One Man's Blog » Trivia

How the World Has Changed in 100 Years

John P. — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 06:10:02 +0000

Ok. This info is old, but I came across it and thought it would be fun to resurrect it once again.

There have been all sorts of claims as to the year these stats originated, but generally I believe they are from 1903. I have not vetted any of the “facts” here, but they do seem to pass the “gut-check” for reliability.

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.
Only 14% of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8% of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost $11.00.
There were only 8,000 cars in the U.S. and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95% of all births took place at home.
90% of all U.S. doctors had no college education. Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and the government as â€œsubstandard.â€
Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering into their country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.
The population of Las Vegas , Nevada, was only 30.
Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents. California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented yet.
There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.
Two out of every 10 U.S. adults couldn’t read or write. Only 6% of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, â€œHeroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.â€
18% of households in the U.S. had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were only about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

English Language Trivia

John P. — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 06:04:11 +0000

In keeping with my fascination with completely useless trivia, here are a few facts you might not have known about the English language.

So, next time you are at lunch with the boys from work and start spouting out this crap to impress everyone just remember who loves ya…

Of all the words in the English language, the word ’set’ has the most definitions!
What is called a “French kiss” in the English speaking world is known as an “English kiss” in France.
“Almost” is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
“Rhythm” is the longest English word without a vowel.

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.
Uncopyrightable is the longest word with no repeated letters.
The word checkmate comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat”, which means “the king is dead”.
In 1945 a computer at Harvard malfunctioned and Grace Hopper, who was working on the computer, investigated, found a moth in one of the circuits and removed it. Ever since, when something goes wrong with a computer, it is said to have a bug in it.
“Kemo Sabe” means “soggy shrub” in Navajo.
No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple.
“Ough” can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.
The “O” when used as a prefix in Irish surnames means “descendant of.”
The right side of a boat was called the starboard side due to the fact that the astronavigators used to stand out on the plank (which was on the right side) to get an unobstructed view of the stars. The left side was called the port side because that was the side that you put in on at the port.
The ZIP in Zip-code stands for “Zoning Improvement Plan.”
The term “devil’s advocate” comes from the Roman Catholic Church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil’s advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.
DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleicacid.
The word “robot” was created by Karel Capek. It came from Czech/Slovak “robotovat,” which means to work very hard.
The term “the whole 9 yards” came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got “the whole 9 yards.”
Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan.
“Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.”
“Freelance” comes from a knight whose lance was free for hire, i.e. not pledged to one master.
“Speak of the Devil” is short for “Speak of the Devil and he shall come”. It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention. That’s why when your talking about someone and they show up people say “Speak of the Devil”
The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle.

Random Animal Trivia

John P. — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 06:43:15 +0000

Here are a few fun / interesting facts about animals:

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
The placement of a donkey’s eyes in its’ heads enables it to see all four feet at all times.
On average a hedgehog’s heart beats 300 times a minute.
In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child.
Dolphins sleep with one eye open.

The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds.
The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump.
Owls are the only birds who can see the color blue.
A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.
An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
A duckâ€™s quack doesnâ€™t echo, and no one knows why.
A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
It’s possible to lead a cow upstairs â€“ but not downstairs.
Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
Polar bears are left-handed.
Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
Starfish have no brains.

Professor Refutes DWI Testing Accuracy

John P. — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 07:34:08 +0000

Dr. David J. Hanson, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the State University of New York at Potsdam has put together a vast amount of information related to the accuracy of current drunk driving testing methods based on his 30+ years of research.

I was surprised to learn that even non-drinkers could easily fail a sobriety test – including a breath alcohol test.

Dr. Hanson has provided a pretty extensive list of DWI / DUI Facts and Myths, and if you own a car I’d recommend you read it.

While you’re there check out the Fun Facts section. I’ve never seen so much alcohol related trivia in one place.

Trivia: Forty Four Fantastic Food Facts

John P. — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 06:43:48 +0000

How about that alliteration huh? :-) Seriously, cheesy though it may be, I found 44 pretty cool facts about food. Just be thankful I didn’t drag it out even longer (think Peter Piper picked a peck…).

Coca-Cola would be green if colouring werenâ€™t added to it.
Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.
The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!

Half of the world’s population live on a staple diet of rice.
In France, people eat approximately 500,000,000 snails per year.
There are about 100,000 bacteria in one litre of drinking water.
Within 2 hours of standing in daylight, milk loses between half and two-thirds of its vitamin B content.
It Takes 3500 Calories To Make A Pound Of Fat!
Peanuts are used in the manufacture of dynamite.
It has been traditional to serve fish with a slice of lemon since the Middle Ages, when people believed that the fruit’s juice would dissolve any bones accidentally swallowed.
The Average Person Eats Almost 1500 Pounds Of Food A Year!
Milk chocolate was invented by Daniel Peter, who sold the concept to his neighbour Henri NestlÃ©.
An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine.
TIP is the acronym for “To Insure Promptness.”
The world’s oldest existing eatery opened in Kai-Feng, China in 1153.
Three quarters of fish caught are eaten – the rest is used to make things such as glue, soap, margarine and fertilizer.
To make one kilo of honey bees have to visit 4 million flowers, travelling a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.
Spotted bananas are sweeter, with a sugar content of more than 20%, compared with 3% in a green banana.
There are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.
Over the last 40 years food production actually increased faster than population.

Over 90% of all fish caught are caught in the northern hemisphere.
Approximately one billion snails are served in restaurants annually.
Vitamin A is known to prevent “night blindness,” and carrots are loaded with Vitamin A. One carrot provides more than 200% of recommended daily intake of Vitamin A.
Carrots have zero fat content.
Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.
In the 1950’s some 80% of chickens in Europe and the US were free-ranging. By 1980, it was only 1%. Today, about 13% of chickens in the West are free-ranging.
An onion, apple and potato all have the same taste. The differences in flavour are caused by their smell.
China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year. 25 million trees are chopped down to make them.
Chocolate is the number one foodstuff flavour in the world, beating vanilla and banana by 3-to-1.
Each American eats approximately 22 pounds of tomatoes yearly. Over 1/2 of the tomato consumption is in the form of catsup and tomato sauce.
The average U.S. dairy cow produces 22.5 quarts of milk each day. Thatâ€™s about 16,000 glasses of milk per year â€“ enough for about 40 people. One cow can give 200,000 glasses of milk in a lifetime.
Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day, or 350 slices per second.
Onions contain a mild antibiotic that fights infections, soothes burns, tames bee stings and relieves the itch of athletes foot.
A family of four could live for 10 years off the bread produced by one acre of wheat.
It takes just 40 days for most Americans to earn enough money to pay for their food supply for the entire year. In comparison with the 129 days it takes the average American to earn enough money to pay federal, state and local taxes for the year.

Reportedly, there are more than 1,750 “O’s” in a 15-ounce can of Spaghetti Os.
Native Americans never actually ate turkey; killing such a timid bird was thought to indicate laziness.
1.5 billion cups of tea are enjoyed throughout the world every day.
Table salt is the only commodity that hasnâ€™t risen dramatically in price in the last 150 years.
Burger King uses approximately 1/2 million pounds of bacon every month in its restaurants.
A study of 19,000 Americans found breakfast skippers are more likely to gain weight because they are more inclined to overcompensate for the loss of key nutrients at breakfast by eating more fat-rich, high-energy foods later in the day.
Beer is made by fermentation cause by bacteria feeding on yeast cells and then defecating.
Carrots were first cultivated in Afghanistan in the 7th century, and they started with yellow flesh and a purple exterior.
Spam stands for Shoulder Pork and hAM.

Size Comparison of Stars and Planets

John P. — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 06:03:41 +0000

As a follow up to my previous post of The Most Important Photo Ever Taken, here is a very interesting video illustrating the relative size of planets in our solar system as well as stars throughout the galaxy.

Keep in mind that the smallest body they show is Mercury and at an average height of 5.5′ it would take over 2.9 million humans standing head to toe just to stretch across that tiny planet.

The largest star illustrated is 753,320 times larger than Mercury. It would take 2.185 TRILLION humans standing head to toe to stretch across the diameter of that star, or 364 times the entire population of Earth.

Human Physiology Trivia – 26 Fun Facts

John P. — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 06:21:49 +0000

As a follow up to my previous trivia topics, I now present some unusual trivia related to the human body.

True, most of this information is completely useless… but then again so was much of the stuff you learned in high school. :-)

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
The average human body contains enough: iron to make a 3 inch nail, sulfur to kill all fleas on an average dog, carbon to make 900 pencils, potassium to fire a toy cannon, fat to make 7 bars of soap, phosphorous to make 2,200 match heads, and water to fill a ten-gallon tank.
You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath.
More people are allergic to cow’s milk than any other food.
Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!
In the late 19th century, millions of human mummies were used as fuel for locomotives in Egypt where wood and coal was scarce, but mummies were plentiful.

You’re born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!
One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!
Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different!
The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!
The present population of 6 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
The average person laughs 10 times a day!
The only time the human population declined was in the years following 1347, the start of the epidemic of the plague ‘Black Death’ in Europe.
A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!

The human brain is 78% water.
A person will die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. Death will occur about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a few weeks.
An average person uses the bathroom 6 times per day.
An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

Some sources for these facts:

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Human_Physiology/The_Nervous_System
http://www.corsinet.com/trivia/h-triv.html

Interesting Insect Facts

John P. — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:30:41 +0000

I don’t know what compelled me to compile this list, but I was reading some little bit of insect trivia and I got off on a tear.

Not only did I compile a bunch of insect trivia, but you can look forward to a series of other interesting trivia topics to come…

There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.
More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
Some worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food!
Bees must collect the nectar from two thousand flowers to make one tablespoonful of honey. In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
Tapeworms range in size from about 0.04 inch to more than 50 feet in length.

A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
In Africa swarms of Locusts may contain as many as 28,000,000,000 individuals. A large swarm may eat up to 80,000 tons of grain and other vegetation in a day.
Amazon ants (red ants found in the western U.S.) steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants, who cannot do anything but fight.
Each year, insects eat 1/3 of the Earth’s food crop.
Mosquitoes prefer children to adults, and blondes to brunettes. Only female mosquitoes bite because they need the protein from blood to produce their eggs and she can triple her body weight with just one meal of blood.
Only full-grown male crickets can chirp.
Dragonflies have as many as 30,000 lenses in each eye.
A tabanid fly, related to horse flies, has been clocked at 90 miles per hour.
The fastest runners are cockroaches, which can move almost a foot per second. However this only translates to a little over 1 mph.
The queen of a termite colony may lay 6,000 to 7,000 eggs per day, and may live 15 to 50 years.
Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates their feet.
The total distance of the many trips honey bees travel to produce a pound of honey is about equal to twice the distance around the world.
There are more than 200 million insects for each human on the planet.

Now, after reading all those insect facts do you have the sudden urge to itch?

By the way, I’m no entomologist, so you might want to double check anything you see listed here before you go citing it anywhere. I did NOT vet these “facts” – still, they’re fun aren’t they? :-)

40 Amazing Facts About Sleep

John P. — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:30:12 +0000

Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you’re sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you’re still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.
A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year.
Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a “neural switch” in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.
To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain’s sleep-wake cycle are closely linked. That’s why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees – one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.
Ten per cent of snorers have sleep apnea, a disorder which causes sufferers to stop breathing up to 300 times a night and significantly increases the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.
Snoring occurs only in non-REM sleep.
Teenagers need as much sleep as small children (about 10 hrs) while those over 65 need the least of all (about six hours). For the average adult aged 25-55, eight hours is considered optimal.
Some studies suggest women need up to an hour’s extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible to depression than men.
Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

Read the rest here.

Beer. It’s what’s for Dinner.

John P. — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 14:49:06 +0000

Now, I know someone is going to accuse me of making up this silly post about beer just so I could post this photo online.

So? Is that a problem?

Anyway, the inspiration for this post was actually a pile of little known beer facts. Enjoy:

According to the Canadian Ace Brewing Co., there are 6,998 drops in a 12-ounce bottle of beer.
St. Arnold is recognized by the Catholic Church as the patron saint of brewing beer.
A 12-ounce beer has fewer calories than two slices of standard, sliced bread.
In Fairbanks, Alaska, it is illegal to give beer to a moose.
The country with the most brands of beer – 400 – is Belgium.
In Germany, you can buy beer popsicles.
Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty [beer] glass.
Milwaukee, WI is the drunkest city in America.

Slashfood.com has a ton of other useless Beer info.

Google Gapminder

John P. — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 21:54:05 +0000

Google teams with Gapminder to deliver an interactive service which allows you to see all sorts of interactive Global statistics ranging from life expectancy to internet usage and more.

Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualizes human development. This is done in collaboration with universities, UN organizations, public agencies and non-governmental organizations.

“It all started in 1998 from an idea to enhance the understanding of world health. We developed prototype software showing time series of health statistics as moving graphics and varying life conditions as 360Â° photo panoramas from homes, schools and health facilities.”

I think it’s important, especially for those of us living in first world nations, to realize how different the world is in terms of access to basic needs ranging from medical care (physicians per 1,000 people) to communication (phone usage per 1,000 people, internet usage per 1,000 people) to sexual equality (ratio of girls to boys in school, % of women in the workforce). Sometimes it really puts things in perspective.

Check it out.