Useless Facts

[Dar]

Because who doesn't love them?

*The longest recorded flight of a chicken was 13 seconds.

*If you pour a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

*Worms can mate with either gender.

 

[Keldeo]

how long I have waited for a thread like this
*In Germany, a QWERTZ layout of the keyboard is used (Y and Z are swapped) because Germans use Z more than Y.

*The word "you" appears 260 times and the word "I" appears 178 times in the 27 Beatles' US and UK No. 1 singles.

*47.5% of cremated human remains is phosphate, while only 0.0005% is tin.

*Beekeepers use color coding to indicate the age of queen bees.

*A chess game following standard rules can be mated in two moves.

 

[Spoon]

• Degus, a type of rodent, can not process sugars. This makes them prime subjects for diabetes testing.
• Kangaroos are incapable of hopping backwards.
• The state of Arizona does not participate in day light savings time.
• Youtube and Twitter are younger than TCoD! :O!

 

[TheBluejay]

More people are killed by cows than by sharks per year

 

[Worst Username Ever]

- Donkey Kong was originally meant to be a Popeye game, but Nintendo lost the license before the game was finished. But Miyamoto didn't want to give up on the game and replaced the characters with his own characters, making the game we know today.
- Ash and Gary from the anime - or in the Japanese version, Satoshi and Shigeru, are named after Satoshi Tajiri and Shigeru Miyamoto.
- Pokémon Black and White was going to have a Pokémon based of Dolly, the cloned sheep, but this was cancelled because it would be "too controversial"
- Ostriches can't walk backwards
- Pigs can't look straight up
- Sharks are the only fish that can blink with both eyes
- Golf balls have 336 holes
- Camels have three eyelids
- Shrimps have their hearts in their heads
- The name Wendy was first used in Peter Pan

I love useless facts.

 

[Murkrow]

All walkers crisps' best before dates are on saturdays.

 

[ultraviolet]

*Worms can mate with either gender.

this is quite misleading; worms do not always reproduce sexually, and even within the ones that do, not all of them are hermaphroditic! it kind of varies by species!
(also you mean sex, not gender)

More people are killed by cows than by sharks per year

people are killed more by most things than sharks, like cars or choking on food. this is like, one of my favourite facts.

- Ostriches can't walk backwards

neither can emus or kangaroos, which is one reason why they're on australia's coat of arms - they can only move forward! :o

- The name Wendy was first used in Peter Pan

The name is found in United States records from the 19th century; the name Wendy appeared over twenty times in the U.S. Census of 1880. In Britain, Wendy appeared as a boy's name in the 1881 census of England, and was occasionally used as a nickname for the Welsh Gwendolyn. However, its popularity as a girl's name is attributed to the character Wendy Darling from the 1904 play Peter Pan and its 1911 novelization Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie.[1][2][3]

but then 'first used' is kind of misleading, I guess if you mean used in a media text, then sure, that might work?

anyway, dogs drink by scooping water into their mouths with their tongues, but cats do this cool thing where they create a column of liquid and catch it with their mouths.

 

[LuckyLapras' Duck]

Kirby was first used to replace Popeye, and then Nintendo decided to use Kirby as a character. And

Spoiler: Kirby anime

in a dentist based episode of the anime, Kirby was forced to have a checkup, but no teeth were found

 

[Murkrow]

Kirby was first used to replace Popeye, and then Nintendo decided to use Kirby as a character. And

Spoiler: Kirby anime

in a dentist based episode of the anime, Kirby was forced to have a checkup, but no teeth were found

Not sure how true it is, but I heard what WUE said, that Donkey Kong was originally going to be a Popeye game. So wouldn't it make sense that Mario replaced Popeye, DK replaced Bluto and Peach replaced Olive Oyl?

 

[Kaithepokemontrainer]

-If you take ANY number, multiply it by 2, add 10, divide by 2, and then subtract the number you started with the answer is ALWAYS 5.
-Drinking blueberry juice improves memory.
-Eating a moderate amount of dark chocolate can be healthy for you.
-Dogs can die if they eat chocolate.
-Most people in the world's favorite color is blue.
-Dogs can smell the presence of autism,particularly asperger syndrome(which I have).
-Cats don't always land on their feet.
-Jellyfish don't have brains.
-Burmy are officially THE most hated Pokemon. Wormadam is the 11th most hated.
-In the bible, the book of Zechariah, chapter 14, verses 12 and 13, it basically says God will cause a zombie apocalypse(When I read this I freaked out because I'm a christian and zombies and spiders are my biggest fear...WHAT ABOUT ZOMBIFIED SPIDERS!?)

 

[RespectTheBlade]

If your family was to go back 10 generations, you would have 2046 ancestors.

 

[nothing to see here]

Not sure how true it is, but I heard what WUE said, that Donkey Kong was originally going to be a Popeye game. So wouldn't it make sense that Mario replaced Popeye, DK replaced Bluto and Peach replaced Olive Oyl?

You mean Pauline? Peach wasn't in Donkey Kong; it wasn't until the first Super Mario Bros. that she appeared.

 

[opaltiger]

If you take ANY number, multiply it by 2, add 10, divide by 2, and then subtract the number you started with the answer is ALWAYS 5.

This is just a simple arithmetic operation disguised by unnecessary steps. If you take 2n + 10 and divide by 2, you get n + 5; so of course subtracting n gives 5. There are much more interesting algorithms that aren't nearly as explicable.

Take the Collatz conjecture. Starting from any number, if it's even, halve it. If it's odd, multiply by 3 and add 1. Repeat the process and eventually you'll get to 1. And no one is quite sure why it works.

 

[sovram]

Take the Collatz conjecture. Starting from any number, if it's even, halve it. If it's odd, multiply by 3 and add 1. Repeat the process and eventually you'll get to 1. And no one is quite sure why it works.

that is really cool. I'm not really into number theory but it sounds like an extremely intriguing problem

 

[Frostagin]

Mew was the first Pokèmon trademark registered.

There are hidden default names in Red and Blue, 'NINTEN' and 'SONY'. This refers to the rivalry between Nintendo and Sony at the time.

...Yeah I spend waaaay too much time on Bulbapedia.

 

[Zexion]

Social Studies teacher last year had us look some up as a group. My group, of three people, compiled this list. what were we, bored?

Spoiler: super long list from class

• Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.
• The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
• All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
• No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.
• "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
• All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
• Almonds are members of the peach family.
• Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
• Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
• There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
• Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula". And can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
• A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
• An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
• Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
• In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
• Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
• The only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
• When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
• The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"
• A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
• On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
• The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
• Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? Paul Reiser himself.
• The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away (pretty good trick).
• In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
• The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

 

[opaltiger]

# A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
# A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

Not to rain on your parade, but neither of these are true. Some species of dragonfly, maybe, but definitely not all (and short lifespan is something I would much sooner associate with mayflies), and it's been shown that goldfish actually have quite good memory (for fish).

ETA: And I'm almost certain the aubergine one is false too. Aubergine is a (sub)tropical crop.

 

[Zexion]

Not to rain on your parade, but neither of these are true. Some species of dragonfly, maybe, but definitely not all (and short lifespan is something I would much sooner associate with mayflies), and it's been shown that goldfish actually have quite good memory (for fish).

ETA: And I'm almost certain the aubergine one is false too. Aubergine is a (sub)tropical crop.

Alright. Thanks for that. I'll remove them.

 

[LadyJirachu]

Jirachu is also the username I used here on the 2004 forum.

No one needed to know this :P

 

[Pig-serpent]

[*]No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.

I would like to argue that "Over" and "clover" rhyme with "silver".