Fast Facts


Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, September 19, 2005

Things you’ve always never wanted to know

  • Numerically, you had more bones the day you were born than you do now.

  • If you yelled for eight years, seven months and six days, you would produce enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

  • Apparently a pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.

  • Des Moines has the highest per capita Jell-O consumption in the United States.

  • The westernmost point in the contiguous United States is Cape Alava, Wash.

  • There are only three animals with blue tongues: the black bear, the chow chow dog and the blue-tongued lizard.

  • The first fossilized specimen of Austalopithecus afarenisis was named Lucy after the paleontologists’ favorite song, “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” by The Beatles.

  • Pinocchio is Italian for “pine head.”

  • The geographical center of North America is near Rugby, N.D.

  • The infinity sign is called a “lemniscate.”

  • Hacky Sack was invented in Turkey.

  • If you stretch a standard Slinky out flat it measures 87 feet long.

  • There are six words in the English language with the letter combination “uu” :Muumuu, vacuum, continuum, duumvirate, duumvir and residuum.

  • Most Americans’ car horns beep in the key of F.

  • Dirty Harry’s badge number is 2211.

  • The pupil of an octopus’ eye is rectangular.

  • The shortest French word with all five vowels is “oiseau,” meaning bird.

  • Camel’s milk does not curdle.

  • “Mr. Mojo Risin” is an anagram for Jim Morrison.

  • The ball on top of a flagpole is called the truck.

  • A person from the country of Nauru is called a Nauruan; this is the only palindromic nationality.

  • The word “modem” is a contraction of the words “modulate, demodulate.”

  • Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated two years after he died.