Facts

This is an extremely long page, and is designed as such to be easily printable. You can jump to any of the sections via the hyperlinks at the top.

Movies/TV/Celebrity Stuff

The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life"
All of the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
In Mel Brooks' 'Silent Movie,' mime Marcel Marceau is the only person who has a speaking role.
Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's salaries.
Spot, Data's cat on Star Trek: The Next Generation , was played by six different cats.
Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.
Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
Betsy Ross was born with a fully formed set of teeth, and the only real person to be a Pez head was Betsy Ross.
Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.
ABBA got their name by taking the first letter from each of their first names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, Anni-frid.)
The Beatles song "Dear Prudence" was written about Mia Farrow's sister,Prudence, when she wouldn't come out and play with Mia and the Beatles at a religious retreat in India.
Kelsey Grammar sings and plays the piano for the theme song of Fraser.
Who's that playing the piano on the "Mad About You" theme? It's Paul Reiser himself.
Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.
Hugh "Ward Cleaver" Beaumont was an ordained minister.
John Lennon's first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence"Oz."
Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard.
Four people played Darth Vader: David Prowse was his body, James Earl Jones did the voice, Sebastian Shaw was his face and a fourth person did the breathing.
Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.
Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)
Wayne's World was filmed in two weeks.
The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in Jello.
Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

Animal Stuff

An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.
Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world.
Horses and Rabbits cannot vomit.
A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.
The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.
The male gypsy moth can "smell" the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.
A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
When opossums are playing opossum, they are not "playing". They actually pass out from sheer terror.
A full grown bear can run as fast as a horse.
A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.
Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.
When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.
Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.
The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
Certain frogs can be frozen solid then thawed, and continue living.
A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
Even if you cut off a cockroach's head, it can live for several weeks.
You can only smell 1/20th as well as a dog.
Mosquitoes have teeth.
Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.
The world population of chickens is about equal to the number of people.
It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up it's stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of it's mouth. Then the frog uses it's forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.
A monkey was once tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend, Indiana.
Millie the late White House dog earned more than 4 times as much as President Bush in 1991. And, rightfully so.
Pollsters say that 40 percent of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets.
You're more likely to get stung by a bee on a windy day than in any other weather.
Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.

Geography/Cultural Facts

Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village."
Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "L.A."
When the University of Wyoming Cowboys play football at home, the stadium becomes the state's largest city.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
Every male over the age of 18 is considered part of the Arizona Militia according to the state's constitution.
Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats.
Texas is the only state that is allowed to fly its state flag at the same height as the U.S. flag.
49.6% of U.S. residents live in the Eastern time zone, 29.3% live in the Central time zone, 5.3% live in the Mountain time zone, 15.0% live in the Pacific time zone and 0.8% live in any other time zone.
Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F. The telephone dial tone is also in the key of F.
27 percent of U.S. male college students believe life is "a meaningless existential hell."
In Kentucky, 50 percent of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.
Croatia was the first country to recognize the United States in 1776.
There are only 14 blimps in the world, and 10 of them are in the U.S.
In 75% of American households, women manage the money and pay the bills.
In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it. {Who studied this and why?}
A Saudi Arabian woman can get a divorce if her husband doesn't give her coffee.
Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru, an island nation in the Western Pacific.
Only 55 percent of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
The average bank teller loses about $250 every year.
A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to theproduction of Guinness beer.
The Japanese word "Arigato", meaning thank you, is derived from the Portugese word "Obrigado." Portugal once had a thriving trade with Japan.
In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones - Bhutan.
About 70 percent of Americans who go to college do it just to make more money.
The three best-known western names in China: Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley.
Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.
There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.
The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.

People Facts

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
Virgina Woolf wrote all her books standing.
Robert E. Lee, of the Confederate Army, remains the only person, to date, to have graduated from the West Point military academy without a single demerit.
Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
Aztec emperor Montezuma had a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant "plenty of excrement."
Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark. (Hence, the light bulb?)
If you told someone that they were one in a million, you would be saying there were about 1,800 of them in China.
Lizzie Borden was acquitted.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
Your right lung takes in more air than your left one does.
Women's hearts beat faster than men's.
Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head.
Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
The average person is about a quarter of an inch taller at night.
Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
An average person laughs about 15 times a day.
Lee Harvey Oswald's cadaver tag sold at an auction for $6,600 in 1992.
The Neanderthal's brain was bigger than yours is.

Word Facts

The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
The Chinese ideogram for "trouble" depicts two women living under one roof.
The Chinese words for crisis and opportunity are the same.
The word "karate" means "empty hand."
Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eyes."
"Kemo Sabe" means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.
The right side of a boat was called the starboard side due to the fact that the astro navigators used to stand out on the plank (which was on the right side) to get an unobstructed view of the stars. The left side was called the port side because that was the side you put in on at the port. This was so that they didn't knock off the starboard!
A hamlet is a village without a church and a town is not a city until it has a cathedral.
The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.

Food Facts

The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
Almonds are members of the peach family.
Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
Bubble gum contains rubber.
Some toothpaste's contain antifreeze.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
The bubbles in Guinness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the top like all other beers. No one knows why.

Random Facts

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag.
26 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.
Charlie Brown's father was a barber.
Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on an analog watch is 10:10 because it make the watch look like it's smiling.
The time displayed on digital watches is 10:58. Advertisers don't know why.
Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tubeand a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
Dartboards are made out of horsehairs.
The only planet without a ring is earth.
A bowling pin need only tilt 7.5 degrees in order to fall down.
Jupiter's core is in fact made of a non-metal, but due to the immense pressure inside Jupiter the core has become a metal. This metal is hydrogen.
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
The launching mechanism of an aircraft carrier ship that helps planes to take off could throw a pickup truck over a mile.
The average sixty minute audio cassette tape has 562.5 feet of tape in it, nearly two football fields long.
The ashes of the average cremated person weigh nine pounds.
The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
Assuming Rudolph was in front, there are 40,320 ways to arrange the other eight reindeer.
If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat, it measures 87 feet long.
Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.
Kotex was first manufactured as bandages, during W.W.I.
A sneeze zooms out of your mouth at over 600 m.p.h.
The condom - made originally of linen - was invented in the early 1500's.
In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.