
                                DATABASE OF FUN
                         (Excerpts from Almanac 1991)
                                        by
                                   Jeff Napier
 
               This Chapter copied by permission from Another Company
               Almanac 1991. The complete Almanac can be had by sending
               $9.95 to: Another Company, Box 298, Applegate, OR 97538.


               At one time Thoreau was a school teacher.  When he was
               accused by his supervisors of leniency, he grabbed six
               random kids and spanked them.

               The  flu mutated into a killer in 1918 and killed 20
               million people. In the US: 548,000.

               One out of every 300 Americans is a millionaire.

          Americans use enough toilet paper in one day to wrap
          around the world 9 times. If it were on one giant roll -
          that we all used - we would be unrolling it at the rate of
          7600 miles per hour. (roughly mach 10, ten times the speed
          of sound)

               The world's longest operation took 96 hours. During
          February 4 -  8, 1951, surgeons in Michigan removed an
          ovarian cyst from a woman. When they were done, she weighed
          308 lbs less.

               Cataract surgery (removal of lens from eye) was first
          done in 1748. But the first anesthesia wasn't until 1842!


               Galileo Galilei, the famous astronomer spent so much
          time looking at the sun with his telescope, that he went
          blind for the last four years he lived.

               24% of Los Angeles is road and parking lots for cars.

               According to the best calculations of some of the
          scientists working on the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb)
          before the first test, there was a 3 in one million chance
          that an atomic bomb would melt down the earth - yet they went
          ahead and tested the first atomic bomb.

               There are 1.3 billion cattle in the world, and they all
          belch. This is a serious problem! Each of these cattle burp
          up about 8 oz of methane per day, which totals 1/3 million
          tons. According to one scientist's calculations, this is
          enough methane to ruin the world's weather by raising the
          temperature 5 degrees within 60 years, due to the greenhouse
          effect.

               The FDA (U.S.  Food and Drug Administration) considers
          chocolate acceptable for public consumption as long as there
          are less than 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. (about 4
          ounces)

               The Volkswagen was originally called the Strength-
          Through-Joy-Wagon.

               Your hair grows a total of 83 feet per day.
          Explanation: You have over 100,000 hairs and each one grows
          about 1/100 of an inch.

               Try to say the alphabet without moving your lips or
          your tongue. Every letter will sound exactly the same.

          "LEECHES  AND  THEIR APPLICATION. - The leech  used  for
          medical purposes is called the hirudo Medicinatis, to
          distinguish it from other varieties, such as the horse-leech
          and the Lisbon leech. It varies  from two to four inches in
          length, and is of  a  blackish brown colour, marked on the
          back with six yellow spots, and edged with  a fellow line on
          each side. Formerly leeches were  supplied by  Sweden  but
          latterly most of the leeches  are  procured  from France,
          where they are now becoming scarce.
               When leeches are applied to a part, it should be
          thoroughly freed  from down  or hair by shaving, and  all
          liniments,  &c., carefully  and effectually cleaned away by
          washing. If the leech is  hungry it will soon bite, but
          sometimes great difficulty  is experienced in getting them
          to fasten on. When this is the  case, roll the leech into a
          little porter, or moisten the surface  with a  little
          blood,  or milk, or sugar and water,  Leeches  may  be
          applied by holding them over the part with a piece of linen
          cloth or  by  means  of an inverted glass, under  which
          they  must  be placed.
               When applied  to the gums, care should be taken  to
          use  a leech glass, as they are apt to creep down the
          patient's throat; a  large swan's quill will answer the
          purpose of a leech  glass.
               When leeches are gorged they will drop off themselves;
          never tear them  off from a person, but just dip the point
          of  a  moistened finger into some salt and touch them with
          it.
               Leeches are supposed to abstract about two drachms of
          blood, or  six leeches draw about an ounce; but this is
          independent  of the  bleeding after they have come off, and
          more blood  generally flows then than during the time they
          are sucking." - from an old book, written 131 years ago.

                              Lifespans of Animals
                             Horse...............30
                             Rabbit...............5
                             Dog.................15
                             cat.................13
                             Elephant...........100
                             Crocodile..........300
                             Cow.................25
                             Pigeon..............20
                             Eagle..............100
                             Whale..............100
                             Tortoise...........350
                             Lion................40
                             Pig.................25
                             Crow...............100

               World's worst meal? Eating a bicycle! A man did this by
          grinding it into powder.

               Some people have as many as 500 taste buds per square
          centimeter, others as few as 5/cm2. Do pancakes with maple
          syrup taste the same to you as they do to me?

         NOTE TO OUR READERS: Although we have researched the material
         in this database carefully it is possible we have made a
         mistake or two.  You might want to do your own checking to
         verify facts before placing bets, etc.

               In 1743 a teen-age boy was observed to have eaten 384
          pounds of food in one week.

               In 1963 a man ate a single meal weighing 54 pounds.

               Coca-Cola, Hires Root Beer and Dr. Pepper were all
          introduced in the same year, 1886.
               John  Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola referred  to
          it as, "Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage."
               7-Up was originally called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-
          Lime Soda when it was invented in 1929.
               The 7 is for the original size - 7 ounces - and the Up
          was for "bottoms up." The first advertising slogan for 7-Up
          was, "It takes the ouch out of grouch."

               It takes 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of
          wheat. It takes 2500 gallons to produce one pound of meat!

               If the water used by the cattle business was not paid
          for by American taxpayers, beef would cost $35 per pound.

               The mayfly has a two-hour long lifespan. It has no
          mouth, because it will not have time to digest a meal.

               In Russia, the average citizen spends 100 hours per
          year waiting in lines just to receive food. That's two and a
          half work weeks.

               We drink 3 million gallons of orange juice daily in
          America.

               We drink 15 million gallons of beer daily in America.
          (We drink five times more beer than orange juice.)

               In Massachusetts it is against the law to use tomatoes
          in clam chowder.

               Archie Bunker's daughter in All in the Family, Sally
          Struthers was the voice of Pebbles in the cartoon, The
          Flintstones.

               One of 88 births is twins. One out of every 16 children
          are born with defects. Most of these are minor, such as the
          many babies born with tails, which doctors cut off. Most
          people do not know if they had a tail.

               In 1914, the world's first airline service started. The
          St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, with two scheduled
          flights per day, had a plane with one passenger seat.

               The world's first automobile was made in France, in
          1771 by Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. It had a top speed of 2.3
          mph. It was powered by a two-cylinder steam engine.

               In total, 18 million Model T Fords were built.

               Soldiers do not march in step across bridges because
          the vibration could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.

               Every day 20,000 people write a letter to the
          president.

               The term Gadget came from Gaget, one of the partners in
          the company that built the Statue Of Liberty.  He sold
          miniatures of the statue to the public who mispronounced his
          name when referring to the little statues.

               90% of tires on the road are underinflated. How are
          yours?

               You have a greater chance of injury playing volleyball
          than football.

               Most tennis injuries actually happen after the game
          when the winner tries to jump over the net.

               Most people think the Wright Brothers were first to
          fly. The first real airplane flight happened in France on
          Oct 9, 1890 by Clement Ader. It was steam powered. The
          altitude was only a few inches. The Wright Bros. knew about
          and studied this flight.

               Decibel = smallest amount of change detectable by the
          human ear.

               great gross = 12 gross = 1728.

               hand = 4"

               Hertz = cycles per second

               1 hp = ability to lift 33,000 lbs one foot in one
          minute. One real horse = .66 hp

               Karat = how many parts out of 24 are pure. (i.e. 18
          Karat = 3/4 pure)

               Quire = one 20th of a ream

               ream = 500 sheets (sometimes 480)

                          SOME CELEBRITY'S REAL NAMES
                         Alan Alda - Alphonso D'Abruzzo
                     Woody Allen - Allen Steward Konigsberg
                         Alice Cooper - Vincent Furnier
                            Redd Foxx - John Sanford
                         Donna Summers - LaDonna Gaines
                          Elton John - Reginald Dwight
                         Martin Sheen - Ramon Estevez

               The giant squid has the largest eye of any living
          animal at up to 15" diameter.

               World wide there are 1,006.7 men for every 1,000 women.

               Life expectancy around the world in 1950 was 47.4 years.

               Mid-1983, the average stay in a California hospital was
          $775.00.

               50% of bomb deaths occur to the people setting the
          bombs.

               20% of women visiting emergency rooms are there because
          of injuries inflicted by the men they love.

               All of the radio waves from space ever studied equal
          less than the power of a snowflake hitting the ground.

               The U.S. has on the road 127,000,000 cars. Lined up
          bumper to bumper, they would circle the globe 18 times.

               The worlds most boring publication is probably the
          calculation of pi to 2 million places, in 800 pages.

               The last episode of M*A*S*H* on Feb 28,1983, was
          watched simultaneously by 125 million people.

               L.A. is an abbreviation, but most people don't know the
          full name. It is, "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de
          los Angeles de Porciuncula".

               Dolphins have brains that are 40% larger than humans.
          Are we really the most intelligent animal on earth?

               The worlds longest limousine is 47 feet and has a
          built-in swimming pool. It rents for $5,000 per day.

               In 1957, a senator, Strom Thurmond, made a speech that
          lasted 24 hours, 19 minutes.

               There is a place in Hong Kong so populated, that each
          person has 42.69 square feet. It would seem that this allows
          only about 6 X 7 feet floor space per person, but most
          buildings are many stories high. If all the people came out
          on the streets at once, such as during an earthquake, there
          would not be enough room to stand.

                                CALORIE COUNTER
                         1 apple................... 80
                         1 banana................. 100
                         1 can beer............... 150
                         1 brownie................. 85
                         1 tbsp butter............ 100
                         1 carrot.................. 30
                         1 oz cheese............ 82115
                         1 egg..................... 85
                         1 french fry.............. 11
                         1 oz ground beef.......... 60
                         1 tbsp honey.............. 65
                         1 hot dog................ 170
                         1 cup milk............... 255
                         1 pancake................. 60
                         1 cup peanuts............ 840
                         1 slice pizza............ 145
                         1 cup popcorn............. 25
                         1 saltine cracker......... 15
                         1 can soft drink......... 145
                         1 tbsp sugar.............. 45
                         1 oz whiskey.............. 70
                         1 slice white bread....... 70
                         8 oz yogurt.............. 230

                              DATES OF INVENTIONS
                         aerosol spray............1926
                         air conditioning.........1911
                         anesthesia...............1842
                         antiseptic surgery.......1867
                         aspirin..................1889
                         ball-point pen...........1888
                         electric motor...........1837
                         electron microscope......1931
                         helicopter...............1939
                         incandescent light.......1879
                         nylon....................1930
                         optical microscope.......1590
                         penicillin...............1929
                         rocket engine............1926
                         submarine................1776
                         television...............1923
                         thermometer..............1593
                         vacuum cleaner...........1907


                              SOME RUSSIAN COMEDY

              A man had a frog on his  head so he went to a doctor.
              The doctor Said, "So, what seems to be the problem?"
              And the frog said, "There's something stuck to my butt."

               The people who work in the Interior Decorating
          Department of Sears have to do a lot of paperwork. They have
          to write a customer's name 67 times for a job which can sell
          for as little as $300 installed.

               American women spend $900 million per year on lipstick.
          That's $1700 per minute.

               Lindbergh was the 67th man to make a non-stop flight
          over the Atlantic Ocean.

               Each episode of Miami Vice, the TV show, is budgeted at $1.4
          million. The whole yearly budget of the real Miami Police Vice
          department is only $1.2 million.

               The IRS offers free advice, but 30% of the advice they
          give is wrong. If you fill out your forms incorrectly based
          on what they have told you, you are still responsible for
          the fines and penalties.

               A mouse can have 8 babies. Assuming four of them are
          female, and knowing that a mouse can give birth 60 days
          after being born itself, after 18 months, a pair of mice can
          become 4.5 million.

               People have died from shaking vending machines and
          having the machines fall on them.

               "Dr. Leroy Wolins, a psychologist at Iowa State
          University, had a student write to 37 authors of scientific
          reports asking for the raw data on which they based their
          conclusions, of the 32 who replied, 21 said their data
          either had been lost or accidentally destroyed. Dr. Wolins
          analyzed seven sets of data that did come in and found
          errors in 3 significant enough to invalidate what had been
          passed off as scientific fact." quoted: - Dr. Mendolsohn,
          Confessions of a Medical Heretic

               All your blood vessels and capillaries stretched out
          would be over 100,000 miles long.

               During 1971, an Englishman committed suicide with an
          electric drill by making 8 holes in his head.

               In 1930, five German men had to bail out of their
          glider plane. Conditions were right for hail that day, and
          these men fell to the ground as the cores of giant ice
          rocks.

               Your color TV is a source of some very rare and weird
          elements. There are europium and yttrium to make the reds,
          and without cerium the radiation from your set would turn
          the picture tube glass purple.

               The outlaw who killed Jesse James, Bob Ford, later
          starred in a play called "How I Killed Jesse James".

               Americans spend 37 billion hours per year waiting in
          lines. That's almost four work weeks (40 hours per week) per
          year for each of us.

               16 out of every 100 doctors will be sued this year.

               Heaviest man: Jon Minnoch (1941-1983), 1400 lbs.

               Most operations: Joseph Ascough (b 1935) underwent 327
          operations for windpipe warts.

               The highest shade temp ever recorded was 136.4 degrees
          fahrenheit in Libya.

               Who says dinosaurs are extinct? One live specimen of
          the lizard Komodo Monitor was found that was 10'2" long and
          weighed as much as three average people.

               The largest dinosaur ever, Brachiosaurus, weighed the
          same as 800 people and was 4-1/2 stories tall.

               Do you wish you could cancel call waiting from your
          phone sometimes? You can in most communities. On a touch
          tone phone, after you get a dial tone, enter * 70, on rotary
          phones dial 1170. Call waiting will resume after you hang
          up.

               Ferdinand Porsche went to trade school to be trained as
          a factory foreman. He got the lowest grades in his class.

                People often wonder how Hitler, with all his crazy
          ideas and rough manner could become so popular a leader. A
          great deal of Hitler's appeal to the masses was that he
          decided to control the automobile industry and promised them
          Volkswagens, cars that every family could afford at a time
          when there was only one car for every 211 people in
          Germany.

               German Count Von der Wense was asked by the Nazis to
          surrender his land for the government Volkswagen plant. They
          offered payment, however. He took the money and bought other
          land, but that land was conquered by Russia. Finally, after
          the war, he ended up with the job of official tour guide of
          the Volkswagen facilities, on the very land he used to own.

               During WWII, 2,700,000 tons of bombs were dropped on
          Germany, (killing 300,000 civilians, seriously injuring
          780,000 people.)

               "When elephants clash, the grass gets trampled"
                      - old proverb

               10% of all Americans earn their livings in some way
          associated with the automobile industry.

               People can usually determine the sex of another unseen
          person from their smell, according to a study by the Smell
          and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

               German researchers trained honey bees to expect food at
          a certain time every day. Then they cut off the bees' heads
          and transplanted a part of their brains into the brains of
          other bees. The bees with the brain transplants then
          expected the food at the same time of day.

               Bees may have a true sixth sense, one that people
          probably do not have: They have magnetic crystals in their
          abdomens with which they may feel direction relative to the
          earth's magnetic field.

               According to research by a British fashion design firm
          and by Sears Roebuck, yesterday's fashions will no longer fit
          modern women. There has been a gradual trend of breasts and
          hips becoming smaller, and waists thicker. Generally, women
          are becoming more tube-shaped.

               In France computer use is called l'informatique, and in
          Sweden computers are called dators (because they handle
          data).

               If your kitty-cat scratches up valuable furniture, tape
          balloons to it. The cat will never scratch there again.

               If you could stack up all the copies of the Guinness
          Book of World Records made just in the year 1985, your pile
          would reach into outer space. It would be 1006 miles high.

               People who live near big airports have as much as a 19%
          higher death rate. Could it be that the noise makes them
          crazy? There has also been some research indicating a higher
          birth defects rate near airports.

               "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether
          it had happened or not."  - Mark Twain.

               The first typewritten manuscript submitted to an author
          was for a book called Life On The Mississippi, by Mark
          Twain in 1874.

               A bicycle racer in good condition can apply about one-
          half horsepower for 20 minutes, and one horsepower for not
          more than 30 seconds.

               Eighty-eight employees of the IRS were convicted of
          crimes in 1987 ranging from selling drugs to embezzlement.

               One out of every 149 Americans is named Smith.

               Average attorney fees during 1989 is $118/hour.

               If a man could be paid minimum wage for shaving, he
          would earn $11,222.50 in a lifetime, working 3,350 hours.

               There have been 2,458,000,000 copies of the Bible made.
          If you put them on a long bookshelf and started driving
          along the shelf at 55 mph, you would have to drive 40 hours
          per week for over 17 weeks to get to the end.

               Baby ducks think the first moving thing they see is Mom.
          If they see a kitty cat when they hatch...

              A scientist has managed through gene-splicing to create
          cedar and poplar trees with square trunks. These will mean
          less wasted wood at the mills when lumber is cut.

               In an average lifetime a person will walk the same
          distance as three times around the equator.

               2 out of every 3 new businesses are started by women. 1
          out of 4 women fail in their new businesses. The failure
          rate of men is 4 out of 5.

               At graduation a child has logged 13,000 hours of
          school, and 15,000 hours of television.

               When the FDA randomly checked turkeys at packing
          houses, they found 1/2 of all them infected with food
          poisoning.

               Last year 81 million Americans got sick from food
          poisoning and 9,000 of them died. The average American will
          get food poisoning 100 times in a lifetime. The symptoms are
          headache, sick feeling, diarrhea. Most people think this is
          the flu. To prevent food poisoning, clean all kitchen items
          with heat, never leave food at room temperature.
               Remember when you could buy little green turtles in
          department stores? These were discontinued because they
          passed salmonella (food poisoning) to children. People who
          knew about the turtle scam were glad. Almost all of those
          turtles starved to death. It seems that a turtle can survive
          several months without eating after birth. The commercial
          turtle food that was available where the turtles were sold
          was usually nothing more than "ant eggs." In fact, it was
          only ant egg SHELLS. But it does not matter that the food
          was not nutritious, because the turtles wouldn't eat it
          anyway. When the shells decomposed and sank to the bottom of
          the water, people used to think that the turtle had eaten.

               Your mouth makes 2 glasses of saliva in one day.

               How do we know what animals think, feel? I say be kind
          to animals just in case it matters to them. The poet William
          Blake said, "How do you know but that every bird that
          cleaves the aerial way is not an immense world of delight
          closed to your senses five?"

               There are 35 countries that have atomic bombs with
          which we can be blown up: Austria, Argentina, Belgium,
          Brazil, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, East
          Germany, Egypt, Finland, France, Iran, India, Israel, Italy,
          Japan, Mexico, Netherlands,Norway, Pakistan, Poland,
          Portugal, Rumania, Russia, South Korea, South Africa,
          Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom,
          United States, Yugoslavia.

               The longest legitimate word in the English language is
          probably: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
          This 45-letter word is a lung disease. It can be found in
          Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 8th Edition. See if you
          can pronounce it.

               Hemidemisemiquaver is a musical term meaning a 64th
          note.

               The proper name for "/" is solidus.

               Do you know the artist Rembrandt's last name?

               In the US 30.8% of women live to be at least 85 years
          old, but less than 15% of men do.

               Abbott and Costello had an insurance policy covering
          damages due to a disagreement between them.

               Rembrandt's last name is van Rijn.

               In Switzerland women could not vote until 1971.

               There is a policeman in Ontario, Canada who is blind.
          (He does not direct traffic, he transcribes surveillance
          tapes.)

               The guy who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1915 had to get
          out and push his broken car for more than the last mile of
          the race.

               W.C. Fields kept $50,000 in a German bank during WWII
          in case the Germans won.

               In 1939 an author named Ernest Vincent wrote a 50,000
          word novel called Gadsby. What was unusual is that there is
          not a single letter e in the whole thing.

               The Mexican term for Americans, GRINGOS, came from a
          song that cowboys often sung, called "Green Grow the
          Lilacs."

               Human beings and pigs are the only animals that can get
          sunburned.

               A person can sweat up to 3 gallons per day.

               As you know, there is some iron in humans. How much?
          About as much as one small nail.

               On December 5, 1664, a ship sank off the coast of
          Wales. The only survivor was a man named Hugh Williams. On
          December 5, 1785, another ship sank. One man survived,
          another Hugh Williams. On December 5, 1860, yet another ship
          went down with only one survivor - you guessed it - his name
          was Hugh Williams.

               There is a species of lizard that has three eyes.

               Sometimes snakes are born with two heads. They usually
          co-exist alright until one tries to swallow the other.

               Scientists tested vision in men with tight collars and
          ties and found significant improvement in these mens' vision
          when they loosened their ties and unbuttoned their collars.

               A baby was born to parents in Turkey that weighed 24-
          pounds, 4-ounces at birth.

               In one large city a telephone operator traced the
          source of an emergency  phone call because the caller would
          not speak. The phone only emitted unusual noises. When the
          emergency technicians arrived at the scene, they found a
          basset hound who had dialed 911 in the processes of chewing
          up the phone.

               There are over one million earthworms under the average
          homeowner's lawn. These will move about three tons of dirt
          per year.

               Dogs can hear sounds up to ten times farther away than
          humans.

               Have you ever wondered why cats and some dogs turn
          around in circles before lying down? This is an instinctual
          motion dating to when the animals had to squash down tall
          grass to make a comfortable place to settle.

               There are over 100 million germs in a teaspoon of
          soil.

               In a fish, the brain weighs about the same as the
          spinal cord. In a human, the brain is fifty-five times
          heavier.
               An elephant's brain is four times bigger than a
          man's.

               Nerve impulses move slowly. It takes 1/50 second to
          notice a pain in you foot.

               Some dinosaurs had two brains! Since nerve signals move
          from one part of the body to another relatively slowly and
          since these beasts were so large, a second brain was located
          at the base of the tail to maintain control of the back of
          the creatures. Interestingly, the rear brain was bigger than
          the one in their heads.

               Ex-First Lady Nancy Reagan was in a high-school play
          (in 1939) in which she had only one line: "They ought to
          elect the First Lady and then let her husband be
          President."

               Of all occupations a person who is a professional
          baseball player is likely to live longest.

               If you are 50 pounds overweight, you will have at least
          8,000 miles more blood vessels than a thinner person.

               It is said that James A. Garfield, a United States
          President could write with both hands simultaneously. And,
          while one hand was writing translation into Greek, the other
          could be writing Latin.

               If you could harness the electrical output of your
          brain, you could power as a 10-watt light bulb.

               Fifty percent of women did not live to age thirty-five
          200 years ago.

               In pre-historic times, average human lifespan was 18
          years.

               The scientist, Louis Pasteur, used to sneak a
          microscope into friends' houses under his coat and then
          examine the food they were about to serve to make sure it
          was safe from germs.

               It is possible for a tapeworm 32 feet long to grow
          inside your belly. (although very uncommon)

               Surgeons used to have to operate quickly, before the
          patients died of extreme pain or blood loss. Robert Liston
          worked so fast that one day he accidentally cut off his
          nurse's fingers. It is not known whether the rest of the
          operation was a success.

               Some vultures have learned that for dinner they can
          crack other bird's eggs by throwing stones at them.

               Some anglerfish, who live in the ocean at depths of
          over one mile, have unusual lives. To see where they are
          going in that depth, or perhaps to attract food, the females
          have a chemically operated lamp that hangs on a stalk in
          front of their mouths. The male doesn't need to see because
          early in his life, he bites into the belly of the female and
          stays there forever. After a while the female grows skin
          over the connection, and the male degenerates, losing his
          teeth, his fins, and any means of life beyond being a small
          appendage hanging off the female.

               One species of shark is so competitive that the babies
          fight each other within their mother, until only one is left
          to be born.

               If you keep alligator eggs below 86 degrees, all
          females will be born. At above 93 degrees, the result is all
          males.

               Horned toads shoot streams of blood from their eyes
          when they are disturbed.

               "I couldn't wait for success, so I went on ahead
          without it." - Jonathan Winters

               The ex-husband of the columnist Ann Landers started
          Budget Rent-A-Car with $5,000 and turned it into a big
          company which he later sold for $10 million.

               Here's an easy one, see if you can remember: What are
          the names of the four musicians who composed the Beatles?
          (..Read on, I'll tell you in a minute)

               The Mets baseball team of 1962 had two pitchers whose
          names were Robert G. Miller and Robert L. Miller. They
          called Robert G. Righty, and Robert L. was referred to as
          Lefty.

               There is a man whose official name has been legally
          changed to Mr. 1069.

               Japanese rickshaws were invented by an American who
          visited in Japan in 1869.

               The game of tennis was originally called sphairistike.

          Answer: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo
          Starr.

               When the subject of a national bird to represent
          America came up, Benjamin Franklin suggested a turkey, but
          an eagle was selected.

               During a battle of the Civil War, Major General John
          Sedgewick said -  just before he was shot to death, "Why,
          they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..."

               I'll bet you don't know what a Zambony is. It is a
          machine that refinishes the ice in a skating rink.

               Black and Hispanic people were twice as likely to
          suffer a personal crime in 1988 at 10.4 per 1000 people,
          compared to white people who had 4.7 crimes per 1000.
               In general, crime is down 25% since the 1970's.

               In India jewelry is sold by weight (by grams) no
          matter how much handwork has gone into it.

               "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
                              -Armand Hammer

               The typical dog owner spends about $5,000 on the dog
          during ten years.

               An octopus has three hearts.

               How successful was Vincent Van Gogh? He only sold one
          painting in his whole life!

               "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we
          have to alter it every six months."
                                        -Oscar Wilde

               In a research study, it was found that three-quarters
          of women in the United States wear the wrong size bra.

               10 Americans per day accidentally poison themselves to
          death.

               An English king used to like eating rotten oysters.

               If you are the typical owner of a computer, you watch
          40% less television than people without computers.

               If you paid an eighteen year old American minimum wage
          for all the hours of television the kid has watched, that
          teenager would get $50,000!

               If you paid $1 for every murder an average 18-year old
          has seen on television, the kid would get $20,000!

               During the 1920's there was a law in Russia that all
          private automobiles (not ones used by the government) had to
          have a yellow stripe painted all the way around the whole
          body.

               You can type the word "typewriter" all from the row of
          keys above the home row.

               How much money is there in America? There is about
          $823 cash in circulation for each of us.

          The Bible contains 3,566,480 letters, 810,697 words.

               Every weekday morning, the commuters of Los Angeles use
          250,000 gallons of gas getting to work. They drive 5 million
          miles, which would be like one car driving to the moon and
          back 20 times, or around the earth's equator 192 times.

               In 1945, the Empire State Building was hit by an
          airplane, which destroyed most of the seventy-eighth floor.

               If you lined up all the mountain bikes in America,
          tire-to-tire, and then rode a bike along that line, it would
          take you 18 weeks, (riding 40 hours per week, 15 miles per
          hour) to get to the end of the line.

               When researchers in Louisiana placed rubber snakes and
          turtles on highways and observed the behavior of 22,000
          motorists, they discovered that 87% of the drivers purposely
          avoided hitting the creatures, but 6% of drivers went out of
          their way to "kill" the rubber animals with their tires.

          Percent of gross national product spent on science:
          Cuba 0.7%
          Soviet Union 4.6%
          United States 2.5%
          Mexico 0.6%
          Argentina 0.39%

               It appears that Adolf Hitler may not have died from
          suicide as people used to believe. He could still be alive
          in hiding. A scientist has tried to match dental records
          from the corpse in the bunker that was supposed to have been
          Hitler and found that the dental features don't match photos
          taken of Hitler when his mouth was open.

               One night in 1833 there were almost a quarter-million
          shooting stars.

               A church steeple was struck by lightning and destroyed
          on April 18th, 1599. The members of the church rebuilt it.
          It was hit by lightning three more times between then and
          1783, and rebuilt again and again. Every time it was hit,
          the date was April 18th.

               The army of Liechtenstein was made up of one man, who
          gave up the military life at age 95.

               230 people died when Moradabad, India was bombed with
          giant balls of hail over 2 inches in diameter.

               While fishing at a pond in New York State, a man lost
          the glass part of his lantern. Five years later, once again
          fishing in the same spot, he caught a fish that was wearing
          that glass lantern chimney.

          Major earthquakes have hit Japan on:
          September 1, 827,
          September 1, 859,
          September 1, 1185,
          September 1, 1649 and
          September 1, 1923.

               The largest moths in the world have a 14 inch wingspan.
          These "Hercules" moths live only 2 weeks and never eat.
          Would you be upset if one landed on your head?

               Sweden once had a supreme court justice who was
          nineteen years old. When he was ten, he could speak fluently
          in 12 languages.

               There is only one person in all recorded history who
          has been killed by a meteorite. Manfredo Settala (1600-
          1680).

               Male natives of New Guinea shave their beards with
          sharp blades of grass.

               There are plants with a body temperature just like
          birds and mammals. Skunk cabbages can have an internal
          temperature 25 degrees higher than their surroundings.

               Americans smoke 1 billion cigarettes per day. If you
          lined up all the cigarettes smoked in one day, then drove
          past them at 55 miles per hour, it would take 28 weeks
          (driving 40 hours per week) to get to the end of the line.
               11,000 cigarettes are lighted every second, just in
          America.
               Every 22 seconds, a kid tries smoking for the first
          time.

               The most words on a single postage stamp is 746 (from
          the country of Greece, year: 1954)

               A Japanese priest set a  kimono on fire in Tokyo
          because it carried bad luck. The flames spread until over
          10,000 buildings were destroyed and 100,000 people died.
          (Year: 1657)

               Insects are nearsighted. They cannot see farther than 9
          feet.

          ";qooooooo.,,,xkiiiiiii"
          This is what happens when a kitty cat walks across a
          computer keyboard.

               The person who is currently the oldest in the world is
          115 years old. She spent 75 years of her life in a mental
          institution.

               You have just enjoyed a small random collection of  excerpts
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