Trivia

There is approximately one chicken for every human being in the world.

The first automobile race ever seen in the United States was held in Chicago in 1895. The track ran from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois. The winner was J. Frank Duryea, whose average speed was 7 miles per hour.

In the memoirs of Catherine II of Russia, it is recorded that any Russian aristocrat who displeased the queen was forced to squat in the great antechamber of the palace and to remain in that position for several days, mewing like a cat, clucking like a hen, and pecking his food from the floor.

The outdoor temperature can be estimated to within several degrees by timing the chirps of a cricket. It is done this way: count the number of chirps in a 15-second period, and add 37 to the total. The result will be very close to the actual Fahrenheit temperature. This formula only works in warm weather. illusion neckline wedding gown

During a severe windstorm or rainstorm the Empire State Building may sway several feet to either side.

In Elizabethan England the spoon was such a novelty, such a prized rarity, that people carried their own folding spoons to banquets.

In "Gulliver's Travels," Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more than 100 years before either moon was discovered.

It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World.

One-fourth of the world's population lives on less than $200 a year. Ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year.

Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

In eighteenth-century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.

The human tongue tastes bitter things with the taste buds toward the back. Salty and pungent flavors are tasted in the middle of the tongue, sweet flavors at the tip.

A sneeze can travel as fast as 100 miles per hour.

It is impossible to sneeze and keep one's eyes open at the same time.

In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.

In the Balanta tribe of Africa, a bride remained married until her wedding gown was worn out. If she wanted a divorce after 2 weeks, all she had to do was rip up her dress. This was the custom until about 20 years ago, anyway.

Marie de Medici, a member of that famous Italian family and a 17th-century queen of France, had expensive tastes in clothes. One special dress was outfitted with 39,000 tiny pearls and 3,000 diamonds, and cost the equivalent of $20 million at the time it was made in 1606. She wore it once.

Here is the literal translation of one of the standard traffic signs in China. It reads: "Give large space to the festive dog that makes sport in the roadway."

In 1968, a convention of beggars in Dacca, India, passed a resolution demanding that "the minimum amount of alms be fixed at 15 paisa (three cents)." The convention also demanded that the interval between when a person hears a knock at his front door and when he offers alms should not exceed 45 seconds.