Fast Facts


Arizona Daily Wildcat
August 25, 2005

Things you've always never wanted to know

  • A 1978 study found that up to 15 percent of Americans who chewed their fingernails also chewed their toenails.

  • President Zachary Taylor never voted in a presidential election - not even his own.

  • If Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, he travels faster than 4,000 feet per second - the speed of a bullet from a .22-caliber rifle.

  • The odds against a flipped coin coming up with the same side showing 10 times in a row are 1,023- to-1.

  • "SOS" doesn't stand for anything. The letters were chosen for Morse Code as a distress signal because of their simplicity - three dots, three dashes and three dots.

  • "TNT" stands for Trinitrotuluene. "EPCOT" stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

  • Lightning is the cause of most forest fires.

  • An armadillo can be housebroken.

  • Cats can't taste sweet things.

  • Sauerkraut originated in China some 1,000 years before it became a favorite in Germany.

  • A pigeon's feathers weigh more than its bones.

  • One-third of all canned fish in the United States is eaten by cats.

  • A male lion can wolf down 75 pounds of meat at one meal.

  • Dogsleds delivered mail in Alaska as late as 1963.

  • They may have been called "water catchers," but the cuffs on men's pants were originally made to hold cigar ashes.