Strange but true facts

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from
history:
Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs -Alexander, the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

Interesting
Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and
laser printers all have in common?

A. All were invented by women.

Impossible :shock: :oops: :lol: Kiddin

At least 75% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow!

Not til I read this one. You are correct.

Jim

Fact - I have more than the average number of arms, legs, fingers, toes, eyes, ears, hands and feet.

Fact - If you multiply 2X2 using logarithms, you'll get 3.999.

Fact - Good Friday once fell on Easter Monday.

Fact - in 1976, The European Economic Community pointed out to the Irish Government that it had not yet implemented the required sex equality regulations. The Irish government immediately advertised for an equal pay enforcement officer. The advert offered different salary scales for men and women.

Fact - in 1971 Mr and Mrs William Farmer of Margate, holidaying in Wales, took a mystery tour run by British Rail. It took them straight back to Margate. Declining the offer of a tour of the town, the Farmers popped home for a cup of tea.

Fact - in 1823, Mr M. Dodd took a copy of Dr J Currie's "Febrile Diseases" out of the University of Cincinatti Medical Library. It was returned on 7 December 1968 by his great-grandson, having accumulated overdue fines of $2,646.

Fact - between 17 October and 3 December 1961, Matisse's painting "Le Bateau" was hung upside down without one of the 116,000 (estimated) visitors to the New York Museum of Modern Art noticing. It was finally spotted by the artist's son.

Fact - The British Navy destroyer, HMS Santes, as part of a training exercise in 1947, was requiired to fire at a target pulled across its bows by the tugboat Buccaneer. It fired a shell, missed the target and sank the Buccaneer.

Fact - I have way too much time on my hands.....

:D :D :D

Vic

Ah, the internet. Easy to find (and recirculate) 'true' stuff that isn't.
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S.Treasury

Not even close. Parker Brothers prints about $50 billion worth of Monopoly money per year; the Bureau of Engraving and Treasury about $231 billion.
The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer

False. Mark Twain did own an early typewriter, and he played around with it - but The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was written longhand in 1876. Twain's first typewritten manuscript was "Life on the Mississippi" (1883), but he didn't type that either - a typist transcribed it from his longhand draft.
Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th,
John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on August 2,
but the last signature wasn't added until 5 years later

Not true. The Congress adopted the declaration by vote on July 4th, and the handwritten resolution required two signatures - the president of the Congress (Jefferson) and the Secretary of the Congress (Thomson). No one else ever signed this one, and the original is lost.

Congress then ordered a formal copy drawn up for the signatures of all the delagates - that's the formal copy we're familiar with, called the "engrossed copy" - and Jefferson was the first to sign this - on July 19th.

It's true that most delagates signed it on August 2nd, but the "last signature" was never added... the declaration has 56 signatures, and there were 58 delegates. We're still waiting on John Dickinson and Robert Livingston.
In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old
England , when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind
your pints and quarts, and settle down."

It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's"

Nope. Several explanations like this are around, but the term actually comes from printing. Moveable type is set in reverse, and it's easy to mistake lower case Ps from lower case Qs. After a page was printed, the type was put back into small boxes in trays called 'cases' (the capital letters went in the top case, which is why we call them 'upper case'), and the apprentices returning type to the cases were always admonished to mind the Ps and Qs.
Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and
laser printers all have in common?

A. All were invented by women.

Less than half right.

Bulletproof vest: Casmir Zeglen (male)
Laser printer: Gary Starkweather (male)
Fire escape: Anna Connelly (female)
Windshield wiper: the design used today can be traced to a 1905 patent by Mary Anderson, but an earlier one was already in use - invented by James Henry Apjohn in 1903.

But the one about the playing cards appears to be true. I didn't even try to research the vision/hearing differences by gender :)

Why did I try to lick my elbow?

Fact - I have more than the average number of arms, legs, fingers, toes, eyes, ears, hands and feet.

Vic

Are you sure Vic? I would have thought you would have managed to slice something off by now.... :P :P

I nearly managed to remove a thumb on my woodworking machine once, but fortunately I failed to destroy it and after I shoved the bits back together it healed back good as new.
:)

Cheers,

Chris

PS No I can't lick my elbow............ yet.....

Noteboat.. YOU are tenacious. I like that. :lol:

I am the opposite. Makes me wonder what other facts, from childhood, that I know are false.. Or are the corrections false.. I am so confused.

Jim

http://www.snopes.com , for all your urban-myth status requirements. If you're reading this thread, you'll love it.

http://word-detective.com/backidx.html , for a lot of (not quite all) your etymology requirements.

http://www.damninteresting.com/ - Not quite the same, but close enough to appeal to the same kind of people :wink:

http://www.snopes.com , for all your urban-myth status requirements. If you're reading this thread, you'll love it.

Ahh yes, I keep this one quite handy. I use it for all the useless chain e-mails that my buddy sends me.

Jim

Heh, yep, nothing I like better than replying to "OMG did you know...?"-type emails with a "yeah, I heard, but it's rubbish. What actually happened was..."-type one :wink:

Why did I try to lick my elbow?

Note: Put down coffee before trying this! :shock:

Dan

Fact:

I'm frequently told that I don't know my arse from my elbow.

So there's no way I'm going to try and lick my elbow as it might be my arse!

Dogsbody: rely on your sense of taste to tell te difference in that situation...

"It is impossible to lick your elbow. "
Gene Simmons can... :wink:

I'll bet right now some freak reading this IS licking his (or her) elbow.