Fast facts


Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, January 24, 2005

Things you always never wanted to know

  • During World War II the city of Leningrad underwent a 17-month German siege. Unable to access the city by roads, the Russians built a railroad across the ice on Lake Lagoda to get food and supplies to the citizens.

  • Elton John's real name is Reginald Dwight. Elton comes from Elton Dean, a Bluesology sax player. John comes from Long John Baldry, founder of Blues Inc. They were the first electric white blues band ever seen in England - 1961.

  • 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.

  • The average garden-variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

  • A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background - when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.

  • The Australian $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes are made out of plastic.

  • Most armadillos seen dead on the road did not get hit by wheels. When an armadillo is frightened it jumps straight into the air.

  • Armadillos can be housebroken.

  • Armadillos have four babies at a time, always all the same sex. They are perfect quadruplets: the fertilized cell splits into quarters, resulting in four identical armadillos.

  • "Wayne's World" was filmed in two weeks.

  • The beautiful town of Puyallup (PEW-al-up) is home to an annual daffodil parade. Three Pacific 10 Conference quarterbacks have come from the small suburb (Damon and Brock Huard of Washington and Jason Johnson of the UA).

  • Cleopatra's last name was Ptolemy, and she was Greek, not Egyptian.

  • Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4: John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on Aug. 2, but the last signature wasn't added until five years later.

  • Barbie's measurements, if she were life-sized: 39-23-33.