooden building could be difficult. It is believed to be one of the smallest post offices in the United States.

Zaire is the world leader in cobalt mining, producing two-thirds of the world's cobalt supply.

The world's tallest mountains, the Himalayas, are also the fastest growing. Their growth - about half an inch a year — is caused by the pressure exerted by two of the earth's continental plates (the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate) pushing against one another.

The biggest hog ever recorded was a creature named Big Boy who weighed in at 1, 904 pounds.  

[Kuroos]

Belgian driver Jenatzy was the first to reach a speed of over 100km/h in his electrically powered car 'La Jamais Contente' in 1899.

Never mind what you saw in the film "The Poseidon Adventure." The biggest wave on record, reported by a reliable source, was estimated to have attained a height of 112 feet. It was measured, at some distance, I hope, by a tanker traveling between Manila and San Diego in 1933. The wind was blowing at 70 mph at the time.

On December 15, 1998, the Mayer Kaplan Jewish Community Center in Skokie, Illinois attempted to set the inaugural world's record for largest number of dreidels to be spun at one time. At least 200 people were needed to set the record.  

[Kuroos]

The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.

Carrageenan is a common ingredient in ice cream and toothpaste. Carrageenan is seaweed. A purple, edible seaweed, also known as Irish moss, that's found along the coasts of Northern Europe and North America. It's used as a suspending agent in foods, pharmaceuticals and liquids, as a clarifying agent for beverages, and in controlling crystal growth in frozen confections.

A single coffee tree yields only one pound of roasted, ground coffee annually.

Bamboo can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.  

[Kuroos]

Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.

A person standing under an oak tree is 16 more times liable to be hit by lightning than if he had taken refuge beneath a beech tree. The oak tree has vertical roots which provide a more direct route to ground water.

The partridge berry is a botanical Siamese twin. Each berry develops from 2 flowers.

The giant sequoia, which produces millions of seeds, can take 175 to 200 years to flower  

[Kuroos]

The squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), when brushed by a passerby, ejects its seeds and a stream of poisonous juice that stings the skin.

The Saguaro Cactus, found in the Southwestern United States doesn't grow branches until it is 75 years old.

Lightning keeps plants alive. The intense heat of lightning forces nitrogen in the air to mix with oxygen, forming nitrogen oxides that are soluble in water and fall to the ground in rain. Plants need nitrates to survive, so without lightning, plants could not live.  

[Kuroos]

Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbecuing. These woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food. Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan, hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple, or mesquite, depending on the type of meat being cooked.  

[Kuroos]

The cashew is part of a fruit that grows in tropical regions called 'a cashew apple'. After harvesting, the cashew apple keeps for only 24 hours before the soft fruit deteriorates. The cashew apple is not commercially important since it spoils quickly, but local people love the fruit. To harvest the nut, the ripe apple is allowed to fall to the ground where natives easily gather it. The apple and nut are separated.