Animal and Fun Trivia

Last updated September 28, 2023

Trivia kinda pops in here before they find a permanent home elsewhere.

The human body makes over 3.8 million new cells every second, with most of those being blood and gut cells.
The average woman speaks about 7,000 words a day, the typical male utters 2,000 words a day.
The ocean hosts 10 times more viruses than bacteria.
The ocean contains 4.5 billion tons of dissolved uranium.
The word SWIMS is the same when read upside down.
The earth's magnetic field has declined 10% over the last century.
Three billion people eat rice three times a day.
500,000 children go blind each year from vitamin A deficiency.
Anheuser-Busch is the largest consumer of rice in the US for their lighter beers.
Hottest temperature ever recorded on earth was 136 degrees Fahrenheit in El Azizia Libya.
At one point, you were the youngest person in the world.
The number of people older than you will never increase.
The name of all the continents start with the same letter that they end with.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
The sun rotates once every 27 days.
The human brain has 86 billion neurons, the mouse has 71 million.
Bombyx morei, the silkworm that was domesticated 4,500 years ago, can no longer survive in the wild. A silkworm makes a single continuous thread half a mile long.
If an influenza virus were the size of your fist, the cell it would attack in your body would be half the size of the Empire State Building. After eight hours the cell would be destroyed.
The 100 trillion tiny bacterial cells in a human outnumber human cells ten to one.
A liter of seawater contains 10 billion bacteria and 100 billion viruses.
The human body contains trillions of viruses comprising our "virome".
A human sneeze travels at 200 miles per hour and may contain up to 200 million individual viruses.
The number 4 is the only number with the same number of letters as the meaning of its name.
Humans have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
The sciatic nerve in the hip is half an inch in diameter.
Although only 2% by weight, the human brain consumes 20% of our oxygen.
A red blood cell can circumnavigate the human body in just 20 seconds.
A red blood cell can travel 12,000 miles in a day.
Heartbeat rates per minute: Mouse 500; Human 70; Elephant 28; Whale 9;
Three deadliest days for pedestrians: Jan 1st, Dec 23rd, and Oct 31st.
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
The rule of 3's: A human can survive 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food.
A bat's nervous system can detect differences in echo delay of just one or two millionths of a second, this is a distance of less than a millimeter.
Just a fraction of a second before the oldest person in the world was born, a completely different set of people were living on the earth.
Take a brand new deck of cards, do eight perfect shuffles with cuts and the cards will return to their original order.
"Twelve Plus One" is an anagram of "Eleven Plus Two"
If every person on earth fought one-on-one until there was only one winner (there can be only one), that person would only have to win 33 times.
A single gram of DNA contains about 700 terabytes of information.
Leonardo da Vinci observed 500 years ago that the combined cross-sectional areas of a tree's daughter branches are equal to the cross-sectional area of the mother branch.
If you spell out the English numbers in order, the first time you get to the letter "a" is at one-thousand.
Why can't you make another word using all the letters in "anagram"?
Texas has the largest state capitol building in the nation, of course.
As of 2018, the animal with the largest genome is the salamander axolotl with 32 billion base pairs. Humans have a tenth of that with 2.9 billion base pairs. Axolotl are particularly interesting since they can grow back entire limbs and organs.
When the greater mouse-eared bat sense one of their predators, an owl, is near, they will emit a sound like a nest of hornets in a feat of acoustical mimicry.
When you burn fat by exercise, where does it go?

Fat is C₅₅H₁₀₄₀, and the chemical equation is:

C₅₅H₁₀₄₀O₆ + 78O₂ -> 55CO₂ + 52H₂O + energy

Your body mixes fat with oxygen to create Carbon Dioxide, water and energy.

So your fat leaves your body as CO₂ in exhaled breath, and water in the form of sweat, pee, tears, and breath.
Traffic accidents killed 40,000 Americans in 2018 (109 people a day) and 1.4 million people worldwide.
The average age of a first time grandparent is 47.
Show this bold Prussian that praises slaughter: slaughter brings rout!

You can remove the first letter from each word in the above sentence and it still makes sense.
Traditionally, violin strings were made of catgut, which oddly enough is not made from cats, but the gut or intestines of sheep or goats.
Some yeasts produce alcohol to fight their eternal enemy - bacteria. That's why humans use alcohol wipes to kill bacteria - something yeast learned eons ago.
The temperature of the sun's corona is 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, yet the surface of the sun is much cooler at 10,800 Fahrenheit for some unknown reason. Astronomers call this mystery the "coronal heating problem.".
The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, and it is 400 times closer to the earth than the sun, so they look about the same size, allowing the moon to just barely eclipse the sun - quite a coincidence.
The world has only two doubly landlocked countries (countries who are landlocked and surrounded by only landlocked countries): Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan.
Animal Trivia
1. The Desert Iguana changes from a dark color in the morning to absorb sunlight to white in the afternoon to repel sunlight.
2. Hooded seals only nurse their newborns for 4 days.
3. Polar bears have black skin to absorb any light and their fur is actually not white, it's transparent.
4. Polar bears often roll in the snow to brush out the salt crystals from their fur.
5. Polar bears can smell a seal pup in the snow a kilometer away.
6. All mammals, from giraffes down to shrews, have exactly seven neck vertebrae (well, with the exceptions of manatees and two types of sloth).
7. An African Fish Eagle may only spend 10 minutes a day hunting to get its necessary half pound of fish a day.
8. Elephants may graze for 20 hours a day to get enough calories from low nutritional food, while lions may sleep for 20 hours a day.
9. Cats live longer than dogs and, in general, small dogs live longer than big dogs.
10. The red-eyed tree frog embryo who are laid on trees overhanging a pond are smart enough to sense when fellow eggs are being eaten by a snake and drop out of their egg sac early to take their chances in the water below.
11. Besides humans, Armadillos are the only animal that can get leprosy.
12. Armadillos always deliver 4 identical babies.
13. Unlike other big cats, cheetah cubs do not have a hunting instinct, they must be taught everything about hunting by their mother.
14. Not only is the tiger's fur striped, but it's skin is also striped.
15. At an estimated lifespan of 200 years, the bowhead whale is the longest living mammal.
16. Driver ants, a type of army ant, are completely blind. They communicate by pheromones.
17. Owl feathers are not waterproofed so the birds are quite miserable in the rain.
18. The Northern short-tailed shrew is truly a weird mammal - it has venom like a Gila monster, uses echo location like a bat, and has a horrible offensive stench like a skunk. Its metabolism is so fast it must eat three times its own weight in food everyday or it will starve. The shrews heart races at 1,200 beats per minute and it is awake for 5 minutes and then must sleep for 25.
19. The Giraffe is the largest ruminant - it has a four chambered stomach and chews cud. It sleeps the least of all mammals, 4 hours a day. It's blood pressure is twice that of other mammals, that pressure is needed to pump blood to its head. The giraffe is not known to swim.
20. East Africa's naked mole rat is the only thermoconformer mammal, it does not maintain a consistent body temperature, but changes temperature with its environment. Its skin lacks pain receptors. It is highly resistant to cancer and is our longest lived rodent, thought to live 30 years. The naked mole rat shows little signs of aging. They live in families of 75 and may have a tunnel system up to 3 miles long.
21. Florida is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles live together. The everglades host a million alligators and 1,500 crocs.
22. Although lions and tigers can be tamed and appear in circuses, jaguars cannot be tamed.
23. What's the difference between crocs and gators? Crocodiles have narrow V-shaped snouts, show both sets of teeth when their mouths are closed, like salty water, and feed mostly on fish. Alligators have rounded U-shaped snouts, only show their top teeth when their mouths are closed, like fresh water, and eat fish and mammals.
24. While a human's heart beats about once a second, a hummingbird's heart beats 21 times per second. Hummingbird's wings beat at 70-80 times per seconds. Hummingbirds are only native to the Americas. The smallest hummingbird, the bee hummingbird weighs less than a penny.
25. Lions
  1. Lions are the only social cats.
  2. Lions are the only cats with sexual dimorphism with the males being easily recognized by their manes.
  3. Lions often hunt at night so they don't overheat. Males in particular overheat easily since they sport a mane that protects them in fights with other males, but limits their activities and makes them easier for prey to see.
  4. Lions have excellent night vision and can see six times better at night than humans.
  5. In her lifetime a lioness will hunt 1,000 times - each hunt is a risk of fatal injury - a broken bone is a death sentence.
  6. A lioness will sometimes abandon a single newborn cub, to try and have another litter with more cubs.
  7. One quarter of all lion cubs are killed by rogue males intending to take over a pride.
26. Snakes grow until they die.
27. Half of all male rhinos in the wild die in disputes with other male rhinos over territory and mating rights.
28. In biology, Haller's rule states that the smaller the animal, the larger the brain is in proportion to the body. Human brains take up 2-3 percent of our body mass. Tiny spiders have 80% of their body cavity filled with its nervous system.
29. Rodents are the most successful mammals. There are more individual rodents than all other mammals combined. 1,800 species of the 4,500 mammals are in the Rodentia order.
30. By controlling the flow of blood to its beak, the toucan can adjust its temperature.
31. Hyenas clans are totally female dominated. The highest status goes to the alpha female, then beta female, down to the lowest ranking female, then the alpha male. BTW, the hyena has the second most powerful bite, 1,000 psi, in the animal kingdom.
32. Pigeons, like most prey animals have a large field of vision, 340 degrees; predators on the other hand have a narrow binocular field of view, but with depth perception to attack their next meal.
33. The endurance of the cheetah is limited by his temperature which rises from 98.6 degrees F to 105 degree in just 328 yards of running. Continued running would fry its brain. Cheetahs hunt during the day since larger predators who would steal their prey are active at night.
34. Being in possession of a potent defense, skunks have no large natural enemies. This is why when on a highway they are unconcerned when a car comes rushing towards them. The skunks are used to raising their tails and threatening the oncoming bear or wolf. If that doesn't work they will perhaps let loose some odoriferous liquid to reinforce the point, sadly these strategies are ineffective against cars. You see the result on highways across America.
35. Domestication is the processes of selectively breeding plants and animals for desired characteristics thereby changing the genetics of the specimen. Taming is taking a specimen from the wild and training a particular individual to have desired characteristics - no DNA is changed. Lions have been tamed, but not domesticated.
36. Polyergus ants are spartan warriors so specialized for fighting they cannot even raise their own young. They steal pupae from Formica ants and bring them home to their nests where existing Formica "slaves" raise the new pupae and the Polyergus young.
37. Rove beetles are a type of Myrmecophile, organisms living with ants, that can mingle with the ants by producing the right smell and thereby plunder the ant nest.
38. Kiwi chicks hatch fully formed and prepared for life. They need no parental care.
39. Dogs have 44 times more smell receptors than humans.
40. Orcas have been known to turn upside down, grab onto a shark, then right themselves causing the shark to be upside down, triggering a motionless, catatonic state in the shark. The orca can hold it there until the shark suffocates from not moving, or is sufficiently drained of energy the orca can kill it.
41. Of the 16,000 species of bees only 5 percent are social bees living in hives.
42. A typical social hive of bees has 50,000 members, with 2,000 dying every day, and 2,000 being born.
43. In ancient Mexico, the only two domesticated animals were the dog and the turkey.
44. Clostridium perfringens, the organism that causes gangrene, can reproduce in nine minutes. At that rate, a single bacterium could theoretically produce more offspring in two days than there are protons in the universe.
45. Hylacosmilus atrox, a saber-toothed predator that roamed South America in the late Pliocene was a marsupial (not to be confused with Smilodon, the official Saber-toothed cat).
46. Unlike most mammals which have two sets of teeth, elephants will have six sets of teeth during their lifetime. After their sixth set has worn out, the elephant slowly starves to death.
47. An elephant's trunk has 40,000 muscles in its trunk that it must learn how to control. Humans have a total of 639.
48. The Cave Swiftlet uses echo location like bats to navigate through dense trees and caves.
49. The brown rat cannot sweat so it controls its temperature by changing the blood flow to the tail, using it like a radiator.
50. The weight of all the ants in the world equals about the weight of all the people.
51. 10¹²⁰ is an estimate of the total number of unique chess games, and is called the Shannon Number.
52. Almost all mammals with horns or antlers are prey animals who use them as defense against predators or to fight for mating rights.
53. At the tender age of 14 days, female lemmings can become pregnant.
54. Burrowing owls when trapped in a hole will make a sound like a rattlesnake to frighten off predator who can't see them, but can hear them.
55. In one season a Grey Squirrel may hide three thousand nuts and recover 90% of them.
56. A Steller's Jay can mimic the sound of a red-shouldered hawk to scare away other birds from a crowded bird feeder.
57. To force meerkats to abandon their recently won prey, a drongo bird can imitate a meerkat warning cry and swoop down and take over their meal while the meerkat runs for cover.
58. Giraffes sleep the least of any mammals, only four hours a day.
59. Giraffes used to roam all over Europe.
60. To pump blood to their head, giraffes have a blood pressure twice as high as any other mammal .
61. While humans have three photoreceptors in our eyes to see red, green, and blue light, the mantis shrimp has 12 distinct photoreceptor types giving it incredible vision including seeing linearly and circularly polarized light.
62. Africa's endangered wild dogs are excellent hunters, but are not stealth hunters like lions, but rather run down their prey and exhaust them. One third of wild dog pups die in the jaws of a lion.
Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, and William Shakespeare died on the same day, April 23, 1616.
The Pantheon in Rome held the record as the largest unsupported dome from its creation in 128 AD to 1436 when Brunelleschi completed the Santa Maria del Fiore dome in Florence Italy.
While the pyramids where being built, woolly mammoths still roamed. The pyramids were finished around 2490 BC, and the last few mammoths made it to 1650 BC.
You have more synapses in your brain than stars in the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains 200 billion stars. The average adult has roughly 500 trillion synapses.
The USS Washington was the only battleship in WWII to sink another battleship, the Kirishima, unassisted.
The Kasuga Taisha Shrine in Nara Japan is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years. This forces the younger generations to learn how to build the temple. Since its original building in 768 it has been rebuilt 57 times.
The word bed looks like a bed.
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the moon landings than to the building of the Great Pyramids.
Males with symmetrical faces have more masculine facial features, and symmetrical females have more feminine facial features.
A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. -WARREN E. BUFFETT on stock market investments
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -Bertrand Russell
The English dictionary is the largest in the world.
The earth is only solid for the first 41 miles, proportionately thinner than the skin of an apple.
Lowest place on earth is the Dead Sea, 1,300 feet below sea level. Amazingly, the second lowest dry point is Death Valley California at 282 feet below sea level.
The ancient Egyptians believed the love vein went from the fourth finger on the left hand directly to the heart - this is why we wear wedding rings on that finger.
Napoleon to his staff, "Ask me for anything, anything but time."
"Are we being good ancestors?" -Jonas Salk
"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give." - Sir Winston Churchill
When climbing mountains, remember the peak is only half-way.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." - Thomas Huxley
Wellerisms
Named after Sam Weller in Dickens' The Pickwick Papers have three parts: a proverb, a speaker, and a literal explanation.

Examples:
"We'll have to rehearse that," said the undertaker as the coffin fell out of the car.
"Simply remarkable," said the teacher when asked her opinion about the new dry-erase board.
"Prevention is better than cure," said the pig when it ran away from the butcher.
Fewer boys in proportion to girls are born each year in industrialized countries. The proportion has declined at a rate of about one per 1000 births every year.
100 million people worldwide suffer from Dengue fever which has no cure.
It's estimated that the two trillion galaxies in the universe which have on average 400 billion stars each.
A Mersenne number is a positive number that can be expressed in the form 2ⁿ-1. The first few are 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, 63, 127, and 255. They are also represented in binary as all '1's. If the number is also a prime number, it gets the special name: a Mersenne prime. The 46th Mersenne prime is 2 raised to 43,112,609 power minus 1.
The "Rule of 72" tells how long it will take a linear process to double. You only have to divide the rate of change into the magic number 72. For example, if you have money in the stock market and expect a 6% return rate then divide 72 by 6 it will take 12 years to double your money.
This is only an approximation and works best for interest rates from 6-10%. The real formula is
Years to Double Investment = ln(2) / ln (1 + (interest rate / 100))
At 8% interest the result is 9.0065 years. (not too bad).
In English the "spear side" refers to the male side of the family and the "distaff side" or "spindle side" refers to the woman's side of the family.
James Garfield, the 20th US president, was a professor of ancient languages and also ambidextrous. He could write Latin with one hand and simultaneously write Greek with the other.
John Tyler, the 10th president, fathered an impressive 15 children, fathering the last in his 70s.
Tungsten has nearly the same density as gold, making it a perfect core for counterfeit gold bars.
words invariant with antinomian prefix:
inflammable = flammable
irregardless = regardless
If you were to unravel all the DNA in a single human cell it be six feet long. Unraveling all the DNA in a human body would reach the sun and back 611 times [type this into Google.com: ((6 ft * 100 trillion) / 93,000,000 miles)/2 ]
"Proprioception" is the sixth sense, or at least a fifth and a half sense of us humans. Are we upside down, or going around a corner in a car with our eyes shut? Some nerves in conspiracy with our inner ear tell us how our bodies are oriented in space.

A network of nerves, in conjunction with the inner ear, tells the brain where the body and all its parts are and how they're oriented. This is how you know when you're upside down, or how you can tell the car you're riding in is turning, even with your eyes closed.
For each single IQ point increase, a person's annual income increases by about $400.
Zero degrees Kelvin is the lowest possible temperature. The highest possible temperature, called the Planck temperature, is equal to 10^32 degrees Kelvin.
"Subaru" is the Japanese name for the Pleiades cluster of stars, hence the Subaru logo of stars.
The human eye has a resolution of about 500 megapixels with a daytime dynamic range detection of 10,000:1.
Dominoes were invented in China and each piece represented the throw of a pair of dice. Blanks were added later in Italy.
Everything around us seems stationary, but our eyes move two to three times every second in jumps called saccades.
If we had 53 states, a prime number, we really would be "one nation indivisible".
The white part of our eyes is named sclerae.
The world consumed 89 million barrels of oil a day in 2012. The US used 18 million barrels a day.
Although Jupiter is a gas giant, it has a rocky core larger than the earth.
Of the 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world, all but 200 are held by the US and Russia.
On 30 October 1961, Russia detonates the largest ever nuclear bomb, Tsar Bomba, with a 50 Megaton yield.
The "ing" form of a verb is called the present participle. A gerund is when you use the present participle as the subject of a sentence. Example, *Crying* is therapeutic. "Crying" is the subject, and the word "is" is the verb. If it's used as an adjective, like "I have a *walking* stick" then it's a gerundive.
Napoleon lost more troops in Haiti than at Waterloo.
Godwin's Law
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful."
Poe's Law
It is impossible to create a parody of extreme views such that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied.
The Dunning–Kruger Effect
People who are not good at a task, don't know they aren't any good, and consistently overrate their abilities. People who are really good, tend to underrate themselves, assuming most people are at least as good as they are.
Clarke's First Law of Prediction:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong."
Cunningham's Law:
"The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer." - Ward Cunningham
Gresham's law

Bad money drives good money out of circulation.
Grey's Law

"Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
Ralph's Observation

"It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you are in a hurry."
Anthony's Law of the Workshop

"Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner."
A prime number is a natural number, greater than 1, that is only divisible with itself and one. Every number greater than 1 is either a prime or can be expressed as a product of primes (e.g., 10 = 2 * 5).
Most people produce more than a quart of saliva a day.
In our lifetimes we make 17 gallons of tears.
In the ancient Roman calendar, the Ides fall on the 15th day of March, May, July, or October, and the 13th day of the other months.
Bosons are subatomic particles with an integer spin for angular momentum. An example is the humble photon. Bosons can be stacked happily on top of each other. The less social fermions with half integer spin, like the proton and electron, don't like to be in the same space with each other.
Outline for children to understand stories:

Somebody / Wanted / But / So / Then
The children fill in the missing information to make a sentence.
Ockham's razor also Occam's razor (OK-ehmz ray-zuhr) noun
A rule in science and philosophy stating that entities should not be multiplied needlessly. This rule is interpreted to mean that the simplest of two or more competing theories is preferable and that an explanation for unknown phenomena should first be attempted in terms of what is already known. Also called law of parsimony.
Rousseau said children are born pure, but civilization corrupts ( he gave his kids up for adoption).
Roman Army
The Legion had 4,800 men composed of 10 cohorts of 480 further divided into 6 centuries of 80 men. Each Century had 10 Tents of 8 men each.
The Seasons for the Northern Hemisphere
Each traditional season starts at either an equinox or solstice. An Equinox is when day and night are of equal length. The Winter Solstice is when the sun is at its most southernmost point in the sky and the shortest day, the Summer Solstice is when the sun is at its most northernmost point in the sky and the longest day.

Spring (vernal) Equinox - 21 March
Summer Solstice - 21 June
Autumn Equinox - 23 Sept
Winter Solstice - 22 Dec

Although the above describes the "traditional" seasons, the actual weather varies greatly depending on where your feet are planted.
Scientific Experiments
In 1747 James Lind, a Scottish physician, ran what could be the first recorded controlled medical experiment in history. He divided scurvy patients into six different groups and treated them with different diets. The patients given two oranges and a lemon a day recovered first. Of course it wasn't until 1795, almost 50 years later, that the British Navy heeded his advice and required lime juice as standard issue on ships - an important component of Britain ruling the oceans (and being derided as "limeys").
A formula developed by Paul Krebaum can help dogs sprayed by skunks better than tomato juice. The mixture must be made in a large, open container because it foams so much that it could explode a closed vessel, and cannot be stored. It contains a quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, a quarter cup of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda) and a teaspoon of liquid soap. (Mr. Krebaum recommends Soft Soap or Ivory.) Work it well into the hair or fur of the victim, avoiding the eyes; while the formula is nontoxic, the salt from the baking soda will sting. Let it sit long enough to work "Let your nose be your guide," Mr. Krebaum said then rinse it thoroughly.
"otium" in Latin expresses the joy of being in control of one's own time.
"morgenfrisk" in Danish is the delight of a good night's sleep.
Unintended Consequences
Huge expenses incurred by Louis XVI aiding the American Revolution to spite England, strained the French treasury. His French soldiers picked up dangerous liberal "We-don't-need-no-king" philosophy from the Americans. Both of these would contribute to the demise of the monarchy in France.
The Roman Way
In 52BC Julius Caesar surrounds Vercingetorix chief of the Gallic tribe Arveni at Alesia. The Romans build siege works around the defenders fort. Upon hearing of reinforcements the Romans build a second set of walls 26 miles in all. The Gauls surrender and the Gallic Wars end.
Rare Elements
The terrestrial reserves of astatine and francium are measured, oddly enough, in milligrams. The name of the rarest element on Earth is Astatine (69 milligrams in all of the Earth's crust). Astatine is formed from radioactive decay and is unstable itself.
It Just Makes Sense
As I single guy I always thought you should have two dishwashers -one on each side of the sink. That way you could just move dishes from the clean one to the table and then back to the dirty dishwasher skipping the wasteful trip to the cabinet.
Let's hope the 1929 economy is not later called "The Great Depression I".
Things you never hear: "Let's go out to eat at the hospital tonight!"
Genghis Khan
Part of the reason the Mongol army was so amazingly successful is that they elected officers from the lower ranks and the upper officers were selected by ability and not birthright. In contrast, European commanders of the time were appointed based on property which was inherited and not ability.
A humorous Statistical Rash:

A) The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
B) On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
C) The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
D) The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine, and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans
E) Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like. It's speaking English that kills you. - Author Unknown
Tonsilloliths
The small white nodules or 'stones' in the crypts of the tonsils are called tonsilloliths and occur in 2 to 3% of the population.
At sea level, helium's lifting capacity is 0.0628 lb/ft3; vacuum lifts at 0.0755 lb/ft3.
During WWII the US attached small incendiary devices to bats to be released from a plane and seek out dark places in Japan to burn the mostly wood houses. Although the plan worked well in tests, even burning down parts of a US base, it was never put into use.
Pigeons were trained in WWII by B.F. Skinner to peck at the picture of a ship. Three birds were to be put into bombs which were guided to enemy ships by the pigeons pecking a projected image from the nose of the bomb. This plan was also not used.
Cicadas in America
America hosts twelve broods of 17-year cicadas and three broods of 13-year cicadas. The different broods may take to the air in different years, but all wait their allotted interval. Cicadas only emerge after a prime number of years to reduce the number of predators. If they were to emerge every three years, and some broods drift into a neighboring years, their predators might adapt and be waiting for them. By waiting a prime number of years, they wait out all predators.
Cicero on Conversation
In "On Duties", Cicero has suggestions for good conversation: speak clearly; speak easily but not too much, do not interrupt, be courteous, never criticize absent people, stick to subjects of general interest, do not talk about yourself; and never lose your temper.
Einstein on Quantum Mechanics
During the Fifth Solvay International Conference in October 1927, Einstein was frustrated with the uncertainty of Quantum Mechanics and said, "God does not play dice with the world." To which Niels Bohr replied, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do."
Sniper Rifles
Sniper rifles are often single shot bolt action rifles because the automatic loading of the next bullet in automatic weapons causes vibration.
Egyptian Medical Technology
The Papyrus Ebers was written in Egypt about 1552 B.C. and gives us these great medical tips:
1. To prevent hair from turning gray, anoint it with the blood of a black calf which has been boiled in the fat of a rattlesnake.
2. To prevent balding mix together the fat of a horse, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, a cat, a snake and an ibex. Then mix in the tooth of a donkey crushed in honey.
3. Splinters are to be treated with a mixture of worm's blood and donkey dung.
4. To stop bleeding, rub donkey dung on a cut.
5. To remove wrinkles, split a toad in half and apply to wrinkled area.
Four Personality Types

Based on the four humors popularized by Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC)

Passive Active

Love Phlegmatic
Easy Going Sanguine
Very Social

Power Melancholic
Organizer, Thinker Choleric
Task Oriented, Dominating
Adjective Order
In English, adjectives seem to follow a specific order:
opinion - size - age - shape - color - origin - material - purpose - noun
Example
"Beautiful little old rectangular brown English leather-bound Collegiate Dictionary"
Not
"Collegiate brown rectangular little leather-bound English old little beautiful Dictionary"

	Passive	Active
Love	Phlegmatic Easy Going	Sanguine Very Social
Power	Melancholic Organizer, Thinker	Choleric Task Oriented, Dominating

Random Stuff

-------------- interesting questions ------------------------
What brings you to tears?
Why do people like you?
Who would like to spend an evening just with you?
What would you do if money was no object, and you knew you wouldn't fail?
What is wrong with the world?

* Q: What is an experienced Emacs user?
* A: A person who wishes that the terminal had pedals.


 
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because 
we do not dare that they are difficult. -Seneca


Is it not better to aim your spear at the moon and strike only an eagle, 
than to aim your spear at the eagle, and strike only a rock?
 

The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness. 
  -the character Annie Savoy in the film Bull Durham



Why does no one confess his sins? Because he is yet in them. It is for a
man who has awoke from sleep to tell his dreams. 
     -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, writer and philosopher (BC 3-65 CE)

 

It is in vain to hope to please all alike.  Let a man stand with his face 
in what direction he will, he must necessarily turn his back on one half 
of the world. -George Dennison Prentice

Three-quarters of teen suicides are from single parent families - NPR

From the Calendar FAQ:

   The solution to problem 2) depended on the fact that it was felt that
   21 March was the proper day for vernal equinox (because 21 March was
   the date for vernal equinox during the Council of Nicaea in AD
   325). The Gregorian calendar was therefore calibrated to make that day
   vernal equinox.

   By 1582 vernal equinox had moved (1582-325)/128 days = approximately
   10 days backward. So 10 days had to be dropped.

   [Dropping 10 days in the 1500s brought the Gregorian calendar in sync
   with the Julian calendar of the 3rd century. But AD 325 is in the 4th
   century.]


   2.2. What is the Gregorian calendar?
   ------------------------------------

   The Gregorian calendar is the one commonly used today. It was decreed
   by Pope Gregory XIII in a papal bull in February 1582.

   In the Gregorian calendar, the tropical year is approximated as
   365 97/400 days = 365.2425 days. This gives an error of 1 day in
   approximately 3300 years.

   The approximation 365 97/400 is achieved by having 97 leap years
   every 400 years.
   ...
   Great Britain and Dominions (including what is now the USA):
                2 Sept 1752 was followed by 14 Sept 1752

When is Easter in the Western tradition? (Short answer)
Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Marriage is like a phone call at night - first you get the ring, then you wake up.

We use kids as gods in our house.

Do not handicap your children my making their lives easy. -Robert Heinlein

Who you are is who you are when no one is watching.

If you are a good leader who talks little, they will say when your work is done 
and your aim fulfilled,  "We did it ourselves."   Lao-Tse

If you believe in telekinesis, raise my right hand.