Monday, October 15, 2007

Did you know...

Pork is the world's most widely-eaten meat.

I read that fact online. That's interesting, because I would have thought chicken. But maybe that's just because I'm not thinking outside my little United States of America.

So today, when I ordered a taco from the Rio Grande Cafe for lunch, instead of defaulting to chicken as my meat of choice, I thought, "You know what, let's do pork. Like the rest of the world."

I like random facts. I gathered a bunch of factoids from http://www.didyouknow.cd/ that I was not aware of until now:


Traffic lights were used before the advent of the motorcar.

The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven.

Half the world's population is under 25 years of age.

US Post Office handles 43% of the world's mail. Its nearest competitor is Japan with 6%.

TIP is the acronym for "To Insure Promptness”.

Statistics show that people with high, medium and low income groups spend about the same amount on Christmas gifts.

80% of millionaires drive second-hand cars.

The oldest person on record is Methuselah (969 years old).

The Bible, the world's best-selling book, is also the world's most shoplifted book.


New Zealand is home to 4 million people and 70 million sheep.

The first electronic mail, or "email", was sent in 1972 by Ray Tomlinson. It was also his idea to use the @ sign to separate the name of the user from the name of the computer.

The largest web bookshop, Amazon.com, stores almost 3 million books.

The names of all the continents end with the letter they start with.

The first city in the world to have a population of more than one million was London.

Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing.

About 50% of Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace. This is called propinquity.

On average, you speak almost 5,000 words a day - although almost 80% of speaking is self-talk (talking to yourself).

Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialized nations increased by 10 cm (4 in).

Men loose about 40 hairs a day. Women loose about 70 hairs a day.

A person remains conscious for eight seconds after being decapitated.

Unless food is mixed with saliva you cannot taste it.

King Henry I, who ruled in England in the 12th century, standardized the yard as the distance from the thumb of his outstretched arm to his nose.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth.

All the planets in the solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

Earth is slowing down - in a few million years there won't be a leap year.

The shortest scheduled airline flight is made between the island of Westray to Papa Westray off Scotland. The flight lasts 2 minutes.

The fewest airplane passengers killed in one year was 1 in 1993 and the most was 583 in 1977 when two Boeing 747s collided on the runway at Los Rodeos airport, Tenerife, the Canary Islands.

About 2.4 billion CDs are sold annually. The number of recorded CDs and blank CDs sold has been about equal.

A grand piano can be played faster than an upright (spinet) piano.

A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle - a group of geese in the air is a skein.

Sharks are immune to all known diseases.

Millions of trees are accidentally planted by squirrels that bury nuts and then forget where they hid them.

7 comments:

TUG said...

How do you think the people who steal the Bible feel once they read it?

joN. said...

i knew the 7s on the dice, methuselah and the bible. some i simply don't belive such as 80% of my speech is to myself (and i actually consider myself someone who talks to myself A LOT) and that all continents end in the same letter they begin with (it's not north american! although south americas almost makes sense).

Ilene said...

I've heard the eyeball thing but I know for a fact that sometimes the eye socket or whatever grows bigger exposing more eye. Jackson's eyes take up more of his face than they did as a baby.

Thanks for enlightening me today..

How did your party go?

Lisa Marie Trent said...

you knew to save the best for last...

Laura Lee said...

I did save my favorite one for last!

Tom said...

Did you know...that Laura's new coat that she was wearing this Sunday was both stylish and classy? I don't mean to go all fashion police on ya, but I gotta give credit where its due.

Laura Lee said...

Thanks for the coat compliment. It was a new purchase. And I did get it at Gap -- much to Scott's surprise who has banned himself from the Gap.

Sometimes the Gap can be classy.