I love, love, love trivia like these . . .
- The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
- “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”.
- Almonds are members of the peach family.
- The symbol on the “pound” key (#) is called an octothorpe.
- The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle.
- Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
- The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
- “Underground” is the only word in the English language thatbegins and ends with the letters “und.”
- There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous" -- tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
- The longest word in the English language, according to theOxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
- The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwenuakitanatahu, a New Zealand hill.
- 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.”
- A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
- An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
- Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
- In most advertisments, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
- Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
- Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy.
- Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
- The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
- A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
- There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters,“therein” -- the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
- Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
- 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 goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
- It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
- It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throwup. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it’s mouth. Then the frog uses its forearms to dig out all of thestomach’s contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
- Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
- The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “Oz.”
- The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radartube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
- ‘Stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only theleft hand.
- The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”
- The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
- Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correctorder, as does arsenious, meaning “containing arsenic.”
- Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
- The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat,” which means “the king is dead”.
Try to tell one of these facts today in a conversation. People will think you're either really smart or really full of crap.
