Glass takes one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite number of times!
Gold is the only metal that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of years.
Dentists have recommended that a toothbrush be kept at least six (6) feet away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush. I keep my toothbrush in the living room now!
When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.
The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer. So did the first 'Marlboro Man'.
Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.
The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.
Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.
Turtles can breathe through their butts. I know some people like that, don't YOU?
The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
Nine out of every 10 living things live in the sea.
Airports at higher altitudes require a longer runway due to lower air density.
Pearls dissolve in vinegar!
The University of Alaska campus spans four time zones.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
A comet's tail always points away from the sun.
If you go to the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.
The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth each year.
The Earth gets about 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.
Due to the force of earth's gravity, it is impossible for a mountain to be higher than about 49,000 feet.
Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration sufficient to cause the bridge to collapse.
Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.
Most dust particles in your house are made from DEAD SKIN!
For every extra pound carried on a space flight, 530 pounds of additional fuel are needed at lift-off. Weight is critical.
The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.
No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven (7) times. Try it. I'll wait...
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes or shark attacks. So, watch your Ass!
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty (50) years of age, or older.
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 one (1) olive from each salad served in first-class.
Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise when viewed from above its North Pole. Since Venus is normally associated with women, what does this tell you?
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
SHOT OF WHISKEY: In the old west a .45 cartridge for a six-gun cost about 12 cents, so did a glass of whiskey. If a cowhand was low on cash, he would often give the bartender a cartridge in exchange for a drink. This became known as a "shot" of whiskey.
BUY THE FARM: This is synonymous with dying. During WW I, soldiers were given life insurance policies worth $5,000. This was about the price of an average farm so if you died you "bought the farm" for your survivors.
IRON CLAD CONTRACT: This came about from the ironclad ships of the Civil War. It meant something so strong it could not be broken.
RIFF RAFF: The Mississippi River was the main way of traveling from north to south. Riverboats carried passengers and freight but they were expensive so most people used rafts. Everything had the right of way over rafts, which were considered cheap. The steering oar on the rafts was called a "riff" and this eventually transposed into riff-raff, meaning low class.
COBWEB: The Old English word for “spider" was "cob."
STATE ROOMS: Travelling by steamboat was considered the height of comfort. Passenger cabins on the boats were not numbered. Instead, they were named after states. So, to this day, cabins on ships are called state rooms.
SLEEP TIGHT: Early beds were made with a wooden frame. Ropes were tied across the frame in a crisscross pattern. A straw mattress was then put on top of the ropes. Over time the ropes stretched, causing the bed to sag. The owner would then tighten the ropes to get a better night’s sleep.
SHOW BOAT: These were floating theatres built on a barge pushed by a steamboat. These played small towns along the Mississippi River. Unlike the boats shown in the movie "Showboat", these did not have engines. They were gaudy and attention-grabbing, which is why we say someone who is being the life of the party is “show boating".
OVER A BARREL: In the days before CPR, a drowning victim would be placed face down over a barrel, and the barrel would be rolled back and forth in an effort to empty the lungs of water. It was rarely effective. Hence, if you are "over a barrel," you are in deep trouble.
BARGE IN: Heavy freight was moved along the Mississippi in large barges pushed by steamboats. These were hard to control and would sometimes swing into piers or other boats. People would say they "barged in."
HOGWASH: Steamboats carried both people and animals. Since pigs smelled so bad, they would be washed before being put on board. The mud and other filth that was washed off was considered useless “hog wash."
CURFEW: The word "curfew" comes from the French phrase "couvre-feu", which means "cover the fire". It was used to describe the time of blowing out all lamps and candles. It was later adopted into Middle English as “curfeu" which, even later, became the modern "curfew". In the early American colonies homes had no real fireplaces so a fire was built in the center of the room. In order to make sure a fire did not get out of control during the night it was required that, by an agreed upon time, all fires would be covered with a clay pot called a “curfew".
BARRELS OF OIL: When the first oil wells were drilled, there was no provision for storing the liquid, so they used water barrels. That is why, to this day, oil is measured in barrels rather than gallons. Another bit of trivia - a barrel of oil is only 42 gallons as opposed to the 55 gallons held by the common steel drum seen everywhere.
HOT OFF THE PRESS: As the paper goes through the rotary printing press, friction causes it to heat up. Therefore, if you grab the paper right off the press, it is hot. The expression has come to mean immediate information.
Warner Communications paid 28 million dollars for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday, which was written in 1935!
Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice!
The ten most valuable brand names on earth: Apple, Coca-Cola, Google, IBM, Microsoft, GE, McDonalds, Samsung, Intel, and Toyota, in that order.
The song Auld Lang Syne is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
Mickey Mouse is known as Topolino in Italy
In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.
The Innovative Innovating Award of Innovation is presented annually, by Discover magazine.
If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent. Drinking a glass of water before you eat may help digestion and curb appetite.
The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can only propagate with human intervention.
Vanilla comes from a particular species of orchid. It is the only agricultural product produced by any species of orchid.
Strawberries and cashews are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.
Avocados have the highest calories of <000000000000000i>any fruit at 48 calories per ounce.
Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers. That is why it is found in some medicines.
Peanut oil is used exclusively for cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it is heated above 450°F.
The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for Blood plasma.
The shortest war in recorded history only lasted 38 minutes.
People made clothes out of food sacks during the Great Depression.
Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army relied on drugs to fight through World War II.
The Roman Emperor Gaius wanted to make his favorite horse a member of public office.
King Henry VII had attendants specifically to help him go to the bathroom.
Ancient Mayans worshipped turkeys as gods.
Americans used to call hamburgers "liberty steaks."
The University of Oxford predates the Aztec Empire.
The use of forks was once considered sacrilegious.
The French constructed a fake Paris during World War I.
Unfortunately, much of this trivia will be outdated by the time you can read it (or I can post it)! Things on the internet just move too fast for us commoners to keep up! Most of what you see here was originally collected sometime in 2021 or 2022.
Although the World Wide Web is often referred to as the Internet, the two are not the same thing.
Currently, the average number of email messages sent daily is about 250 billion and growing.
81% of all email sent is SPAM. That's about 200 billion daily and growing.
The first ever email message was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson.
The current estimated number of Internet users is just over 2 billion, and growing.
97% of all telecommunications ever sent has been carried over the Internet.
Currently, there are more than 637 million Web Sites on the Internet. So whatever you're searching for, it's likely out there!
Currently, over 60% of all web-servers run on Linux.
Currently, about 60% of all Web Sites run on an Apache Web Server.
More than 90% of today's 500 fastest supercomputers run some variant of Linux, including the 10 fastest.
Garfield the cartoon cat once offered a free email service. Can you guess the name? It was gmail.com, later acquired by Google.
The very first photograph placed on the World Wide Web:
It was posted way back in 1992, by Silvano de Gennaro, who gives this description of the event:
After their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked me for a few scanned photos of "the CERN girls" to publish them on some sort of information system he had just invented, called the "World Wide Web". I had only a vague idea of what that was, but I scanned some photos on my Mac and FTPed them to Tim's now famous "info.cern.ch". How was I to know that I was passing an historical milestone, as the photo above was the first picture of a band ever to be clicked on in a web browser!".
WebMaster sez: Actually, other sources indicate that it was the first picture of any kind ever to be clicked on!