Okay, time for me to pull out my big book of obscure trivia!

A hummingbird is the only animal that can fly backwards.

26 astronauts have reported seeing UFOs while in orbit around the Earth during space missions.

A bolt of lightning heats the air around it to three times the temperature of the Sun's surface. It strikes the surface of the Earth with a force as great as 100 million volts.

The life span of a taste bud on the tongue is 10 days.

In 1879, the drug of choice to treat morphine addiction was cocaine.

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming one-tenth of a calorie.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

There are more stars in the Universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the world.

The total weight of a pigeon's bones is less than that of its feathers.

Rubber bands retain their elasticity longer if refrigerated.

All of the coal, oil, gas and wood Earth can produce could keep the Sun burning but for merely a few days.

If an octopus is hungry enough, it will actually consume its own arms.

The eye of an ostrich is larger than its brain.

The yo-yo is believed to be the second oldest toy in the world. The Greeks played with yo-yos as far back as 500 B.C. The oldest toy in the world? Dolls.

The collective noun for the kangaroo is mob; the frog, an army.

On the Leaning Tower of Pisa, six of the tower's eight floors are without safety rails. More than 250 people have fallen to their deaths since 1174.

If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan Project, your birth place is listed as a post office box in Albuquerque.

It costs more today to purchase a car in the United States than it cost Columbus to equip and undertake his voyages (plural!) to the New World. (Scary thought, that!)

In England, during Queen Victoria's reign, it was illegal to be a male homosexual, but not a lesbian. The rationale was that, when the Queen was approving the law, she refused to believe that women would turn homosexual. (And I'm thinking, "WTF, mate?")

A cubic mile of fog is made up of less than a gallon of water.

The dimensions of a standardised grave plot is 7'8" x 3'2" x 6'0". I'm not kidding.

The benchmark of a computer's compatibility with IBM's original PC has changed over the years. Back in the 1980s, it was not 100% compatible if it couldn't run Microsoft Flight Simulator for MS-DOS. Yes, a computer game was the benchmark for IBM compatibility.

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days on end, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat a single cup of coffee.

If solved perfectly, any Rubik's Cube combination can be solved in only 17 rotations.

The Hallmark company makes greeting cards for 105 different relationship types.

At the height of inflation in Germany in the early 1920s, a single US dollar was equal to four quintillion German marks.

Aluminum is strong enough to support 90,000 pounds of weight per square inch.

I think that's all for now...I'll be back with more!

BioKraze wrote:

Tamago wrote:

Looks like you are right.  I came from the docs yesterday and he confirmed that it is vertigo, I was surprised as I thought vertigo was just something some people get when they are at a great height.  I just hope I recover soon, I have to do a lot of bending over when I clean the insides of the cars at my job and the last thing I need is to have my head spinning all the time.

I hope you get well soon, Tamago!

Thanks I look forward to being able to lean over without wanting to collapse.

BioKraze wrote:

The Hallmark company makes greeting cards for 105 different relationship types.

105 of which are accounted for in the SKUniverse.

Ivy-chan wrote:

Dolphins can ejaculate through 15 feet of water.

I wonder what they did to find that out. ?

BioKraze wrote:

[
In England, during Queen Victoria's reign, it was illegal to be a male homosexual, but not a lesbian. The rationale was that, when the Queen was approving the law, she refused to believe that women would turn homosexual. (And I'm thinking, "WTF, mate?")

This thing is actually a bit older than Victoria - I believe it stretches to the 18th century, at least. The idea was that women don't have the knob A to push into hole B - yes, some people are that unimaginative. And it has inspired a conspiracy-theory of secret rule of aristocratic lesbians in the Great Britain since the days of Elisabeth I. Yes, you read correctly.

ahhh so that is the reason that in literature was allowed to portray lesbian women but not gay men... you always learn something new each day

Well, technically portraying any kind of erotica was strictly forbidden, but the writers were creative. You can find plenty of both male and female homosexuality in the Victorian novels, if you can get through the euphemisms.
I do remember being somewhat amazed when I read Carmilla, written in 1872, where the title character keeps swearing her love for the storyteller, another young woman, without any other characters being bothered, at all...

This actually inspired me to remember a bit of trivia of my own:

The first vibrator was invented in the Victorian era to be strictly used by medical professionals to calm down a hysteric woman.

Aren't there tribes (not sure if that's the right word) of primates where the alpha-male mounts the other members? Including, sometimes, the subordinate males. Although that's a ritual to show dominance, as opposed to seek pleasure, I guess.

Lightice wrote:

The first vibrator was invented in the Victorian era to be strictly used by medical professionals to calm down a hysteric woman.

I heard from somewhere that so many women were hysterical because women were taught to refuse sex. The doctors would do a "house call" to calm them down, but all the doctors really did was give them an orgasm to calm them down.

I bet someone could seriously cheat life by not going to school or working, but spending all day learning useless trivia, for years. o.o Then they could go on a bunch of game shows, win millions of dollars, and say "Take THAT life!"

Romanticide wrote:

Dani wrote:

Lightice wrote:

The first vibrator was invented in the Victorian era to be strictly used by medical professionals to calm down a hysteric woman.

I heard from somewhere that so many women were hysterical because women were taught to refuse sex. The doctors would do a "house call" to calm them down, but all the doctors really did was give them an orgasm to calm them down.

At least as far as I've heard, this is true. Look up vibrators on wikipedia. I know it's not that reliable, but I've read it in other sources as well.

Confirming the naughty business in the Victorian era. I should go dig up my copy of The Teaching Company's lecture series on Victorian England and see if they cover that. It's always been a little amusing to me...I guess we know what occupation Akio would hold in that era, eh?

Last edited by Giovanna (01-11-2007 06:31:12 AM)

Giovanna wrote:

Confirming the naughty business in the Victorian era. I should go dig up my copy of The Teaching Company's lecture series on Victorian England and see if they cover that. It's always been a little amusing to me...I guess we know what occupation Akio would hold in that era, eh?

Oh, yes, I could just imagine...

NURSE: Doctor, doctor!
AKIO: Yes?
NURSE: There's a patient on 10th Street and 6th Avenue!
AKIO: Well. Time for Doctor Akio to make a house call...

*starts giggling inanely*

Whoo hoo! Got even more trivia for your enjoyment! Here goes!

A human's eyes are always the same size from birth to death. However, our ears and nose never stop growing 'til the very end.

Only two words use every single vowel of the English alphabet in order (A E I O U): "abstemious" and "facetious."

A snail can remain in a hibernative state for three years before waking.

Almonds are classified as a member of the same family as peaches.

There are more chickens on Earth than humans. (Scary thought!)

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history to NOT have a full moon.

Sharks are the only fishes that can blink with both eyes.

Using a QWERTY keyboard, "typewriter" is the longest word to be made using the keys of only one row.

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the English alphabet. If I'm not mistaken, there is a second: "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz."

And for your further information, a jackdaw is a African relative of the common crow.

Hope to have more trivia next time, folks!