Carol Bowman sent us this list as a fun thing to read to a friend in the hospital. It piqued my interest, so I started googling the statements and discovered the original source for this list.
Some of these statements are true, some are true but with caveats, and some are wrong. I didn’t check all of these, but have noted the ones I did check. Fun trivia, for sure. I did check snopes. com to see if they knew about this list. I have to say that I grew disenchanted with snopes when we were writing Synchronicity Highway and found that snopes dismissed the JFK/Lincoln parallels outright, basically writing them off to random weirdness. I think snopes is actually a skeptic site. That said, here’s their take on this list.
For the sake of brevity, I’ve eliminated some of the items on the original list. Feel free to find your own supportive or contradictory evidence as to what’s true – and what isn’t!
A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. – Yes, but in the outer ears.
A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue. True
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds. True but…It turns out to be about 5 months.
A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours. Well, no.
A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A snail can sleep for three years. Apparently true.
Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer. Sounds about right, like John Gotti calling himself a plumber.
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. True
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age. Sort of true.
Butterflies taste with their feet. True!
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. True.
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. Didn’t check this, but it sure feels true!
It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. DaVinci invented a lot of things, but not the scissors.
Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The Peanut is one of the ingredients of dynamite .
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. True
“Stewardesses” is the longest word typed with only the left hand and “lollipop” with your right. The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
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. I believe that Niagra Falls – or parts of it- also froze this past winter.
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 T
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance. Well, maybe and maybe not. If you google this, you’ll find that he was – and that he wasn’t.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.
NOW you know everything
Fascinating to read. Apt for a hospital visit too, gets your mind onto a different plane.
This is fascinating! I mentioned in an email to the Macs yesterday about the one that states dogs make only about ten sounds. That one made me chuckle. Although our young black Lab is not a “yappy” dog or what many would term a “nuisance barker”, she is incredibly vocal, and makes at the very least 18 or 20 different sounds from day to day. She has barks, yips, whines, growls, whimpers, hisses, gggrrrrrs, howls ,meows like a cat when the cat is in the house, and several strange sounds that seem to be words. She has sounds for pretty much everything that goes on in her world. I can pretty easily determine what she is thinking by listening to her “dog speak”. It’s a definite language! The other one on the list is “silver” not having a word that rhymes with it. Does “sliver” not rhyme with silver? This is a fun list! And informative!
I didn’t realize the comments on this post were off. Sorry! Now they’re on!