99%
of the money (notes) in our skyrockets has detectable amounts of cannabis, heroin, cocaine, and anouther drug i cant remember
(woo who?, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 12:24, Reply)

to elaborate
on jeaneye's everyone was a female thing. your only a male if your gonads drop out
(woo who?, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 12:11, Reply)

In France
A "French Letter" is called an "English Overcoat"

And the second Pope ever was called St Linus

Oh - and elephants are the only animals to have 4 knees
( groovegenerator The man who mistook his wife for his wife, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 12:11, Reply)

the word genocide
has only been around for about 60 years (i.e. since WW2) even though back in the day it was a common persuit of various people tribes etc.

in australia the hokey cokey is called the hokey pokey
(woo who?, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 12:05, Reply)

hilarius
From 19 November 461 to 29 February 468 there was a Pope Hilarius

The yellow colour of American school buses is defined precisely by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. it is Federal Standard No. 595a, Color 13432
( the wub - guide onion for the blind, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 12:05, Reply)

Lagom
The common swedish word "lagom" can't be be translated in to a single word in any other language. In english it would be something like "not to much, not to little".
The origin of the word is the old days when they passed one jug of beer around and everyone should drink "lagom" so there would be some left for the last person, but not more then he could handle.
Lag = team, om|kring = around
(m.beckman, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 11:31, Reply)

Time magazine "man of the year" misconception
The title is, in ignorance, sometimes mistakenly assumed to be an honour. There was a massive public backlash in the United States after Time named Ayatollah Khomeini Man of the Year in 1979. Since then, Time has generally shied away from choosing controversial candidates. Time's Person of the Year 2001 — in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks — was New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It was a somewhat controversial result; many thought that Giuliani was deserving, but many others thought that the rules of selection ("the individual or group of individuals who have had the biggest effect on the year's news") made the obvious choice Osama bin Laden. They cited previous choices such as Adolf Hitler to demonstrate that Person of the Year did not necessarily mean "best human being of the year".
Sorry to be such a pedantic bastard, but hey, that's kind of the point of this, eh?
( BobbyParadise, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 11:23, Reply)

A whale is not a fish
it's an insect.
(pfy, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 11:21, Reply)

Also, inspired by Surreal Barmaid!
My fave word at the moment is vexillology.

It's the study of Flags!
( Redsushi! Whoop! Whoop! Yes, that one!, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 11:00, Reply)

Stupid but true!
a shark will only attack you if you're wet!
( Redsushi! Whoop! Whoop! Yes, that one!, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 10:59, Reply)

Useless facts - I love' em !
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in air crashes.

If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning first before you will die of oxygen deprivation.

Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by a lightning strike.
(Kuddly Keef, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 10:50, Reply)

factage, mm.
Since I have a million of these, let's start with my (second) favourite word: prosopagnosia, the disorder in which it becomes physiologically impossible to recall or recognise someone's face.
Can you tell I'm a psych/neuroscience student?
(surreal barmaid, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 10:46, Reply)

yummy

my hamster ( male) ate my brothers hamster (female). not because he was hungry, but because she wanted the house.
(goorf, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 10:43, Reply)

Words that rhyme with 'month'
The popular myth that no word rhymes with 'month' is untrue. Just recently, a girl with a lisp shouted 'cunts' at me and my mate.

That rhymes with month.
(yokelrobin THE NERD WHOSE HAIR DEFIES GRAVITY/FASHION, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 9:21, Reply)

The Hokey Cokey...
Was originally a Puritan piss-take on the Catholic mass. "You do the hokey cokey and you turn about" was the interpretation of the Latin blessing of the host ("hoc est meum corpum") and its presentation to the congregation.

It also gave us "hocus pocus".
(Monsieur Allotrope is taking Tiger Mountain from behind, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 8:54, Reply)

A few more
From "The book of lists". I more or less knew the gist of the following facts but looked them up to post. So the added details are for your enjoyment. (And, yes, I used them with mitigated success with the opposite sex at parties.)

1.In 1854, IBM-France asked J. Perret, a professor, to translate the word "computer". He proposed "ordinateur" from archaic theological vocabulary (God being the world's "ordinator", the one who brings order to it).

2. Of all conquerors, Gengis Khan is the one who conquered the most: 7 800 000 squared kilometers. Runner-up Alexander the Great pales at less than half the amount of teritory: 3 500 000 squared kms.

3. 11 states without armies: Andorra, Costa Rice, Dominique, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Maurice, Monaco, Nauru, Saint-Martin, Salomon, and Western Samoan Islands. Many of them, as you probably realized, are only small islands. Still, all maintain a police force.
(st0pid, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 8:42, Reply)

jeaneye
is on speed
( Snollock Biffer I don't really sniff Bollocks, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 5:25, Reply)

More than half the polpulation of the UK aren't called Steven.

( mike woz ere 7442200 & 7696970 getter, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 5:22, Reply)

Mud for the stomach
If you're ever stuck in the Amazonian rain forest and are forced to eat any leafs, or fruits, or whatever vegetable there, do as the animals do and eat plenty of mud.

Everything in that forest is highly toxic, and ingesting mud is the only thing that will protect your stomach. Otherwise you'll die. Bet you didn't know that.
(Mariana, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 4:26, Reply)

Aubergine
The French for lawyer and aubergine is not the same. The vegetable is aubergine and the lawyer is avocat. Aubergine is the French term for a traffic warden, due to their aubergine coloured uniforms.
( Silva, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 3:54, Reply)

Mice
There are 250 to a gallon of mice.

You don't want to know how I know that.
(tragerstreit, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 3:33, Reply)

Take the numbers
3 6 and 9.. Add together all the possible combinations without repeating any of the numbers. The answer is 3996. This also works for 1 2 and 3. The answer being 1332.

I don't know why and if there any other combinations like this. And I have no idea how I found this out but I've known it as long as I can remember and you lot are the first people I've ever told. :P
(jeaneye, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 3:06, Reply)

The average chocolate bar
has 9 insect legs in it.
(jeaneye, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 2:55, Reply)

Every human being
starts life as a female. To become male, the right hormones are introduced to the featus at a certain point in the pregnancy. This explains the existence of nipples on males.
(jeaneye, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 2:54, Reply)

Whales
have never hurt any human being in recorded history. I say in recorded history because the closest whale human harming incident is Jonas and the whale although in the Bible it is actually never named as a whale.. it is always a "big fish".
(jeaneye, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 2:53, Reply)

did you know...
that ducks have regional quacks?
(jeaneye, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 2:45, Reply)

more late night trivia crap
hitler had a square mosutash because it was atribute to his favoet comic charlie chaplin
american out law jesse james was decended from william shakespear

queen phillipa who was mairred to edward the 3rd was englands frist black queen

septimus serverus a roman emperor was englands frist black ruler

kennith the 3rd was scotlands frist black ruler
(bashman, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 2:03, Reply)

you know...
Boys have penises, girls have penises too, thats what they drag their boys around by.

no words in the english language rhyme with orange, purple, silver, or month.

I'm still trying to get webster's dictionary to officially recognize the word "Alquix" to win a bet from a scrabble game six years ago.

Nero never fiddled while Rome burned... the fiddle wasn't invented yet... however, any roman coin/pictures with his visage on it show him playing the BAGPIPES!
(almightynoitall, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 1:45, Reply)

a few

prince charles and prince william never travel together on the same plane, in case there is a crash.

blocks of solid tea were used in siberia as currency til the 19th century

most lipstick contains fish scales

you're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206

all completely unrelated, except they are true!
( manolith hooray for me, Sat 19 Mar 2005, 1:32, Reply)

What about
Freud?

The man killed his best friend by unaddicting him to morphine and then addicting him to cocaine. He later died from taking both.

e e cummings was a virgin until the tender age of 23, when he lost it to a French lady of the night.

The Vietnamese currency is called the 'dong' *snigger*

Marlon Brando turned up for Apocalypse Now filming 40 pounds overweight, having not read the script or the novel. He later adlibbed his entire performance.

There has never been a female pope.

The Queen Mum was made Borg in the mid-70's.
(Schumann makes awesome quiches., Sat 19 Mar 2005, 1:28, Reply)