Bizarre,odd,strange, unusual Facts!

[newbloodmoon]

"Rabbit Catcher" at one time meant Midwife (An underground education by Richard Zacks)

[JamieSymptom]

Awesome lists, very entertaining read.

*The guillotine was invented in Yorkshire,England

I can at least verify this one, in Halifax where I live we had what was known as the Gibbet back in 1286!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Gibbet

[Hierognosis]

wait, we're mostly drunk so never mind what I just said.

AHAHAH!

[karl 12]

Abraham Lincoln's mother died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and Mrs Lincoln drank the milk.

Because of the rotation of the earth an object can be thrown father if it is thrown West.

Elvis Presley never gave an encore.

Nanotechnology has produced a guitar no bigger than a blood cell.The guitar,10 micrometers long,has strings that can be strummed.

Goldfish can suffer motion sickness.

Seven per cent of the entire Irish barley crop goes into making Guiness.

The U.S. has never lost a war in which mules were used.

American Vogue ran into trouble when it published a recipe that recommended using horse lard to cook tastier French Fries.

In a scientific study children were told to imagine that they were wearing heavy mittens.The temperature of their fingerprints went up.

Pepper was sold in individual grains during Elizabethan times.

Americans eat approximately 20 billion pickles every year.

Pumpkins were once recommended for removing freckles.

Mark Wahlberg has a third nipple which was airbrushed out of the Calvin Klein underwear ads.

The distress term Mayday comes from the French term m'aidez meaning 'help me'.

X ray technology has shown that there are 3 different versions of the Mona Lisa under the one thats visible.

Watermelons which are 92 per cent water originated from the Kalahari desert in Africa.

Mozart never went to school.

Pope Paul IV was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel that he ordered Michaelangelo to paint garments on them.

Columbia University is the second largest landowner(after the catholic church)in New York city.

Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.

The tango originated as a practical dance between two men.

Every U.S. president with a beard has been a Republican.

The last time American green cards were actualy green was 1964.

At the deepest point of the ocean (11.034 km) an iron ball would take more than an hour to sink to the ocean floor.

About 10 million bacteria live in one gram of soil.

Only 13.5 per cent of scientists are women.

If you were locked in a completely sealed room you'd die of Carbon Dioxide poisoning before you'd die of Oxygen deprivation.

Counting how many times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds and then adding forty to that number will tell you roughly what the outside temperature is in Farenheit.

The oldest living thing in the world is a creosote bush in South Western California which is more than 11,000 years old.

Henry Fonda,David Niven,Uri Geller,Chris De Burgh,The Duke of Windsor,Napoleon Bonapart,James Joyce,John F. Kennedy,Benito Mussolini,

Leo Tolstoy,H.G. Wells,Grouch Marx,Mike Tyson and Sir Richard Branson all lost their virginity to prostitutes.

If you slowly pour a handful of salt into a totaly full glass of water it will not overflow.In fact the water level will go down.

James Madison (1809-1817) was the first U.S. president to wear long trousers;all the previous presidents had worn knee breeches.

Couples who marry in January,February or March have the highest divorce rate.

90 per cent of movies released in the United States are porn films.

The average woman uses about 6 pounds of lipstick during her lifetime.

The Queen can or could drive legaly without taking a driving test.

Over 1000 planets the size of the Earth could fit inside the sun.

All the moons of the solar system are named after Greek and Roman mythology,except the moons of Uranus which are named after Shakespearean characters.

When the Americans sent a man into space,they spent a million dollars developing a pen that could write upside down in conditions of zero gravity.The Russians used a pencil.

Hilary Swank is Rob Lowe's sister in law.

Natalie Portman has never revealed her true surname as she wants to protect her family's privacy.

The average iceberg weighs 20 million tons.

Most orchids are bisexual.

The most abundant metal in the Earth's crust is Alluminium.The Chinese were using Alluminium to make things as early as AD 300.Western civilisation didn't rediscover it until 1827.

You can figure out which way is South if you are near a tree stump.The growth rings are wider on the South side.

There are 10 million bacteria in a litre of milk-thats equivalent to the population of Greece.

The Siberian Larch accounts for more than 20 per cent of the world's trees.

1 in every 4 Americans has appeared on television.

1 out of 5 pieces of the world's garbage is generated in the U.S.

There has never been a sex change operation performed in Ireland.

The Christmas holidays are the busiest time in plastic surgeon's offices.

Pablo Picasso was abandoned by the midwife just after his birth because she thought he was stillborn.He was saved by an Uncle.

Michael Jackson owns the rights to the South Carolina state anthem.

Marlon Brando's occupation on his passport was 'shepherd'.

There are 2 credit cards for every person in the U.S.

97 per cent of paper money in the U.S. contains traces of cocaine.

Woodpecker scalps,porpoise teeth and giraffe tails have all been used as money.

During World War 2,W.C. Fields kept $50,000 in Germany 'just in case the little b*stard wins'.

The Chinese ideogram for trouble shows two women living under one roof.

Dirty snow melts quicker than clean snow.

82 per cent of workers on the Panama Canal suffered from Malaria.

Mucophagy is the medical term for snot eating,the consumption of the nasal mucus obtained from nose picking.

There is no single word for the back of the knee.

Genghis Kahn's calvalry only rode female horses so soldiers could drink their milk.

Cuckoo clocks come from the Black Forest in Germany -not Switzerland.

Chewing gum whilst peeling onions will keep you from crying.

South American Gauchos put raw steak under their saddles before starting a days riding to tenderize the meat.

The warrior tribes of Ethiopia used to hang the testicles of those they killed in battle on the ends of their spears.

The girls of the Tiwi tribe of the South Pacific are married at birth.

1 kg of lemons contains more sugar that 1 kg of strawberries.

Ludwig Van Beethoven was once arrested for vagrancy.

Salvador Dali once arrived at an art exhibition in a limousine filled with turnips.

The poorest country in the world is Mozambique-Switzerland is the richest.

At the nearest point,Russia and America are less than 4 km apart.

Jolly green giant translated into Arabic means 'intimidating green ogre'.

When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa,they used their standard packaging with the cute baby on the label.Unfortunately they were obliged to change it when they discovered that,in Africa,the standard practise is to put pictures of the contents on foods.

Sharwoods launched it's Bundh sauces without realizing that,in Punjabi,the word Bundh is perilously close to a word meaning ****.

Axl Rose used to earn $8 per hour for smoking cigarettes for a science experimentat U.C.L.A.

Fidel Castro was voted Cuba's best schoolboy athlete in 1944.

Black lemurs are the only primates,other than humans,that might have blue eyes.

The female starfish produces 2 million eggs a year-99 per cent of these are eaten by other fish.

New Zealand is the only country that contains every type of climate in the world.

No president of the U.S. was an only child.

Slugs can fertilise their own eggs.

A green fly born on a Sunday can be a grandparent on a Wednesday.

If a cockroach breaks a leg it can grow another one.

A typical bed houses over 6 billion dust mites.

The average bee yields only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in it's life.

To keep from being separated while sleeping,sea otters tie themselves together with kelp.

All clams start out as males;some decide to become females at some point in their lives.

Sharks will eat anything except something in the vicinity of where they give birth.This is the only way nature protects them from accidentaly eating their own babies.

In the original story of Cinderella her slippers were made of gold (not glass) and her stepsisters were beautiful on the outside but their ugliness lay within.

There are just 6 grams of gold in an Olympic gold medal.

In the 1500s,1 out of every 25 coffins was found to have scratch marks on the inside.

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

George I,King of England from 1714-1727 was German and couldn't speak a word of English.

Leonardo Da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

During WW2,it was against the law in Germany to name a horse Adolf.

Between 1839 and 1853,Nicaragua had 396 different rulers.

The Pentagon has twice as many toilets as necessary because in the 1940s when it was built,Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate facilities for blacks and whites.

Fewer than one per cent of the Carribean Islands are inhabited.

Tasmania has the cleanest air in the inhabited world.

Homosexuality remained on the American psychiatric association's list of mental illnesses until 1973.

Cleopatra wrote a book on cosmetics-one of the ingredients was burnt mice.

Adolf Hitler's mother considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.

In ancient China,doctors only got paid if the patient stayed in good health.If the patient's health deteriorated,sometimes the doctor had to pay him.

Albert Einstein was once offered the presidency of Israel.He declined saying he had no head for problems.

In 1939,the American Nazi party had 200,000 members.

In the latter part of the 18th century,Prussian surgeons treated stutterers by snipping off portions of their toungues.

Elthelred the unready,King of England in the 10th Century,spent his wedding night in bed with his wife and his mother in law.

Emperor Calligula once decided to go to war against the Roman God of the sea Poseidon and ordered his soldiers to throw their spears into the water.

One third of all fresh water in the world is in Canada.

Coca Cola is Africa's largest private sector employer.

One species of shark is so competitive that babies fight each other within the womb until only one is left to be born alive.

The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

When the air force was conducting test runs and breaking the sound barrier,fields of turkeys dropped dead.

Bluebirds cannot see the colour blue.

The tenrac,a Madagasgan insectivore has 22-24 nipples.

A mouse has more bones than a man. Mouse 225, man 206.

Lions cannot roar until they reach the age of two.

Mice will nurse babies that are not their own.

When a horned toad is angry,it squirts blood from it's eyes.

The vagina and the eye are self cleaning organs.

It takes about 200,000 frowns to make a permanent wrinkle.

Every year,100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens.

Clark Gable was listed on his birth certificate as a girl.

A hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4ft child inside.

Ravens can learn to open a box to get a treat, and then teach others to do the same.

The red kangaroo can produce two different types of milk at the same time to feed both younger and older offspring

It would take about 200 million Hydrogen atoms to cover the full stop at the end of this sentence.

Edited November 23, 2008 by karl 12

[odiesbsc]

When Gerber first started selling baby food in Africa,they used their standard packaging with the cute baby on the label.Unfortunately they were obliged to change it when they discovered that,in Africa,the standard practise is to put pictures of the contents on foods.

AAARRRRHHHHHGGGGG !!! They want us to eat babies !!!!!

[Wolfcurse]

Caligula never actually got around to making his horse a senator; he merely toyed with the idea.

[when.i.am.queen.]

Natalie Portman has never revealed her true surname as she wants to protect her family's privacy.

Well, somehow it got leaked to wiki.

Portman was born Natalie Hershlag (Hebrew: נטלי הרשלג‎) in Jerusalem, Israel.Her father, Avner Hershlag, is an Israeli doctor specializing in fertility and reproduction (reproductive endocrinology).[7][8] Her mother, Shelley Stevens, is an American homemaker who now works as her agent. Portman's maternal ancestors were Jews from Austria and Russia and her paternal ancestors were Jews who immigrated to Israel from Poland and Romania. Her paternal grandfather's parents died in Auschwitz and her Romanian-born great-grandmother was a spy for the British during World War II.

Portman's parents met at a Jewish student center at Ohio State University where her mother was selling tickets. Her father returned to Israel, but the two corresponded and were married when her mother visited Israel a few years later. In 1984, when Portman was three years old, the family moved from Israel to the United States, where her father pursued his medical training. The family first lived in Washington, D.C., where she attended Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, but relocated to Connecticut in 1988, and then settled permanently in Long Island, New York, in 1990.Portman has said that although she "really love the States... my heart's in Jerusalem. That's where I feel at home."She is an only child and very close to her parents, who are often seen with her at her film premieres.

source

[karl 12]

AAARRRRHHHHHGGGGG !!!

Ha ha,yes the African food fact is a funny one.

Found these very interesting facts about life in Ye Olde England in the 1500s:

*Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June.

However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.

Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

*Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.

The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water,then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children.

Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying,Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water.

*Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals

would slip and fall off the roof.

Hence the saying .It's raining cats and dogs.

*There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house.

This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed.

Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection.That's how canopy beds came into existence.

*The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.

Hence the saying, Dirt poor.

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside.

A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway.Hence the saying a thresh hold = threshold.

*In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.

Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot.

They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme,Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old..

*Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.

It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon.

They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat..

*Those with money had plates made of pewter.

Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leak onto the food, causing lead poisoning death.

This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

*Bread was divided according to status.

Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

*Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky.

The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.

They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.

Hence the custom of holding a wake.

*England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people.

So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.

When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive.

So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse,lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.

Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be quite literaly 'saved by the bell'.

[karl 12]

Well, somehow it got leaked to wiki.

source

Thanks for the link-I guess we can scratch that one then!

Will you remember me when you're the Queen?

[karl 12]

Caligula never actually got around to making his horse a senator; he merely toyed with the idea.

Good one!

He still sounds completely bonkers though

[S2F]

Thanks for those karl. I always wondered about some of those.

[Ketzer]

Never believe "amazing facts" lists on the internet.

Many of the facts in the first post are just not true, I'd like to see a source.

[karl 12]

Never believe "amazing facts" lists on the internet.

Is that a fact?

[karl 12]

Accounts from Holland and Spain suggest that during the 1500s and 1600s urine was commonly used as a tooth-cleaning agent.

The first written account of the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, was made in 565AD.

Today there are almost a billion TV sets in the world.

Picasso could draw before he could walk and his first word was the Spanish word for pencil.

The first book published is thought to be the Epic of Gilgamesh, written at about 3000 BC in cuneiform, an alphabet based on symbols.

To save costs, the body of Shakespeare's friend and fellow dramatist, Ben Jonson, was buried standing up in Westminister Abbey, London in 1637.

Rodin died of frostbite in 1917 when the French government refused him financial aid for a flat, yet they kept his statues warmly housed in museums.

2 billion people still cannot read.

The one place where a flag flies all day, never goes up or comes down, and does not get saluted, is the moon.

A diamond will break if you hit it with a hammer.

A house fly lives only 14 days.

One in ten people in the world live on an island.

In the US, murder is committed most frequently in August and least frequently in February.

During the 6th Century, it was customary to congratulate people who sneezed because it was thought that they were expelling evil from their bodies. During the great plague of Europe, the Pope passed a law to say "God bless you" to one who sneezed.

When Alexander Graham Bell passed away in 1922, every telephone served by the Bell system in the USA and Canada was silent for one minute.

An exocannibal eats only enemies. An indocannibal eats only friends.

English sailors came to be called Limeys after using lime juice to combat scurvy.

In 1973, Swedish confectionery salesman Roland Ohisson was buried in a coffin made entirely of chocolate.

In the 6th century BC Greek mathematician Pythagoras said that earth is round - but few agreed with him.

Greek astronomer Aristarchos said in the 3rd century BC that earth revolves around the sun - but the idea was not accepted.

In the 2nd century BC Greek astronomer Erastosthenes accurately measured the distance around the earth at about 40,000 km (24,860 miles) - but nobody believed him.

In the 2nd century AD Greek astronomer Ptolemy stated that earth was the centre of the universe - most people believed him for the next 1,400 years.

Chevy Chase was a battle that took place on the english-Scottish border in 1388.

When killed in battle, Japanese officers were promoted to the next highest rank.

In 1894, Lord Kelvin predicted that radio had no future; he also predicted that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible.

Traffic lights were used before the advent of the motorcar.

Leonardo da Vinci never built the inventions he designed.

80% of millionaires drive second-hand cars.

Tourism is the world's biggest industry, affecting 240 million jobs.

The can opener was invented 48 years after cans were introduced.

Elvis was an avid gun collector. His collection of 40 weapons included M-16s and a Thompson submachine gun.

The harmonica is the world's best-selling music instrument.

Earth is slowing down - in a few million years there won't be a leap year.

There is no record of a person being killed by a meteorite but animals are occasionally hit.

Pea crabs (the size of a pea) are the smallest crabs in the world.

In Old Testament times the Mediterranean Sea was called the Great Sea.

There are 92 known cases of nuclear bombs lost at sea.

Since 1495, no 25-year period has been without war.

The doors that cover US nuclear missile silos weigh 748 tons yet open in 19 seconds.

[karl 12]

Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

[TheResearcher]

*There is cyanide in apple pips.

Not in the usual dangerous form though If there was, you would die from ingesting them.

[Purplos]

I've read conflicting reports about this one:

A spider web with silk strands the thickness of a pencil could stop a 747 in flight.

Also that spider silk is more effective at stopping bullets than kevlar.

[Mars Bonfire]

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

Tell that to those leg humping dogs!

[clockworkgirl21]

Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

Some primates do, too.

Is it really true your heart stops when you sneeze?

[karl 12]

Is it really true your heart stops when you sneeze?

Thanks for the replies -I think that ones a turkey:

Sneeze myths:

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/sneeze.asp

Edited May 16, 2009 by karl 12

[karl 12]

When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris in 1911,one of the people arrested on suspicion of its theft was Pablo Picasso.

He'd been implicated by his friend the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Both men were questioned and eventualy released.

[njade01]

Just to show my age:

Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam" in Casablana

I liked this one:

Swiss people eat more chocolate than any other person in the world.

Although it is no great surprise, have you tasted Swiss chocolate?

[CausticGnostic]

A very entertaining series of posts, karl! Thanks!

It just goes to show that reality is not only weird, but weirder than we usually imagine!

[April_Rose]

In Europe in the middle ages Animals could be brought to trial. They were given a full defense counsel and were prosecuted with the whole rigor of the law. Although the trials rarely went the way of the animals, there was one donkey that got off. In Toulouse, in medieval France, a man was charged with having sex with his donkey. The man was hanged. But the donkey was spared, after impassioned pleas convinced the court that she was not a willing or compliant victim.

[Shadowmalerenamon]

In Chinese the words for 'crisis' and 'opportunity' are the same.

Which words , there are many words for both crisis and opportunity

Crisitunity! lol