Odds and Ends
More Odd Facts
In 280 AD, in Turkish town of Patara, the original Saint Nichols was a monk who saved a group of nuns from becoming prositutes by throwing balls of gold into their bedroom windows. Odd for a monk, hw was wealthy having inherited his fortune when his parents died in an epidemic. He is the patron saint of banking, pawnbroking, pirating, butchery, sailing, thievery, orphans, royalty, and New York City.
Chrismakah is celebrated by families whose parents are Christian and Jewish.
In A.D. 320, Pope Julius I, bishop of Rome, proclaimed December 25 the official celebration date for the birthday of Christ.
Christmas wasn’t declared an official holiday in the United States until June 26, 1870. The first state to recognize the Christmas holiday officially was Alabama. Oklahoma was the last U.S. state to declare Christmas a legal holiday, in 1907.
Male reindeer shed their antlers before Christmas. So although Santa's reindeer all have male names, they're does.
Contrary to popular belief, suicide rates during the Christmas holiday are low. The highest rates are during the spring.
President Teddy Roosevelt, an environmentalist, banned Christmas trees from the White House in 1912.
Reindeer get a parasitic respiratory infection that turns their nose red.
Germany made the first artificial Christmas trees. They were made of goose feathers and dyed green.
Black Friday is not the busiest shopping day of the year. Although it varies, it usually lands sometime in December.
A woman who passes under the Mistletoe and is not kissed will not marry in the coming year.
For the first time in 70 years, a letter has been added to the Morse Code.
.--.-. is Morse Code for the @ symbol. It joins the Period, Comma, Question Mark and Slash. The Colon has yet to make the cut.
Three National Football League Teams have never had cheer leading squads.
The Steelers, the Lions and the Giants. Also the Broncos currently have no cheerleaders.
It's illegal for you to pump your own gas in New Jersey. Bikini waxes are illegal as well.Proof.
In the US Army it's bad luck to....
1. Touch the barrel of the tank gun after you align it, until it fires.
2. Eat M&M's or apricots while standing in the turret.
3. Touch a sniper's camophlage.
What Happens Between Consenting Monarchs...
Debunked: The etymology of the 4-letter word "fuck" is an acronym of old. [e.g. "Fornication Under Consent of the King."]
While the exact origin of "fuck" is not known, it does come from a Germanic root and cognates can be found in almost all the Germanic languages.
Also, acronyms are pretty much a 20th century invention. The earliest known acronym is ANZAC (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps), dating to the First World War. There are some older words where acronymic phrases were created out of existing words, but none that were created from a phrase until the 20th century.
The band playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever" is an emergency signal to circus performers.
Click Here to see proof
The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
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.
If you toss a penny 10,000 times, it will not be heads 5,000 times, but more like 4,950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.
Al Capone's business card described him as a Used Furniture Dealer.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
The phrase "sleep tight" derives from the fact that early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with rope stretched across the bed frame. A tight sleep was a comfortable sleep.
In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.
The saying "it's so cold out there it could freeze the balls off a brass monkey" came from when they had old cannons like ones used in the Civil War. The cannonballs were stacked in a pyramid formation, called a brass monkey. When it got extremely cold outside, they would crack and break off... Thus the saying.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes. (ed. note: if the rider's head is up the horse's ass, the rider died a politician.)
There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.
UPDATE FROM A READER: Previously we had said :"No American car has been named after a dog."
We were wrong. Joe Kochevar, up there in Canada, mentioned that the Willy "Whippet" was in fact the only American car named after a dog. The Willy brand is currently "Jeep". Thanks for paying attention Joe. Click Here to see proof
You can buy a 10 acre plot of land on the Moon.Click Here to see proof
Big black holes sing bass. One particularly monstrous black hole has probably been humming B flat for billions of years, but at a pitch no human could hear, astronomers said.
The pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below middle C, roughly the middle of a standard. Researchers think it is the deepest note ever detected in the universe .Click Here to see proof
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out of the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
Barbie's measurements (if she were life-size): 39-23-33.
Popeye the Sailor Man had Betty Boop as his first Love interest.