The book of cool pointless facts

Chapter 2

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BlackGuitar000

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36. A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.

37. The 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.

38. Canadian researchers have found that Einstein's brain was 15% wider than normal.

39. The average person spends about 2 years on the phone in a lifetime.

40. The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

41. The largest number of children born to one woman is recorded at 69. From 1725-1765, a Russian peasant woman gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.

42. In ancient Rome, it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.

43. The bagpipe was originally made from the whole skin of a dead sheep.

44. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear. Any cup-shaped object placed over the ear produces the same effect.

45. Revolvers cannot be silenced because of all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.

46. Liberace Museum has a mirror-plated Rolls Royce; jewel-encrusted capes, and the largest rhinestone in the world, weighing 59 pounds and almost a foot in diameter.

47. A car that shifts manually gets 2 miles more per gallon of gas than a car with automatic shift.

48. Cats can hear ultrasound.

49. Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

50. The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

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

52. Children grow faster in the springtime.

53. On average, there are 178 sesame seeds on each McDonalds BigMac bun.

54. The Baby Ruth candy bar was actually named after Grover Cleveland's baby daughter, Ruth.

55. Minus 40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

56. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down -- hence the expression "to get fired"

57. Nobody knows who built the Taj Mahal. The names of the architects, masons, and designers that have come down to us have all proved to be latter-day inventions, and there is no evidence to indicate who the real creators were.

58. 7.5 million Toothpicks can be created from a cord of wood.

59. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

60. A 41-gun salute is the traditional salute to a royal birth in Great Britain.

61. The earliest recorded case of a man giving up smoking was on April 5, 1679, when Johan Katsu, Sheriff of Turku, Finland, wrote in his diary "I quit smoking tobacco." He died one month later.

62. "Goodbye" came from "God bye" which came from "God be with you."

63. February is Black History Month.

64. The elephant is the only animal with 4 knees.

65. There is no egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England nor French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

66.

We take English for granted . . . but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

67.

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

68.

And doesn't expecting the unexpected, make the unexpected.....expected?

69.

When the stars are out they are visible...But when the lights are out, they are invisible.

70. There is a murder every fifteen seconds