(all words in brackets are lies)
(Sorry, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:45, Reply)

Did you know
that a peanut is not actually a nut, but a legume?

Oh, and everything begins with 'E'
(Amazing Mr Strange, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:41, Reply)

They don't call me Samstistics for no reason!
Did you know:
that every time a blue whale ejaculates it releases 80 tons of sperm only 20 tons of that go into the female (now you know why the sea is salty),
every continent begins and ends with the same letter,
every single (and i mean every) american president has worn glasses but some never in public,
all (yes all) polar bears are left handed,
sex penis erectus in latin means six pine trees in a row (correct my latin spelling),
only 1% of the world have a computer,

(oh and by the way there is only one union jack in the world on thats on the flag ship of her HM navy if its on any ship its still is a union flag; also the union flag upside down is a distress signal)
(Phagenius, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:41, Reply)

Debunking
Space Pancake - The Germans do have a word for fluffy. (I asked my German housemate. Not sure on the spelling but it sounds like "fluffsich") And the quote was in Blackadder Goes Forth, not Blackadder III.

Dan J - Eminem rhymes "oranges" with "syringes" and "hinges" on the album The Eminem Show.
There is a little-used word "grunth" that rhymes with "month"
"Silva", meaning a wood, is an exact rhyme for "silver" in that they are pronounced exactly the same way.
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:40, Reply)

Did you know
the most used letter in the english language is the letter "E"!

Well that explains Lancastrians for you
( Big Ian has stopped changing his sig, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:34, Reply)

Croydon
was granted a market charter in 1276.
(haberman is singing in the changes, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:31, Reply)

cat out of the bag
The phrase "letting the cat" out of the bag comes from the time when people used to sell piglets in sacks. People would sometimes stick a cat in there and sell it off pretending it was a pig (stupid fools didn't think to check). Therefore when he got home the consumer would have a nasty suprise - letting the cat out of the bag.

So...your professor was wrong! *smiles smugly*
(mrmistoffeles, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:25, Reply)

I got this off of a 16th birthday card...
...the top speed of a porcupine is 16 km/h.

Ten years I've had that knowledge. Ten years!
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:24, Reply)

If the Chinese population were to be lined up round the equator.....
most of them would have wet feet.
(randy the gnome, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:17, Reply)

A blu-ray disc
Is read with a blue laser rather than a red laser. The blue light laser gives less scatter than a red light laser and can be made to read to a finer spot therefore increasing the ammount of data one can fit on a disc the size of a DVD or CD...

You did want useless!
(newcustomerserviceteam, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:15, Reply)

Humpty
Lovely bloke, desperately needs to get out more and stop working out and posting engineering proofs to all the posts about metal.
;)

FACT.

Oh yeah, who cares if a duck's quack echoes?
( ogwen69 has returned from Reddit, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:12, Reply)

The Union Jack
Did you know/care that the Union Jack isn't called the Union Jack, it's called the Union Flag, the only time is called a Union JAck is when it's on a ship.

Tadaa
(pheasant, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:09, Reply)

Yeah, you're wrong
Yawning has nothing to do with oxygen. It's a social thing - animals yawning are saying "I've had enough of this - let's go to sleep for a bit". It's contagious because everyone else is saying, "yeah, good plan".
( teedyay, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:06, Reply)

My favourite bit of useless trivia
Ever noticed when someone yawns you yawn as well? Well.......

Yawning is when you take in a greater amount of oxygen. When someone does this your instinctual part of brain automatically thinks the room is running low on oxygen (hence the person yawning) and that's why you yawn too!

Or I could be talking a whole load of bollocks, try it, you might like it...
(kendoddsdadsdogsdead, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:05, Reply)

bunny_333,
you are so full of wank.
(Sorry, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:04, Reply)

milk in bags??
I'm Canadian, and I've never seen milk in a bag. Maybe it's one part of the country.

Might as well come up with a useful fact now.
If anyone ever tells you the longest English word is "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniosis," tell them they're dead wrong. It's "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcaniosises."

That's all I got right now.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 17:00, Reply)

this may be crap
but the word 'run' has the most flexible of meanings of any word in the english language.

think about it.
(secretlysomeoneelse, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:58, Reply)

If you touch
as far down the center of your palm with the middle finger of the same hand, unassisted, you'll find that the distance from where you reached to the fingertip of your (now extended) middle finger is proportional to the length of your turgid knob.
If you're female, then it's the length of what would be your (turgid) knob, if you had one.
If you're not female and you try this and it's not right, then you're a mutant.
If you don't believe me ask your doctor.
(funkyballs, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:56, Reply)

grog = booze
named after captain grogham who watered down the ship's alcohol to 50% to prevent drunkeness on board, and the sailors named it grog. Because it were crap.

Which leads to the fact that the Portuguese Navy is the only one that allows alcohol on board.

There's a popular story that when Nelson fell in battle they preserved him in a barrel of brandy. true. but the myths are a) the sailors kept sneaking drinks from the undiluted booze, or b) when they got him back all the crew drank to his memory from said booze.

Usually I can come up with literally millions of these things, but my brain has relegated me to Naval facts. Which is odd.
(niceandwarmandhot vive la résistance, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:54, Reply)

Limpets
Limpets cultivate their favourite type of seaweed and algae through secreted enzymes in their mucus trails, when submerged by sea water. This enables a small garden to be created on the rock which they guard territorially.
(Manatee Fondler, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:49, Reply)

A bit of culture in us all
Every person in the world has, within their bodies, about a billion particles that once belonged to William Shakespear.
(bunny_333, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:47, Reply)

I've...
...just had a poo.

That is all.
(wild, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:42, Reply)

How to deal with a Ravenous Wolf
Apparently, the best way to deal with a wolf that wants to tear your throat out is to expose your throat to it!

It may sound utterly stupid, but wolves have an in-built survival mechanism which doesn't allow them to press an attack on an obviously submitting foe. According to some lupine observers, this instinct is so deeply engrained that it lacks the ability to differentiate a wolf from any other animal. Humans, being the only animal not completely at the whim of instinct can exploit this to save themselves if attacked by wolves.
(Snitter the Rat, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:41, Reply)

The Flintstones
were the first couple to be shown in bed together on prime-time US television.

To combat "filth" on the telly, archaic rules stated that if a man and a woman where in a bedroom, both had to have at least one foot on the floor at all times.

Abraham Lincoln's secretary was called Kennedy.
John F Kennedy's secretary was called Lincoln.

From 1979 to 1999, Neptune was the farthest planet from the Sun, as Pluto's orbit is a bit bent.
( rnuk http://flickr.com/rnuk, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:37, Reply)

Every breath you take
on average contains one carbon atom from Julius Cesar
(shouldwork, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:37, Reply)

A Male Rabbit
can tell when female humans are approaching their periods and become rampant, spraying urine and mounting arms.
(Squitter - Mr Lovebucket is a w*nker, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:34, Reply)

RE: Dave Bedlams - Frozen Balls
Monkeys were never made out of brass, it was too expensive. They were made from wood.
The saying means:- If they were made out of brass then cold temperatures would freeze the cannon balls off them.

Also let the cat out of the bag comes from the navy too.
The cat-o-nine-tails used to be kept in a velvet bag, so when you let the cat out of the bag you'd be in for a good kicking.

/pedant
( youknowyouloveit, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:30, Reply)

Let the cat out of the bag
comes from the same source as "a pig in a poke".
In the olden days, shady characters would sell pigs at the market, but they would hand the customer a sealed bag with something wriggling in it. This bag was called a poke. When the customer got home with their pig in a poke, they would open it up and find the wriggling thing was actually a cat, thus letting the cat out of the bag.

Another cat one, not enough room to swing a cat comes from the navy. They used a whip called the cat-o-nine-tails to deliver punishments, but most below deck areas didn't have enough room to swing a cat.

Oh yeah, New Yorkers are c*nts, or berks if you prefer. (Sorry, bad journey into work this morning).
( Silva, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:29, Reply)

More bullets
were fired in the film `The Wild Bunch` than in the entire US-Mexican war.
(shouldwork, Fri 18 Mar 2005, 16:26, Reply)