FACTS-41
Wild turkeys can run 20 miles per hour.
Wild turkeys can fly for short distances up to 55 miles per hour.
The turkey was domesticated in Mexico and brought to Europe in the 16th century.
The female turkey is called a hen.
The male turkey is called a tom.
The wild turkey is native to Northern Mexico and the Eastern United States.
A 15 pound turkey usually has about 70 percent white meat and 30 percent dark meat.
The heaviest turkey ever raised was 86 pounds, about the size of a large dog.
In 2003, the average American ate 17.4 pounds of turkey.
Turkeys can drown if they look up when it is raining.
Turkeys have heart attacks. When the Air Force was conducting test runs and breaking the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead.
The best time to see a turkey is on a warm clear day or in a light rain.
The bright skin that hangs from a turkey's neck is called a "wattle."
Turkeys are able to adapt to a wide variety of habitats. However, most turkeys are found in hardwood forests with grassy areas.
Turkeys have a wingspan of approximately 4.5 feet.
Over 100 million birds die annually by crashing into glass windows in the United States.
Kiwis are the only known bird to have nostrils located at the tip of their beak.
In the United States birds and planes collided more than 22,000 times between the years of 1990 and 1998.
In the Middle Ages, peacocks and swans were sometimes served at Christmas dinners.
In order to scare away predators, Giant petrels, a type of seabird, throw up all over the intruder.
The Arctic Tern, which is a small bird, can fly a round trip from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back. This can be as long as twenty thousand miles per year. This is the longest migration for a bird.
The American Kestrel hawk weighs only four ounces.
Storks were a symbol of fertility in Europe and were considered to bring good luck.
Some birds have been know to put ants into their feathers because the ants squirt formic acid, which kills parasites.
Pigeons can see ultraviolet lights.
In 1681, the last dodo bird died.
Flamingos are able to fly at a speed of approximately 55 kilometers an hour. In one night they can travel about 600 km.
Blue Jays can imitate the calls of hawks.
Birds do not sweat, as they do not have sweat glands.
A seagull can drink salt water because it has special glands that filter out the salt.
FACTS-40
Wild turkeys spend the night in trees. They especially like oak trees.
Turkeys have heart attacks. The United States Air Force was doing test runs and breaking the sound barrier. Nearby turkeys dropped dead with heart attacks.
Commercially raised turkeys cannot fly.
Turkeys are related to pheasants.
A domesticated male turkey can reach a weight of 30 pounds within 18 weeks after hatching.
2.74 billion pounds of turkey were processed in the United States in 1994.
Turkeys do not see well at night.
A large group of turkeys is called a flock.
Turkeys can see in color.
Turkeys don’t really have ears like ours, but they have very good hearing.
The ballroom dance the "turkey trot" was named for the short, jerky steps that turkeys take.
A 16 week old turkey is called a fryer. A five to seven month old turkey is called a young roaster and a yearling is a year old. Any turkey 15 months or older is called mature.
Illinois produced 2.9 million turkeys in 2003 and ranked 15th in turkey production in the United States.
Minnesota, North Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia, Missouri and Virginia are the leading producers of turkey in 2003. These states produced 75% of all the turkeys raised in 2003.
Gobbling turkeys can be heard a mile away on a quiet day.
Male turkeys gobble. Hens do not. They make a clicking noise.
Nineteen million turkeys are eaten each Easter.
Twenty-two million turkeys are eaten each Christmas.
Forty-five million turkeys are eaten each Thanksgiving.
United States turkey growers raised 270 million turkeys in 2003.
It takes 75-80 pounds of feed to raise a 30 pound tom turkey.
Turkey eggs are tan with brown specks and are larger than chicken eggs.
Most of the turkeys raised for commercial production are White Hollands.
Baby turkeys are called poults and are tan and brown.
Turkey feathers were used by Native Americans to stabilize arrows.
Turkeys lived almost ten million years ago.
Turkeys can see movement almost a hundred yards away.
Six hundred seventy-five million pounds of turkey are eaten each Thanksgiving in the United States.
Turkeys’ heads change colors when they become excited.
Tom turkeys have beards. This is black, hairlike feathers on their breast. Hens sometimes have beards, too.
FACTS-39
The Barn Owls hearing is so highly developed that they can hunt for their prey in total darkness.
The world's smallest owl is the elf owl which weighs 1.5 ounces and is the size of a sparrow.
Owls swallow their prey hole because they have no teeth. After approximately 12 hours they cough up the feathers, bones, and fur in a shape of a football pellet.
Owls have no teeth.
Male owls weigh less and are smaller than female owls.
Wild turkeys can run at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour.
Benjamin Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey.
A spooked turkey can run at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. They can also burst into flight approaching speeds between 50-55 mph in a matter of seconds.
So close, yet so far
A wild turkey has excellent vision and hearing. Their field of vision is about 270 degrees. This is the main reason they continue to elude some hunters.
Gobbling starts before sunrise and can continue through most of the morning.
Turkeys fly to the ground at first light and feed until mid-morning. Feeding resumes in mid-afternoon.
Turkeys spend the night in trees. They fly to their roosts around sunset.
Minnesota led the United States in turkey production in 2001. Forty-three million turkeys were produced.
Turkey eggs hatch in 28 days.
The fleshy growth under a turkey’s throat is called a wattle.
Turkeys have a long, red, fleshy area called a snood that grows from the forehead over the bill.
The caruncle is a red-pink fleshy growth on the head and upper neck of the turkey.
Israelis eat the most turkeys.....28 pounds per person.
The costume that "Big Bird" wears on Sesame Street is rumored to be made of turkey feathers.
Turkey skins are tanned and used to make cowboy boots and belts.
Most turkey feathers are composted.
Turkeys have been bred to have white feathers. White feathers have no spots under the skin when plucked.
Turkeys will have 3,500 feathers at maturity.
For their first meal on the moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin ate roast turkey in foil packets.
White meat has fewer calories and less fat than dark meat.
Turkey is low in fat and high in protein.
According to the 2002 census, there were 8,436 turkey farms in the United States.
50 percent of U.S. consumers eat turkey at least once per week.
Eating turkey does not cause you to feel sleepy after your Thanksgiving dinner. Carbohydrates in your Thanksgiving dinner are the likely cause of your sleepiness.
The five most popular ways to serve leftover turkey is as a sandwich, in stew, chili or soup, casseroles and as a burger.
Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented a live turkey and two dressed turkeys to the President. The President does not eat the live turkey. He "pardons" it and allows it to live out its days on a historical farm.
June is National Turkey Lover’s Month.
Turkey breeding has caused turkey breasts to grow so large that the turkeys fall over.
In England, 200 years ago, turkeys were walked to market in herds. They wore booties to protect their feet. Turkeys were also walked to market in the United States.
Wild turkeys were almost wiped out in the early 1900's. Today there are wild turkeys in every state except Alaska.
FACTS-38
Smaller parrots live 10 to 15 years.
Parrots have large heads and short necks.
Some American parrots are mostly blue or yellow.
Most parrots are predominantly green, especially the ones from South America.
Parrots weigh from just a few ounces to 3½ pounds.
Parrots range in size from the pygmy of the South Pacific which is only 3½ inches long to the hyacinth macaw which is about 10 inches long. Much of its length is in its long tail.
Parrots are divided into groups such as cockatoos, lories, lovebirds, macaws, and parakeets.
Three hundred and twenty-eight different species of parrots live on the Earth.
There are 315 species of parrot in the world.
Parrots cannot eat chocolate because it is poisonous to their bodFACTS-37
Hummingbirds cannot become addicted to the nectar you put out in your feeder. They will leave the feeders when they need to.
Hummingbirds eat both nectar and the small insects found near the nectar.
Although male hummers are more colorful than female hummers, female hummingbirds are relatively colorful.
Hummingbirds have split tongues, which they fold into a tube when feeding.
Normal flight speed for a hummingbird is 25 to 30 mph, but hummers can dive at speeds of up to 60 mph.
It takes hummingbird eggs two to 2 1/2 weeks to hatch.
Hummingbird eggs are so small that a penny would completely cover three of them. The usual brood, however, is two eggs.
Hummingbird nests average about 1-1/2 inches in outside diameter. A penny will almost fill the inside diameter.
Only ten species of hummers have significant ranges north of Mexico. Only the ruby-throated hummingbird ranges east of the Mississippi.
In the eighteenth century, when Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus devised the scientific classification system still in use today (kingdom, phylum, class, order and family) hummingbirds were assigned their own family: Trochilidae, from the Greek trochilos, meaning small bird.
When early Spanish explorers encountered hummingbirds they called them Joyas voladoras, flying jewels.
Hummingbirds are native to South America.
Adult female Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are 15-20% larger than adult males.
The only bird that can fly backwards is the Hummingbird.
A hummingbird's heart beats 615 beats in a minute.
Hummingbirds flap their wings between 50 and 70 times a second!
Some species of the parrot have become endangered. Thousands are brought to Europe and North America as pets. Many of these die making this journey.
Parrots have a wide range of articulations. Wild parrots do not imitate. Only pets will mimic people and noises they hear. The African gray parrots are the best mimics.
Parrots are hole nesters. They build their nests in holes in trees, termite mounts, rock cavities, or ground tunnels. A few exceptions will build stick nests.
More than 90 percent of the parrots imported into the United States are probably wild caught.
It is thought that two million parrots alone are legally or illegally traded each year.
More than 1.8 million parrots legally entered the international trade from 1982-1988 of which 80 percent were imported into the United States.
Recent figures suggest that 40 percent of these species are threatened primarily by habitat destruction, 17 percent primarily by trade, 36 percent by a combination of the two causes and 7 percent by other factors.
At least 30 percent of the 140 parrot species found in the Western Hemisphere are now threatened with extinction.
An additional 25,000 parrots die of suffocation, starvation, inhumane treatment while being transported to the Texas border.
An estimated 25,000 wild parrots, caught or plucked from their nests in Mexico, are smuggled across the Texas border each year.
Every year, approximately 250,000 parrots are imported to the United States to satisfy a demand for exotic birds as pets.
It is estimated in the year 2000 there were 60 million birds in 6.13 million homes.
In 1990 there were 11 million pet birds living in 5.1 million households in the US
By 1996 the number of pet birds had grown to 40 million while the number of homes remained fairly consistent at 5.9 million.
In the wild, Macaws and Cockatoos can fly 500 miles per day in search of food!
Some parrot vocalizations can be heard for up to 1 mile!
Wild parrots live in the forest of tropical zones including South America, Australia, and New Guinea. A few live in Africa and mainland Asia.
Larger parrots such as the macaws and cockatoos live more than 75 years.
FACTS-36
The ostrich is a member of the ratite family of birds.
One ostrich egg equals up to 24 chicken eggs. And it takes approximately 2 hours to boil!
The ostrich has two toes on each feet which gives it greater speed.
The fastest running bird is the Ostrich, which has been clocked at 97.5 kilometers per hour.
Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water.
On ostrich's egg weighs 3 1/2 pounds.
The largest egg laid by a living bird is that of the North African Ostrich. It is 6 to 8 inches in length and 4 to 6 inches in diameter. The smallest is that of the hummingbird. It is less than 0.39 inches in diameter.
Ducks were once wild until they were domesticated by the Chinese many hundreds of years ago.
Ducks keep clean by preening themselves with their beaks, which they do often. They also line their nests with feathers plucked from their chest.
Ducks' feathers are waterproof. There is a special gland that produces oil near the tail that spreads and covers the outer coat of feathers. Beneath this waterproof layer are fluffy and soft feathers to keep the duck warm.
Ducks provide us with eggs, meat and feathers.
Ducks' feet have no nerves or blood vessels. This means ducks never feel the cold, even if they swim in icy cold water.
A duck waddles instead of walking because of its webbed feet.
Ducks have webbed feet, which act like paddles.
Ducks can live from 2-12 years, depending on the species.
The duck is the smallest of them all and have shorter necks and wings and a stout body.
Ducks are related to geese and swans.
A male duck is called a drake, a female is called a duck. Babies are called ducklings.
All of the Peking ducks in the United States are descendents from three ducks and one drake imported to Long Island, New York in 1873.
A duck has three eyelids.
A duck's quack has no echo.
Some ducks and geese can fly as much as 332 miles a day!
The strike of the eagle talon is so powerful that it's force is twice that of a rifle bullet.
Whenever a Bald Eagle migrates south it always goes to the same spot and when it returns north it always goes back to the same spot.
Sub adult eagles that have not yet made a breeding territory are believed to wander more.
Adult eagles usually stay near their nesting territory as the supply of food and weather conditions will allow.
Bald Eagles are the national symbol of the United States
Eagles have great eyesight that helps them see for one to one and a half miles away. (Thus the term eagles eye) They can dive at 100 miles per hour. Their eyesight and diving ability help them catch food.
Bald Eagles help man by catching rodents and rabbits that destroy grain fields.
Bald Eagles can fly with 8 pounds of food.
Bald Eagles normally eat fish. Sometimes they will eat snakes and smaller birds.
There are approximately 7,000 feathers on an eagle.
Pound for pound, an eagle's wing is stronger than the wing of an airplane.
An eagle can kill a young deer and fly away with it.
An eagle's nest located in Maryland, USA reportedly weighed about 3,000 pounds.
FACTS-35
Bats always turn left when they leave their caves.
Frog-eating bats identify edible frogs from poisonous ones by listening to the mating calls of male frogs. Frogs counter this by hiding and using short, difficult to locate calls.
Bats sleep during the day and feed at night. The place that bats sleep in is called the "roost."
Bats emit ultrasonic sounds to communicate with each other.
Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
African heart-nosed bats can have such a keen sense of sound that they can hear the footsteps of a beetle walking on sand from six feet away.
Giant flying foxes, which are a type of bat, that live in Indonesia have wingspans of nearly six feet.
Vampire bat saliva has been responsible for many advances in research into stroke recovery.
The flying fox of Africa has a wingspan of fifty inches!
The flying fox is a bat with a wing span over five feet.
The world's smallest mammal is the bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.
On average, a hen lays 300 eggs per year.
Nine egg yolks have been found in one chicken egg.
A mother hen turns her egg approximately 50 times in a day. This is so the yolk does not stick to the shell.
To produce a dozen eggs, a hen has to eat about four pounds of feed.
The largest chicken egg ever laid weighed a pound and had a double yolk and shell.
A chicken with red earlobes will produce brown eggs, and a chicken with white earlobes will produce white eggs.
A chicken is 75% water.
In the U.S., approximately 46% of the chicken that is eaten by people comes from restaurants or other food outlets.
Hens will produce larger eggs as they grow older.
A chicken loses its feathers when it becomes stressed.
A chicken once had its head cut off and survived for over eighteen months, headless.
A female ostrich shows remarkable ability to recognize her own eggs even when mixed in with those of other females in their communal nest.
Ostriches are so powerful that a single kick at a predator, such as a lion, could be fatal.
Ostriches stretch out their neck and lay their head on the ground to keep from being seen, hence the myth that ostriches hide in the sand.
Ostrich is the largest and heaviest living bird. It is unable to fly and does not posses a keeled sternum (breastbone) common to most birds.
Ostriches can run up to 70km/hr(40 mph) and can outpace most pursuers, such as lions, leopards, and hyenas.
Ostriches do not bury their head in the sand.
When fully grown an ostrich has one of the most advanced immune systems known to mankind.
Ostriches have the best feed to weight ratio gain of any land animal in the world. They are successfully farmed in at least 50 countries; from the coldest climates of Alaska to the equatorial areas of central Africa.
Ostriches are not an endangered species; there are at least 2 million worldwide.
Ostrich meat resembles beef in its appearance and is cooked almost the same way.
Ostrich meat is a red meat and is very low in cholesterol, calories and is almost fat free.
Ostriches produce the strongest commercially available leather in the world and some of the most beautiful feathers.
Ostriches skeletons and fossils have been found which date back over 120 million years; ostriches are a true dinosaur.
There are 3 main species of ostriches of which only one, the Struthio Camelus Domesticus (the African Black), is found in captivity.
Ostriches cannot fly.
FACTS-34
The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals(ASPCA) was formed in 1866.
The 1st performance of Handel's "Messiah" was on April 13, 1742 at the New Music rooms in Fishable St., Dublin. Because of the demand for space, the men were asked not to wear their swords and the ladies not to wear hoped skirts.
The first toothbrush with bristles was developed in China in 1498. Bristles were taken from hogs at first, later from horses. The nylon bristles were developed in 1938 by DuPont.
In the 1800s, the Chinese believed that strangling a man was less sever a punishment than beheading because the body would not be permanently disfigured.
The first reference to a monetary prize in a horse race was offered by Richard I in 1195.
The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
Police dogs were first used in 1816 in Scotland.
Laika the dog was the first living thing which was sent to space.
It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so that the stomach is dangling out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses its' forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
Barbara Bush's book about her English Springer spaniel, Millie's book, was on the bestseller list for 29 weeks. Millie was the most popular "First Dog" in history.
The first seeing-eye dog was presented to a blind person on April 25, 1938.
Felix the Cat is the first cartoon character to ever have been made into a balloon for a parade.
Dr. Guillotin merely proposed the machine that bears his name (which was rejected by the crown) and he never made a working model. The first working model was made by his assistant years later. When the machine attained infamy in the French Revolution, Dr.Guillotin protested its use and went to his grave claiming that the machine was unjustly named after him.
Chinese made the first wheelbarrow.
The Sumerians invented writing.
The Sumerians, who lived in the Middle East, invented the wheel in about 3450 BC.
It was the Romans who made the first popsicle. They took some ice and added flavors to it and then licked it.
Thomas Crapper developed the flush toilet. In 1884, he simulated the materials a toilet would normally handle, to create "a super-flush which had completely cleared away: 10 apples, 1 flat sponge, 3 air vessels, Plumbers Smudge coated over the pan, 4 pieces of paper adhering closely to the soiled surface." A fantastic feat of flushing!
The Industrial Revolution in Europe first saw the beginning of air pollution, which gradually became a major global problem.
The first steam powered train was invented by Robert Stephenson. It was called the Rocket.
The first pick-up truck in the world was made by Gottlieb Daimler in 1886. Gottlieb produced the world's first motorcycle in 1885.
The first car with four wheels was made in France in 1901 by Panhard et LeVassor.
pin bowling was made up in Germany during the Medieval ages Karl Benz invented the first gas powered car. The car had only three wheels.
The first toy balloon, made of vulcanized rubber, was thought of by someone in the J.G.Ingram company in London, England in 1847.
The first metal bicycle was called the High-Wheel or Penny Farthing. People had a hard time keeping their balance on this type of bicycle.
The first bicycle that was made in 1817 by Baron von Drais didn't have any pedals.
The Wright Brothers invented one of the first airplanes. It was called the Kitty Hawk.
The first black surgeon to do open heart surgery was Dr. Daniel Hale Williams. In 1893, he saved a man who was knifed by opening his chest and sewing together the wound, which was only a fraction of an inch from his heart. He was one of the first to do this. He accomplished this without any modern medical devices, such as x-rays.
The first animal sent up to outer space was a dog.
JOSEPH RECHENDORFER was the first person to think of putting a piece of rubber onto the top of a pencil which makes it real easy to rub out mistakes.
The first kind of PENCIL was a bunch of GRAPHITE sticks held together by string. Then someone decided it would be better to push the graphite into the inside of a hollow wooden stick.
FACTS-33
Persians first began using colored eggs to celebrate spring in 3,000 B.C. 13th century Macedonians were the first Christians on record to use colored eggs in Easter celebrations. Crusaders returning from the Middle East spread the custom of coloring eggs, and Europeans began to use them to celebrate Easter and other warm weather holidays.
An American cow called Fawn was not afraid of flying. In May 1963, she was swept up by a tornado and carried half a mile, only to land safely in another farmer's field. Five years later, another tornado carried her over a bus. She survived this too, and lived to the ripe old age of 25.
The greatest snow fall ever in a single storm was 189 inches at the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in February, 1959.
The 1st feature-length animated film, released by Disney Studios in 1937, was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
The town of Tidikelt in the Share Desert once went ten years without rainfall.
The record for the biggest one day rainfall was set on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, on March 15, 1952, where 74 inches of rain fell in 24 hours.
The word "earthling" was first found in print in 1593.
The first man-made object to circle the earth was Sputnik I, launched in 1957.
The coldest outdoor temperature ever recorded on earth was 127 below zero in Antarctica on August 24, 1960.
Even when all the molecules in a single breath of air have been dispersed evenly in the earth's atmosphere, there will still be one or two of the same ones taken into the lungs with every subsequent breath. Every time you breathe in, you inhale one or two of the same molecules that you inhaled with the first breath you took as a baby.
An earthquake on Dec. 16, 1811 sent the Mississippi River backwards.
The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League all-stars Game.
The first footprints at Grumman’s Chinese Theater (now Mann's Chinese Theater), were made by Norma Tallmadge in 1927. Legend has it that she accidentally stepped in wet concrete outside the building. Since then, over 180 stars have been immortalized, along with their hands and feet and even noses (Jimmy Durant).
The Beatles were depicted in wax at Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London, in 1964, the first pop album stars to be honored.
The crew of Apollo 11 who put the first man on the moon have the same initials as the first men on earth. Armstrong: Adam Aldine : Abel Collins : Cain
The Apollo 11 plaque left on the Moon says, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. / WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND."
The "countdown" (counting down from 10 for an event such as New-Years Day) was first used in a 1929 German silent film called "Die Frau I’m Monde" (The Girl in the Moon).
Tatum O’Neal is the youngest Oscar winner not to receive a Special Award. O’Neal was just 10 years old when she won the Best Supporting Actress award for Paper Moon. Shirley Temple is the youngest person to win an Academy Award when she was given the Special Award for Outstanding Contribution in 1934 at the age of 6.
Sunday, July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, Edwin Aldrin was the second. They were members of Apollo 11, and landed in the Sea of Tranquility. The Lunar Excursion Module was named the "Eagle." Michael Collins stayed onboard the mother ship, "Columbia."
On February 6, 1971 the first golf ball was hit on the moon by Alan Shepard.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon with his left foot.
In 1963, baseball pitcher Gaylord Perry remarked, "They'll put a man on the moon before I hit a home run." On July 20, 1969, a few hours after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Gaylord Perry hit his first, and only, home run.
In 1959, the Soviet space probe "Luna Two" became the first manmade object to reach the moon as it crashed onto the lunar surface.
George Crum invented potato chips in 1853 at the Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs, New York. Crum was part Indian, part black, a former guide in the Adirondacks.
Every time the moon's gravity causes a ten-foot tide at sea, all the continents on earth rise at least six inches.
Easter is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after March 21.
December 1972 U.S. astronaut Eugene CERN an becomes the last person to set foot on the moon.
After the sun, the closest star to Earth is 25,000,000,000,000miles away.
1959's A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.
The oldest works of art are pictures of animals found in caves in Spain and France. They have been dates as far back as 18,000 years ago.
FACTS-31
Adding sugar to coffee is believed to have started in 1715, in the court of King Louis XIV, the French monarch.
According to an Old English system of time units, a moment is considered to be one and a half minutes.
According to a recent survey, more Americans lose their virginity in June than any other month.
According to a global survey in 1997 by Durex Condoms Canadians are the world's fourth worst lovers. The worst three slots belong to South Africa, Russia, and Poland.
Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
Abraham Lincoln's ghost is said to haunt the White House.
Abraham Lincoln had to go across the street to the War Department to get news from the battlefield because there was no telegraph in the White House.
About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it.
About 80% of the city was burned in the Great Fire of London in 1666.
About 75% of the people in the U.S. live on 2% land.
About 70% of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money.
About 55% of all movies are rated R. About 500 movies are made in the US and 800 in India annually.
About 24% of the total ground area of Los Angeles is said to be committed to automobiles.
About 200,000,000 M&Ms are sold each day in the United States.
Abe Lincoln's mother died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and Ms. Lincoln drank the milk.
ABBA GOLD has been in the UK charts for over 280 weeks, thats over 5 years
A typical American eats 28 pigs in his/her lifetime.
A total of 63 errors were made in the 1886 World Series.
A teaspoon of neutron star material weighs about 110 million tons.
"Hang on Sloopy" is the official rock song of Ohio.
"Flushable" toilets were in use in ancient Rome.
"Canada" is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
"Asthma" and "isthmi" are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.
"A motion to table a motion to reconsider a vote to table an appeal of a ruling that a point of order was not in order against a motion to table another point of order against a motion to bring to a vote the motion to call up the resolution that would institute a rules change."
Frank Baum, the writer of "The Wizrd of OZ", looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."
On average, every chocolate bar contains at least three insect legs.
Alfred Hitchcock did not have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it.
Penguins are not found in the North Pole.
More Monopoly money is printed yearly than real money throughout the world.
FACTS-32
A dentist invented the Electric Chair.
Electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain has been proven to revive long-lost memories.
Crocodiles have brains no larger than a cigar and they cannot stick their tongue out.
'Crack Cocaine' is still cocaine. It is simply a different chemical process applied to cocaine powder that allows cocaine to be smoke able. This means that the 'high' from Crack Cocaine is much stronger and more immediate (taking about 8 seconds to reach the brain); and also shorter lived then from the powder.
Cocaine works in a totally different way from narcotics such as morphine or heroin. Heroin works on receptor sites in the brain which are stimulated by the drug to produce pain-relieving and mood-enhancing chemicals. Cocaine on the other hand works by stimulating the central nervous system, and like alcohol, is processed through the liver.
There was no soap in the ancient Mediterranean world. Olive oil was used to wash the body in addition to cooking.
The largest body of fresh water in the world is Lake Superior.
The body's largest internal organ is the small intestine at an average length of 20 feet.
Chameleons can reel in food from a distance as far away as more than two and a half times their body lengths.
A millipede has 4 legs on each segment of its body.
A leech is a worm that feeds on blood. It will pierce its victim's skin, fill itself with three to four times its own body weight in blood, and will not feed again for months. Leeches were once used by doctors to drain "bad blood" from sick patients.
A flea can jump 350 times is own body length. (say. you jumping the length of a soccer field)thanks seraph
A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body.
When Swiss cheese ferments, a bacterial action generates gas. As the gas is liberated, it bubbles through the cheese leaving holes. Cheese-makers call them "eyes."
The song "When Irish Eyes are smiling" was written by George Graff, who was German, and was never in Ireland in his life.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
Faye Wong received a 7 digit fee for recording 'eyes on me' and it took her about 4 hours.
FACTS-30
Scientists have actually performed brain surgery on cockroaches.
German cockroaches can survive for up to one month without food and two weeks without water.
A cockroach can change directions up to 25 times in a second.
If a cockroach breaks a leg it can grow another one.
The earliest fossil cockroach is about 280 million years old – 80 million years older than the first dinosaurs!
Cockroach can live up to nine days without its head.
Certain female species of spiders such as the Australian crab spider, sacrifice their bodies as a food source for their offspring.
Some male spiders pluck their cobwebs like a guitar, to attract female spiders.
Fried spiders taste like nuts.
The largest spider ever was the Megarachne which had a diameter of 50 cm. The fossil was found in Argentina.
The bite from a black widow spider is not automatically fatal. In fact, less than 1% of all people bitten by this spider run the risk of dying, and most of them are saved with the use of antivenin.
The skeleton of a spider is located on the outside of the body.
Spiders usually have eight eyes, but still they cannot see that well.
There are about 34,000 species of spiders.
Spiders have claws at the ends of their legs.
Only the female black widow spider has a poisonous bite. The male spider's venom is not poisonous and it does not attack its prey.
Of the 35,000 species of spiders, only 27 species are known to have caused human fatalities.
Many insects can carry 50 times their own body weight.
If all the insects in the world were put on a scale, they would out weigh all creatures.
For more than 3,000 years, Carpenter ants have been used to close wounds in India, Asia and South America.
The longest insect is a walking stick that can reach a length of 33 centimeters.
The eggs of walking stick insects are among the largest in the insect world. Some eggs are more than eight millimeters long.
A scorpion can have up to 12 eyes.
A caterpillar grows roughly 27,000 times its size when it first emerges as an egg.
Locusts can eat their own weight in food in a day. A person eats his own body weight in about half a year.
Monarch caterpillars shed their skin four times before they become a chrysalis, growing over 2700 times their original size.
The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.
About 80% of the Earth’s animals are insects!
There is only one insect that can turn its head -- the praying mantis.
A flea can jump 130 times its own height.
The fiddler crab can grow a new claw when it loses one of its own.
The Jungle Nymph Stick is one of the heaviest insects. In Malaysia they are often kept by people who feed them guava leaves and use the droppings to make tea.
FACTS-29
In the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, if a man was not married by age 30, he would not be allowed to vote or watch athletic events involving nude young men.
In playing poker, there is one chance in 500 of drawing a flush.
In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That's where the phrase, "goodnight, sleep tight" came from.
In Shakespeare, Rosalind, the heroine of "As You Like It", has more lines than any of Shakespeare's female characters. Cleopatra comes in second with 670 lines and third place belongs to Imogen ("Cymbeline"), with 591 lines.
In seventy-five years the human heart pumps 3,122,000,000 gallons of blood, enough to fill in oil tanker over 46 times!
In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length.
In Scotland, Irn-Bru is a soft drink that is more popular than Coca-Cola. When McDonalds opened in Glasgow and did not sell Irn-Bru, it was considered an insult, and the restaurant was subsequently boycotted.
In Scituate, Rhode Island it is illegal to keep a flock of chickens in your motorhome if you live in a trailer park.
In Saratoga, Florida it is illegal to sing while wearing a bathing suit.
In Salem, Massachesetts sleeping in the nude in a rented room is forbidden, even for married couples.
All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20.
All mammals have tongues.
Alexander H. Stephens was Jefferson Davis's Vice President of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Alekthophilia is the love of chickens.
After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear pink.
The lifespan of a firefly is about seven days. During these days, they are busy trying to find a mate.
Out of every 1,000 Mosquitoes, one female carries a disease that could be fatal to humans.
There are more than 2,400 flea species in the world.
There are approximately 2,700 different species of mosquitoes.
The dragonfly has not changed over the last 300 million years.
Some mosquitoes can beat their wings 600 times a second. A midge fly holds the record, with a wing beat of 1046 times a second.
The average housefly lives for one month.
The fastest known insect is a dragon fly that has been clocked at 58 kilometers an hour.
Flies can "taste" with their feet.
FACTS-29
A honey bee strokes its wings about 11,500 times a minute.
Bees can communicate with other bees by dancing. Their dance can alert other bees as to which direction and the distance nectar and pollen is located.
It takes 12 honeybees to make one teaspoon of honey.
In one trip, a honey bee visits about 75 flowers.
In one day, a queen bee can lay up to 1500 eggs in one day.
In a lifetime, on average a honey bee produces 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.
Honeybees use the sun as a compass which helps them navigate.
A honey bee has four wings.
A bird called the bee eater in areas of Africa thinks that riding around on the backs of other animals is fun!
The honeybee has to travel an average of 43,000 miles to collect enough nectar to make a pound of honey!
A flea can jump 150 times its size. That is the same as a person able to jump up 1,000 feet in the air.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of for to seven weeks.
A housefly can only ingest liquid material. They regurgitate their food to liquefy the food that they are going to eat.
A house fly's feet are 10 million times more sensitive than a human tongue.
The amount of blood a female mosquito drinks per serving is five millionths of a liter.
Dragonflies can fly up to 50 miles per hour.
Only female mosquitoes bite humans. Male mosquitoes live on natural liquids from plants and other resources.
One of the most dangerous insect in the world is the common housefly. They carry and transmit more diseases than any other animal in the world.
Most fleas do not live past a year old.
The itch from a mosquito bite can be soothed by cutting open a clove of garlic and rubbing it on the bite.
Mosquitoes prefer children over adults.
Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue more than any other color.
A mosquito flaps its wings 500 times a second.
The average life span of a mosquito is two weeks.
The Arctic tern flies an average of 22,000 miles a year!
FACTS-28
The original name for the butterfly was 'flutterby'!
Butterflies belong to INSECTS, which is the largest, most varied group of animals.
Wasps that feed on ferment occasionally get drunk and pass out.
Tarantula wasps paralyze tarantulas and lay a single egg on the still living spider; when the egg hatches, the wasp larva has fresh food.
The female yellow jacket wasp lays both fertilized and unfertilized eggs. Female workers develop from the fertilized egg and male drones develop from the unfertilized egg.
The heaviest insect in the world is the Goliath beetle from Africa. A big male can weigh up to 100 grams.
There are more than 300,000 species of beetles, making them the largest order of insects in the world.
The metallic-colored wing covers of some beetles are used for jewelry.
Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph.
A bee travels an average of 1600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey; up to 6 miles per trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.
Honeybees visit about 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey.
During honey production periods, a bee's life span is about 6 weeks.
Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees!
Honeybees are the only insects that produce food for humans.
About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax.
Beeswax production in most hives is about 1 1/2% to 2% of the total honey yield.
The average hive temperature is 93.5 degrees.
Queens will lay almost 2000 eggs a day at a rate of 5 or 6 a minute. Between 175,000-200,000 eggs are laid per year.
The speed at which honey bees fly is at 15 miles per hour.
The sole purpose of a drone bee is to mate with the queen bee.
Bees from the same hive visit about 225,000 flowers per day. One single bee usually visits between 50-1000 flowers a day, but can visit up to several thousand.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
A colony of bees have to fly almost fifty-five thousand miles and tap two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
FACTS-27
All pilots on international flights identify themselves in English.
The most difficult language to learn is Basque, which is spoken in northwestern Spain and southwestern France.
There are more than 2,700 languages in the world. In addition, there are more than 7,000 dialects.
he male ladybug is usually smaller than the female.
During hibernation, ladybugs feed on their stored fat.
Ladybugs make a chemical that smells and tastes terrible so that birds and other predators won't eat them.
A female ladybug will lay more than 1000 eggs in her lifetime.
There are nearly 5,000 different kinds of ladybugs worldwide and 400 which live in North America.
Bed bugs prefer to hide in cracks and crevices during the daytime and come out to feed on the host's blood at night, usually while the host is sleeping.
The biggest bug in the world is the Goliath Beetle which can weigh up to 3.5 ounces and be 4.5 inches long.
Adult bed bugs are about 1/4-inch long and reddish-brown, with oval, flattened bodies.
Lady Bugs really are not bugs. They are actually beetles and their correct name is The Ladybird Beetle.
Related species, such as the bat bug and bird bug, prefer to feed on bats, birds, and other wild hosts, but will also feed on humans if the opportunity arises or the preferred host dies or leaves the roost.
The common bed bug, whose preferred host is humans, is rarely encountered, presumably because of improvements in sanitation.
Butterflies get their name from the yellow brimstone butterfly of Europe that is first seen in the early spring or "butter" season.
Female Queen Alexandra butterflies, from Papua and New Guinea, are the largest in the world, some with wingspans larger than 26 cm.
Butterflies and moths are found on all land masses except Antarctica.
The atlas moth, one of the largest silk moths, can be mistaken for a medium-sized bat when flying.
There are over 2,000 species of butterflies in the rainforests of South America.
Butterflies belong to, alongside with moths to an order called Lepidoptera.
The fastest flying butterfly is the Monarch, which has been clocked with a speed as high as 17 miles per hour.
Butterflies are further divided into 30 orders, the main basis of classification being their wing structure.
The main features of butterflies have in common are:
6 legs
one pair of antennae
a segmented body in which three body parts, a head, a thorax and an abdomen can be distinguished.
Night butterflies have ears on their wings so they can avoid bats.
A butterfly's taste sensors are located below their feet.
The color in a butterfly's wings does not come from pigment. The color is produced prism-like by light reflected by their transparent wing scales.
The largest butterfly is the Queen Alexandra's birdwing butterfly from Papua New Guinea. The wingspan of the butterfly can reach to be almost one foot.
A butterfly has to have a body temperature greater than 86 degrees to be able to fly.
A butterfly can see the colors red, green, and yellow.
FACTS-26
Out of all the eight letter words in the English language, only one has only one vowel in it: "strength"
Only 3 words in the English language end in "ceed": "proceed," "exceed," and "succeed."
On June 26th, 1945, the charter of the United Nations was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco. (The text of the charter was in five languages: Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.)
Of all the words in the English language, the word "set" has the most definitions.
Of all the languages in the world, English has the largest vocabulary about 800,000 words.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
No language has more synonyms than English.
Latin is a dead language.
In Vulcan, Alberta Canada, the tourist welcome sign is written in both English and Klingon (alien language from “Star Trek”).
French was the official language of England for over 600 years.
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, has been translated into more languages than any book outside of the Bible.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Finnish word SAIPPUAKIVIKAUPPIAS a soapstone seller is the longest known palindrome in any language.
"Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
"The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.
"Four" is the only number whose number of letters in the name equals the number.
"Forty" is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. "One" is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.
"Rhythms" is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.
Many languages in Africa include a “click” sound that is pronounced at the same time as other sounds. You must learn these languages in childhood to do it properly.
More than 1,000 different languages are spoken on the continent of Africa.
There is no word that rhymes with purple.
The most common letters in English are
R S T L N E.
Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
There is no word that rhymes with orange.
It has been estimated that the number of actively spoken languages in the world today is about 6,000.
The language of a society changes slowly but steadily with the result that an educated person will not be able to read or understand words in his language written 500 years ago.
No word in the English language rhymes with"month".
"Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
Of all the words in the English language, the word ' set ' has the most definitions!
The language in which a government conducts business is the official language of that country.
Somalia is the only African country in which the entire population speaks the same language, Somali.
FACTS-25
According to Illinois state law, it is illegal to speak English. The officially recognized language is "American."
Widow is the only female form in the English language that is shorter than its corresponding male term (widower).
Victor Hugo's Les Miserable contains one of the longest sentences in the French language 823 words without a period.
There is only ONE word in the English language with THREE CONSECUTIVE SETS OF DOUBLE LETTERS.... Bookkeeper
There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs five times: "indivisibility."
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.
There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."
There are thirteen languages spoken by more than 100 million people. They are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian, French, Japanese, German, and Urdu.
There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. The most widely spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. There are 885,000,000 people in China that speak that language.
There are only two sequences of four consecutive letters that can be found in the English language: "rstu" and "mnop." Examples of each are understudy and gynophobia.
There are only 4 words in the English language which end in "duos": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
There are at least two words in the English language that use all of the vowels, in the correct order, and end in the letter Y: abstemiously & facetiously.
There are 41,806 different spoken languages in the world today.
The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
The word "honcho" comes from a Japanese word meaning "squad leader" and first came into usage in the English language during the American occupation of Japan following World War II.
The shortest word in the English language with all its letters in alphabetical order is the word "almost."
The Philippines has more than 1,000 regional dialects and two official languages.
The only MLB team to have both its city's name and its team name in a foreign language is the San Diego Padres.
The longest word in the Finnish language, that isn't a compound word, is 'epaejaerjestelmaellistyttaemaettoemyydellaensaekaeaen'. In English it means 'even with their lack of ability to disorganize'.
The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters ispneumonoultra-microscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.
The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.
The longest one syllable word in he English language is"screeched".
The letter most in use in the English language is "E" and the letter "Q" is least used.
The computer programming language ADA was named in honor of Augusta Ada King. The U.S. Defense Department named the language after the Countess of Lovelace and daughter of Lord Byron because she helped finance and program what is thought to be the first computer, the “analytical engine” designed by Charles Babbage.
The Chinese language does not require punctuation.
The "huddle" in football was formed due a deaf football player who used sign language to communicate and his team didn't want the opposition to see the signals he used and in turn huddled around him.
South Africa used to have two official languages, now it has eleven.
Some biblical scholars believe that Aramaic (the language of the ancient Bible) did not contain an easy way to say 'many things' and used a term which has come down to us as 40. This means that when the bible -in many places -refers to '40 days,' they meant many days.
Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language.
Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter was reported to have said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers."
FACTS-24
The largest piece of ice to fall to earth was an ice block 6 meters (20 ft) across that fell in Scotland on 13 August 1849.
The largest hailstone recorded fell on 14 April 1986 in Bangladesh weighing 1kg (2.25lbs). The hailstorm reportedly killed 92 people.
The largest snowflakes in the world fell across Fort Keogh in Montana (USA) on 28 January 1887.
Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is the only permanent snowcap within sight of the equator.
Permanent snow and ice cover about 12% (21 million square km's) of the Earth's land surface. 80% of the world's fresh water is locked up as ice or snow.
A single snowstorm can drop 40 million tons of snow, carrying the energy equivalent to 120 atom bombs.
There is NOT a law of nature that prohibits 2 snowflakes from being identical.
Denver CO received 9.6 inches of snow. October of that year proved to be the coldest and snowiest of record for Denver, with a total snowfall for the month of 31.2 inches.
Light snow falls in Canberra during most years, but it rarely accumulates to more than a few centimeters.
In Australia, snowfalls are common above 1,500m in the Alps during the winter, but there are no permanent snowfields anywhere on the continent.
Denver CO was buried under 21.3 inches of snow, 19.4 inches of which fell in 24 hours. The heavy wet snow snapped trees and wires causing seven million dollars damage.
Parts of Michigan and Wisconsin experienced their first freeze of the autumn. Snow and sleet were reported in the Sheffield and Sutton areas of northeastern Vermont at midday.
The most snow produced in a single snowstorm is 4.8 meters (15.75ft) at Mt Shasta Ski Bowl, California (USA) between 13 and 19 February 1959.
A typical flash of folk lightning lasts for about 0.2 seconds.
At any particular time, there are approximately 1,800 thunderstorms occurring in the Earth's atmosphere.
The turkey was once nominated to be the official bird of the United States.
The thing that hangs from the top of the beak of a turkey is called the snood.
A peregrine falcon can reach speeds up to 200 miles per hour.
Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms every day!
The scarlet tanager, a songbird native to Illinois, can eat as many as 2,100 gypsy-moth caterpillars in one hour.
The oldest bird on record was Cocky, a cockatoo, who died in the London Zoo at the age of 82.
The highest flight by a bird was by a Ruppell's vulture at 37,000 feet. The bird hit a plane at this height.
The fastest bird in the world is the Peregrine Falcon, which can reach speeds in excess of two hundred miles per hour.
There are an estimated 2,500 collisions between birds and planes each year in the US.
The flying fox of Africa has a wingspan of fifty inches!
Birds save energy by flying in a "V" formation.
The largest bird egg ever laid was laid millions of years ago by the Madagascar, or the elephant bird.
Wild Flamingos are pink because they consume vast quantities of algae and brine shrimp.
Whooping cranes are born with blue eyes that change to bright gold by the time they six months old.
Blue jays often forget where they hide winter supplies of food.
Sometimes birds show anger towards humans by taking out its feelings on other birds nearby, because they are too afraid to attack humans.
The Egyptian vulture uses stones to smash ostrich eggs.
Vultures can soar for hours without one beat of their wings.
The dipper bird builds nests behind waterfalls for protection.
When two lovebirds appear to be kissing, they are actually grooming each other with their bills to keep clean and neat.
The fastest bird is the peregrine falcon. It can fly at a speed of 168-217 miles per hour.
A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
There are about 100 billion birds in the world, and about 6 billion of them make their homes in the United States.
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