Fast Facts
September 8, 2006
- In English, four is the only number that has the same number of letters as its value.
More than a third of all pineapples come from Hawaii.
In 18th-century France, visitors to the royal palace in Versailles were allowed to stand in roped-off sections of the main dining room and watch the king and queen eat.
It’s rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a Breathalyzer to read zero.
A good-quality Persian rug, which contains 1 million knots in every 3 square inches, can last as long as 500 years.
Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
Most burglaries occur in the winter.
Southern Indian drug addicts get high by having venomous snakes bite their tongues. This can give addicts a 16-hour high, but it can be very deadly.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.
The last member of a group of people who believed the earth was hollow died in 1982.
In 1911, Bobby Beach broke nearly all the bones in his body after surviving a barrel ride over Niagara Falls. Some time later in New Zealand, he slipped on a banana and died from the fall.
Snow angels were first made by medieval Jewish mystics who practiced rolling in the snow to purge themselves of evil urges.
Canada imports about 850 Russian-made hockey sticks on an average day.
Bamboo (the world’s tallest grass) can grow up to 90 centimeters in a day.
A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
One in 10 people are arrested every year in the United States.
Al Capone’s famous scars (which earned him the nickname “”Scarface””) were from an attack. The brother of a girl he had insulted attacked him with a knife, leaving him with three distinctive scars.
