In eighteenth-century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.Ĭaesar salad has nothing to do with any of the Caesars. More people are killed by a champagne corks than poisonous spiders.ĭuring the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who wore a beard was required to pay a special tax. The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight, and always falls over on its right side when intoxicatedĪmount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $40,000.īanging your head against a wall uses 150 calories per hour. That is why your TV set has channels 2 and up, but no channel 1. In the 1940s, the FCC assigned television's Channel 1 to mobile services (two-way radios in taxicabs, for instance) but did not renumber the other channelĪssignments. There is approximately one chicken for every human being in the world.Įvery night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles (jaws) into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem, and, with legs dangling, fall asleep. Ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year.Īmericans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day. One-fourth of the world's population lives on less than $200 a year. Although they are rapid, they are not agile so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a Graves had forgotten to cut eyeholes.Ĭrocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. His pillowcase mask to find his way out the door. A customer recognized him, however, when Graves lifted up a corner of Ralph Graves entered a doughnut shop with a gun and demanded money from the cashier. If these were laid end to end they would circle the world nine times. More than 2 billion pencils are manufactured each year in the United States. The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words. Lightning strikes the earth 100 times every second. Than 100 years before either moon was discovered. In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. They may occasionally nap in them, but they actually sleep in other places. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.īirds do not sleep in their nests. If our sun were the size of a softball, the star Antares would be as large as a house. The star Antares is 60,000 times larger than our sun. In one of the great embarrassments of democracy, the voters of Picoaza elected the foot powder by a clear majority Pulvapies also ran well in outlying districts.įor a while Frederic Chopin, the composer and pianist, wore a beard on only one side of his face. The coastal town of Picoaza, Ecuador, was in the midst of a very boring election campaign when a foot deodorant manufacturer came out with the slogan "VOTE FOR ANY CANDIDATE, BUT IF YOU WANT WELL-BEING AND HYGIENE, VOTE FOR PULVAPIES." Then on the eve of the voting, a leaflet reading: "FOR MAYOR: HONORABLE PULVAPIES" was widely distributed. The sounds cause their pupils to change focus and blur their vision. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by noise. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.Įxperiments conducted in Germany and at the University of Southampton in England show that even mild and incidental noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. On a Canadian two-dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag. Tapley kept his word and his chin whiskers went unshorn from November 1860 until he died in 1910, attaining a length of twelve feet six inches.Įvery day more money is printed for Monopoly than for the US Treasury. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.ĭuring Abraham Lincoln's campaign for the presidency, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat named Valentine Tapley from Pike County, Missouri, swore that he would The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. In ancient China and certain parts of India, mouse meat was considered a great delicacy. It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World.Ĭlans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
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