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A 747's wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.

A gallon of used motor oil can pollute nearly one million gallons of water!


Idling a car engine uses 1.6 ounces of gas per minute.  One half ounce is used just to start it.

Cook eggs with your cell phone!  Strange Secret


Light bulb inventor, Tommy Edison, feared the dark!  O.T. Smyzk, Prov., RI

Thieves rob 20 U.S. banks a day of an average $2,500 each!  Average thieves say they get less than that, but who can trust them!

Nearly 50% of bank robberies take place on Fridays.


DaVinci's Mona Lisa has no eyebrows! It was a custom in Renaissance Florence to shave them off!
L. Sosnowsk, Oxford, CT

Mona Lisa may have been pregnant! Pregnant women of her time wore the same shawl she wears. Her hairstyle, hands on her stomach, and dress color all point toward this. The painting may have been her husband's gift to her to celebrate her pregnancy.
Logan Bradley, Jamestown, RI

Tomatoes grow better if you mix a tablespoon of Epsom salt in the dirt when planting!

A Nobel Peace Prize depicts three naked men with their hands on each other's shoulders.
Tsk tsk!  J. Wilams, NY, NY


Cracks travel through  glass at 3,000+ mph.  No wonder it's so difficult to catch them!


One ragweed plant can spew a billion grains of pollen!  Achoo!

Medications  injure 1.5 million Americans annually!

Medication "mistakes" cost USA hospitals about $3.5 billion annually according to the Inst. of Med. Nat'l Academy!

One mile in every five of the USA's Eisenhower interstate highway system must be straight. The straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war, terrorist attack, or other national or state emergencies.

A "fortnight" (two weeks) is a contraction of "fourteen nights".  (Admit it, you always wanted to know!)

Bad credit can ruin you, but now, by law, once a year you can get free, "no strings" copies of your credit reports to check them: AnnualCreditReport.com

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Football is murder on cows! It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs!

 

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

 

Termites outweigh the world's humans
10 to 1!

Greeks in Sparta, at the height of its power, in 400 BC, had 25,000 citizens...and 500,000 slaves!

The first 20 African slaves brought to USA, were landed in the colony of Virginia in 1619, by a Dutch ship.

TOILETRIES

The first U.S. ship to have a flush toilet was the Union ironclad warship, Monitor.

The first toilet seen on TV was on "Leave It To Beaver"!

George II of Great Britain died on the toilet on 25 October 1760 from an aortic dissection.

Dentists have recommend that  toothbrushes be kept 6 feet away from toilets to avoid airborne particles created by flushing.

The Pentagon has twice as many bathrooms as necessary to meet local building codes!  Apparently there's a lot of crap going on at the Pentagon!

In the 1940's Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilets for blacks and whites!

A blessing is a group of unicorns.

A flink - twelve or more cows.

A crash - a group of rhinos.

A mob - a group of kangaroos.

A pod - whales.

A murder - a group of ravens.

A mess is a group of officers!

An exaltation - a group of larks.

A parliament - a group of owls.  Here, here...!

Every Seinfeld episode contains a Superman image!

Afghanistan is the only nation whose name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A"!

Toss a penny 10,000 times and it won't come up heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The head side is heavier, so it lands face down more!

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired." OUCH...!

How far would you have to go if you were to spell out numbers before first using the letter "A"?  To one thousand!

Copyright is automatically created the moment a work is fixed in form that can be perceived directly or with the aid of a device. A work must be "registered" however to bring a lawsuit for copyright infringement in the USA.

Copyright registration costs $20 and requires filing a non-returnable copy or copies of a work. It takes six to eight months to receive a certificate of registration.

Copyright lawsuits can take years to litigate and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to resolve through trial.

NY's 92nd Street Y is one of the USA's oldest Jewish community and cultural centers, founded in 1874.

Dylan Thomas in 1953 introduced his play for voices, "Under Milk Wood," at the 92nd Street Y after completing it while staying in the Y's residence.

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma made his New York recital debut at the 92nd Street Y in 1974.

The herpes simplex virus type 1 or 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) infects nearly 90% of the world population according to the World Health Organization. That means just about everybody is infected with the coldsore virus. This has been true since about 500 years before the Roman Empire!

Marijuana is illegal today partly because cotton growers in the 1930s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition!  Today, so does the alcohol lobby.

Each gallon of gasoline burned adds about 19 pounds of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere!

The average CEO makes 431 times more a year than the median worker salary!

It takes 2 YEARS for the average worker to earn what the average CEO earns in ONE DAY!

Expenditures by pharmaceutical companies on advertising and marketing outstrips research spending at most of the USA's top ten by two to one!

More than half of 170 researchers who contributed to the 1994 edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) had financial ties to drug companies.  (Anybody ever hear the term "conflict of interest"?  Or wonder why so many drugs are prescribed for silly stuff...)

A Nazi researcher, who got ticks to carry diseases in WWII, later worked at a secret U.S. Gov't lab on Plum Island, near Lyme CT -- where tick born Lyme Disease later broke out in epidemic proportions!  The potentially deadly disease has been spreading across the USA and Canada ever since!

Germany generated one third of the world's wind-powered electricity in 2007 and plans to triple its wind power capacity by 2030.  (President Bush...are you listening?)

Of 18,778 illegal aliens removed from the U.S. in June 2006 by DHS - 7,740 had criminal records!
     

POLITICS

George Bush celebrated his 59th birthday by running down a policeman with his mountain bike. Previously Mr. Bush crashed his bike on his ranch.  In 2002, he fainted and toppled off his sofa when he choked on a pretzel, and, in June 2003, he fell off a scooter at his estate in Maine.  And - Yes, Virginia, Mr. Bush really IS president of the most powerful country on Earth!

80% of votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes!

No federal agency has regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry!

Former chairman of ES&S, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, was elected by votes counted on his ES&S machines!  The Senate Ethics Committee later caught Hagel lying about his ownership of ES&S!

No paper trails are left by Diebold's touch screen voting machines! They generate no physical record to verify that data coming out of them matches what voters put in - even though Diebold makes thousands of ATMs, checkout scanners, ticket machines, etc. -- which create detailed paper trails!

Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states!

Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer, Jeff Dean, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree. He was convicted of planting "back doors" in software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection!

California banned the use of Diebold machines because their security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! See the movie here: http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov

All -- not some -- but *all* voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Governor Jeb Bush's brother, George, or Republican candidates!

FROGS

All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads!  Toads generally prefer warmer climates, have dry, warty skin and lay eggs in chains.

A group of frogs is called an "army". A group of toads is a "knot"! 

When a frog swallows, his eyeballs close and go down into his head to help force his meal down his throat! *GULP*

The longest frog leap we know of was 33 feet five a half inches!  A frog named Santjie did it at a frog derby held in South Africa.

If humans jumped as well as the average frog, they'd leap 100 feet in a single bound!

Frogs have been known to enjoy music...(this is not a "doctored" photograph)

The word "Checkmate!" comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means, "The king is dead."

Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."

Raisins placed in a glass of champagne keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom!

More Strange Secrets about....

PLACES WHERE THEY DO THINGS "DIFFERENT"

In Virginia, a statute passed in 1930 prohibits corrupt practices or bribery by anyone...other than a political candidate!  Apparently Florida, Louisiana, Chicago, Texas and a dozen other cities and states have similar statutes?

COFFEE

The word "coffee" comes from the Arabic word "qahwah", meaning wine: Not from the town of Kaffa, in Ethiopia (Abyssinia), as many have supposed.

A shepherd discovered the coffee plant when his goats suddenly got hyper, staying awake day and night. He traced their odd behavior to the eating of a strange new berry: coffee!

Coffee was first mentioned in literature by Rhazes, an Arabian physician.

As a crop, coffee was first grown almost 1,000 years ago in Ethiopia.

By the 1200's, coffee houses already had spread across the Middle East. By the end of the 17th century, they were popular in Italy, France, Holland, England, Germany, Austria, and many other countries!

Coffeehouses invariably became places where people met and freely discussed whatever interested or impassioned them.  Including politics...

Numerous powerful rulers, politicians, and religious leaders were threatened by this and tried to eliminate coffee houses. None succeeded!

Caffeine in coffee (as well as alcohol and the nicotine in tobacco) is more addictive than Marijuana!

Apples keep people awake better than the caffeine in coffee!

Both apples and caffeine, however, fall far short of the sound of  mortar fire.  U.S. soldiers and journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan claim it "instantly wakes one" in the morning and has an immediate "invigorating impact on one's psyche, bowels and bladder!"  Thanks, guys, but we'll stick with apples and coffee!

Thelma Pickles was John Lennon’s first girlfriend!

336 dimples dot the face of a regulation golf ball.

Want to ripen green fruit and vegetables faster?  Place them in a paper bag with ripe bananas!

KIO3 (kio3) tablets can prevent thyroid cancer from radiation, nuclear accident, even some "dirty" bombs!

Sold to foreign powers... control or ownership of U.S. airports, railroads, bridges, ports and highways! Eager to balance budgets for political gain, politicians are selling USA infrastructure!

Lamp oil gets label glue off anything!  T. Rasel, SK, RI 

Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.

The first plane flown at Kitty Hawk by the Wright Brothers, on December 17, 1903, was named "Bird of Prey"!

Strange Secrets about...

ANIMALS & FISH

Hummingbirds cannot walk!

99.9% of all animal species that ever lived on earth were extinct before the coming of man.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain!

Rats can live longer without water than camels!

Snails can sleep for 3 years!

Goldfish have a memory span of three seconds. This explains why few goldfish grow up to be physicists!

Porcupines float in water!  Word to the wise: Never swim with porcupines.

30% of people are allergic to cats, but now for $40,000 they can buy a hypoallergenic cats! The Allerca company breeds them to reduce allergy-triggering proteins.

Cats have a language of about one hundred vocal sounds, dogs just ten!

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear!  All the better to ignore you with.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

Mules: The U.S. has never lost a war in which mules were used!  This explains our problems in Vietnam and Iran.

The heart of a Blue Whale, the largest animals ever on Earth, is the size of a Volkswagon.  And, yes, Blue Whales are larger than the largest known dinosaur!

Oarfish (Regalecus glesne) are the longest bony fish in the world. Its snakelike body sports a spectacular red find along its 15 m. length!  It has a horse-like face, blue gills, and accounts for many sea-serpent sightings.

Cows can be led up stairs, but not down!

Coral's architecture and chemistry is so similar to bone that it has been used to replace bone grafts to help human bone heal quickly and cleanly.

CHICKENS

T-rex's closest living relative is the chicken!

450 million chickens populate the United States...more chickens than people (300 million)

Ameraucana and Araucana chickens can lay eggs in shades of green or blue!

The term 'Chicken Pox' comes from the Old English term 'gican pox', that means the itching pox.

To hypnotize a chicken: Hold its head on the ground and repeatedly draw a line with a stick or finger that starts on the ground at its beak and extends straight outward in front of it. The chicken will remain immobile for 15 seconds to 30 minutes, continuing to stare at the line.

Sir Francis Bacon, a founder of the scientific method, dropped dead of pneumonia in 1626 after killing a chicken and stuffing it with snow to see if cold would preserve it! Note-to-self:  Do not stuff chickens with snow...

The chicken came first! According to Genesis 1:20-22, the chicken came before the egg!  Honest!

Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey...the best fertilizer?  Chicken manure!

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In Texas, it's against the law for anyone to have a pair of pliers! This explains a lot about Texans!  R. Til, Lubbock, TX

In Providence, RI, it is illegal to jump off a bridge. You may, however, go jump in a lake...as long as you don't do it from a bridge!

In Philippsburg, Germany, EnBW nuclear power plant officials admitted in March 2006 that they lost the keys to the plant!  Sure, nuclear power is "safe"...!

In St. Louis, it is illegal to drink beer out of a bucket while sitting on a curb.  You may swill down beer by the gallon, however, if standing... or lying on the sidewalk and sucking it directly from a keg!  You gotta love St. Louis!

In North Carolina, it is against the law for cats and dogs to fight. (Couples, however, may fight like cats and dogs do in other states?)  Ms. Tappy Mullen, Rocky Mount, NC

In Massachusetts, it is against the law to put tomatoes in clam chowder. It is not against the law, however, to put clam chowder in tomatoes...although we advise against it!

In Nevada, no clocks keep time on casino walls...but plenty tick away the seconds on the walls of houses of ill repute.

In Pennsylvania, it is illegal for a man to purchase alcohol without written consent from his wife.

In Kienberg, Switzerland, night club owner, Benedict Frank, set a small paper flower on fire to show visiting fire  inspectors how safe they were. The resulting blaze burned the club and a neighboring restaurant to the ground. Bummer!

In Texas it is illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing.

In Vermont, by law everyone must take at least one bath a week.

Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote.

In Cleveland, it is illegal to catch mice without a hunting license!

 SLEEP

Getting up during the night to urinate may be a sign of sleep apnea because, when you stop breathing due to closure of the passageway between the back of the throat and the windpipe, the brain works extra hard to keep oxygen levels up. To do it, it sends signals to your respiratory muscles, especially the diaphragm, to work harder. This, in turn, causes pressure changes in the chest, which then stress the heart, causing it to secrete a substance that fools the kidneys into making urine!  There, now, aren't you glad you know?

Alcohol causes sleepiness and may help you initially fall asleep, but it causes sleep disruption later in the night and can actually worsen snoring and sleep apnea...and you know what that means!  (See "Gettimg up during the night..."")

Blood pressure meds:  If you need two or more medicines to control blood pressure, you may have obstructive sleep apnea. This is even more likely if you are overweight.

People with high blood pressure who have sleep apnea are known to have decreases in blood pressure and better-controlled blood pressure once placed on CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure masks worn to improve and prolong sleep)!

Exercise helps you relax and usually helps consolidate sleep, but exercising (or eating) within three hours of bedtime can actually disrupt sleep. Both activities increase chemicals associated with increased wakefulness.

SCIENCE & MATH

A typical lightning bolt is 2-4 inches wide, two miles long and five times hotter than the surface of the sun!

If the sun stopped shining suddenly, it would take eight minutes for people on earth to become aware of it!

If you add the numbers 1-100 consecutively (1+2+3+4+5 etc) the total is 5050.

Live minnows found inside a duck egg with no breaks in its shell baffled British biologists in 2006.  Dr M. Cobb and colleague, Henry McGhie, head of Natural Sciences at  Manchester Museum, wrote New Scientist Magagine in the hope readers could help solve the mystery!

Summer 2006 was the second warmest June-to-August period in the continental U.S. since records began in 1895, according to scientists at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center.

The speed of sound in water is 1,435 m/sec - nearly five times faster than the speed of sound in air.

Other Strange Secrets about...

THE PLANET

Earth is the only planet not named after a god.

Earth's longest mountain range is the 50,000 km Mid-Ocean Ridge, which spirals the globe. It stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic, skirting Africa, Asia and Australia, and crossing the Pacific to the west coast of North America. It is four times longer than the Andes, Rockies, and Himalayas combined!

Largest recorded tsunami measured 60 m above sea level.  An 8.9 magnitude earthquake in the gulf of Alaska in 1899 caused it to crash ashore at hundreds of km/hr.

A mouthful of seawater may contain millions of bacterial cells, hundreds of thousands of phytoplankton and tens of thousands of zooplankton.

Air pollution provides 33% of the toxic contaminants that end up in oceans and coastal waters.

Rivers and Streatms deliver 44% of toxic contaminants (mostly from soil run-off) to the world's oceans and coastal waters.

Three times as much rubbish is dumped into the world's oceans as the weight of fish caught!

Pressure at the deepest point in the ocean is 11,318 tons/sq m; the equivalent of one person trying to support 50 jumbo jets.

The top ten feet of the ocean hold as much heat as the entire atmosphere!

The lowest point on Earth is called The Challenger Deep.  It is 11,034 meters deep and is located in the Marianas Trench (western Pacific). If Mt. Everest were placed at the bottom, there'd be more than a mile of ocean above its peak!

90% of all volcanic activity occurs in the oceans.

DEATH AND DYING

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

Thirty-three Popes died violently!

17 assassination attempts were planned on the life of Adolf Hitler, none succeeded.

Referred to as "angel lust", post-mortem erection occurs when males die vertically or face-down – and remain in this position. Gravity causes blood to settle in the lower body causing edema (swelling)...you-know-where!

Don't laugh too much, it can kill you! Greek philosopher Chrysippus died of fatal hilarity after seeing a donkey eating figs. (Now THAT's funny - but "drop dead" funny?)

Die laughing:  50-year-old bricklayer, Alex Mitchell, from King's Lynn, England, was unable to stop laughing on 24 March 1975 while watching a kilted Scotsman use bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding in a demonstration of Scottish martial arts. After 25 minutes of unstoppable laughter Mitchell keeled over dead.  His widow later sent the cast and producers of the show a letter thanking them for making his final moments happy ones!

Queen Victoria insisted on being buried with the bathrobe of her long-dead husband, Prince Albert, and a plaster cast of his hand.

Dead skin makes up most of the dust particles in your house.

The Marlboro company's  first owner died of lung cancer.

Burials in America deposit 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid—formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol—into the soil each year!

Cremation pumps dioxins, hydrochloric acid, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide into the air.

Promessa, a Swedish company, will freeze-dry your body in liquid nitrogen, pulverize it with high-frequency vibrations, and seal the resulting powder in a cornstarch coffin that will decompose in 6 to 12 months.  This disposes of you, while enriching Promessa and supposedly saving the planet!

In Madagascar, families dig up dead relatives and parade their bones around the village in a ceremony called Famadihana. After the shindig, remains are wrapped in new shrouds and reburied. The old shroud is given to a newly married, childless couple to cover their bed. Oh joy,oh bliss!

Mummies were used as fuel for locomotives during a 19th century railway expansion in Egypt because construction workers unearthed to many of the pesky things!

Hair and finger nails continue to grow after death.

The "Spanish Flu" epidemic which broke out in 1918 killed more than 30 million people worldwide in less than a year.

The Black Death, in just four years (1347 to 1351) reduced the population of Europe by one third!

The children's song "Ring around the Rosy" originated in medieval Europe during the Black Plague. Rosey rings  appeared on the skin of infected people. "Pocket full of posies" refers to the belief that, if rose petals were carried in one's pocket, one would not be infected. "Ashes to ashes" refers to the burning of corpses. And, "We all fall down" meant everyone infected - died. Cheery little tune, isn't it?

Seven US presidents who died in office were elected at precise 20-year intervals.

The "SOS" (Save Our Souls) signal was adopted as the international distress signal in 1912. On April 15th, 1912, the Titanic, on her maiden voyage, became the first ship to use it when it stuck an iceberg and sank, killing more than 1,500!

Fourteen years earlier Morgan Robertson published a novel describing a similarly sized ship which crashed into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night...just like the Titanic.  The fictional ship's name?  The Titan!

You will die - if locked in a completely sealed room - of carbon dioxide poisoning before oxygen deprivation.

You will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death occurs in about 10 days without sleep.  Starvation takes longer.

 

WAR

Until 1933, German S.A. (Brownshirts) were equipped with revolvers and machine guns proudly embossed with 'MADE IN USA'!

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

About 100 UXB's (unexploded bombs) still lie fully armed under the streets of London. Their fuses have long since corroded.  Borough councils decided on a policy of 'Let sleeping dogs lie'.  But tred gingerly...?

The 'V FOR VICTORY' sign was created by Belgian refugee, Victor De Laveleye, who, in a short-wave broadcast from London, urged his countrymen to chalk the letter 'V' on all public places as a sign of confidence in ultimate victory. The BBC then plugged the idea in its numerous foreign language programs.  It was further reinforced by the famous two finger 'V' sign of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

The PEACE SYMBOL was first created as a nuclear disarmament symbol by the Direct Action Committee.  It was first shown in 1958 at peace marches in England. It is a composite of the semaphore signals N and D, which stand for nuclear disarmament.

The first atomic bomb used in warfare exploded on August 6, 1945, during World War Two.  The USA, on orders from President Truman, dropped it on Hiroshima, Japan, killing 140,000.

The USSR set off the largest nuclear explosion in history, detonating a 50 megaton bomb (2600 times the Hiroshima bomb) over the Novaya Zemla Islands, on Oct. 30 1961.

The first US Marines wore high leather collars to protect their necks from sabres, hence the name "leathernecks."

The launching mechanism on  an aircraft carrier could throw a pickup truck more than a mile!

The first shot of World War II in Europe was fired from the 13,000 ton German gunnery training battleship Schleswig Holstein in Danzig (now Gdansk). It was visiting Poland to honor sailors lost on a German cruiser, some of whom were buried in Danzig. At 4.30 am on September 1, 1939, the ship moved slowly down the Port Canal to Westerplatte (an area containing Polish troop barracks, munitions storage and workshops) and at 4.47 am, at point blank range, the order to 'Fire' was given.

'Nazi' is an acronym formed from the first syllable of NAtional and the second syllable of SoZIalstische. This practice was common in the Third Reich, another example being 'Gestapo' (Geheime Staatspolizei).

The Swastika is an ancient sacred symbol from near-prehistoric times. Before Nasism turned it into a hate symbol, it was a sign of good fortune and well-being. Its name is derived from the Sanskrit 'su' meaning 'well' and 'asti' meaning 'being'. It is well-known in Hindu and Buddhist cultures.

Huge forest swastika found!  In 1937 an ardent follower of Hitler planted a 3,600 square meter area of Larch trees to form a Swastika in a forest north of Berlin.  In Autumn, it stood out strikingly among surrounding evergreens, but could be seen only from the air.  Angry discoverers found and destroyed it in 2001.

Displaying the Swastika is forbidden in Germany, as is owning Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf', a copy of which was presented to all newly married couples in Nazi Germany. 
Oh, hush, my beating heart...!

On behalf of Hitler, wealthy American car maker Henry Ford accepted the German Grand Service Cross in 1938 from a German diplomat. So did the senior executive of General Motors (German branch) and wealthy and highly politically 'connected' American aviation hero, Charles Lingbergh!  Proving, once again, that "Good men are hard to find..."

Hitler told the truth!  The Fuehrer told Germans at the start of WWII, "Just give me ten years and you will not recognize your cities!"  He was right...

One war is never enough!  On the need to plan future wars, in 1939 Hitler said, "We must be sure to have an opening for a new war. In future peace treaties, we must therefore always leave open questions that will provide a pretext (for war). That's Statesmanship!"  No, Adolf, that's ...sick!

Biological weapons work began in 1940 in Britain. One idea was to impregnate cattle "cakes" (feed) with Anthrax and drop it by RAF planes to infect Germany livestock. Tests were carried out on flocks of sheep with devastating results. Five million such cakes were made...but never used.

Germany manufactured nerve gases during the war: Tabun, Sarin and Soman among them. Allied Forces found thousands of tons found in Austria after the war.

The League of Nations functioned throughout World War II, but did little, either before or during the war, to stop it.

The League's successor, The United Nations, came into being at a League session in the San Francisco Opera House.  The League of Nations officially passed into history on April 19, 1946.

The shortest war on record was fought between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.  By Jove, jolly good sport, old boy, and just in time for "tea"!

Benedict Arnold was the best general in the Continental Army and without him the colonists probably would have lost the Revolution! In 1775, the future traitor came within a whisker of conquering Canada. In 1776, he built a fleet and fought a bigger British fleet to a standstill on Lake Champlain. At Saratoga in 1777, his brilliant battlefield leadership forced the British to surrender. The victory persuaded the French to join the war on the American side. Ironically, Arnold switched sides in 1780, partly because he disapproved of the French alliance!  Ah, those FRENCH, again...!

George Washington was a great liar!  He ran dozens of espionage rings in British-held New York and Philadelphia, and was a genius at disinformation. He constantly befuddled the British by leaking lies through double agents, including wildly inflated reports on the strength of his army! So much for the man who supposedly "could not tell a lie"!

The total number of Americans killed in the Civil War is greater than the combined total of all Americans killed in all other wars.

History's first submarine attack took place in New York Harbor in 1776!  Resembling two large tortoise shells joined together, the sub called ""Turtle" was made of 6-inch-thick oak timbers coated with tar. On September 6, 1776, it targeted the HMS Eagle, flagship of the British fleet. It tried to secure a keg of gunpowder to the ship and sneak away before it exploded. But the Turtle tangled with Eagle's rudder bar, lost ballast and surfaced before it could plant the bomb.
 

Strange Secrets about....

THE HUMAN BODY

Three-hundred-million cells die in the human body every minute.

Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day.

The first-known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 BC. Yep, that'll do it!  That'll stop any sort of conception!

A cough releases an explosive charge of air that moves at speeds up to 60 mph.

A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 mph.

A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.

Babies are born with 300 bones: Adults have only 206!

There are 45 miles of nerves in the skin of a human being.

A fingernail or toenail takes about 6 months to grow from base to tip.

A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.

An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.

The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.

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.

Blondes have more hair than dark-haired people.

By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds.

By the time you turn 70, your heart will have beat some two-and-a-half billion times (figuring on an average of 70 beats per minute.)

Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.

Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.

Every person has a unique tongue print.

Every square inch of the human body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.

Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will

have lost 105 pounds of skin.

Humans shed and re-grow outer skin cells about every 27 days - almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime.

If you go blind in one eye, you'll lose only about one-fifth of your vision (but all your depth perception.)

Heart attack risk is higher on Monday than any other day of the week.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

It takes 17 muscles to smile --- 43 to frown.

Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system.

Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

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 human organ is the skin, with a surface area of about 25 square feet.

The left lung is smaller than the right lung to make room for the heart.

The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next to your temple, is called a tragus.

The average human produces 25,000 quarts of spit in a lifetime, enough to fill two swimming pools.

The feet account for one quarter of all the human bodies' bones.

The human body has enough fat to produce 7 bars of soap.

The human body has over 600 muscles, 40% of the body's weight.

The human brain is about 85% water.

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.

For organs to form during embryonic development, some cells must commit suicide. Without such programmed cell death, we would all be born with webbed feet, like ducks.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

Lynching or so-called "lynch-law" owes its name to James Fitzstephen Lynch, mayor and warden of Galway, Ireland, who tried, condemned, and executed his own son, by hanging, in the year 1493.  Ouch...what a way to become famous!

In the 1800's doctors reported slaves suffered from a terrible disease called "drapetomania" or an uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery!  Duhhhh...

Physicians also diagnosed slaves as suffering from another awful disease: "dysaethesia aethiopica" or the tendency to be disobedient!  Double DUHHHHhhhhhh...!

These are the same geniuses who in the early and mid 20th century "discovered" whites were genetically superior to blacks in cognitive abilities and that homosexuality was a "disease"!  So much for putting one's blind faith in "science", psychiatrists, and physicians!  Caveat emptor.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

The Greek national anthem has 158 verses.

There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

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

Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

Only four words in the English language end in"-dous"; tremendous, horrendous, stupendous and hazardous.

Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula"- and can be abbreviated to

3.63% of its size: "L.A."

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its

A Wonderful Life."

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

An American one-dollar bill has an owl in the upper left corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right corner.

4,000 years ago in Babylon it was customary for a bride's father to supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know today as the "honeymoon."

 

SAYINGS

P's and Q's -- Ale is ordered by pints and quarts in Irish pubs. So in old Ireland, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to "Mind Your pints and quarts!" lest they be spilt.  From when came the phrase, "Mind your P's and Q's!"

"Wet your whistle!" -- In Merry Old England years ago, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the handles of their ceramic mugs. For a refill, they'd whistle.

"Goodnight, sleep tight!" -- In days of yore, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes that were pulled "tight" to make the mattresses firmer to sleep on.  Thus the phrase, "Sleep tight...and don't let the bed bugs bite!"

"The whole 9 yards" --  W.W.II fighter pilots started this one. Their aircraft took .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts that measured  exactly 27 feet (9 yards) before being loaded to their planes. If a pilot fired all his ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards!"

"Rule of thumb" -- stems from an old English law which forbid beating one's wife with anything thicker than the husband's thumb, be it board or twig, strap...or iron rod!  Ah, the British, such a "proper" sort!

"Jeep" -- The word comes from a WWII U.S. Army abbreviation for a "General Purpose Vehicle", shortened to "GP"!
 

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INVENTIONS

Viagra:  Men worldwide now salute the working stiffs of Merthyr Tydfil, the Welsh hamlet where, in 1992, the gravity-defying side effects of an angina drug first popped up.  Previously, the blue-collar town was known for producing a different kind of "iron", but that's all over now!

Typewriters and Computers:  On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens annually, explaining why typewriters and computers had to be invented!  (As yet we have no statistics regarding pencil death rates or how they may have contributed to speed these inventions.)

LSD: Albert Hofmann took the world's first acid hit in 1943, when he touched a smidge of lysergic acid diethylamide, a chemical the Swiss scientist had researched for inducing childbirth.  Apparently he planned to make child birth a real "trip"?

The Electric Chair was invented by a dentist. Figures...

X-rays: Several 19th-century scientists toyed with penetrating rays emitted when electrons strike metal targets, but the x-ray wasn't discovered until 1895, when German egghead Wilhelm Röntgen tried sticking various objects in front of the radiation and saw the bones of his hand projected on a wall.  He did not live a long life...

Penicillin: Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming was researching the flu in 1928 when he noticed that a pesky blue-green mold had infected one of his petri dishes - and killed the staphylococcus bacteria growing in it.  All hail sloppy lab work!

Artificial sweeteners: Three leading pseudo-sugars reached human lips only because of sloppy lab procedures in which scientists forgot to wash their hands and licked them before cleaning up after experiments! Cyclamate (1937) and aspartame (1965) were byproducts of sloppy lab techniques in medical research, and saccharin (1879) was discovered during a project on coal tar derivatives.  Yum-yum.

Microwave ovens: Microwave emitters (magnetrons) powered Allied radar in WWII. The leap from detecting Nazis to nuking nachos occured in  1946 when a magnetron melted a candy bar in Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer's pocket!

Brandy: Medieval wine merchants used to boil water out of wine so their delicate cargo would keep better and take less space at sea. Before long, someone decided to bypass the reconstitution stage, and brandy was born. Pass the Courvoisier!

Cigarette lighters were invented before matches. (And cigarettes before smokers?)

Balloons were invented in 1824, the same year as the electromagnet.

Vulcanization:  Regular ubber rots badly and smells worse, unless it's vulcanized.  Ancient MesoAmericans had their own version of the process, which Charles Goodyear rediscovered it in 1839 when he unintentionally (well, at least according to most accounts) dropped a
rubber-sulfur compound onto a hot stove.

Silly Putty: In the 1940s, GE scientist James Wright was working on artificial rubber for the war effort when he mixed boric acid and silicon oil.  Voila! "Silly Putty" was discovered.  V-J Day didn't come any sooner, but comic strip image-stretching became a national pastime!

Potato chips:  To spite a customer who complained that his fries were cut too thick, in 1853 chef George Crum sliced paper-thin sheets of potato and fried 'em to a crisp.  The diner couldn't eat just one!

Other Strange Secrets

A "Gay Bomb" is an informal name for a potential non-lethal chemical weapon, which a U.S. Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing. In one sentence of the military document about the Gay Bomb, it was suggested that a strong aphrodisiac could be dropped on enemy troops, ideally one which would cause "homosexual behaviour". Sleep tight, America. You're in safe hands with the U.S. military. (We don't make these up...honest.)

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It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky. Which is why so few pigs ever try to fly...poor things.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

On average, a human being will have sex more than 3,000 times and spend two weeks kissing in their lifetime.

Rats and horses can't vomit. Just as well...

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have more than a million descendants. Which is why rats will inherit the earth before the meek do...?

If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. Try to suppress a sneeze, though, and you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.

Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented July 16, 1969 (since revised), made it illegal for U.S. citizens to make contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles?

A pin hole in a balloon grows at a speed much higher than the speed of sound in air, actually breaking the sound barrier, and creating a small sonic boom. At least that's what balloon manufacturers claim!

Pamela Anderson, Shania Twain, Keanu Reeves, Celine Dion, Alansi Morissette, Bryan Adams, Dan Aykroyd, Neil Young, Jim Carrey and Jennifer Tilley were all born in Canada.

Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. Sprays block a mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.

The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.

The king of hearts is the only king without a mustache.

American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

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

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

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

The word "samba" means "to rub navels together."

What occurs more often in December than any other month? Conception.

In 1982, Englishman William Hall committed suicide by drilling holes into his head with a power drill. You'll be elated to know...it took 8 holes!

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in W.W.II killed the only elephant in the Berlin zoo.

The glue on postage stamps in Israel is certified kosher.

A hurricane releases more energy in 10 minutes than all the world's nuclear weapons combined!

Five Jell-O flavors that flopped: celery, coffee, cola, apple, and chocolate.

Studies show a cat falling from the 7th floor of a building has about a 37% less chance of surviving than if it fell from the 20th floor. It takes about eight floors for the cat to realize what is happening and better orient itself for a survivable landing. I wonder how they studied this?

The Sun moves 165 miles a second. The earth moves 18 miles a second, and your bathroom toilet is on the earth. Think about that the next time you are about to pee.

The Atlantic Ocean is Saltier then the Pacific Ocean.

In medieval England, beer was often served with breakfast. (No wonder men lust after the "good old days"!)

At 90 degrees (F) below zero your breath will freeze in midair and fall to the ground.

Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.

Only female mosquitoes bite.

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

Men get hiccups more often than women.

Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better than men. No comment...

The percentage of American men who say they would wed the same woman if they had to do it all over again: 80%.

The percentage of women who say they would wed the same man if they had to do it all over again: 50%. Ut-oh!

Percentage of men who say the are happier after a divorce or separation: 58%

Percentage of women who say they are happier after a divorce or separation: 85%!

Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

There is only a 1 in 7 chances that a burglary in the US will be solved. Who says crime doesn't pay!

The only bird that can fly backwards: Hummingbird.

The youngest pope was 11 years old, which may explain a lot about the alleged infallibility of popes...

Scientists say the average person eats about 2 pounds of bugs a year; mostly because insects accidentally get ground up in foods like peanut butter, strawberry jelly, and spaghetti sauce. Diet, anyone?

Pearls melt in vinegar.

While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.

Pound for pound, hamburgers can cost more than a new car.

"Go!" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.

Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter

Edward Kennedy was suspended from Harvard for cheating on a Spanish exam.

Lorne Greene had a nipple bitten off by an alligator while hosting "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom." Wild, indeed!

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.

U.S. Interstates go north-south and are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates go east-west and are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.

Ancient Egyptian priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

What is the most popular registered boat name? Obsession.

More women wash their hands in the bathroom than men. Women ~ 80% Men ~ 55%

In a recent survey, Americans revealed that Banana was their favorite smell.

Women invented bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser printers.

A kiss stimulates 29 muscles and chemicals causing relaxation.

Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil.

3.9% of all women surveyed say they never wear underwear.
 

COMING SOON:   StrangeSecrets Index