Did you know?
 

We've all got them.
We've all told.
We've all heard them

Those usless fact that you hear at work, parties, and other social gatherings. Facts that you cannot live without.

Perfectly pure water does not conduct electricity.

Fred & Wilma Flintstone where the first couple to appear in bed on TV in the US

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you cant sneeze with your eyes open

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In theory a bumblebee should not be able to fly.

The world constipation record is one year (a doctor friend told me, although we were both drunk at the time...!).

Polar bears are left-handed.

There was another one I can never remember exactly about which way the water swirls down the plug hole, either side of the equator...

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The earth has 5 moons!

(And no im not joking)

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You can't whistle when you are laughing!

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Cats are the only felines who can purr whilst inhaling and exhaling.

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Where and if so linky please?
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Being able to curl your tongue is genetically inherited!

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swing chain means warm seat ;)

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Ah, maybe why the consipracy theories keep on being posted. Nobody knew not to look at the moon :p:

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answered here
http://www.earthsky.com/shows/listen...?date=20040112
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Did you know Robbie Williams is a smug talentless t*t
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Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant call Diamond Star.

The term the "Boogey Man will get you" comes from the Boogey people,who still inhabit an area of Indonesia. These people still act as pirates today and attack ships that pass. Thus the term spread "if you don't watch out the Boogey man will get you."

The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.

The only planet without a ring is earth.

The word posh, which denotes luxurious rooms or accomodations, originated when ticket agents in England marked the tickets of travelers going by ship to the Orient. Since there was no air conditioning in those days, it was always better to have a cabin on the shady side of the ship as it passed through the Mediterranean and Suez area. Since the sun is in the south, those with money paid extra to get cabin's on the left, or port, traveling to the Asia, and on the right, or starboard, when returning to Europe. Hence their tickets were marked with the initials for Port Outbound Starboard Homebound, or POSH.

David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

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Many years ago, dried manure was shipped as a kind of commodity. The problem was that if the sea became choppy or the waves were high, sea water would often get into the hold. This salt water, when mixed with the dried, packed manure, would cause gas creation (methane I think?), which was highly flammable. To combat this, the manure had to be stored higher up in the hold, to avoid it from mixing in the water that sloshed around on the floor. The bales were thuse marked "Ship High In Transit", which was abbreviated to...

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Guinea Pigs cannot be sick...

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...but pigs from Guinea can! How weird's that?

;)

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The earth has 2 moons...

I has 'The moon' and 'Cruithne'

It did have J002E3 for a bit but it has buggered off now. (animation of J002E3)

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Even if Ship High In Transit was actually stamped on boxes (which isn't likely) it is not the origin of the word **** which for most of it's existance had an "e" on the end anyway.
Likewise, the story about Fornicate Under Concent of the King is a load of bo11icks which also has nothing to do with genitalia and actually refers to priests (see Virgin Records court case over the Sex Pistols album title "Never mind the bollicks")

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I dont have a direct link, but it was on that QI program with Steven Fry. They were being rather mean to the contestants because in one series they asked how many moons does the Earth have - to which they all lost points for answering one - despite them complaining that it is called THE moon after all. In fact at the time they said - there were actually 4 moons in orbit round the earth - most too small to see with the naked eye but there all the same.
Then in the next series they asked the same question again - they all buzzed in and answered 4 becuase they had had the same question on the previous series, and they all lost points again much to the delight os Steven who proclaimed that there were now 5 moons as one had just recently been descovered.

There is an article on space.com about us having two moons but that was published in 1999 and is out of date.

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The version I heard is that they packed it in bales, and daubed S.H.... on the side of them. TBH I can't vouch for the truth of it, as I wasn't there!

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<#include std.links to snopes etc> for all those links debunking "facts" that are not at all factual :walk:

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An Elephant is the only animal with four knees.:)

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Not strictly an earth moon, more a large asteroid that has temporarily been 'captured' by earths gravity. It actually divides its time between orbiting the sun and earth in a horseshoe orbit. See space.com.

There could at any time be many 'moons' orbiting earth temporaraily, but a lot depends on whether you call them moons or asteroids or dust particles. ;)

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I call them 'Martin' :p:

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An elephant is the only mammal that cannot jump.

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Hippos can't either AFAIK

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Sorry, me283 - see next:

Quite right, Xaccers - the word actually comes from Old English 'scitan' to defecate (Chambers).

Another invention I'm afraid, David. The term is actually 'Bogey (or Bogy) Man,' not 'Boogey Man,' which seems to be an Americanism. I remember when I was a kid, the 'Boogey Man' spelling was never used in this country. It comes from an old word meaning 'goblin.'

Did you know that Columbus was wrong, very, very lucky and never discovered America?

The dispute in Columbus' time was not actually about whether the world was round (which was generally accepted then by educated people), but about its size. Two Greek philosophers had each calculated a different size for the world in classical times, and the dispute in the 15th century was over which one was right. Columbus believed that the smaller value was true, and hence that he could sail round the world 'the other way,' by going west, to reach India. You must remember that the eastern route to India was perilous then, involving sailing round the tip of South Africa.

So he tried it. He was wrong, however - the larger size was the correct value and if the American continents hadn't been there, he would have drowned in mid-ocean as a forgotten footnote in history. Lucky or what?

He landed in the West Indies, and that's why they have that name - he believed he had reached the easternmost islands of India. He finally died there, still convinced that he had discovered the western route to India, and never set foot on the American continent. So he really cannot be said to have discovered America - he never landed on it or even saw it, and believed he had reached India.

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Posh was a class of ticket on a ship, meaning, port on starboard home, to make sure you was on the shaded side of the ship.

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I love this forum ? :)

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Computers were NOT used in the creation of the 'guide' in the bbc hitchhikers guide TV series.... It's surprising that a lot of people STILL don't believe me when I tell them that.

In season one of the Tripods the main characters only 'meet' the tripods 5 times!!!

The Tripod city was (at the time) the biggest ever miniature that the BBC had built being over 1000 square feet in size.

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Yes, people forget that Star Wars, I think, was effectively the first film to use CGI.

The superb effects of 2001, for instance, were done entirely with models.

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The skin of a soap bubble is 10,000 time thinner than the breadth of a human hair.

Ants have five noses.

Octupuses have three hearts.

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Ants breath through there feet.

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I thought all insects respire through spiracles in their abdomens (and maybe thoraxes)?

This is the reason insects can never get very big. Recent research, apparently, shows that at times the Earth's atmosphere has had a much higher oxygen cntent than it does now. These are the periods when larger insects were able to flourish.

But the giant insects of SF films would generally be impossible, even in a pure oxygen atmosphere, unless they used a completely different method of respiration. And then they wouldn't be true insects any more...

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Just going of what the pest control guy told me :shrug:

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Roald Dahl invented the word 'gremlins' This has been disputed but I beleive it to be true so it must be correct..

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Looks that way, http://delarue.net/gremlins.htm ;)

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No :confused:

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The word 'gremlins' has been in use since the '40s at least. Remember that Twilight Zone with William Shatner keeping seeing gremlins wrecking the 'plane he's on?

It was certainly used by airmen in WWII.

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I think Patrick is right, marky, but flies & butterflies taste with their feet ;)

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They do indeed breathe via spiracles, but that's not the reason for the size limitation, about 12". Their breathing process is a form of diffusion, and if the insect were any bigger it simply wouldn't work. Mind you, even a stick insect is a bit worrisome when it's 12" long.

And as for those dragonflies millions of years ago - if birds had been around then, those monsters could've picked 'em off! Even today's dragonflies are intimidating - you know, those about 4 or 5 inches long? Imagine one of those a foot long! Scary or what?

Did you know dragonflies can fly backwards?

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LOL! That's why flies walk all over a lump of you-know-what going "mmmm, mmmm!" ;-D
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That's right, they do, don't they? And many insects can hover, which very few birds can do.

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No, it wasn't. They did use computer control for the cameras, but CGI back then was in its infancy and wasn't even called CGI at the time. They weren't the first to use computer control, either; 2001 was the first film to employ this, although they didn't use it to the extent ILM did.

The computer graphic displays were done by Dan O'Bannon, using the same techniques he used to such effect in Dark Star - not a computer in sight.

Boiler: "He told us this, uh, four years ago."
Doolittle: "No, I think it was four years ago."
(Boiler nods, then realises)
Boiler: "That's what I said."

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There are only thirteen blimps in the world.

Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.

The existing biggest blimp is the Fuji Film blimp.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Perriwinkle Blue.

Dalmatian dogs are born pure white, they don't start getting spots until they are three or four days old.

Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.

There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

"Video Killed the Radio Star" was the very first video ever played on MTV.

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Wasn't it John Lithgow? Loved him in 2010.

"Urrgh...if it has to taste like this, I don't care if my electrolytes are balanced or not!"

"Yeah, just don't lose that calculator."
Floyd casually pats his breast pocket. Then stops dead. Look of horror, shared by Curnow. Pats other pocket - nothing. Then, utterly straight-faced, Floyd shows the calculator was in his other hand all the time.
"S***. Please don't do that to me again."

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The bell outside the kremlin is called "the Csar Kolokol "

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Nope. Definitely William Shatner. Wasn't it one of the episodes revisited in the Twilight Zone movie? Maybe that's what John Lithgow was in. The original episode with WS was in 1961, I think. That's one of the great things about the original TZ - so many people played parts in it who only later became famous stars.

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Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.

Madrid is the only European capital city not situated on a river.

Pinocchio is Italian for †œpine head.ââ‚ƚ¬Ã‚ÂÂÂ�

The word †œqueuingà¢ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã‚ Â� is the only English word with five consecutive vowels.

The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

The two longest one-syllable words in the English language are †œscreechedà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚Ã⠀šÃ‚Â� and †œstrengths.Ãƚ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚à ‚ÂÂ�

Many Japanese golfers carry †œhole-in-oneââ‚Âà ‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ÂÂ� insurance, because it is traditional in Japan to share oneââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s good luck by sending gifts to all your friends when you get an †œace.âà ƒÆ’¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚ � The price for what the Japanese term an †œalbatrossà¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã‚Ã⠀šÃ‚Â� can often reach $10,000.

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On QI Jeremy Clarkson drove the Marathon course in rush hour, while an athelete ran it. JC lost by 8 mins

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Admiral Nelson suffered from sea-sickness.

Humming birds are the only birds that can fly backwards.

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There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, †œthereinà¢ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã‚ Â�: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, here, ere, therein, herein.

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

†œEvianâ € � spelled backvards is naive.

There is no such thing as naturally blue food, even blueberries are purple.

Soldiers from every country salute with their right hand.

If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.

English soccer club Liverpool were formed because their local enemies, Everton, couldnââ‚Ã⠀šÃ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t pay the rent for their stadium. Therefore Liverpool took over at the stadium (Anfield) and became Englandââ‚à ‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s top soccer team ever.

†œStudies show that if a cat falls off the seventh floor of a building it has about thirty percent less chance of surviving than a cat that falls off the twentieth floor. It supposedly takes about eight floors for the cat to realise what is occuring, relax and correct itself. At about that height it hits maximum speed and when it hits the ground itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s rib cage absorbs most of the impact. So throw your cat off a building today!ââ‚Ã⠀šÃ‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ÂÂ�

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Oh, right, I thought you were talking about the movie. I forgot it was a revisit. My bad.
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Did you know that arms races aren't unique to homo sapiens?

To explain: some species of bat home in on moths using their sonar in order to pick them off on the wing. However, some species of moth then evolved the ability to detect the sonar; the moth judges how close the bat is by the strength of the signal and, just before the bat strikes, the moth evades it. Effectively, the moth is watching its six.

Other species have taken this further, by evolving the ability to produce what can only be described as a jamming signal: they detect the vibrations of the bat's sonar and broadcast their own signal at nearly the same frequency, thus confusing the bat and giving the moth a few seconds' grace before the bat strikes.

Sooner or later, of course, the bats will probably evolve the ability to change their sonar frequency rapidly, to confuse the moths and thus regain the upper hand. And so on.
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Did you know that not only does the female praying mantis chew the male's head off while they're...at it..., not only does he carry on regardless, but in fact, he can't do the business unless she chews his head off. The action of eating his head triggers the production of certain chemicals which make fertilisation possible.

It seems rather extreme, having your head chewed off - and your body devoured afterwards, too - just for a bonk. Still, whatever floats your boat. :)

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In the words of Phillip J. Fry of futurama....
Fry: So you have to choose between a life without sex or a grousome death?
Zoidberg: Yes.
Fry: Tough call!!

Also, Did you know that 70% of statistics are made up on the spot?

The H.M.S Birkenhead (named after my hometown) is actually the origin of the phrase "women and children first" and not the R.M.S Titanic as many believe, the titanic incident happened around 60 years later.

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David, †œqueuingà¢ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã‚ Â� only has four consecutive vowels. There's more, but ICBA. ;-)

Not inappropriate, ZrByte! ;-D

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A nephalist is a teetotaler who denies it. :scratch:

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And the other 43% are worthless anyway :D

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Because of the way the Earth rotates, twice a year North Korea becomes South Korea and vice versa. This is the basis for Dubya including them in his phrase the "Axis of Evil".

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Did you know that there are more molecules in a glass of water than there are grains on sand in the world (according to S Fry QI)

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Of course, it can be spelled queueing. _Then_ it has five consecutive vowels... ;-)

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A cannon ball will float in a bath of mercury.

All mens nipples are 9 inches apart.
(bet you go and check now)

Liverpool has the largest cathedral and the biggest clock face in Britain.

Central Park New York was modelled on Central Park Birkenhead.

G.A Bell did not invent the telephone.

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I was going to mention this, the main reason is that it was the same man who was responsible for the design of both.

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Did you know:

The Lord's Prayer has 66 words,
The Gettysburg address has 286 words,
There are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence,
But the EU regulations on the sale of Cabbage totals 26,911 words.

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The first American couple seen in bed together where...


Fred & Wilma Flintstone

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yes. :D

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The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...) the percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

What trivia fact about Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) is the most ironic? He was allergic to carrots

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. Itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s where we get the phrase †œmind your Pâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢s and Qâ₠¬ÃƒÆ’¢â€žÂ¢s.ÃÂà ‚¢ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã‚ƚÂÂ�

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. †œWet your whistleââ‚à ‚¬Ã‚ÂÂ� is the phrase inspired by this practice.

In Shakespeareâââ€Å ¡Ã‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase †œgoodnight, sleep tight.ââ‚Ã⠀šÃ‚¬Ãƒâ€šÃ‚ÂÂ�

The worldââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

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Prove it.

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:shocked: How on earth can that be possible.
The majority of people havent even started puberty by then.

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A more likely explanation is that it comes from printing since p and q are very easy to mix up when the letters are reversed, so compositors were warned to "mind their p's and q's".