If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on the right side of your mouth. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left side of your mouth.

To make half a kilo of honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 million individual flowers

Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by 'Bayer'.

Tourists visiting Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an insult!

People in nudist colonies play volleyball more than any other sport.

Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he declined.

Ancient Roman, Chinese and German societies often used urine as mouthwash.

Astronauts can't belch - there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

Because of the speed at which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds

The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion to shave them off!

The night of January 20 is "Saint Agnes's Eve", which is regarded as a time when a young woman dreams of her future husband.

Google is actually the common name for a number with a thousand zeros

It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!

Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end

If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

Each year 2,000,000 smokers either quit smoking or die of tobacco-related diseases.

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

Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals

Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.

The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.

Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above 450°F

The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.

Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean

The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man

Airports at higher altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air density

The University of Alaska spans four time zones

The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.

In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.

Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday.

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

A comet's tail always points away from the sun

The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was intended to prevent

Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.

The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armour raised their visors to reveal their identity.

If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.

When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight

In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed

Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside

Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams

The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth each year

The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust

Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 meters

Mickey Mouse is known as "Topolino" in Italy

Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down

Everything weighs one percent less at the equator

For every extra kilogram carried on a space flight, 530kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off

The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.

And last but not least: In 2011, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays. This apparently happens once every 823 years! This is called 'money bags'.


Cheers, Vince

Profoundly interesting!

Suz

VINCE,you are wealth of information. LOL I knew you had to break cadence on a bridge. Army lingo!! All good INFO. Thanks

"When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight "

I want to know who discovered this.

English Mike wrote:

"When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight " I want to know who discovered this.

it is the HOW this is discovered that intrigue me.

who has the job of weighing the earth each day! and what scales do they use? wouldnt gravity working from both directions mean its weightless any way?

Very interesting Vince. I have a few comments:

1. There is a tribe in Africa in which the males wash their hair in cow urine to give it an attractive red color. Urine, by the way, in a healthy person or animal is sterile.

2. Ask the next dehydrated person you see if they are thirsty. Unless they are demented, they will be thirsty.

3. Having grown bananas, as I recall, new plants propagate from the roots of plants that have produced bananas and died so, I think they could live without man though not as efficiently as they do with mans help. The plant that really needs mans help is corn. If it wasn't for continuous attention, corn would in a short time degenerate into some fairly useless grass; actually corn is a grass.

4. If I'm ever trapped in a well in daylight, I'll try to remember to look for stars.

5. If the earth gains 100 tons a day in weight, that means in a year it gains 36,500 tons and its gravity will increase. As gravity increases, you will need to increase the elevation of your firearm sights. Actually, the increase in gravity, probably explains those shots I missed; thanks for the information.

Very interesting Vince. I have a few comments:

1. There is a tribe in Africa in which the males wash their hair in cow urine to give it an attractive red color. Urine, by the way, in a healthy person or animal is sterile.

2. Ask the next dehydrated person you see if they are thirsty. Unless they are demented, they will be thirsty.

3. Having grown bananas, as I recall, new plants propagate from the roots of plants that have produced bananas and died so, I think they could live without man though not as efficiently as they do with mans help. The plant that really needs mans help is corn. If it wasn't for continuous attention, corn would in a short time degenerate into some fairly useless grass; actually corn is a grass.

4. If I'm ever trapped in a well in daylight, I'll try to remember to look for stars.

5. If the earth gains 100 tons a day in weight, that means in a year it gains 36,500 tons and its gravity will increase. As gravity increases, you will need to increase the elevation of your firearm sights. Actually, the increase in gravity, probably explains those shots I missed; thanks for the information.

English Mike wrote:

"When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight " I want to know who discovered this.

Remember the tests they did after criminals were decapitated as a punishment ...they allegedly called out the criminals name and the "head" responded by looking towards the sound. Beyond that I have no idea how they would have made this startling discovery.

Cheers, Vince

Apparently bananas as we know them need human help to reproduce but the wild ones manage nicely on their own, though the fruits are far less palatable due to the much larger(& viable) seeds.

I like these lists for the mixture of facts & half truths they contain - it's entertainment chasing down the realities.

Vince wrote:

And last but not least: In 2011, July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays. This apparently happens once every 823 years! This is called 'money bags'.

Actually it will happen again in 2016 and 2022 and 2033.

We only have a total of about a dozen possible calenders. That get recycled over and over again.

Dimitri

D is right about the Fridays for the years mentioned, any one that runs unix or linux can open up a terminal and type in "cal plus the year to find out.

That said, there is more then a dozen calenders see here

No I meant that the days the year starts on, combining with leap years only allows for a dozen or so variations on our calender. So we keep going throw the same calenders, we just have to change the year on top.

Dimitri

Quote::

Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end

Aint what she said!