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You
Could Learn a Lot From Crap
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| The
Monthly Droppings for January 2008: |
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Click on the category name to view more
trivia related to the topic.
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Animals
& People
A skunk will not bite and throw its scent at the same
time. |
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Arts
& Literature
The Grimm brothers (Jacob and Wilhelm), of Grimm's
Fairy Tales fame, were not storytellers but merely
collectors of fairy tales. The Grimms were
language scholars, and the stories were collected and
codified in the early 19th century as an exercise in
comparative German philology and grammar. |
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By The
Numbers
At 12:34 on May 6, 1978, there was a lining up of dates
and time that will not happen again until the year 2078.
On that day the numbers in the time were followed by the
numeric sequence of the month day and year. The
resulting sequence read 12:34 5/6/78. |
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Entertainment
Of all the cable TV channels, C-SPAN is available to the
most American viewers. |
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Food
& Drinks
Pez was invented in 1927 by Eduard Haas, an Austrian
antismoking fanatic who marketed peppermint-flavored Pez
as a cigarette substitute. He got the name for the
German word for peppermint: pfefferminz. |
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Geography
An estimated 90% of the world's fresh water is located
in Antarctica. |
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History
Christopher Columbus was never called Columbus in his
lifetime. When he was alive he was known by at
least five other names: Crisoforo Colombo (believed by
historians to be his birth name); Christovam Colom (his
merchant-seaman name while in Portugal); Christobal
Colon (His adopted name after he moved to Spain, and the
name he used during his voyages); Christophorus Colonus
(The name preferred by his son Fernando); and Xpoual de
Colon (The name that appears in his agreement with the
King and Queen of Spain before his first voyage across
the Atlantic). The name Christopher Columbus first
appeared in 1553 in a book by Petrus Martyr. |
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Miscellaneous
The hole in a pencil sharpener into which the pencil is
placed is called a chuck. |
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Science,
Technology & Inventions
Sound travels fifteen times more swiftly through steel
than through air. |
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Sex
Studies have shown that, as a general rule, men have a
tendency to fantasize more about scantily clad women
than about those that are naked. |
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Sports
The game of badminton used to be called poona. |
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The
Earth & The Universe
All of the planets in our solar system (including Pluto)
could be placed inside the planet Jupiter. |
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Unusual
Laws & Customs
In Idaho a citizen is forbidden by law to give another
citizen a box of candy that weighs more than 50 pounds. |
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Words
The magician's word "abracadabra" is actually an ancient
sorcerers' spell that historians have traced to the time of
the Black Plague. Amulets with the following
inscription were worn to keep the disease away:
ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB
ABRACADA
ABRACAD
ABRACA
ABRAC
ABRA
ABR
AB
A |
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Visitor
Submissions
In 1957, a bristlecone pine called "Methuselah"
was found to be 4,723 years old. It's believed
to be the world's oldest known living thing.
- Sgt. P. Jackson
If
you have some trivia you'd like to see here,
send it to spot@mindlesscrap.com.
I don't make any guarantees about the accuracy of
the Visitor Submissions since I'm not the one who
did the research.
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