Did or do you know that [Archive]

sleepyy

01-23-2008, 10:30 PM

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1. Coca-Cola was originally green.
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2. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
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3.The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they
start with.
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4. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
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5. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
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6. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters
only on one row of the keyboard.
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7. Women blink nearly twice as much as men!

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8. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
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9. It is impossible to lick your elbow.
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10. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you
sneeze,your heart stops for a millisecond.
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11. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
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12. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the
toughest tongue twister in the English language.
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13. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try
to suppress
a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and
die.
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14. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from
history.
Spades - King David
Clubs - Alexander the Great,
Hearts - Charlemagne
Diamo*** - Julius Caesar.
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15. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
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16. If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front
legs in the air, the person died in battle.
If the horse has one front leg in the air,the person died as a result
of wounds received in battle.
If the horse has a all four legs on the ground, the person died of
natural causes.
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17. What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers
and laser printers all have in common?
Ans. - All invented by women.
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18. Question - This is the only food that doesn't spoil. What is this?
Ans. - Honey
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19. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
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20. A snail can sleep for three years.
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21. All polar bears are left handed.
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22. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive
from each salad served in first-class.
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23. Butterflies taste with their feet.
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24. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
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25. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
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26. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
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27. Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.
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28. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
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29. The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.
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30. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
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31. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the
body to squirt blood 30 feet.
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32. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could
have over million descendants.
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33. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in
your ear by 700 times.
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34. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
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35. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
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36. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.
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37. And finally 99% of people who read this will try to lick their
elbow.

Skiz

01-24-2008, 05:58 AM

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1. Coca-Cola was originally green.

False - http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/green.asp
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2. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

According to the sixth edition of The Columbia Encyclopedia (2000), Muhammad is "probably the most common given name" in the world, including variations.[14] It is estimated that more than 15 million people in the world bear the name Muhammad.
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3.The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they
start with.

Can't argue with that.
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4. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

Unfortunately, I cannot find any evidence that
this exact experiment has actually been done, or
at least the results published. Ideally, the
two muscles would come from the same animal, since
hearts and tongues could vary widely. In humans,
for example, tongue strength and endurance is
increased in trained speakers, trumpet players, etc.
Obviously, heart strength and endurance would be
increased in aerobically fit individuals.

Heart muscle is, indeed, considered muscle, albeit
a different 'type' than tongue muscle. There are three
types of muscle: striated/skeletal, cardiac, smooth.
Tongue is striated muscle, like almost all of the
muscles under voluntary control. Heart muscle
is cardiac. Smooth muscles typically control things
that are involuntary and squeeze: our guts, arteries, etc.

Strength and endurance are two different measurements,
as you point out. And they refer to what you'd expect:
Strength is how hard you pull, endurance is how long
you can keep it up. Interestingly, the endurance contest
is won by smooth muscle, which appears specially optimized
for very long hard contractions. Next, of course, would
be cardiac (heart) muscle, followed by striated muscle,
which would vary a lot depending on the particular muscle.

Incidentally, to perhaps confuse the issue further,
this website claims that
"...the strongest muscle of all is the masseter muscle of your inner jaw" (http://www.surry.com/muscles.html),
and, for an alternate answer,

this other website claims that "the muscles that can be considered to be the
strongest in the body,[are] those of the lower body, since, these muscles receive
the most strenuous work of any muscles" (http://www.msms.doe.k12.ms.us/biology/anatomy/muscular/muscular.html)
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5. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

Believed to be true. Found similar statements on several Almanac type sites.
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6. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters
only on one row of the keyboard.

Can't dispute that.
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7. Women blink nearly twice as much as men!

Hmm. I think this may have been inspired by studies of something called prepulse inhibition. Basically, everyone blinks when startled by a loud noise. However, if the noise is preceded by a quieter noise, the blink response tends to be less severe. In this test, women will blink harder than men. Not only that, lesbians will blink less severely than heterosexual women, and gay men will blink more severely than heterosexual men. (Since the response is reflexive, and not learned, many interpret this as indicating a biological cause of homosexuality.)

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8. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

True. You'll pass out and your body will resume breathing.
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9. It is impossible to lick your elbow.

False.

http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2701/444g7lz3.jpg
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10. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you
sneeze,your heart stops for a millisecond.

False. It's tradition. Long ago, they (mainly European nations) believed that when someone sneezed the body was expelling demons. By saying "God bless you" they were hoping to guard against the evil spirits entering the body again.
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11. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/6343/22193157jh6.jpg
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12. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the
toughest tongue twister in the English language.

OK...
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13. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try
to suppress
a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and
die.

True? I found a couple of cases on a medical related forum. I also wouldn't find it terribly surprising that one could burst a blood vessel; that isn't difficult to do.
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14. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from
history.
Spades - King David
Clubs - Alexander the Great,
Hearts - Charlemagne
Diamo*** - Julius Caesar.

False - http://www.snopes.com/history/world/cardking.asp
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15. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

True.
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16. If a statue of a person in the park on a horse has both front
legs in the air, the person died in battle.
If the horse has one front leg in the air,the person died as a result
of wounds received in battle.
If the horse has a all four legs on the ground, the person died of
natural causes.

Partially true, though only in relation to Gettysburg equestrian statues: If the horse has one foot in the air, the person was injured in battle, and later died as a results of those injuries.
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17. What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers
and laser printers all have in common?
Ans. - All invented by women.

Bullet proof vests were invented by a man - Norval V Cobb

Fire escapes were invented by a man - "The Fire Escape: On May 7, 1878, the fire escape ladder was patented by Joseph Winters. This was followed by the portable fire escape ladder, which was invented on November 11, 1890, by Daniel McCree of Chicago."

Windshield wipers were thought to be invented by a woman though the name is debatable.

Laser printers were invented by a man - "All of us who use laser printers today can thank the original laser printer, developed at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. That's where an engineer named Gary Starkweather figured out how to take Xerox copier technology and add a laser beam to it to come up with something totally new."
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18. Question - This is the only food that doesn't spoil. What is this?
Ans. - Honey

False. There are lots of foods which do not spoil. Refined white sugar is just one example.

I did find one article which claimed that honey had been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and was still good. Not that's proof.
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19. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

Probably True - Some sources say that crocodiles don't have tongues at all, while others say that the tongue is attached to the rest of the mouth. The first link below shows some good pictures of the inside of a croc's mouth, and it certainly does appear to be lacking a tongue that it could move around or stick out, but part of the wording on the page refers to "palate/tongue." The second link below is to the abstract of a paper about crocodile biology. While I don't have access to the full paper, the title is, "Salt Glands in the Tongue of the Estuarine Crocodile Crocodylus porosus," which certainly seems to indicate that crocs have tongues. So, my best guess is that crocodilians have a tongue attached to their mouth that they can't articulate.
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20. A snail can sleep for three years.

Probably True- Actually, it's most likely being in a suspended state of animation for three years, which isn't the same thing as sleep in the sense that we're used to, but it's close enough. I haven't been able to find what I'd call a good, reliable scientific source that confirms the three year claim, but I've seen many references to snails hibernating or going into torpor. Plus, the site below does mention a study where snails did hibernate that long in laboratory conditions.
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21. All polar bears are left handed.

True.
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22. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive
from each salad served in first-class.

True.
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23. Butterflies taste with their feet.

True.
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24. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Obviously false - turtles can't jump, neither can snails. Maybe it started out as the only "mammals" that can't jump," but I doubt rhinos or hippos can either.
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25. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

False - To give just one example, foxes have been domesticated this past century. I guess it also depends on what you mean by domestication - actually selectively breeding an animal to change its behavior, like that fox experiment, breeding animals in captivity, like zoos, or simply "breaking" a wild animal to make it work for people, like is done with wild horses and elephants.
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26. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

No data to support either way.
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27. Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.

True. There are lots more - http://shakespeare.about.com/library/weekly/aa042400a.htm
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28. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

True.
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29. The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

True.
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30. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

True - "Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist and former steamboat engineer, sees elderly drunkard touch terminals of electrical generator in Buffalo, New York. He is amazed at how quickly and apparently painlessly the man is killed and describes episode to friend State Senator David McMillan."
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31. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the
body to squirt blood 30 feet.

True.
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32. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could
have over million descendants.

:dry:
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33. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in
your ear by 700 times.

"The source of this idea seems to be a 1992 study from the medical journal Laryngoscope in which Itzhak Brook and William Jackson measured bacteria levels found on 20 audio headsets of the type provided on commercial airline flights. At the beginning of the experiment, the typical headset had 60 microorganisms on its surface; after an hour's use of the headphones by a volunteer, that number went up to 650 — roughly 11, not 700, times more. This could suggest that headphones make germs procreate like crazy, an icky enough image, but the authors say it's more likely that the heat and humidity created in the user's ears cause "resident organisms from the deeper skin layers and the sweat and sebaceous glands" to congregate out in the open, which to some might seem far ickier.

So we've got the general idea that headphone use for an hour = lots more bacteria, but where did that 700-times thing come from? Here we turn to the "Practical Traveler" column in the New York Times of January 3, 1993. Addressing the topic of germs lingering on airplane pillows, headrest covers, and headsets, writer Betsy Wade summarizes the Brook and Jackson report as saying their "research showed a 100- to 700-fold increase in bacteria" on the headset. Now, the Straight Dope staffers and I have turned that study upside down and can't fathom how Wade got her numbers. Whether they arose from a cryptic reading of the data, a misreading, or a proofreader's slip, it's of such that Internet factoids are born."
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34. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

False. "The first lighter, Döbereiner's lamp, was invented by Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner in 1823. It stayed in production until 1880.The first "match" was created in 1805."
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35. Most lipstick contains fish scales.

"Yeah, lipstick contains fish scales. Some lipstick, anyway. This could be the first E-mail factoid in the history of the Internet to have some grounding in reality. Sooner or later you knew something was bound to slip through.

The ingredient under discussion is called pearl essence. (Some sources give this as "pearlescence.") It's the silvery stuff found in fish scales that's used in some lipsticks, nail polishes, ceramic glazes, etc., to make them shimmery. Pearl essence is obtained primarily from herring and is one of many by-products of large-scale commercial fish processing. Synthetic versions have been developed, but to what extent they've supplanted the natural variety I hesitate to say. The cosmetics companies were not forthcoming and I got contrary stories from different industry observers. Fishermen still collect the stuff, though, and one presumes it's being put to good use."
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36. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.

Undetermined. Lack of research on the subject but possibly true.
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37. And finally 99% of people who read this will try to lick their
elbow.

Who knows? I didn't.