Enlighten us with your fun facts!

[BreakGuy]

Yes, I'm sure you have a few fun facts stored away somewhere. Whether they be serious, silly, random, useless or comedic, now's the time for you to share them with everyone.

I'll get the party started... Did you know -40°F is equal to -40°C.

 

[iStudentUK]

The first soup made by humans is thought to be Hippopotamus.

Canada was named by a conference in London, other suggestions included Victorialand and Transatlantica.

Ignorance of the law can be an excuse (at least here in the UK).

Humming is much harder when you hold your nose closed.

The Godfather Part II was the first sequel to win an Oscar for Best Picture, only LOTR Return of the King has done that since (although some say that was not a true sequel). I also believe Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only two actors to win Oscars for playing the same character.

 

[Gav2k]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Globally 155000 people die every day where as 275000 people are born.

 

[Shrink]

The expression "rule of thumb" originated in Colonial America. It referred to the right of a man to beat his wife with a stick, as long as the stick was no bigger than his thumb in circumference.

Along with this is the fact that women were considered chattel. That is, possessions similar to the man's horse, cow, or dog.

Real nice history.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Vaginae and Shark Livers excrete similar lubricating compounds.


Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until they are 2-6 years old.


40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.


Your feet are bigger in the afternoon than the rest of the day.


You are naturally radioactive for most of your life.

 

[iStudentUK]

The expression "rule of thumb" originated in Colonial America. It referred to the right of a man to beat his wife with a stick, as long as the stick was no bigger than his thumb in circumference.

I thought this was a misconception, and that it refers to the thumb being used as a primitive unit of measurement? Whilst it was (and in some places is) still legal for a husband to use 'corrective force' against his wife, I didn't think there was an actual law mentioning it. One English judge was reported to have said it, but there is little evidence of this and that doesn't make it law anyway.

 

[Shrink]

I thought this was a misconception, and that it refers to the thumb being used as a primitive unit of measurement? Whilst it was (and in some places is) still legal for a husband to use 'corrective force' against his wife, I didn't think there was an actual law mentioning it. One English judge was reported to have said it, but there is little evidence of this and that doesn't make it law anyway.

You are undoubtedly correct and thanks for the information.

I readily concede that my source (which I no longer remember - in fact, at my age, I no longer remember what I had for breakfast!) could well have been inaccurate.

Just to make the point that I did not assert that it was a law, but just a convention.

 

[tktaylor1]

40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.

Ah college, the good ole days.

 

[OneMike]

- Parts of Bill Gates house was designed using a Macintosh computer.

- If you opened up the case of the original Macintosh, you will find 47 signatures. One for each member of Apple's Macintosh divison as of 1982.

 

[Firestar]

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until they are 2-6 years old.

I knew this one. I feel smart now.

Most of these I've read online, so they may not be at all true:

1. Hippo milk is pink.
   
2. 1 in 5000 Atlantic lobsters are bright blue.
   
3. One town in Indiana is called Santa Claus. (I know this one is true.)
   
4. The correct term for a cat’s hairball is a “bezoar.”
   
5. In Chinese, the KFC slogan "finger lickin' good" comes out as "eat your fingers off".

 

[skunk]

I thought this was a misconception, and that it refers to the thumb being used as a primitive unit of measurement? Whilst it was (and in some places is) still legal for a husband to use 'corrective force' against his wife, I didn't think there was an actual law mentioning it. One English judge was reported to have said it, but there is little evidence of this and that doesn't make it law anyway.

The French for an inch is "pouce", which means "thumb" (a measurement almost exclusively surviving in Quebec/New Brunswick). This seems a far more likely derivation for a term meaning a useful approximation.

 

[northy124]

Ignorance of the law can be an excuse (at least here in the UK).

No it isn't, where did you learn that from?

 

[skunk]

No it isn't, where did you learn that from?

In a time when there are a huge number of poorly and/or hastily drafted laws - many of which even those who drafted them are unable to apply with any certainty - it is a fair defence, both in the UK and the US, to challenge the application of a law on the grounds that it is unclear what it means, or that it is self-contradictory.

 

[Jaffa Cake]

The collective noun for fairies is a 'herd'.

 

[iStudentUK]

No it isn't, where did you learn that from?

There aren't many examples (that I know of) but the easiest example I came across during my studies is in the Theft Act 1968. There is a defence of genuinely believing you had the right in law to take/keep something, and that is regardless of whether that belief was true and whether the law actually says something else. One example is that some people think 'finders keepers' is actually law, when actually it's not that simple, but they could use that as a defence to prosecution for theft.

---

Another theft related interesting fact- it is possible to steal your own property!

 

[srf4real]

A visitor to New York City is ten times more likely to be bitten by a native resident than likely to be shark bitten while swimming in the Ocean.

 

[skunk]

The collective noun for fairies is a 'herd'.

...and the collective noun for bankers is a "wunch".

 

[lewis82]

Vaginae and Shark Livers excrete similar lubricating compounds.

Similarly, there are very little physiological differences between an oesophagus and a vagina.

 

[r1ch4rd]

40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.

Ironing Board and Tea Cosy incidents are on the increase in the UK. You can query this database to find the actual statistics -- http://www.hassandlass.org.uk/query/index.htm

 

[MacRy]

47.68% of statistics are made up.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

. I also believe Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only two actors to win Oscars for playing the same character.

Kelsey Grammer is the only actor to have been nominated (and I think won) three different types of emmys for the same role. Guest actor, supporting actor and lead actor for Fraiser in Wings, Cheers, and Fraiser.

 

[Hellhammer]

Each sperm carries 37.5MB of data. One ejaculation can have a throughput of over 10,000TB.

 

[srf4real]

Each sperm carries 37.5MB of data. One ejaculation can have a throughput of over 10,000TB.

Why the heck are we all wasting money on hard drives and solid state then when a well placed hard on would suffice ???

 

[Jaffa Cake]

One ejaculation can have a throughput of over 10,000TB.

You won't get that much data if you only have a floppy, though.

 

[0000757]

I know a lot about company names.

The company name "Sprint" comes from "Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal Communications".

The Name Verizon comes from the Roman goddess of Truth Veritas & the word Horizon.

AT&T stands for American Telephone & Telegraph.

Vodafone is a combination of Voice, Data, and Telefone.

T-Mobile literally means Telekom-Mobile.

Samsung means "3 stars" in Korean. (their phones are more like 0 stars!)

Apple was named because it was Job's favorite fruit.

Microsoft was a combination of MICROcomputer SOFTware.