Lisa Simpson Strange: Weird facts return to column

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September 12, 2007

Anonymous The Glasgow Daily Times Wed Sep 12, 2007, 11:08 AM CDT

Weird Things You Never Know!! (But do now!) Thought it might be time for another one of those e-mail lists with lots of weird facts and information.

A shrimp’s heart is in its head.

The “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo and no one knows why.

Most lipstick contains fish scales.

Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.

If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.

If you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out.

In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

More than 50 percent of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

Horses can’t vomit.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world’s nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs ... but not downstairs.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

It’s physically impossible for you to lick your elbow.

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.

A snail can sleep for three years.

No word in the English language rhymes with “MONTH.”

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

All polar bears are left-handed.

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

“Go,” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand 7-foot-2.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Almost everyone who reads this will try to lick their elbow.

Lisa Simpson Strange is special projects editor for the Daily Times. She can be reached by e-mail at lsstrange@glasgowdailytimes.com

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