Fact
78% of posters don't check on www.snopes.com to see if their useless fact is actually true or not.
(Iou1username, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 8:37, Reply)

The word tampon..
..comes from the word tampion, which is the plug that goes in the end of a cannon,

www.dictionary.com
(orderoftheflame, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 8:30, Reply)

but...
Yaks milk is pink.

and...

female hyenas have cocks...
(orderoftheflame, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 8:08, Reply)

Pi is..
3.141592653589732384626433827950884197169399375105820974944

i thought i could be arsed to type the whole thing, i was wrong.
(orderoftheflame, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 8:08, Reply)

"Ahem"
There is only one G. O. D.
And I am she


;)

I'd also like to be a rodent................. ha (/emetophobic)
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:43, Reply)

Most of this information isn't useless enough!
Here we go:

The second slowest growing tree in the world is the Huon Pine - It can take 2000 years for the diameter of the trunk to reach 40cm, and grows mainly in the Huon Valley in Tasmania.

in 1854, a French cow named 'Molly' gave black milk that had the same nutritional qualities of normal milk.

Squid can kill themselves by biting off their tentacles.
( gronkpan @vomitinglarry.bsky.social, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:35, Reply)

Well...
Charlie Chaplin once ended third place in a Charlie Chaplin imitation contest.
Bill Gates' home was designed on a Macintosh.
And last but not least: the plastic tubes at the end of your shoelaces are called 'aglets'. Indeed, aglets.

/edit: Fuck. I should read stuff before posting. Turns out I just repeated after the very first answer. Oh, well...
(One of these things first, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:26, Reply)

Strings
A piano has roughly 230 strings, and the combined tension of all the strings equals about 20 tonnes.
( Hosehead, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:25, Reply)

Actual Genuine Unused Facts, Still in Shrink-Wrap
1. Gerbils are actually flightless bats.

2. Carrots have testicles.

3. The richest man in the world, if shot out of a cannon straight into a concrete wall, would make just as big a splat as a man of average means.

4. Dust devils are not actually devils. They are the restless spirits of unhappy nuns, all covered in dry fluff.

5. A giant octopus at Marine Land, USA has never had a nosebleed.
(meatybrain, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:16, Reply)

Raccoon Penis'sss'sss
The Raccoon has a bone in his penis.  Though not the only mammal to have such bony protuberance, it is one with a very interesting folklore behind it.

Lucky Raccoon Penis Bones!  With Picture!

Although I have been told the Cherokee used these as toothpicks, this may just be myth.  However I can see some of those old Hillbilly types pinning their floppy hat brims up with their "toothpicks..."
( CapnChkn I would rather be flying elephants., Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:15, Reply)

Quack of a duck
The common fact stating that a ducks quack doesn't echo is actually false. It does indeed echo, but so quietly you can't hear it without specialised equipment.

I saw it on tele the other night so it must be true.
(Brundy, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:07, Reply)

The shell of an egg
is formed by cold fusion occuring within the chicken.
( Noit happy baby orangutan, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 7:07, Reply)

I got three.
1. It's physiologically impossible to lick your own elbow.

2. 1 out of 5 facts presented here are urban legends. You can look them up at www.snopes.com. (The Neil Armstrong-Gorsky-sex for instance.)

3. 1 out of 5 b3ta readers will have tried to lick their elbow after reading 1.
(st0pid, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 6:59, Reply)

Fucking math
111111111*111111111
is really
12345678987654321

Try it, you'll like it.
(fishclown, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 6:53, Reply)

Goodio
The weight of the worms living in the soil beneath a fully stocked cattle paddock weigh more than the combined weight of all the cattle above.

Rodents cannot vomit, hence the efficacy of warfarin and rat poison.

Doe rabbits can re-absorb their unborn young in bad times.

Kangaroos can have three babies on board at a time: one in the pouch almost fully grown, one tiny one on the second nipple inside the lower pouch, and one in the oven. If bad seasons mean there is not much food there, the female can keep the young embryo in stasis until conditions and food supplies improve.

The most common name in the world is Mohammed

The word 'Quiz' was made up in response to a bet that nobody could get a new word into the general lauguage within a week. the guy who invented the word made it up on the spur of the moment, and painted it all over walls, streets and buildings in his town overnight. Next day, everyone was asking "what is quiz?" and it became a term for a puzzle.

There are 14 teaspoons of sugar in a litre of Coca Cola. And I still love it. Double Sars apparently has MORE than that to swipe the sugariest drink tag from Coke.

I've got a million of 'em. Just ask me!
( Shazzoir Old enough to know better young enough not to care, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 6:32, Reply)

Wazzock.
A wazzock is a sock placed in the middle of a room during a masturbation party. Last person to cum over it has to wear it home......true story.
(Cousin Walter., Fri 18 Mar 2005, 6:12, Reply)

.
the pinchable bit of skin covering the point of your elbow is called a weenis.

also a handy word to yell in public places.
(three hams, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 4:46, Reply)

AMazing ANimal Faktz!
The white Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding Academy are born black. Dalmation dogs are born white and spotless.

You can feel an Apaloosa's spots.

The vampire bat doesn't suck. it scratches the skin very gently until blood begins to ooze. Then it licks.

Cat's penises are barbed.
( Artamnesia, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 3:57, Reply)

There lived in China
a funny old man, whose name was Chiga Woga Chin Chon Chan,
His arm were long and his legs were short,
the poor little fella couldn't walk or talk.
(anotheradam, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 3:53, Reply)

The origin of the word "posh"
is from ships travelling south east from the UK, whose passengers could afford the 'port out starboard home' and not endure the heat of the sun pouring through.
(anotheradam, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 3:15, Reply)

Double basses and platypuses
Double bass strings are tuned in 4ths because, what with the instrument being so bloody big, the distance between notes a 4th apart is too far to stretch.

Also, platypuses (that's the correct plural) don't have similar reproductive organs to humans, they're a particular subclass of mammals called monotremes (meaning "one hole") which is essentially what they have.
(In Cognito, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 3:06, Reply)

Arsenal....
Is not the only football club not named after an area. Port Vale was a meeting house/private member's bar in Stoke-on-Trent.
(FiftyFour, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 3:00, Reply)

Even more pedantic
Glass isn't a supercooled liquid, it's an amorphous solid, otherwise known as a glass. While it is possible for it to flow over time the process takes so long that it would be impossible to observe over a human timescale.

It can be possible to sing while counting. About half of people use sound to count and the other half use vision, so some people can't sing while counting and others can't read.
(Cuddles It's not rape if they're already dead, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 2:47, Reply)

Some facts about the 1500s
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of thehouse had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't
throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.
It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This
posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings
could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and
a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy
beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.
Hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would
get slippery in the winter when wet , so they spread thresh (straw) on
floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they adding more
thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A
piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a "thresh
hold."

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that
always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat
the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then
start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.
When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.
It was a sign of wealth that a man could "bring home the bacon." They
would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and
"chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content
caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of
the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper
crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone
walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for
burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days
and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and
see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a
"bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out
of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they
realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."
(Chanticleer, kept, awkwardly, pausing, on, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 2:46, Reply)

Utterly useless
The phrase 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' comes from old, old, incredibly old times (mainly when horses were used for everything).

Anyway, if someone presented you with a horse as a present, it was apparently very bad etiquette to inspect the horse's teeth. The person giving away the horse might think you were insinuating that he was giving you a knacker, and take the horse away again. So it basically means, don't question something good happening to you, because it might go away again.

I can't even remember where I learned that, but it always used to bug me and it's quite amusing imagining two peasants having a set-to over horse teeth.
(sporks, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 2:36, Reply)

Did you know that- - - - -
by inputting letters only on your keyboard starting from the bottom left, you end up with:
mnbvcxzlkjhgfdsapoiuytrewq.
Also, I just farted.
(anotheradam, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 2:31, Reply)

Fact-o-matic
The New Zealand Royal Air Force has a kiwi as its symbol. Kiwi's are flightless birds.

Guinness brewed in Malaysia is 7% alcohol.
Guinness brewed in Australia tastes like piss.

The optimum % alcohol for drinking is around 20% - higher than this your stomach tightens up (or something) and it takes longer to get into your blood.

Kwik-E-Mart is a real chain of shops in New Zealand.

At 30m below sea level you can crack an egg and play with the contents like a ball. The pressure holds it together.
(SheepFiddler, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 2:22, Reply)

100% of English speakers
can't speak, spell or write English properly.
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 1:49, Reply)

Isaac Newton
His most useful and beneficial invention: The Catflap.
(Corn Dog, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 1:48, Reply)

One more...
To get the bagpipes to start up properly, you actually have to swat the bag so that all four reeds start cleanly, without howling or squeaking. This is why it is referred to as "striking up the pipes".
(chazz, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 1:40, Reply)