Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of the blue whale
Birds do not sleep in their nests. They may occasionally nap in them, but they actually sleep in other places.
The formula for cold cream has hardly changed at all in the 1,700 years since it was originally made by the Roman physician Galen.
Objects weigh slightly less at the equator than at the poles.
If the Earth was a non-rotating sphere, it would show equal gravitational values (values of g) at any point on its surface. However, the Earth is not spherical but elliptical, with a greater radius at the equator than at the poles. As a result, one might expect gravitational readings to be lower at the equator than at the poles. And, because the Earth is rotating, there is a tendency for objects to be thrown away from the Earth. This tendency is greatest at the equator and zero at the poles, reducing the gravitational attraction.
After Albert Einstein had been at Princeton for some months, local news hounds discovered that a twelve-year-old girl happened to stop by the Einstein home almost every afternoon. The girl's mother hadn't thought to ask Einstein about the situation until the newspapers reported it, but when she got the opportunity after that she did so. What could her daughter and Einstein have in common that they spent so much time together? Einstein replied simply, "She brings me cookies and I do her arithmetic homework."
One of the movie moguls the Marx Brothers had to deal with was Irving Thalberg of MGM. Purposefully or not, Thalberg had the annoying habit of making people wait outside his office for extended periods of time. One time he kept the Marx Brothers longer than they liked. When he finally got around to seeing them, he discovered they were stark naked outside his doorway, roasting potatoes in the lobby's fireplace. It was the last time he kept them waiting.
In 1500 B.C. in Egypt a shaved head was considered the ultimate in feminine beauty. Egyptian women removed every hair from their heads with special gold tweezers and polished their scalps to a high sheen with buffing cloths.
In ancient China and certain parts of India, mouse meat was considered a great delicacy.
In ancient Greece, where the mouse was sacred to Apollo, mice were sometimes devoured by temple priests.
In the United States, a pound of potato chips costs two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes.
Experiments 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. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by noise. The sounds cause their pupils to change focus and blur their vision.
According to many language experts, the most difficult kind of phrase to create is a palindrome, a sentence or group of sentences that reads the same backward and forward. 5 examples:
1 Ma is as selfless as I am.
2 Nurse, I spy gypsies. Run!
3 A man, a plan, a canal - Panama.
4 He lived as a devil, eh?
5 Red rum, sir, is murder.
Tibetans, Mongolians, and people in parts of western China put salt in their tea instead of sugar
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Topic: Strange & Useless Facts (Read 7166 times)