The original jimcofer.com FrontPage site used to have a “Fact of the Week” on the home page. I used to have a page on that site where I stored all the previous facts. This became the “Useless Facts” page on this site, but since I stopped updating the facts years ago, I decided to cut and paste the old page into a post and delete the original.
So here ya go:
– The Kid Loco remix of the Saint Etienne song “4:35 In The Morning” is exactly 4 minutes and 35 seconds long.
– The character “Fez” from That 70’s Show got his name from pre-production scripts, where he was referred to only as “Foreign Exchange Student” (abbreviated “FES”).
– Dennis Hopper really was inhaling nitrous oxide on the set of Blue Velvet.
– The scene at the beginning of Apocalypse Now when Martin Sheen put his hand through the mirror?? Also real.
– Every ten minutes, the National Security Agency destroys a stack of classified papers 6 feet wide, 8 feet tall and 60 feet long.
– The shortest war on record – between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896 – lasted just 38 minutes.
– Armadillos have virtually no immunity to leprosy and can easily transfer the disease to humans. (submitted by TNH!)
– 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321 (submitted by KCL!)
– Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots! (submitted by KCL!)
– Sideshow Bob (The Simpsons) and Jean Valjean (Les Misérables) have the same prisoner number: 24601.
– India was conquered not by the British government, but by the East India Company – a publicly-traded corporation based in London that had its own army, currency, and church.
– On November 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an “Honorary Harlem Globetrotter.”
– About 5% of Americans claim to have talked to the devil personally.
– A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
– At the height of inflation in Germany in the early 1920s, one U.S. dollar was equal to 4 quintillion German marks.
– The practice of naming hurricanes started in 19th century Puerto Rico, where the storms were named after the saint’s day in the liturgical calendar on the day the storm struck land. Source: The Charlotte Observer, 10/14/2002
– Greece’s national anthem has 158 verses.
– Ducks contain only dark meat.
– Georgia is the only state in the USA that did not elect a Republican governor in the 20th century.
– There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.
– A 1982 Burger King commercial with Sarah Michelle Gellar was the first TV commercial to ever mention a competitor by name.
– Chef Boyardee’s real name was Hector Boiardi. And yes, the picture on the can is the “real” Chef Boiardi.
– “Forty” is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order.
– You share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.
– Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house in 1840.
– A new Subway restaurant opens in the United States every three hours.
– Cranberry is the only flavor of Jell-O® that is made from real fruit, not artificial flavoring.
– No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple!
– One of Jennifer Connelly’s first film appearances was in Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake” video.
– A coat hanger is 44 inches long if straightened.
– A quarter has 119 grooves around its edges.
– In the UK, home values have increased by £1100 per week for the past two years! Source: ITV News
– It is unlawful to hunt on Sunday with any rifle, shotgun or handgun in North Carolina.
– By age 60, most people have lost half of their taste buds.
– No piece of paper can be folded in half consecutively more than 7 times.
– “Fulgurite” is glass created naturally in the ground by lightning strikes.
– The nighttime population of the City of London is around 6,000 people.
– Paris Hilton has size 11 feet.
– ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of the band member’s first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Annifrid)
– In Sweden, the monarch is always “the King”, even if she’s a woman! A queen is only the wife of a king.
– The House of Commons is the only house in the United Kingdom that the Queen is expressly forbidden to enter!
– Teddy Roosevelt once killed all 4 lions with a knife to save his dogs on a hunting trip.
– The only fifteen letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable”.
– Thomas Jefferson liked Jesus’ teachings but didn’t like the “superstitious bits”, so he re-wrote the New Testament.
– 25 percent of all British children aged 7-10 have their own cell phone! Source: ITV News
– A third of developing countries have a waiting period of 6 years or more for a telephone, compared with less than a month in developed nations.
– In 1914, Czar Nicholas II ordered one of every item from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue.
– The cooking staff on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan serve 18,150 meals daily.
– The flag of Hawaii is the only U.S. state flag to have flown over a kingdom, a territory, a republic and a state.
– The “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia is the only house Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever owned.
– Daniel Boone and Betsy Ross are the only 2 real people to be made into PEZ dispensers.
– The Atlanta Braves baseball team is the oldest continuously-operating sports franchise in North America.
– The shortest distance between two London Tube stations is 850 feet (Leicester Square and Covent Garden). Any able-bodied person can easily walk this faster than the Tube can carry you.
– Madonna is the first artist in history to have a simultaneous number one hit in every European country in every music format: single, album, download single and mobile phone ringtone.
– Porky’s is the all-time highest-grossing Canadian film at the US box office.
– The last scene of the film Silence of the Lambs takes place at South Bimini airport in the Bahamas.
– Reno, Nevada is actually west of Los Angeles, California.
– The Pittsburgh Steelers are the only NFL team that doesn’t own the rights to their own logo! (It’s owned by the American Iron and Steel Institute)
– Pittsburgh is the only city in America where all of the professional sports teams (the Steelers, the Pirates and the Penguins) have the same colors (black and gold).
– Sting takes in an average of $2,000.00 per day in royalties for the song “Every Breath You Take.”
– The skeletons in the “swimming pool scene” in the film Poltergeist were genuine human skeletons.
– Because passports are issued in the name of monarchs in countries that have one, and since a monarch can’t issue a passport to his\her self, Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t have a passport!
– Westminster Abbey is a “Royal Peculiar” and is “owned” by the British monarch. Therefore it is neither a cathedral nor a parish church.
– British Deputy Prime Minster John Prescott has never sent an e-mail.
– Keanu Reeves reportedly earned $259,600,000 for his roles in the Matrix trilogy.
– Original Survivor vocalist David Bickler (the “Eye of the Tiger” band) is the singer in Budweiser’s “Real Men of Genius” ads!
– Iceland had alcohol prohibition from 1915 to 1922. However, beer was prohibited until 1989!
– Prison Break was filmed at the now closed Joliet Correctional Center, a real prison outside Chicago. Lincoln Burrows cell was originally occupied by real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy!
– Whitman Mayo’s character “Grady Wilson” is named after actor Grady Demond Wilson (Lamont Sanford); ironically, Whitman died at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.
– On April 4, 1964, the Beatles held the entire top five in the US singles charts: 1. “Can’t Buy Me Love”, 2. “Twist and Shout”, 3. “She Loves You”, 4. “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, 5. “Please Please Me”.
– Until 1878, it was possible to live in the District of Columbia, but *not* in the city of Washington! The district was originally divided into Washington City, Alexandria County, Georgetown, and the County of Washington; the Organic Act of 1878 consolidated the governments (and their boundaries) into one city (Washington) in the District of Columbia.
– Bénédictine is thought to be the oldest continuously made liqueur; it was created by Dom Bernardo Vincelli in 1510, at the Benedictine Abbey of Fécamp in Normandy.
– “Canola oil” is a politically correct term made up to sell rapeseed oil in North America. The name is a portmanteau of “Canada” and “oil”, since much of it comes from Canada.