As I promised in an earlier post, it’s time for another installment of really weird facts and assorted nonsense. I’m going to try to supply everyone with this kind of thing each week because there’s absolutely no end to the amount of weird and useless facts available out there. It’s my job job to find them and share them with you whether you like or or not. Lets get this ball rolling.
A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
A silicon chip a quarter of an inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
Snails can have about 25,000 teeth.
About 70% of all living organisms in the world are bacteria.
A ten gallon hat holds 3/4 of a gallon.
A whale’s heart beats only nine times a minute.
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.
Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep him cool. He changed it every two innings.
The longest one syllable word in the English language is screeched.
Well there’s your weekly installment of weird facts. I barely scratched the surface of what I have stored away for future posts. I hope you find them as interesting as I do. Enjoy your day.
As we’re all aware this last year-and-a-half with the pandemic has changed many things, some for the better and some for the worse. Since the onset of the pandemic I’ve noticed a disturbing trend with female drivers in the area and I’m assuming that it’s pretty much the same all across the country. I’ve mentioned in past posts that common courtesy is one of the victims of the pandemic and I need to take that one step further. It seems that many female drivers have taken to “flipping the bird” with a vengeance. I’ve seen teenage girls, old ladies, soccer moms, and just about everyone else getting with the program. Needless to say it sparked my curiosity which then required a little research into my archives about the practices of “throwing the finger” and here’s what I found.
SOME HISTORY OF THE BIRD
Tossing the bird has been a tradition with us men that has been passed down through the ages from grandfathers to fathers and then to their sons. Guys have been throwing the finger for a variety of reasons for as long as I can remember. We owned this gesture until the feminists arrived. Now the ladies have every right to be as obnoxious as we’ve been and believe me their certainly doing it with panache and gusto.
Thrusting up a middle finger or “flipping the bird” is one of the more familiar hand gestures across this country. Its popularity is also worldwide and has been around for a very long time in a number of European countries. No one is sure how it originated but we all know that the Romans used it at the time of Christ.
Just as there are many gestures in the world to convey one’s negative feelings about another, there are also regional differences to show approval. Men around the world have several gestures to imply that a woman is pretty. In the United States, men lift their eyebrows, in the Arab world a man grabs his beard, while in Greece he would stroke his cheek. In Italy, a man sticks his finger into his cheek and rotates it, Frenchmen kiss their fingertips, and Brazilians will pretend to hold up a telescope to their eye.
Obviously, almost any gesture can have meaning, either positive or negative, somewhere in the world. So the next time you travel abroad, be careful how you gesture with your hands. You might unwittingly attract unwanted attention from the natives, especially in the Middle East. They seem to look for any spoken word or gesture by a non-Arab as a reason to throw you into prison for a chat or to just execute you.
In my attempt to be fair I’ve also seen a few men with some unfortunate habits. While I myself would never today do something so crude. In my youth I may have lost control a few thousand times. I deeply regret those times when I “birded” nice old ladies or a few hundred clergymen. It really is nice to see that the female of the species now has the capability and the mindset to throw the bird to damn near anybody for damn near any reason. “I Am Woman” hear me roar.
And thanks to whoever placed that Ryan Gosling GIF on the net. It made my day.
It’s been a long week and I’m a little sick of thinking or talking about politics, younger generations, and the pandemic. I’m on overload with more news about masks and all of the assorted BS that goes along with that. I think it’s time for another installment of Totally Useless Trivia. The following items came into my files over the last few years and I love saving them for these not-so-special occasions. Let’s get started.
As an adult human being you have more than 20 square feet of skin on your body about the same square footage as a blanket for a queen-size bed. How creepy is that?
We Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day, or 350 slices per second. Yet for some reason we still don’t seem to understand why obesity is running rampant through the country. Are we really that stupid?
An estimated 800,000 senior citizens voluntarily give up their driving privileges each year. The average age at which they surrender the wheel is 85.
All of the clocks in the movie “Pulp Fiction” read 04:20. Rent the movie and check it out.
Americans appear to have the most sex at 132 times a year, with the Russians close behind at 122 times a year. Hard to believe the the French are only at 121. Let it be known that I’m officially volunteering to verify these numbers.
A portion of the water you drink every day has already been drunk by someone else, maybe several times over. This I didn’t really need to know, Ewwwwwwww!
About 1.7 liters of saliva is produced each day in an average person. You can’t have those long sloppy wet kisses without it.
A healthy individual releases 3.5 oz of gas in a single flatulent emission, or about 17 oz in a day. Wonderful, just freaking wonderful.
A kiss stimulates 29 muscles and chemicals causing relaxation. Women seem to like it light and frequent while men like it more strenuous. I think it’s really 30 muscles if you get my drift. LOL
Condoms will last about a month when stored in a wallet; any longer and its more likely to break. Wish I would have known this back in high school. I carried one for three years.
A Georgia company will mix your loved one’s ashes with cement and drop it into the ocean to form an artificial Reef. It must be “Greenie” heaven.
35 billion emails are sent each day throughout the world. Who cares, it’s mostly SPAM anyway.
61,000 people are airborne over the US at any given time. From a former white-knuckle flier, “better them than me.”
3,400,000 Americans are considered “Extreme Commuters”. These are people who commute over 90 minutes round trip every day to work. Anyone who’s ever lived in a major metro area can verify this one. Route 128 in Boston was my home for years.
That should curb your craving for stupid and useless information for another week or so. When you start going into withdrawal, drop me an email and I’ll fix you right up.
All those years ago when I started this blog I had difficulty deciding on the proper name for it. After weeks of overthinking and indecision I decided on everyuselessthing. Initially I did a lot of political ranting but that was a wasted effort. Political discussions are to me as boring and useless as discussions of religion and sports. This blog name gave me the freedom to say whatever I wanted about any subject that tweaked my interest. Occasionally I shift gears and blog about unrelated and quirky information I’ve gathered over the years. Trivia is a favorite topic for me and today I’m going to fill your trivia basket with weird and hopefully interesting facts. Here we go . . .
Sean Connery once worked as a coffin polisher.
Johnny Mathis dubbed Miss Piggy’s singing voice in The Muppet Movie.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
The first TV sitcom couple to share a double bed were the Munster’s in 1964.
The blood in the famous shower scene in Psycho was really Hershey’s chocolate syrup.
A pigs orgasm lasts for thirty minutes.
Twelve or more cows are known as a flink.
There are 450 hairs in an average eyebrow.
The billionth decimal digit of the numerical value pi is nine.
Woman blink twice as often as men.
That completes the first ten items of this post and hopefully the final ten will be even more useless.
The first person to refer to a coward as a “chicken” was William Shakespeare.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
Mark Twain failed to graduate from elementary school.
President Andrew Jackson’s pet parrot had to be removed from his funeral in 1845 because it was swearing.
Australia is the only continent without an active volcano.
On November 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II was made an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
The colors blue, red, yellow, black, and green were chosen for the Olympic Rings because at least one of them appears on the flag of every nation in the world.
In 1956 the Physical Culture and Sports Commission of communist China recognized the sport of hand-grenade throwing.
Butter was the first food product allowed by law to have artificial coloring. It is totally white in it’s natural state.
That’s it for today. More trivia lists will follow in the future. Now, I’ve got better things to do like cutting grass and then picking ticks off my body. Who doesn’t love Summer.
This post was originally offered early in 2012 when I first started blogging for everyuselessthing. This list of questions I answered back then were an attempt by me to introduce myself to new readers. To see the original answers will require that you to search through my archives but the answers will be much the same now as they were then.
I want my readers to understand me. It’s the wish of almost every other human being on the planet that someone “gets us”. I’m going to list one hundred really stupid and simple questions and then post my answers. If you read them all and then bundle them into one huge ball of useless information, you just might have a better understanding of me. It may work or it may not but you’ll never know until you give it a try. To test it further ask a friend, lover, or family member to answer them. You might be surprised to find out they’re not exactly the person you thought. Here we go.
1. Do you sleep with your closet doors open or closed? Open.
2. Do you take the shampoos and conditioner bottles from hotel? Yes.
3:Do you sleep with your sheets tucked in or out?Tucked out.
4:Have you ever stolen a street sign? Yes
5:Do you like to use post-it notes? Yes
6:Do you cut out coupons but then never use them? No, I hate coupons.
7:Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of a bees? Bees, at least I’d survive.
8:Do you have freckles? A few scattered here and there.
9:Do you always smile for pictures? No, I hate being photographed.
10:What is your biggest pet peeve? People who talk-over me while in conversation.
11:Do you ever count your steps when you walk? Almost always.
12:Have you ever peed in the woods? Yes, it’s the best.
13:What about pooped in the woods? I have but it’s unpleasant.
14:Do you ever dance even if there’s no music playing? Only when I’m alone.
15:Do you chew your pens and pencils? Only pencils.
16:How many people have you slept with this week? Does my cat count? If she does then “2”.
17:What size is your bed? Queen.
18:What is your Song of the week? Marvin Gaye – Charlie Puth
19:Is it okay for guys to wear pink? Yes.
20:Do you still watch cartoons? Almost never.
21:What’s your least favorite movie? Anything with Will Ferrell in it.
22:Where would you bury hidden treasure if you had some? None of your business. It’s called ‘hidden treasure’ for a reason.
23:What do you drink with dinner? Seltzer Water or wine.
24:What do you dip a chicken nugget in? Ketchup.
25:What is your favorite food? Hamburgers.
26:What movies could you watch over and over and still love? Anything prior to 1950.
27:Last person you kissed/kissed you? My better-half.
28:Were you ever a boy/girl scout? Yes.
29:Would you ever strip or pose nude in a magazine? No, it might scare people.
30:When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper? 1990.
31:Can you change the oil on a car? Yes.
32:Ever gotten a speeding ticket? Oh yeah.
33:Ever ran out of gas? Once in 1975.
34:Favorite kind of sandwich? BLT, with lots of B.
35:Best thing to eat for breakfast? Bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee.
36:What is your usual bedtime? 11 PM.
37:Are you lazy? No.
38:When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween? At 45, I was Woody Allen.
39. Who is your favorite dead singer? Amy Winehouse
Loved Her
40:How many languages can you speak? 1.5
41:Do you have any magazine subscriptions? Yes, one.
42:Which are better Legos or Lincoln logs? Legos.
43:Are you stubborn?Yes.
44:Who is better…Leno or Letterman? Johnny Carson.
45:Ever watch soap operas? I used to.
46:Are you afraid of heights? Not really, no.
47:Do you sing in the car? Sometimes.
48:Do you sing in the shower? No.
49: Do you sleep clothed or naked? Naked.
50:Ever used a gun? Yes.
51:Last time you got a portrait taken by a photographer? I was two years old.
52:Do you think musicals are cheesy? Some are, some not.
53:Is Christmas stressful? Yes, it’s a pain in the ass.
54:Ever eat a pierogi? Hundreds of times, Yummmm!
55:Favorite type of fruit pie? Apple.
56:Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid? Archeologist.
57:Do you believe in ghosts? No.
58:Ever have a Deja-vu feeling? Yes.
59:Take a vitamin daily? Yes.
60:Wear slippers? Yes.
61:Wear a bath robe? Yes.
62: How old were you when you lost your virginity? 14.
63:First concert? Harry Chapin.
64:Wal-Mart, Target or Kmart? Walmart, to people watch.
65:Nike or Adidas? Dr. Scholl
66:Cheetos Or Fritos? Cape Cod Potato Chips.
67:Peanuts or Sunflower seeds? Cashews.
68:Ever hear of the group Tres Bien? Hell no.
69:Ever take dance lessons? Yes. as a kid, 3 years.
70:Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing? No, there won’t be a future spouse.
71:Can you curl your tongue? Yes, and I know how to use it too.
72:Ever won a spelling bee? No.
73:Have you ever cried because you were so happy? Yes, at my divorce hearing.
74:Own any record albums? Yes, vinyl and CD’s.
75:Own a record player?Yes.
76:Regularly burn incense? Yes.
77:Ever been in love? Yes.
78:Who would you like to see in concert? Celine Dion.
79:How many tattoos do you have? Six small ones.
80:Hot tea or cold tea? Hot.
81:Tea or coffee? Coffee.
82:Sugar or snickerdoodles? Sweet’n’Low
83:Can you swim well? Yes.
84:Can you hold your breath without holding your nose? Yes.
85:Are you patient? Not really.
86:DJ or band, at a wedding? DJ.
87:Ever won a contest? Yes.
88:Ever have plastic surgery? No.
89:Which are better black or green olives? Green.
90:Can you knit or crochet? Neither.
91:Best room for a fireplace? Bed room.
92:Do you want to get married? Never again.
93. Do you wear glasses? Yes.
94:Who was your HS crush? Beth.
95:Do you ever cry and throw a fit until you get your own way? Only as an infant.
96:Do you have kids? Yes.
97:Do you want kids? No more thank you very much.
98:What’s your favorite color? Blue.
99:Do you miss anyone right now? Yes.
100: Have you ever been stung by a bee? Yes.
* * *
There you have it. My screwed up and over-explained personality in a nutshell. Remove a few of these questions and add your own. Personalize it as much as you think is necessary. Then have a few of your friends compete the questions and invite them over for a few bottles of wine and a group discussion. It might be a great deal of fun but even if it isn’t make sure you’re serving a really good wine.
I’ve been contemplating something for the last few months and I’ve finally decided to end my blogging career here on WordPress. I’ve been blogging on a regular basis for almost seven years on two different blogs and I’ve had a lot to say. I’ve voiced my somewhat irreverent opinions on everything from politics to religion. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve made some good friends over the years as well as a few liberal enemies.
I also have a number of other interests that have slowly but steadily taken over my daily activities and turned blogging into a secondary concern. I’ll be shutting down this blog the week prior to Halloween and it should remain available for a time until my domain renewal next year. After that who knows . . . .
I’d like to thank all of my followers and other regular readers for stopping by as often as they have and I’ll certainly miss their intellectual and opinionated emails. The email, everyuselessthing@yahoo.com, will remain active indefinitely.
I’ve always been a lover of Nature and almost anything related to it. As a photographer I spend as much time as I can out-and-about communing with Mother Nature. I come by it honestly because as a kid growing up I spent more than half of my time in the woods with my friends. We lived on the edge of huge state park directly adjacent to the Allegheny River and knew every inch of the place. My father, a hunter, spent a lot of time explaining about local wildlife and how they lived and traveled in the wild. It was just a very cool place to grow up.
So I thought I’d share a few interesting factoids about Nature with you. Here they are.
Every year the world’s deserts produce 1.7 billion tons of dust.
Nature reserves and national park cover 3% of the worlds surface.
Over 99.9% of the land on earth is not occupied by a person at a given time.
A tenth of the world’s population relies on the Ganges for water.
It takes one hundred years for the deep-sea clam to grow to the length of a third of an inch.
Nearly half of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans since the beginning of the nineteenth century has been absorbed by the oceans.
An estimated 30% of Earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production.
Since the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, the sun has become 25-30% hotter.
More than 90% of the world’s rubies come from Burma (or whatever they’re calling it these days).
Lake Baikal in Russia contains about 20% of the world’s fresh water.
That’s it for today. It’s time to turn off this computer and get to work in the yard. Winter’s coming and the garden has to be deconstructed.
We do a lot of trivia on this site which usually consists of total useless information about totally useless things and people. Today will be a miscellaneous mish-mash of things I’ve discovered recently. First is something called the Manner of Death statistics. It’s a list created by some group somewhere telling us all how we are dying in descending order of frequency. Enjoy!
That’s enough to send a cold chill up anyone’s back. The perfect way to start your day. Next is a list of injury types, hospital data, and a whole lot more.
Number of medically attended injury and poisoning episodes in the population: 39.5 million
Episodes per 1,000 population: 126.3
Number of visits (to physician offices, hospital outpatient and emergency departments) for injuries: 80.1 million (includes visits for adverse effects of drug, medicinal or biological substance)
Number of emergency department visits for injuries: 43.0 million (includes visits for adverse effects of medical treatment)
Number of discharges for fractures (all sites): 1.1 million
Number of discharges for poisonings: 260,000
Number of discharges for certain complications of surgical and medical care: 1.0 million
Mortality
Total number of deaths: 192,945
Deaths per 100,000 population: 60.2
Poisoning
Number of poisoning deaths: 48,545
Deaths per 100,000 population: 15.4
Traffic Deaths
Number of deaths: 33,804
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.7
Firearm Deaths
Number of deaths: 33,636
Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.6
Are you feeling more secure now? Do you even want to leave the house? It appears that life in these United States is a real crap shoot. Roll the dice and hope for the best every time you leave the house.
I admit I’ve depressed myself with this posting so I’ll keep this last item short. On this day in history many people have passed on. Here are two that died on this day that I thought might interest you.
1948 Babe Ruth, Baseball legend (NY Yankees), dies in NY at 53
1977 Elvis Presley, American musician, dies at Graceland at 42. Official cause of death is cardiac arrhythmia
I feel the need today to once again fill your heads with more of my useless information. These factoids were chosen at random and are in no particular order or category.
Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair.
The philosopher Daniel Dennett introduced the Frisbee to Britain.
Isaac Newton invented the cat door.
The longest length of time from invention to production was for the ballpoint pen at 58 years. The zipper took only 32 years.
Windshield wipers, laser printers, and bullet-proof vests were invented by women.
I’m amazed at some of the facts I’ve been finding and the longer I look the crazier they seem to get. Lets continue.
In India, 127 million people were vaccinated in a single day in 1997.
There are nearly as many American Indians in California now as there were in the eighteenth century.
By 2007, the cost of a coffin in Bagdad was 50-75 dollars, up from 5-10 before the Iraq war.
In Britain, 93% of young people can master a computer game while only 38% can bake a potato.
Jack Bauer, the lead character from the series 24, personally killed 112 people in the first five seasons of the show.
Re your eyes getting tired? Are you bored yet? No! I’ll just keep going until you’re asleep.
There are no legal public cinema’s in Saudi Arabia.
One in every 3400 Americans is an Elvis impersonator.
There are approximately twenty families with the name Obama in the US, compared with more than 11,000 Clintons and 60,000 Bushes.
In the year 1377, 35% of all English men were named John.
There are more people named Chang in China than there are people in Germany.
That’s just about it for today but I have one more tidbit I especially liked:
“In the urban West, one of every three women has blond hair; only one in 20 is a natural blond.”
Someone has the best job ever. He spends all day checking to see if the rugs match the drapes.
I am not now or ever have been considered a religious person. I’ve read as much information as I could find on almost every major religion over the years. It was my vain attempt to convince myself one way or the other that such a thing was necessary in my life. I accomplished my goal but it left me with volumes of information on religions both interesting and some not so much. Today I’ll post some strange but true religious trivia and you can do with it what you will.
The temple of all faiths: Birla Temple in New Delhi, India, includes separate areas for worship for every known religion.
It was not until the fourth century that the church (Christianity) began to celebrate the feast of Christmas.
The first Bible printed in America in 1663 was a translation into the Algonkian language.
The word “and” appears 46,277 times in the King James version of the Bible.
Hijmar, a holy man of Benares, India, held his left arm in the same position for 12 years.
The first book digest: Dubash Meghji, of Zanzibar., ate one page of the Koran each day for thirty years.
Each year Shia Muslims in Ahmadabad, India, mourn the death of Imam Husain, a descendant of the prophet Mohammad, by whipping themselves with knife-tipped chains.
In 1993, Israel’s telephone company offered a service for people to fax messages to God, to be placed in the Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.
Forty nuns at a convent in Stetyl, the Netherlands, have maintained a continuous prayer in their chapel for ninety-eight years.
The people who worship a nail: The Maria Gonds of Chandra, India, pray only to a 12 inch spike.
In 1685 a church bell from a Protestant chapel in France was whipped and burned after being charged with “inflaming the hearts of heretics”.
Prayer stones addressed to Egyptian god Ra and sold to worshippers in Ancient Egypt had large ears engraved on them – so Ra would be sure to hear their messages.
In 1992 a historic church in Melle, France, installed a juke box that plays Gregorian chants, Tibetan mantras, and Jewish liturgical music.
And last but not least:
Ancient Egyptian priests in 450 b.c. trained baboons to sweep out their temples.
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