It's been a while....
Pretty interesting stuff, but quite useless to know.
Enjoy...
-----------------------------------------------------
The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan". There was never a recorded Wendy before.
On the Canadian two dollar bill, the flag waving over the Parliament Building is American. The Canadian two dollar bill is no longer in circulation.
A duck's quack does not create an echo. Nobody knows why.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War 2 killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo
The Roman Catholic Church did not acknowledge that the earth revolves around the sun until the mid 1990’s.
There have been fewer people below 2km in the ocean than there have been on the moon.
In October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Soviet nuclear submarine was under attack by 11 US destroyers and an aircraft carrier near Cuba. Against all orders from colleagues to launch its deadly payload, the Soviet naval officer refused - in fear of what would surely be the start of nuclear war. This was revealed 40 years later, by Director of the National Security Archive Thomas Blanton. In his speech at Havana, he said: “A guy named Vasili Arkhipov saved the world!”
45% of the dollar bills you'll ever own have been in a stripper's g-string.
On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and King Kong was his favourite movie.
The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet (9 Yards), before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."
When Bill Gates was searching for a city to setup a Mircrosoft campus in Asia, the Chief Minister of Hyderabad, India randomly approached him while Gates and his associates were walking towards their car. It was in that 1 minute walk, that the minister convinced Bill Gates why Hyderabad is the city he is looking for. Today, the Hyderabad campus is the largest Microsoft facility outside the United States.
Josef Stalin used to personally watch and approve every single foreign film before it would be allowed to watch in Russia.
Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
The original fifty cent coin in Australian decimal currency had $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive coin
S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was just chosen by a 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were the easiest to enter
S = dot dot dot
O = dash dash dash
S = dot dot dot
A high carrot consumption diet can make you turn orange! This discoloration of the skin is known as Carotenemia and is most common within Vegetarians.
The longest successfully guarded secret was the Chinese art of silk making 5000 years ago. They kept their secret for 3,000 years!
According to a British law passed in 1845, attempting to commit suicide was a capital offence. Offenders could be hanged for trying.
Highway 401 in Southern Ontario, Canada is the busiest motorway in the world. With 18 lanes in the Toronto area, it is also the widest highway there is.
In medieval Europe, fully armored knights raised their visors with their hand to show their face in order to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom is still maintained today in the form of the military salute.
In every episode of "Seinfeld" there is a Superman somewhere.
At impact with the Earth, the temperature of a lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the sun – 33,000 degrees Celsius.
Cricket - a game that is largely unheard of in the Americas - is the second-most popular sport in the world, after football (soccer).
Trousers (or pants) were originally worn by Nomadic Persian Horsemen and later by the Chinese and Turks. It was not until the late 15th- early 16th century that they became an acceptable form of clothing in Europe.
Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
Author