Totally Useless (or not) Fact of the Day

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Since 1950, neither winners

nor heirs may sell their Oscar statuette
without offering to sell it back

to the Academy first for $1.

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The average American uses 12.4 gallons of water
to take a shower which lasts, on the average,
10.4 minutes at an average temperature
of 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

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In general, Italian brands of pasta
are thicker than their American counterparts.

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The smallest of American owls, the elf owl, often nests in the Gila woodpecker's cactus hole after the woodpecker leaves. The owl measures barely 6 inches tall. It specializes in catching scorpions, seizing each by the tail and nipping off its stinger. It then swallows the scorpion's body, pincers and all.
More pictures:
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In 1990, The Simpsons debuted as FOX network's highest-rated program, earning high praise from critics. First introduced in 1986 in brief cartoon vignettes on The Tracey Ullman Show, the Simpsons were named after, but not based on, creator Matt Groening's own relatives: Groening's father and son are named Homer, another son is named Abraham, his mother is Marge, and he has two sisters, Lisa and Maggie. Bart's name, according to Groening, is an anagram of "brat."

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One Native American has served as vice president of the United States. Charles Curtis of Kansas was President Herbert Hoover's vice president. Curtis's mother was a full-blooded member of the Kaw tribe.

Did they ever say what town Springfield was named after?

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The Animal Crackers box is designed with a string handle because the animal shaped cookie treats introduced in 1902 as a Christmas novelty were packaged so they could be hung from Christmas trees.

On April 8, 1953, the first 3-D film by Columbia Pictures, and the first released by a major studio — "Man in the Dark" — opened in New York City. Starring Edmond O'Brien, the film has to do with a criminal who undergoes brain surgery and loses the memory of his past illegal activity.

Architect James Horan was awarded $500 and a parcel of land in Washington, D.C. for his 1792 winning design for the President's House, now known as the White House.
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Bad Predictions -- "Railways can be of no advantage to rural areas, since agricultural products are too heavy or too voluminous to be transported by them."
- F.J.B. Noel from an 1842 pamphlet entitled: "The Railroads will be Ruinous for France and Especially for the Cities Through Which They Go."

Months that begin with a Sunday
will always have a "Friday the 13th."
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Celebrities with known phobias include:
Singer Aretha Franklin
has an extreme fear of flying. She won't travel on airplanes, even for concerts clear across the country.
Actor and screenwriter Billy Bob Thorton
has cancelled television appearances that required him to get on a plane.
Actress Natalie Wood
was hydrophobic - her accidental death by drowning in the ocean in 1981 was very strange and unsettling for those who knew her well.
Tennis champ André Agassi
has a phobia of spiders, according to Brooke Shields in a statement to the press in October 1996.
Supernatural novelist Anne Rice
has stated that she fears the dark.
Actress Kim Basinger
has a phobia of wide, open spaces.
Film director Alfred Hitchcock
had a peculiar fear of eggs, according to biographer Donald Spoto.
Country star Lyle Lovett
reportedly is afraid of cows.
Pop singer Michael Jackson
appears to have had a phobia of germs (referring to his obsessive wearing of a surgical-style mask when out in public).

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In ancient Rome,
it was considered a sin
to eat the flesh of a woodpecker.

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The single-blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone, and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.

A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward.
This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward.
Not only does it read the opposite,
the meaning is the exact opposite ...

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The longest main street in America, 33 miles in length,
can be found in Island Park, Idaho.

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Abraham Lincoln signed the first federal income tax law.
The tax was 3 percent on incomes over $600.

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The two most illustrious people in England at the close of the sixteenth century never set foot outside of "this royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This fortress built by Nature… this little world; this precious stone set in the silver sea... this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England." The two were Queen Elizabeth and William Shakespeare; their achievements, however, have to this day influenced all of the world.

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The ball on top of a flagpole is called a "truck."

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Bats are the only mammals that are able to fly.
The "flying squirrel" can only do what the gliding opposum does — glide for short distances.

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Camels were domesticated around 4,000 years ago.

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Here's a fact about the 1500s:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell the brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married. (Oh, how romantic ... )

The most abused drug is not alcohol.
The most abused drug in the world is caffeine - found in sodas, coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate, candies, and many over-the-counter medicines. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, caffeine is an addictive drug that creates physical dependence and causes an increase in heart rate, body temperature, urine production, and gastric juice secretion. Caffeine can also raise blood sugar levels and cause tremors, loss of coordination, decreased appetite, and postponement of fatigue, and it can interfere with the depth of sleep and the amount of dream sleep.

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The first plastic ever invented was celluloid.
It came about as an alternative for billiard balls
made from ivory.

Birthday today: April 21st
Queen Elizabeth II [Elisabeth Mary]
Queen of the United Kingdom
b: 1926 -
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The Romans were enamored with the smell of roses. According to historians, Nero had pipes installed under banquet plates to allow his guests to be spritzed with rose scent between dinner courses.
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Johnny Carson's reply to a reporter when asked what he would like his epitaph to be was "I'll be right back."

Quote of the Day
"Trouble is only opportunity in work clothes."
-Henry J. Kaiser

Aprosexia is the abnormal inability to concentrate.

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What?

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George Washington was the ninth president of the United States. The United States was established on July 04, 1776. George Washington was inaugurated thirteen years later, on April 30, 1789. During the intervening years, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia drew up the Articles of
Confederation (the first American constitution). In 1781, Maryland representative John Hanson was elected the first president of the Congress of the Confederation. His official title was "president of the United States in Congress Assembled." After Hanson, seven other men served as president: Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Nathaniel Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin. In 1787, Congress held a constitutional convention. The delegates wrote the current constitution, ratified by the states in 1788. The following year, the ratifying states elected Washington our nation's ninth president
(but the first president under the new constitution).

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April 27th ... Although invented in 1964, the first mouse for a home computer system made its debut in a Xerox computer on this date in 1981.
(I know, I know ... I am a couple of days late with this one ... I've been busy, doing yard-work.)

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Dungarees did not originate in America.
Dungaree cloth was developed in Dungri, India, a suburb of Bombay, as early as the seventeenth century. Denim, also developed in the seventeenth century, originated in Nimes, France. Called serge de Nimes in Europe, the name of the fabric was pronounced denim in the United States. In the 1860's, a Jewish tailor named Levi Strauss, who had been making overalls from canvas for miners in California's gold rush, switched to denim, dyeing the fabric indigo blue to hide stains and making the sturdy pants even more popular.

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Heinz does not make 57 varieties.
In 1896, while riding in an elevated train to New York City, company founder H.J. Heinz spotted an advertisement for a shoe store, announcing "21 styles" of shoes. Inspired by the concept, Heinz immediately decided to use it to advertise his pickles and condiments. Although Heinz made more than sixty different products at the time, he settled on the slogan "57 Varieties" because he liked the way it looked in print. Today, the H.J. Heinz Company makes more thn 3,000 varieties, but still uses the "57 Varieties" slogan.

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Dracula was a real person.
Irish author Bram Stoker named Count Dracula, his fictional vampire after Prince Vlad IV of Walachia, the brutal tyrant who ruled the region south of the Transylvanian Alps (now part of Romania) from 1456 to 1462. During those six years, Vlad IV, the son of Vlad Dracul (Romanian for "Devil"),executed thousands of people by impaling them on pointed stakes, earning him the nicknames Vlad Tempes ("The Impaler") and Vlad Dracula ("son of the Devil"). Stoker based his 1897 novel Dracula on the vampire legends that probably arose in reaction to the thousands of savage executions Vlad IV committed. In the novel, Dracula is killed when a stake is driven through his heart.
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The seventeenth president of the United States was not Ulysses S. Grant. His parents named him Hiram Ulysses Grant, but they called him Ulysses. In 1839, the congressman who appointed Ulysses to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point mistakenly reported the youth's name to the registrar as Ulysses S. Grant. He thought Ulysses was the young man's first name and his middle name was that of his mother's family, Simpson. Grant, convinced that his classmates might tease him over his real initials (H.U.G.), never corrected the mistake.

Can Thinking Harder Burn More Calories?
According to Popular Science, your brain requires a tenth of a calorie per minute, just to stay alive. If your thinking hard that melts a respectable 1.5 calories a minute. The brain burns between 400 and 500 calories per day. So about 25% of the total calorie intake of an average 2000 calorie / day person.
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No wonder the rabbit needs so many carrots and greens!

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The Quick 10: The Birthplaces of 10 Great American Foods

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Millions of buffalo never roamed the United States.
Buffalo can be found in India, the Phillippines, Celebes, and Africa. The animal mistakenly called a buffalo in the United States is actually the North American Bison, a completely different animal. Bison have twenty-eight ribs and seperate upturned horns; buffalo have twenty-six ribs and joined horns. In 1850, approximately 20 million bison roamed over the western plains of North America. European settlers nearly annihilated the bison. By 1889, only 551 bison could be found in the United States. Today, there are over 400,000.

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Frankenstein was not a monster.
In both the 1818 novel (Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley at age eighteen) and the 1931 movie (Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff),Frankenstein is the name of Victor Frankenstein, a student of natural psychology, who creates the monster. In the novel, Frankenstein names his monster Adam. In the movie, the monster goes unnamed.

Leap year does not occur every four years.
February 29 is added to the calendar year only when the number of the year is divisible by four - except in cenentary years not divisible by 400. For instance, the year 2000 was a leap year, but the year 2100, while divisible by 4, will not be a leap year because it is not divisible by 400.

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During the heating months of winter, the relative humidity of the average American home is only 13 percent, nearly twice as dry as the Sahara Desert.

That's why we connected a humidifier to our furnace. We have forced hot air heat, so it would be really dry without it.

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Eating carrots does not improve your eyesight.
Carrots contain carotene, a good source of vitamin A. While vitamin A deficiency can damage the body's epithelial tissues (inhibiting the manufacture of the retinal pigment rhodopsin and decreasing your ability to see in dim light), the body can use only a limited amount of vitamin A and flushes the excess from the system. Eating carrots will not improve your eyesight, but doing so can help prevent damage to your epithelial tissues.

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Taxation without representation exists in the United States of America. Residents of Washington, D.C., pay the same federal taxes as other U.S. citizens. However, since the District of Columbia is not a state, the citizens do not elect any voting representatives to Congress, and they were not granted the right to vote in presidential elections until 1961 by the 23rd Amendment. In 1970, Congress allowed the district to elect a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. In 1978, Congress passed a constitutional amendment to give the district voting representation in the House and Senate, but only fifteen of the necessary thirty-five states ratified the amendment, which expired in 1985. A majority of the district's voters supported
statehood in a 1980 election and approved a state constitution in a 1982 election, but Congress never admitted Washington, D.C., as the state of New Columbia.

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Key West, Florida, is the top-ranking American city for warmth, with an annual average temperature of 77.7 degrees F; International Falls, Minnesota, is the coldest, with an annual average of 36.4 degrees F.

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Camels do not carry water in their humps.
Camels do not have a reservoir for liquids in their hump. The hump is a food reserve made primarily of fat. By storing most of its body fat in the hump, the camel can lose heat freely from the rest of its body without having to prespire much, thereby conserving water. A camel can go for days or even months without water because, unlike other animals, camels retain urea and do not start sweating until their body temperatures reach 115 degrees Farenheit.

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In 1896, 75,000 people rode Jesse Reno's
"inclined elevator" during a
two-week exhibition at Coney Island.

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Adolph Hitler did not create the swastika.
The swastika is an ancient religious symbol of good fortune. It was used on ancient Greek pottery and Mesopotamian coins, Celtic and Scandinavian artifacts, and art and religious objects from India, China, Egypt, and pre- Columbian America. Hitler appropriated the swastika and used its mirror image as a symbol for the Third Reich, causing the swastika to become one of the most hated symbols in the history of humanity. Since 1945, it has been illegal to display the swastika in Germany.

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S.O.S. does not stand for "Save Our Ship".
S.O.S., the international Morse code signal for distress, does not stand for anything. The letters S.O.S. were adopted by international agreement in 1908 because they are easy to transmit. The letter S is transmitted as three dots. The letter O is transmitted as three dashes. The international signal for a distress call by radio or telephone is "Mayday," derived from the French word m'aider ("help me").

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Soy milk, the liquid left after beans have been crushed in hot water and strained, is a favorite beverage in the East. In Hong Kong, soy milk is as popular as Coca-Cola is in the U.S.