[iAMfromHuntersBar]

Hi, I stole this pub ammo from Amazon.co.uk forums... really liked some of them and thought I'd share! :D

• In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
• Once picked from the vine a fruit ripens and a vegetable rots.
• Forty is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order.
• The average raindrop reaches a top speed of 22 mph.
• Statistically the safest age of life is 10 years old
• On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year
• The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
• The average person spends two weeks of their life kissing
• Typewriter is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard
• The colours and patterns you see when you rub your eyes are called pressure "phos-phenes"
• The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
• last year 652 people were killed by chairs ... only four from sharks.
• Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson".
• The first couple to be shown in bed together on TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
• In Shakespeare'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 "goodnight, sleep tight".
• Earthworms have 5 hearts
• An office desk has 400 times the bacteria as a toilet seat.
• The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing card!
• By recycling just one glass bottle, the amount of energy that is being saved is enough to light a 100 watt bulb for four hours
• Each year, Americans throw away 25 trillion Styrofoam cups.
• The three wealthiest families in the world have more assets than the combined wealth of the forty-eight poorest nations
• if you rearrange the words "Osama Bin Laden" you can spell "An Islam bad one"
• 40 percent of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals
• The chances of your dying on the trip to buy your Lotto ticket is greater than your chance of winning.
• the filming of the movie 'Titanic' cost more than the Titanic itself
• A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

Anyone got any other peaches to add?

J

[RickJ]

Sweet. I'll commit those to memory for when they accept me on Jeopardy :)
I'm a trivia junkie.

[NeedKarma]

Furiously.cleaning.office.desk.

[RickJ]

furiously.cleaning.office.desk.

Haha, don't forget the chair seat!

[shygrneyzs]

Eight spiders in my lifetime, eh? That is a great bit of information. The spider thing though... lol.

[RickJ]

I cannot verify the accuracy of all of these, but they looked neat.

1. That citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; "7" was selected because the original containers were 7 ounces. "UP" indicated the direction of the bubbles.
2. Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
3. Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.
4. The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
5. American car horns beep in the tone of F.
6. No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times.
7. Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
8. 1 in every 4 Americans has appeared on television.
9. You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
10. Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
11. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
12. The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
13. A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
14. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.
15. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
16. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."
17. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
18. The 57 on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.
19. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
20. Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
21. The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.
22. Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
23. Betsy Ross is the only real person to ever have been the head on a Pez dispenser.
24. Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
25. Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.
26. Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
27. All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
28. Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
29. The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in jelly.
30. Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
31. Pearls melt in vinegar.
32. It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
33. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
34. The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
35. It is possible to lead a cow upstairs... but not downstairs.
36. The average life span of a major league baseball: seven pitches.
37. A duck's quack doesn't echo and no one knows why.
38. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
39. Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters found in the word "criminal."
... >>> The second ? William Jefferson Clinton !

[RickJ]

PS - Mythbusters busted #3 :)

[RickJ]

What are those ridges in the middle of the upper lip called?

And besides orange, are there more common words with no rhyme?

[iAMfromHuntersBar]

Just to add to 21 - two of the biggest "Marlboro Men" died from lung cancer... oh, and cigarettes have up to FIFTY carcenagenic chemicals in them!

And to add to 39;

Every United States President elected or re-elected in 20-year intervals, beginning in 1840, has died in office: William Henry Harrison (elected 1840), Abraham Lincoln (elected 1860), James A. Garfield (elected 1880), William McKinley (re-elected 1900), Warren G. Harding (elected 1920), Franklin D. Roosevelt (re-elected 1940). Kennedy's assassination continued the pattern of the 20-year curse or the zero factor. However, the pattern was broken with Ronald Reagan (elected 1980), although he was shot in an attempted assassination on March 30, 1981, which he survived.

[Emland]

There are 2.5 twists per inch in a Twizzler.

February 1865 and February 1999 were the only months in recorded history not to have a full moon.

A standard book of matches contains 20.

A "librocubicularist" is someone who reads in bed.

"Kalewala," a Finnish poetic saga, devoted 400 verses to beer. Only 200 verses were devoted to the creation of Earth.

Each year, about 46 million Cokes, five million pounds of French fries and seven million hamburgers are consumed at Walt Disney World.

Approximately 20% of Americans have a passport.

In poker, an ace-king hand is called "Big Slick." That's because AK is the postal abbreviation for Alaska. "Big Slick" refers to the Exxon Valdez oil spill that took place off the shore of Alaska.

The eyes of babies don't produce tears until the baby is six to eight weeks old.

The herring is the most widely eaten fish in the world.

Dill seeds are so small that about 10,000 dill seeds are needed to make an ounce.

Sno-Caps candies were originally called Bob Whites.

The Eiffel Tower is painted approximately once every seven years and requires nearly 50 tons of paint each time.

Beethoven's last symphony was his ninth.

Mississippi is the poorest state.

The card game solitaire is also called Patience.

Research shows that only 43% of homemade dinners served in the U.S. include vegetables.

[iAMfromHuntersBar]

What are those ridges in the middle of the upper lip called?

It's called the Philtrum! :D

[alkalineangel]

Rick:

Philtral Columns are the ridges...

and words from wikipedia with no rhyme...
almond (Though 'diamond' forms a Masculine rhyme with it)
angry
angst
aspirin
bachelor
breadth
bulb—although the OED lists culb, a retort
chaos
chimney
circus
citrus
crayon
depth
different (whether pronounced as two- or three-syllable word)
dunce (close rhyme with "runts")
elbow
else
empty
engine
film
glimpsed
gulf (although in some dialects this is pronounced to rhyme with 'wolf')
(gulf rhymes with engulf, as in: "The fire engulfed the room")
hostage
iron
javelin
justice (only rhymes with proper nouns)
laundry
luggage
monster
month—disputed; some claim that oneth is a word, by analogy with second, third, while others note that the logical analogy is with "twoth" and "threeth". The mathematical expression "n+1th" is one place where this rhyme can be used. Also, millionth, billionth etc. The word Grunth, (alternative spelling to Granth) the name of the sacred scripture of the Sikhs, also rhymes.
mulcts
ninth
office
olive
orange (only rhymes with proper nouns)
pint (rhymes with obscure northern dialect word rynt, which means 'to stand aside')
pedant
penguin
pizza
promise (only rhymes with proper nouns)
reptile
rhythm
shadow
sculpts
silver
sixth
transfer
twelfth Can be loosely rhymed with stealth
vacuum
width with**

[RickJ]

Holy cow, I did not realize there were so many. Some of them seem so-so, though, as their last syllable has a rhyme.

Orange, Sculpt, Sixth, etc - with one syllable of an odd sound - to me sound like more true no rhymers.

[iAMfromHuntersBar]

More about the Philtrum from wikipedia (I thought it was really nice!);

According to the Jewish Talmud (Niddah 30b), God sends an angel to each womb and teaches a baby all the wisdom that can be obtained. Just before the unborn baby comes out, the angel touches it between the upper lip and the nose and all that it has taught the baby is forgotten.

Similarly, in other folksayings, it is said that an angel "shushes" the baby in the womb, to stop it from talking about heaven, or to forget. Other stories say that it is an indent left by the finger of God.