Fast Facts


Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday, October 13, 2005

Things you've always never wanted to know

  • Sitophobia is the fear of food.

  • In 1976, President Ford sent out 40,000 Christmas cards.

  • Dirty snow melts faster than clean snow.

  • It costs more to buy a new car today in the U.S. than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World.

  • Cancer causes one death in the U.S. every 90 seconds.

  • In the book "Peter Pan" by James M. Barrie, the place where the children go with Peter is not called "Never-Never Land." It is called "Neverland."

  • It is illegal to hunt camels in Arizona.

  • The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.

  • Honeybees kill more people each year than snakebites.

  • There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants.

  • Early Mickey Mouse can be distinguished from later ones by the fact that the originals have a pie-shaped section of white in their eyes while the later ones do not.

  • The right lung takes in more air than the left.

  • Flamingos are not naturally pink. They get their color from their food, an algae that turns pink during digestion.

  • In 1933, Mickey Mouse received 800,000 fan letters.

  • Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eye."

  • The sloth moves so slowly that algae can grow undisturbed on its fur.

  • The longest recorded tapeworm found in the human body was 33 meters long.

  • It's against the law in Chicago to eat in a place that is on fire.

  • A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier can run for up to 18 years.

  • The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.

  • Henry Ford produced the Model T only in black because the black paint available at the time was the fastest to dry.

  • There are more than 1,700 references to gems and precious stones in the King James translation of the Bible.

  • In ancient Rome, it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.

  • The record number of human male orgasms in an hour is 16.

  • You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.

  • Every five seconds a computer gets infected with a virus.

  • The yo-yo was originally a weapon used in the Philippine jungles.

  • Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.

  • The mother of Michael Nesbit of The Monkees invented liquid paper correction fluid.

  • Betsy Ross is the only real person to ever have been the head on a Pez dispenser.

  • The only married couple to fly together in space was Jan Davis and Mark Lee, who flew aboard the Endeavor space shuttle from Sept. 12-20, 1992.

  • It is estimated that at any one time, 0.7 percent of the world's population is drunk.