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You're right, Bob. I saw a lot of other than useless information there. If the criteria was who cares, I don't care if there is already a winner.
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In responce to the manhole question, Manhole covers are round because... the round shape (circle) will not allow the top cover to fall thru the hole...all other shapes would allow the top to fall thru...it was a saftey design measure.
Rick @ Trick
-------------------- Rick Whitmire Trick Communications & Signs Box 1124, Hudson, WI Posts: 132 | From: Hudson, WI | Registered: Nov 2002
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QUESTION: Is a Zebra white with black stripes or black with white stripes? ANSWER: Neither. He's invisible with black and white stripes, so you can see him!
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Packets of tim tams have 11 biscuits, yet some selected varieties only have nine.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
Almonds and pistachios are the only nuts mentioned in the Bible.
One of the holiest Christian holidays is named after a pagan goddess. The name "Easter" derives from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, who governed the vernal equinox.
Seven suicides are recorded in the Bible.
Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say 'many things' and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -- in many places -- refers to '40 days,' they meant many days.
The Hindu holy day begins at sunrise, the Jewish holy day begins at sunset, and the Christian holy day begins at midnight.
A single share of Coca-Cola stock, purchased in 1919, when the company went public, would have been worth $92,500 in 1997.
Americans spent over $360 million in 1982 to avoid having bad breath.
Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers were all invented by women.
Cocaine was sold to cure sore throat, neuralgia, nervousness, headache, colds and sleeplessness in the 1880s.
For two years, during the 1970s, Mattel marketed a doll called "Growing Up Skipper." Her breasts grew when her arm was turned.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting advertising space on his cows.
It was the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, CT, whose name -- and lightweight pie tins -- gave birth to the modern Frisbee.
In the 1700s, European women achieved a pale complexion by eating "Arsenic Complexion Wafers" actually made with the poison.
The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500's.
The first safety feature for an automobile was invented in 1908 by John O'Leary. He patented a large net, to be installed on the front fender, to scoop pedestrians out of the way before they could be run over.
The first toothbrush with bristles was developed in China in 1498. Bristles were taken from hogs at first, later from horses. The nylon bristles were developed in 1938 by DuPont.
Wrigley's promoted their new spearmint-flavored chewing gum in 1915 by mailing 4 sample sticks to each of the 1.5 million names listed in US telephone books.
An etiquette writer of the 1840's advised, "Ladies may wipe their lips on the tablecloth, but not blow their noses on it."
Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented in 1889, was the first ready-mix food to be sold commercially.
Fortune cookies were invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodle maker.
Haggis, the national dish of Scotland: take the heart, liver, lungs, and small intestine of a calf or sheep, boil them in the stomach of the animal, season with salt, pepper and onions, add suet and oatmeal. Enjoy!
Large doses of coffee can be lethal. Ten grams, or 100 cups over 4 hours, can kill the average human.
Mayonnaise is said to be the invention of the French chef of the Duke de Richelieu in 1756. While the Duke was defeating the British at Port Mahon, his chef was creating a victory feast that included a sauce made of cream and eggs. When the chef realized that there was no cream in the kitchen, he improvised, substituting olive oil for the cream. A new culinary masterpiece was born, and the chef named it "Mahonnaise" in honor of the Duke's victory.
McDonalds and Burger King sugar-coat their fries so they will turn golden-brown.
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs in 1853 by chef George Crum. They were a mocking response to a patron who complained that his French fries were too thick.
The daughter of confectioner Leo Hirschfield is commemorated in the name of the sweet he invented: Although his daughter's real name was Clara, she went by the nickname Tootsie, and in her honor, her doting father named his chewy chocolate logs Tootsie Rolls.
The world's costliest coffee, at $130 a pound , is called Kopi Luwak. It is in the droppings of a type of marsupial that eats only the very best coffee beans. Plantation workers track them and scoop their precious poop.
Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
Most men have erections every hour to hour and a half during sleep.
The average duration of sexual intercourse for humans is 2 minutes.
The average human body contains enough: iron to make a 3 inch nail, sulfur to kill all fleas on an average dog, carbon to make 900 pencils, potassium to fire a toy cannon, fat to make 7 bars of soap, phosphorous to make 2,200 match heads, and water to fill a ten-gallon tank.
The largest cell in the human body is the female ovum, or egg cell. It is about 1/180 inch in diameter. The smallest cell in the human body is the male sperm. It takes about 175,000 sperm cells to weigh as much as a single egg cell.
Dr. Seuss wrote "Green Eggs and Ham" after his editor dared him to write a book using fewer than 50 different words.
Frank Baum named "Oz" after a file cabinet in his office. One cabinet was labeled "A to N," and the second was labeled "O to Z."
A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
America's first nudist organization was founded in 1929, by 3 men.
Barbers at one time combined shaving and haircutting with bloodletting and pulling teeth. The white stripes on a field of red that spiral down a barber pole represent the bandages used in the bloodletting.
Catholic Popes who died during sex: Leo VII (936-9) died of a heart attack, John VII (955-64) was bludgeoned to death by the husband of the woman he was with at the time, John XIII (965-72) was also murdered by a jealous husband, Pope Paul II (1467-71) allegedly died while being sodomized by a page boy.
Hans Christian Andersen, Cher, Tom Cruise, Albert Einstein, Whoopie Goldberg, Greg Louganis, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Gen. George S. Patton, are (were) all dyslexics.
Men commit suicide three times more frequently than women do. But women attempt suicide two to three times more often than men.
More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.
The New York phone book had 22 Hitlers listed before World War II ... and none after.
Women shoplift more often than men; the statistics are 4 to 1.
"Ough" can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.
In 1945 a computer at Harvard malfunctioned and Grace Hopper, who was working on the computer, investigated, found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.
In the 19th century, craftsmen who made hats were known to be excitable and irrational, as well as to tremble with palsy and mix up their words. Such behavior gave rise to the familiar expression "mad as a hatter". The disorder, called hatter's shakes, was caused by chronic mercury poisoning from the solution used to treat the felt. Attacking the central nervous system, the toxin led to behavioral symptoms.
In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.
Oddly, no term existed for "homosexuality" in ancient Greece - there were only a variety of expressions referring to specific homosexual roles. Experts find this baffling, as the old Greek culture regarded male/male love in the highest regard. According to several linguists, the word "homosexual" was not coined until 1869 by the Hungarian physician Karoly Maria Benkert.
The "y" in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a "th" sound, not "y". The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England used the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".
The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
The term "dog days" has nothing to do with dogs. It dates back to Roman times, when it was believed that Sirius, the Dog Star, added its heat to that of the sun from July3 to August 11, creating exceptionally high temperatures. The Romans called the period dies caniculares, or "days of the dog."
The term "honeymoon" is derived from the Babylonians who declared mead, a honey-flavored wine, the official wedding drink, stipulating that the bride's parents be required to keep the groom supplied with the drink for the month following the wedding.
The term, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was, "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified is to poke someone's eye out.
The word "set" has the highest number of separate definitions in the English Language (192 definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary.)
The word gargoyle comes down from the Old French: gargouille, meaning throat or gullet. This is also the origin of the word gargle. The word describes the sound produced as water passes the throat and mixes with air. In early architecture, gargoyles were decorative creatures on the drains of cathedrals.
Phew... well, that was a lot.. I stumbled onto a trivia website the other day, and decided to go back to it when I saw this topic. Hope there are some in there that people haven't heard before
Kat.
-------------------- From Kat Johnston (previously Katie Wright, for those who can remember that far back) Posts: 530 | From: Brisbane, Australia | Registered: Feb 1999
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For those who have clicked on the Ohio Barns/Mailpouch link in Bill and Jane's post, there has been a Mailpouch Tobacco sighting in Dover, NJ. Need to confirm and get some pics.
More Trivia- Red Coats wore the color so commanders could hide blood letting wounds easier. This was to avoid panic among the troops during battle.
-------------------- Alan Ackerson LetterWorks Design and Graphics alan@ack2.com Posts: 776 | From: Oak Ridge, NJ | Registered: Aug 2002
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Good Job Bruce & J.T. I don't know anything about hockey, but I figured I would throw them in for our Northern friends. I know we have hockey down here, but it isn't as popular as the others. I only knew about the first five. Thanks for the additional three. So many people have a tough time with this question.
Ryan, Where do you learn such interesting stuff? Is it the people you hang out with?
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Randy If you Have any other shape with a smaller base/hole you could position the cover in a way that it could fall in the hole. A circle is the onty shape you cant drop in no matter what angle
-------------------- Ryan Young Indocil Art & Design indocil@comporium.net 803-980-6765
I highjacked Letterville!! Winter Muster 2004 Posts: 904 | From: Rock Hill, SC | Registered: Sep 2001
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[ May 14, 2003, 03:01 PM: Message edited by: Peter Schuttinga ]
-------------------- "Are we having fun yet?" Peter Schuttinga DZines Sign Studio 1617 Millstream rd Victoria BC V9B-6G4 Posts: 521 | From: Victoria BC | Registered: Mar 2002
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Alan's post reminded me of a joke. A British officer was captured by the French during one of their wars and the French were interogating him. The Frenchman asked him, "Why do you English wear red coats? Don't you know that we can spot you easily in the trees and you make a great target?" The stauch Englishman kept his cool and said, "Sir, the reason we English officers wear red coats is that if we are shot and wounded our blood is not as obvious, we don't alarm our men and we can fight on to victory." So now we know the reason the French wear brown pants. Jane
-------------------- Bill Diaz Diaz Sign Art Pontiac IL www.diazsignart.com Posts: 2111 | From: Pontiac, IL | Registered: Dec 2001
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Jane
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