I love learning all sorts of new and random things so I thought it would be cool if we had a thread to share all the crazy facts we learn!

For instance, I found out yesterday that there are approximately 1.6 millions ants for every human being on this planet. This is disgusting but so cool because ants are all about claiming territory and this is how they do it!

So please feel free to post and share your facts with the rest of the forum! :razz:

don't we already had one similar thread?

or rather... two actually...

http://www.isketchforum.net/did-you-know-t2033.html
http://www.isketchforum.net/well-never-knew-t3076.html

Aww. I promise I did look first, just not very well it seems :(

Someone with power feel please free to delete thissssssss.

TBH this thread is probably easier as we're not necroing old threads or whatever it's called.

Uhhh... Random fact.

A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.

The Head of State of Japan, Akihito, is the only remaining emperor in the world.

Btw, do these random facts have to be true?

Lol. Facts are supposed to be true? de facto?

Titin, the largest known protein, is also the longest word in any language.

(The full chemical name is 189,819 letters long.)

You inherit mitochondrial DNA only from your mother.


For random facts do have a look at http://atlasobscura.com/

One of my favorite sites on the web.

Heh, nice idea for a new thread. You never know, one of these random facts might come up in a pub quiz or such like.

Saying that, my random fact comes from a question in the most recent pub quiz I went to.

RFact: The longest ever film title has 42 words. This is the full title.

"Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D"
Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Day_of_the_Dawn_of_the_Son_of_the_Bri de_of_the_Return_of_the_Revenge_of_the_Terror_of_t he_Attack_of_the_Evil,_Mutant,_Alien,_Flesh_Eating ,_Hellbound,_Zombified_Living_Dead_Part_2:_In_Shoc king_2-D)

i know nothing :(
except. 1) db is oddone number one and 2) sparrow is oddone number 2 and 3) i so tired......

A female ferret will die if she is not mated with :(

Haha, they sure do! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKWCz0YhmcY

Apples are more efficient at waking you up in the morning than coffee.

The first product to have a bar-code was gum.

Mosquitos are repelled by banana.

Ha. You love females ;D

Over hundreds of years, thousands of ostriches have been watched by researchers and there hasn't been one single recorded case of an ostrich burying it's head in the sand.

The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!

So jealous! ...Except that I don't have four feet... But that's so cool!

A shark has to keep moving in the water. If it stays still or is dragged backwards through water, it drowns.

A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.

Always wondered why this was the case and now I know!

A chicken with red earlobes will produce brown eggs, and a chicken with white earlobes will produce white eggs.

London Underground: The Northern Line is the line that stretches furthest south.

Thank you for that! I've always wanted to know. Can act like a smart farmer dude now ;D

During good sex, endorphins are released, which are powerful painkillers. So headaches are in fact a bad excuse not to have sex.

Headaches are a bad excuse not to have good sex. Not just any sex. :P


If a statue of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, then the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air then the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the Horse has all four legs on the ground, then the person died of natural causes

In the past, when a clan no longer wanted a member in it, they would burn down their house. This is where the expression “to get fired” comes from.

Following on from 830's London Underground post, the Circle Line (http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45537000/jpg/_45537957_circleonly.jpg) is no longer a circle!

"Typewriter" is the longest English word that can be typed using only the top row of keys on a standard computer keyboard.

"Stewardesses" is the longest English word that can be typed using only the left hand on the keyboard.

Black sheep have a better sense of smell than white sheep

The Guinness Book Of Records holds the record for being the book most stolen from public libraries.

Werner Heisenberg, the man behind the uncertainty principle has an epitaph that reads :

"He Lies Somewhere There"

In space, no one can hear you cry. Because you can’t. Astronauts are unable to cry properly because there is no gravity and tears cannot flow properly as they would on Earth. It is possible to produce tears in space – but they would leave the eye and float around.

Male bats have the highest rate of homosexuality of any mammal.

Forasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls (grosses pelotes de pee) from which many evils may arise which God forbid; we command and forbid, on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future.

Football was banned in England from 1314 to 1667, by decree of nearly 30 mandates.

The future of the tomato was decided at a Supreme Court due to imposition of a tax upon vegetables but not fruit. The judge ruled that the tomato be classified according to it's everyday purpose as a vegetable rather than it's more accurate botanical group.

The aftermath of World War One finally drew to a close yesterday when Germany paid off the last of its reparations, 91 years after the Treaty of Versailles, which instigated it.

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. The frog then uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

So gross but also so cool at the same time!

New Zealand has a strong hold on the international trade in sheep meat. There are presently around 9 sheep to every 1 human in New Zealand (the population of New Zealand is 4 million).

Thought I would add this in for a certain American who loves his sheep jokes.

If you took a tennis racquet, and took all the strings out, and split them all down the centres, and laid them end to end ...

... you wouldn't be able to play tennis, as your racquet would be broken.

New Zealand has a strong hold on the international trade in sheep meat. There are presently around 9 sheep to every 1 human in New Zealand (the population of New Zealand is 4 million).

Thought I would add this in for a certain American who loves his sheep jokes.

However, times have changed, as about 30 years ago, there were SIXTY sheep per person! Thankfully we seem to be losing interest! :lol:

LOL Deadlock...ain't that a fact! The ball would go right through, dammit

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

Yay numbers!

The shortest person to have been verified was Gul Mohammed, measuring just 22 inches and he lived from 1957 - 1997

The tallest person to have been verified was Robert Wadlow, at a whopping 8ft 11in and he lived from 1918 - 1940

That's a HUGE difference!

I've had first-hand experience of one of those, when I went to West Midlands Safari Park. They gave us boxes of dry food to feed some of the "safe" animals with, and I ended up with a giraffe's head coming in my sunroof with a tongue as long as my forearm. Scary.

RF: Giraffes used to be called camel-leopards. Search for "cameleopard" if you don't believe me on this one :razz: Nobody ever does.

http://thepetmuseum.blogspot.com/2007/01/cameleopard.html

PS, I resisted the urge to post punchlines on that picture ... so badly. :embarrassed:

Men think about sex every seven seconds.

That's why when I eat hot dogs, I eat them in SIX seconds. Just before it starts feeling wrong.

A giraffe's legs alone are taller than many humans—about 6 feet (1.8 meters). These long legs allow giraffes to run as fast as 35 miles (56 kilometers) an hour over short distances and cruise comfortably at 10 miles (16 kilometers) an hour over longer distances.

I guess it depends on the quality of the gas! :lol:

I'm thinking money!

The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

If you have 3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

Eating even a little bit of a polar bear's kidney can prove fatal to humans!

A man's beard grows the fastest when he's anticipating sex.

Robert E. Lee of the confederate army remains the only person to have graduated from the west point military academy without a single demerit

Ouch! Is easily excited. This has been a Dagon minute. o.q

I beg your pardon?

Nutter!

I might be, so what? Is that wrong?

^Exhibit A.


:lol:

What's Exhibit B then? :lol: :disapprove:

You twit! :P:

Said with strong affection/effection :smile:

Quiet around here innit? :eek: :disapprove: And *shrugs*

It'll be all right, Ouch! o.q

The text message tone on a Nokia phone is 'SMS' in morse code.

An elephant can die from a broken heart. :(

Most physicists don't really understand quantum mechanics.

Betty Boop's hair was originally red.

Too bad they changed it.

Between 1937 and 1945 Heinz produced a version of Alphabetti Spaghetti especially for the German market that consisted solely of little pasta swastikas.

I did a search online to find me a pack for my current/future collection of bizarre curiosities, but as it turns out it's actually an urban myth:

http://www.snopes.com/business/alliance/swastika.asp

Tom Hanks lets his brother do all the voice acting for the Woody dolls and video games.

LNptl7bjRhI

Contrary to popular belief, Quincy Jones had little to do with the musical arrangement of "Billie Jean." Quincy Jones didn't even want the song on the "Thriller" album, and then would only consider it if heavily edited to his liking. MJ had to go over his head to CBS executives not only to have it on the album, but to keep it's musical arrangement as the world now knows it which differed to MJ's original demo only by the enhanced drum track.

A banana is a berry but a strawberry isn't.

Bananas don't grow on trees... the banana plant is the world's largest herb.

And on a side note, I love Graham Norton.

RF: A banana plant is a type of lily

RF: Children grow faster in the springtime

Yup, he's great isn't he? He has a very sympathetic kind of humor. I'm always looking forward to that show.

RF: A raisin will keep bouncing up and down in a glass of fresh champagne.

He does make for a very good Friday night.

RF: It is estimated that at any one time, 0.7% of the world's population is drunk.

A group of crows is called a murder.

The moonwalk was not invented nor innovated by Michael Jackson, nor by Jeffrey Daniels who taught it to him and claimed to've originated it. The correct name for the dance step was called the "slide" and later the "back slide" - and while it's origins can be traced back to the the old art of miming, in a move called "walking against the wind", usually creditted to Marcel Marceau - it was incorporated into the world of tap as early as the 1940's - 1950's. Most famously by acts like Bill Bailey, Nicholas Brothers, and Cab Calloway.

Blue eyes are the most sensitive to light.

The first ever text message sent contained the message "Happy Christmas".

The Beatles did NOT invent, or create, or introduce "psychedelia" to rock music. The 13th Floor Elevators preceeded them in successfully bringing it into the rock medium in January 1966, already performing songs like "You're gonna miss me" and "Tried to Hide" - the former of which would later become a modest hit when released on their debut album - while the band itself formed in 1965. Guitarist Stacy Stutherland was already pioneering the use of reverb, echo with blues/acid guitar stylings. One of the band's most innovative sounds came via Tommy Hall's use of an "electric jug" - which is unheard of to this day. Yes, a "jug"... like what you'd find someone blowing in, in a bluegrass setting. The Beatles psychedelic album "Revolver", which is highly regarded as their first psychedelic album, and credited with innovating rock music through the influence of psychedelia didn't come into being until August 1966.

The Doors would actually precede the two bands in the musical attempt, however, with their first early, unreleased recordings in the fall of 1965, "Moonlight Drive", "End of the Night", and "Go Insane." Though there was very little involvement of traditional Rock elements, and performances of these songs would lay in wait due to the Doors struggling to find gigs early in their career due to their "bizarre" sound, Jim Morrison's lack of confidence in a live setting, and an incomplete, unstable band that seemed always in transition. The few performances in 1965 were for friends, fraternity parties, and a couple of club gigs.

Their steadier gigs would came later in late 1966-67, with the soon-to-be popular hits, "Light My Fire", and "Break On Through (To the other side.)"

There'd be many instances prior to these bands where the term "psychedelic" would be used either in lyrics of songs, or in promotions, but early applications were mainly in the "spoken word" format, lectures, and modest musical experimentations involving recorded ritualistic chants of native peoples, and having nothing at all to do with the rock genre. Other times it's casually applied to examples of music that were penned or composed by artists influenced by their use of LSD, but without exhibiting any real "pschedelia" in the musical composition itself like Bob Dylan's "Gates of Eden."

I apologize for the length, but I couldn't help it. x]

When a pregnant woman suffers organ damage (such as a heart attack), the fetus sends stem cells to the damaged organ to help repair it.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself

The Beatles did NOT invent, or create, or introduce "psychedelia" to rock music. The 13th Floor Elevators preceeded them in successfully bringing it into the rock medium in January 1966, already performing songs like "You're gonna miss me" and "Tried to Hide"

That's one of my most favourite bands. Thanks for giving them the credit they deserve.

RF: In 1969 their main man Roky Erickson got arrested for the possession of one joint of marijuana. Facing a 10 year prison term (!) he pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. So they then decided to give him extensive shock theraphy and Thorazine treatments.. He tried to escape numerous times but didn't get out until his release in '72.

In '82 he officially declared to be an alien.

hfcHgk10rbg

That's one of my most favourite bands. Thanks for giving them the credit they deserve.


*tips hat* But you know, there is a "thank you" button. :razz:



RF: (A short one for a change) Edgar Allen Poe's favorite term was "cellar door."

The Cookie Monster's real name is Sid.

Belief said that the marriage ring is worn on the 4th finger from thumb because that vein runs directly from the heart. This vein is called Vena Amoris, literally meaning “Vein of Love”.

The term “marriage” derives from the Latin word mas meaning “male” or “masculine.” The earliest known use of the word in English dates from the thirteenth century

The nude sketch of Kate Winslet in 'Titanic' was drawn by James Cameron, the director.

WOW! Did not know that...thanks :biggrin:

The hands that were filmed sketching Winslet's naked form do not belong to Leonardo DiCaprio; they are Cameron's. However, James Cameron is left-handed and DiCaprio is not, so in post-production these shots had to be mirror-imaged!

The Godfather film adaptation was originally intended to be a typical gangster shoot-em-up.

The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions

Rush Hour was originally planned to star Eddie Murphy and Jackie Chan, but the former turned it out down in favor of "Holy Man." A decision Eddie Murphy would later admit was one of his few regrets in his career.

The lion used in the MGM logo killed its trainer the day after it was filmed.

A lion's roar can be heard from up to 8 km away.

A lion's roar can be heard from up to 8 km away.

WOWZA!

The Star-Spangled Banner became the US national anthem in 1931. Prior to that, it was My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” which had the same melody as Britian’s national anthem God Save the Queen, which is based on music written by John Bull in 1619. Bull’s melody has been used more than any song in national anthems.

Roald Dahl received a letter in 1971 from a real-life Willy Wonka. This Willy Wonka didn’t own a chocolate factory. He lived in Nebraska and worked as a postman.

WillyWongker from Nebraska?

Mensa members have a lot on their minds, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for dealing with social niceties like whether a hug is appropriate. So when members gather, they place colour coded stickers on their name tags, indicating their willingness to give and receive hugs.

Green, of course, means go ahead and hug. Yellow indicates that a hug is acceptable with permission. But anyone wearing a red dot would really rather you kept your hands to yourself.

TF is Green!

Now that is a fact and a statement. Try and hug me... and you may wish to reconsider your assumption :razz: :twisted:

You dont want a hug from me?

The longest word you can make with the letters on the top row of your qwerty-keyboard or typewriter is 'typewriter'.

Ps - wearing a red dot here.

/me gives novak a hug takes off the red dot and puts a tag on him that says "Arrisdaroldi's cuddle buddy"

RF: I am human.

The longest word in the English language that is typed solely with the left hand (if typing properly) is stewardesses

I am a man.

The voice of Optimus Prime is also the voice of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.

The word SET has the most definitions of any word in the English language. SET has 464 definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here's how the others stack up:
RUN - 396 (defs.)
GO - 368
TAKE - 343
STAND - 334
GET - 289
TURN - 288
PUT - 268
FALL - 264
STRIKE - 250

The hundred billionth crayon made by Crayola was Periwinkle Blue.

The chicken is the closest living relative to the T-Rex.

A succinct trifecta this time:

Elvis Presley was rejected from a gospel quartet before he tried his hand at a solo career.

Michael Jordan was cut from his HS basketball team after trying out.

Babe Ruth was known for his impressive pitching, and was signed into the Majors as a starting Pitcher for the BoSox, before they realized this pitcher's at bats actually outshined his pitching.

The term "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" is from Ancient Rome. The only rule during wrestling matches was "No eye gouging." Everything else was allowed, but the only way to be disqualified was to poke someone's eye out.

The film Citizen Kane regarded as "the greatest film ever made" for it's innovation of cinematography, technique, and storytelling, almost never saw the light of day. Welles - who was under an unheard of greatly privileged contract with high expectations tied to it - hadn't even thought of it while being occupied trying to get other projects green-lit, when a meeting with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz brought him the suggestion of basing a film on newspaper magnate "William Randolph Hearst." Which then -after finishing production - brought threats of having it's rights purchased by other studios - in order to bury the print - who feared Hearst releasing previously hushed Hollywood scandals in retaliation.

Otters sleep holding hands.

Awwww...innit cuuuuuuuuute?

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbaqaiZQKf1qbp0mto1_400.jpg

Otters sleep holding hands.

D'aww.

The stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes - a phosphene is a phenomenon characterised by the experience of seeing light without light actually entering the eye.