Bet You Didn’t Know!

Here are some very interesting things that you might not have known — fascinating revelations that ordinary people like you and me don’t normally know.

Actually, I cannot guarantee the veracity and accuracy of every entry, but who cares?

The titillating list makes for good entertainment!

* * * Things You Might Not Have Known

• Money isn’t made out of paper; it’s made out of cotton.

• The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickles the company once had.

• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

• The US Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

• A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

• A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why.

• 2x4 is 1 ½ x 3 ½.

• 40 percent of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

• The "spot" on 7Up comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was an albino.

• 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

• During the chariot scene in Ben Hur, a small red car can be seen in the distance.

• On the average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

• John Wilkes Booth’s brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son.

• Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system. A few ounces is enough to kill a small-sized dog.

• Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.

• Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.

• Most lipstick contains fish scales.

• Donald Duck comics were once banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.

• Ketchup was sold in the 1830’s as medicine.

• Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

• Due to the extremely high costs in California during the Gold Rush of 1849, it was more feasible for miners to send their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing.

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

• Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

• The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

• There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

• The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before!

• The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

• There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a $10 dollar bill.

• Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips.

• If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

• Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow a film down so you could see his moves. That’s the opposite of the norm.

• The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA.

• The mask used by Michael Myers in the original Halloween was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.

• The original name for the butterfly was "flutterby"!

• 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 first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

• By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can’t sink in quicksand.

• Casey Kasem is the voice of Shaggy on Scooby-Doo.

• Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. Sender: Em Arches

* * * Gold Bullion

Why is gold stored in the form of bricks? Why does gold, the epitome of glamour and glitter, show up in such an ugly and boring form? It’s rather inappropriate for its role as the metal of our dreams.

Ah, but not inappropriate for its role as the world’s most prominent embodiment of wealth and value. In that role we need to get as much of it as possible into small, absolutely secure spaces such as vaults. It’s a matter of geometry: bricks are the most efficient way to stack and store gold. You can bank on it. Sender: Os Perez

* * * Things You Don’t Normally Know!

• The citrus soda 7-Up was created in 1929; "7" was selected because the original containers were seven ounces. "Up" indicated the direction of the bubbles.

• Mosquito repellents don’t repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito’s sensors so they don’t know you’re there.

• Dentists recommend that a toothbrush be kept at least six feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.

• The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as substitute for blood plasma.

• A piece of 8x10 bond paper cannot be folded more than 7 times. Try it!

• 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 747’s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight.

• 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 from dead skin.

• The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.

• Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

• Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

• Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.

• All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn’t like wearing them in public.

• Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

• The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing his hands in jelly.

• Pearls melt in vinegar.

• It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year’s supply of footballs.

• Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second? William Jefferson Clinton. Sender: Renchi S. Arce

* * * More Interesting Trivia

• One in every four Americans has appeared on television.

• Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are 50 years of age or older.

• Adolf Hitler’s mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.

• Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

• Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

• The three most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

• 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. Circular stairs prevented them from going up. Sender: Bobbie

* * * Hey, I Didn’t Know That!

• "Stewardesses" is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.

• White Out was invented by the mother of the Monkee’s Michael Nesmith.

• A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

• In England the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

• To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaws, prick your fingers into its eyeballs. It will let you go instantly.

• Frank Sinatra never owned a pair of Levi’s.

• Look at your zipper. See the initials YKK? It stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the world’s largest zipper manufacturer.

• A mathematical wonder: 111,111,111 multiplied by 111,111,111 gives the result 12,345,678,987,654,321.

• Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".

• "I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

• The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. The ammo belts for .50 caliber machine guns measured exactly 27 feet before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole nine yards."

• The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

• Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

• A "jiffy" is the name for an actual unit of time–1/100th of a second.

• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

• The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.

• The "pound" (#) key on your keyboard is called an octothorp.

• The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

• Honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life. What about milk you say? A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living.

• Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.

• Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. That’s how we got the modern military salute.

• Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

• Hummingbirds are the only animals that can fly backwards.

• A cat’s jaw cannot move sideways. Sender: Shanice

* * * I Never Knew That!

• Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

• Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

• There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

• The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.

• A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

• Two-thirds of the world’s eggplants is grown in New Jersey.

• The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

• On a Canadian $2 bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag.

• All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.

• "Dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends in "mt."

• All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of a $5 bill.

• Almonds are a member of the peach family.

• Maine is the only state that is only one syllable.

• Los Angeles’ full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula" - and can be abbreviated to 3.63 percent of its size: "L.A."

• A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

• An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

• In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

• Al Capone’s business card said that he was a used furniture dealer.

• A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

• A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

• A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

• It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

• The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.

• You can see Abe Lincoln sitting in the chair (the Lincoln Memorial) inside the building on a penny.

• The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

• There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

• "Typewriter" is the longest word you can type using only the top shelf of the keyboard.

• Abe Lincoln’s dog, Fido, was assassinated, too. (He was stabbed to death!)

• In Chinese, the KFC slogan "finger lickin’ good" comes out as "eat your fingers off."

• A cockroach can live for 10 days without a head.

• European women didn’t wear underwear until the 1900’s.

• We shed 40 pounds of skin in a lifetime.

• Yo-yos were once used as weapons in the Philippines.

• Prince William once flushed his dad’s shoes down the toilet.

• Coca-Cola can be used as car oil.

• Mexico City sinks about 10 inches a year.

• Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth 1st’s mother, had six fingers on her left hand.

• The Australian term for going to the bathroom is, "Spending a penny."

• You blink your eyes about 20,000 times a day.

• Girls see better than boys in the dark.

• An average person has 696 muscles; a caterpillar has more than 4,000.

• The typical bed houses two million dustmites. Yuck!

• Brains are more active sleeping than watching TV.

• Ancient Romans and Egyptians used crushed tadpoles mixed with oil as hair dye.

• Blue is the favorite color of 80 percent of Americans.

• A giraffe cleans its ears with its 21-inch tongue.

• When a person shakes their head from side to side, he is saying "yes" in Sri Lanka.

• There are more chickens than people in the world.

• It’s against the law in Iceland to have a dog.

• The thumbnail grows the slowest, and the middle nail grows the fastest.

• Children grow faster in the spring.

• The only word in the English language with all vowels in reverse order is "subcontinental".

• 85 percent of people killed by lightning are male.

• Your body is 70 percent water.

• There are more telephones than people in Washington, D.C.

• The back of a sock is called a "gore."

• Beethoven poured ice water over his head before he composed.

• We’ve eaten 400 billion Oreo’s since they were first introduced in 1912.

• The Snicker’s bar is the #1 selling candy sold in vending machines.

• Add up all the numbers on a roulette wheel and the sum is 666.

• In Pakistan, it’s rude to show your feet.

• There are more plastic flamingos in the US than real ones. Senders: Audrey L. Tan and Erlyn C. Viaña

* * *

I’d love to hear from you! E-mail deeperdoor@yahoo.com or deropedero@hotmail.com. Should you want to pass on portions of this particular article, please acknowledge The Philippine Star Lifestyle Section, LIVING ALIVE by Dero Pedero. My book Jewels for the Mind, a collection of thoughts, formulas and affirmations for success, prosperity and fulfillment, is available at National Book Store, Powerbooks and PageOne, Rockwell. Thanks for all your letters and e-mail!