Facts you didn't need to know - Harvey Insurance Resources

Facts, you didn't need to know,...but they're interesting

"Almost any biographer, if he respects facts, can give us much more than another fact to add to our collection. He can give us the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders." Virginia Woolf (1882–1941).

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.
No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age or older.
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.
A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.
Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin.
The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.
Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.
Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
The three most valuable brand names on earth: Apple, Google, IBM, in that order. (2011)
It is possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.
A duck's quack doesn't echo and no one knows why.
Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second was William Jefferson Clinton.
Turtles can breathe through their butts.
Butterflies taste with their feet.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
On average 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
It's physically impossible for you to lick your elbow
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
A snail can sleep for three years.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
All polar bears are left handed.
In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
"Go," is the shortest complete sentence in the English language
If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall. Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100 of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
Almonds are a member of the peach family.
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt."
February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand; "lollipop" with your right.
The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
The Bible does not say there were three wise men; it only says there were three gifts.
The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).
There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
There are more chickens than people in the world.
There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."
There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewable Vitamins.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.
White Out was invented by the mother of Mike Nesmith (Formerly of the Monkees).
101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.
If you see a statue in the park of a person on a horse, and the 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 all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.
Almost everyone who reads this email will try to lick their elbow.
.....So, did you try to lick your elbow yet?

Subject: Old time education

Here are some facts about the 1500's:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would .get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a "thresh hold."

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."

And that's the truth... so, whoever said history's boring?

11.26.2012