In Case You Didn't Know ...

[Typo Fu Master]

The largest natural breasts in the world belong to Annie Hawkins-Turner (aka Norma Stitz) of the USA, who has a 70 inch chest, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. That's a bra size of 102ZZZ. She suffers from gigantomastia, which is a slow but steady growth of breast and fat tissue.

The largest breast implants in the world belong to Sheyla Hershey of Houston TX, formerly of Brazil. Ms. Hershey's implants put her at an astounding 38KKK. She had to have the procedure done in her native Brazil, as the US doesn't allow that amount of silicon in a body. The surgery led to repeated staph infections in both breasts, and the eventual necessary removal of the implants. However, the implants were later replaced, and as of 2011, she was attempting to get her breasts up to MMM.

Though everyone's taste buds vary, breast milk is generally considered to have a sweet flavor, due in large part to the high amounts of lactose.

Alas for the smokers out there, cigarette smoke is hell on your breasts. It's true; the chemicals in cigarette smoke break down the elastin in our bodies, leading to saggier boobs.

There are actually five states where a woman can walk around topless: New York, Hawaii, Texas, Maine, and Ohio (though they might try to pick you up on a public nuisance charge in Texas, unless you're in Austin). There is a whole political movement behind women being topless in public, called Topfreedom.

Among primates, only humans have permanent breasts. All other primates only grow full breasts for the purpose of feeding their children.

Some women can reach orgasm just through nipple stimulation. In one study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, it was found that for some women self-stimulation triggered the genital sensory cortex of the brain.

Breast size is not static. Yes, we all know that if you gain or lose weight, or become pregnant, your breasts will grow or shrink. But did you know that your breasts can grow by as much as a cup size during PMS?

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[Typo Fu Master]

Foreskins can be used to make skin grafts for burn victims. One foreskin can actually provide four acres worth of grafted skin.

The world's largest penis is 13.5 inches.

According to a study by the University of Ulster-Northern Ireland, men in the Republic of Congo have the biggest average penis size in the world. They were first with an average length of 7.1 inches.

Humans are the only primates that do not have have bones in their penises.

There is a condition known as Koro, which is an irrational fear of retraction of a penis back into the body.

There is a museum in Iceland strictly dedicated to penises.

There is a rare condition known as diphallia where a person can have two functional penises.

All penises actually start off as clitorises.

Penises can actually break.

There is a restaurant in Beijing that specializes in serving penises.

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[Typo Fu Master]

In 1964, the U.S. Congress recognized bourbon as a "distinctive product of the United States." The American whiskey gets its name from Bourbon County, Kentucky. Ironically, despite Kentucky producing 95 percent of the world's bourbon, none of it is currently made in Bourbon County.

The word brandy is derived from the Dutch word brandewijn, which translates to “burnt wine.” This popular digestif is created by distilling wine.

Some of the earliest thermometers—used in the 1600s—contained brandy instead of mercury. The liquor was eventually replaced with mercury due to the latter material's wider range of liquid-state temperature.

Even though gin has been produced in the U.S. since colonial times, it wasn't a very popular liquor until the Prohibition era. The ease with which it could be made and the relatively low cost involved in producing it made gin an abundant favorite at illegal bars.

Gin became extremely popular in the British colonies due to its use as an additive in concoctions intended to prevent malaria. Colonists in tropical areas would use gin to mask the bitter flavor of quinine, an anti-malarial drug, by dissolving it in carbonated water—forming tonic water—and then adding a splash of gin. This gin-and-tonic drink later made its way back to the rest of the world, and the rest is history.

Stylists in the 1800s believed that rum held the secret to clean and healthy hair, and often advised their clients to wash and soak their hair in the tropical liquor. (Brandy was considered a slightly less effective alternative.)

July 31 is “Black Tot Day” in the U.K., commemorating the 1970 rule that abolished the British Navy's daily ration of rum for sailors. The ration was referred to as a “daily tot” and dwindled from half a pint twice a day when it was originally introduced in 1655 to 70 milliliters once per day at the time it was abolished.

In order to determine whether their rum had been watered down more than it should be, sailors would occasionally mix gunpowder with their liquor and attempt to light it on fire. If the mix refused to flame up, they knew it had been watered down too much. A desirable proportion of water-to-rum, when mixed with gunpowder, would catch fire—thereby giving sailors “proof” of its alcohol content. This is where the modern term for a liquor's alcohol content originates.

Famous explorers Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus traveled with a large amount of sherry onboard their ships during their historic journeys. In fact, Magellan reportedly spent more on sherry than he spent on weapons for his 1519 trip around the world.

True tequila (made from blue agave in specific regions of Mexico) never contains the infamous “worm,” though other types of mezcal (made from different agave plants) are occasionally sold with the larval form of a moth that lives on agave plants floating in the bottom of the bottle. Even though the presence of these moths was a bad sign—indicating that the crop has been infested—including a “worm” in bottles of mezcal became a popular marketing gimmick in the 1940s and continues today.

No one is quite certain when and how the margarita was first created, but the most popular origin story for the tequila drink dates back to October 1941, when bartender Don Carlos Orozco reportedly mixed up the drink for Margarita Henkel, the daughter of a German ambassador who wandered into Hussong's Cantina in Ensenada, Mexico. Henkel lived near the city, and since she was the first person to sample—approve of—the drink, Orozco named it after her.

While most vodka is the product of distilled grains, potato vodka is also a popular alternative—especially for anyone with gluten allergies. Because it's derived from potatoes, this type of vodka is entirely gluten-free.

The first country to make vodka its national drink was Poland, which was also the first country to export vodka.

During the reign of Peter the Great, it became customary for foreign dignitaries to drink from the “Cup of the White Eagle”—a chalice containing 1.5 liters of vodka. This prompted many nations' ambassadors to travel in pairs, with one official drinking the vodka and the other attending to the important state issues that needed to be discussed.

Vodka is the world's most popular liquor by a huge margin, with more than 4.44 billion liters consumed last year. In Russia alone, 13.9 liters of vodka are consumed each year per person.

During the Prohibition era, the U.S. government's ban on alcohol sales did not include whiskey prescribed by a doctor and sold in pharmacies. This exemption was one of the chief reasons behind the exponential growth of the Walgreens pharmacy chain, which stocked whiskey and grew from 20 stores at the start of Prohibition to almost 400 stores in 1930.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Winter cold kills more than twice as many Americans as summer heat does.

In one study, men rated pictures of women’s breasts and bodies as more attractive in the winter months, while they rated pictures of women’s faces the same. Researchers believe men don’t see women’s bodies as much during the winter, so they’re more excited when they do.

While it seems counterintuitive, Earth is actually closest to the sun in December, even though winter solstice is the shortest day of the year.

Chionophobia is the persistent fear of snow, especially becoming trapped by snow. The term is derived from the Greek words chion and phobos, meaning “snow” and “fear,” respectively.

Every winter, at least one septillion (that’s 1 followed by 24 zeros) snow crystals fall from the sky.

A New Zealand insect called the Weta freezes completely solid when temperatures drop during the winter. However, when temperatures warm back up, the insect unfreezes, thaws, and resumes its activities.

The onset of menopause is significantly higher in winter than in spring or autumn, with a smaller peak in summer.

The average snowflake falls at about 3 mph.

The largest recorded snowman ever built was in Bethel, Maine, in February 1999. The 113-foot, 7-inch snowman broke the previous record held by Yamagata, Japan, at 96 feet and 7 inches.

Bismarck, North Dakota, holds the record for the most snow angels at one time. On February 17, 2007, several schools joined forces to create 8,962 snow angels.

Cold winter weather dulls sexual sensations, and cooler body temperatures decrease arousal for both men and women. Interestingly, women are 30% more likely to orgasm if their feet are warm.

Millions of monarch butterflies fly to Mexico for the winter. They are the only insect that migrates to a warmer climate that is 2,500 miles away each year. Additionally, they like to hibernate in the same trees every year.

Many insects prepare for winter by creating their own “antifreeze.” During the fall, insects produce more glycerol, which gives their body a “super-cooling ability” by allowing bodily fluids to drop below freezing without causing ice damage. Glycerol also lowers the freezing point, which makes insects more cold tolerant and protects their tissue and cells from ice damage. Their glycerol levels drop again during the spring.

The volcanic eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora in April 1815 created a “Year without Summer” in the Northern Hemisphere.

Some plants, both annual and perennials, require “vernalization” (from Latin vernus, meaning “of the spring”) to flower. This means that a plant needs to experience a period of low winter temperature to initiate or increase the flowering process. Researchers believe this ensures that seed production begins in spring and summer rather than in the fall.

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[Typo Fu Master]

In the nine minutes of screen time Max Schreck has as Count Orlock in F.W. Murnau’s classic Nosferatu (1922), he blinks only one time (near the end of part one).

The horror genre has never gotten much love from the Academy. Though there still seems to be a bias against scary movies during awards season, The Exorcist earned 10 Oscar nominations in 1974, including a Best Supporting Actress nod for Linda Blair, who was just 15 years old at the time.

Wes Craven reportedly planned to have a stuntman play the seemingly immortal youth-hater known as Freddy Krueger, but (wisely) opted to go with an accomplished actor for the role instead. His first choice was the brilliant British character actor David Warner, who you'll no doubt recognize from Time Bandits, Titanic, and various incarnations of Star Trek. Warner had to pass on the project, which opened the door for the truly excellent Robert Englund.

Psycho is the first American film to show a toilet on screen. It's also the first American film in which we hear a toilet being flushed.

Stephen King wasn't a fan of The Shining. In 1983, Stephen King told Playboy, “I’d admired [Stanley] Kubrick for a long time and had great expectations for the project, but I was deeply disappointed in the end result. Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fell flat.” King didn’t like the casting of Jack Nicholson either, claiming, “Jack Nicholson, though a fine actor, was all wrong for the part. His last big role had been in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and between that and the manic grin, the audience automatically identified him as a loony from the first scene. But the book is about Jack Torrance’s gradual descent into madness through the malign influence of the Overlook—if the guy is nuts to begin with, then the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted.”

While the lack of shark appearances works to heighten the tension in Jaws, the real reason the shark isn’t shown in full is because the mechanical shark that was built rarely worked during filming. Director Steven Spielberg had to create inventive ways (like Quint’s yellow barrels) to shoot around the non-functional movie shark.

It took seven years to get Aliens made. Why did it take seven years to get a sequel made? Lawyers and money, of course. Talk of a sequel began shortly after the original Alien (1979) was a hit, but it was delayed because of a dispute between the film’s producers and 20th Century Fox over the distribution of the original movie’s profits. Fox, reluctant to make a sequel because it would be expensive, finally agreed to it as a way of settling the beef with the producers—basically, “We won’t give you any more of the first movie’s profits, but we’ll greenlight a sequel, and you can make money from that.” (Amusingly, the same producers plus James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd sued Fox again after Aliens, claiming the studio had used “creative accounting” techniques to avoid paying them.)

You’ve likely heard of Ed Gein. His house of horrors made headlines for years after he was sent to a mental hospital for his actions. They were so memorable, in fact, that he inspired some of the most iconic thrillers of all time: Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Among the items discovered at his Plainfield, Wisconsin farm were four noses, nine masks made of human skin, numerous decapitated heads, lampshades and bowls made of skin, lips being used as a pull on a window shade, and a belt made from nipples. Gein later admitted to only two murders and said most of the items had come from late-night cemetery raids.

To make sure that the depiction of Wicca in The Craft was as close to real life as it could be, the filmmakers hired Pat Devin as a consultant. Devin is a member of one of the largest and oldest Wiccan religious organizations in United States, Covenant of the Goddess, and at the time she was the First Officer of the group’s Southern California Local Council. Devin played a big role in the production process and at times worked directly with the actresses. “A lot of my suggestions were acted upon and virtually all of my suggestions were given careful consideration,” Devin shared, “ even if they didn’t all end up in the final version of the film.”

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[Typo Fu Master]

Approximately 9% of people who try marijuana become addicted to it, compared to 15% of people who try cocaine, and 24 % of those who try heroin.

The word “canvas” is related to the word “cannabis.” Historically, canvases were made of hemp.

Heavy pot smokers are at risk for some of the same diseases as cigarette smokers, such as bronchitis and other respiratory ailments.

Bob Marley was buried with his Bible, his guitar, and bud of marijuana.

Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington grew hemp on their plantations. The British crown even ordered the colonists to grow the plant.

"Bhang” is an Indian milkshake whose main ingredient is marijuana.

The first item sold over the Internet was a bag of marijuana over 40 years ago. Stanford students used Arapnet (an early form of the Internet) to buy weed from their counterparts at MIT.

Marijuana is the most common illegal drug used in the United States. Approximately 100 million Americans have tried marijuana at least once, and more than 25 million have smoked it in the last year.

According to the U.N., 158.8 million people around the world use marijuana, which is over 3.8% of the world’s population.

Cannabis seeds were used as a food source in China as early as 6000 B.C.

The first recorded use of marijuana as a medicinal drug occurred in 2737 B.C. by Chinese emperor Shen Nung. The emperor documented the drug’s effectiveness in treating the pains of rheumatism and gout.

From 1850 to 1942, marijuana was listed in the United States Pharmacopoeia as a useful medicine for nausea, rheumatism, and labor pains and was easily obtained at the local general store or pharmacy.

There is a difference between hemp and pot. While hemp plants are the same species as marijuana plants, they don’t produce the psychoactive ingredient (THC) that is in pot.

Someone would have to smoke over 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about 15 minutes to die of a lethal overdose. In other words, dying from a weed overdose is nearly impossible.

Researchers discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana.

Betsy Ross’s first flag of the U.S. was made of hemp.

The first two drafts of the United States Declaration of Independence were written on paper made from hemp.

Spiders high on marijuana built messy webs, were easily distracted, and gave up easily. Spiders high on LSD, on the other hand, spun highly geometric webs, even more so than when they were sober.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Monopoly​

The longest game of Monopoly lasted 70 days.

Marvin Gardens doesn't exist. Marven Gardens is real, but there's a typo on the board that never got fixed.

Jeweler Sydney Mobell crafted the most expensive Monopoly version. Valued at $2 million, it consists of a 23-carat gold board and diamond-studded dice.

The characters on the board have names. Jake the Jailbird is the dude behind bars and Officer Edgar Mallory sent him there.

"Boardwalk," the most expensive property on the board, has variants depending on where the game is sold. "Paseo del Prado" in Barcelona and "Rue de la Paix" in France.

Neiman Marcus produced a $600 chocolate version of the game in 1978.

Chutes & Ladders​

The game was originally called Snakes and Ladders in the U.S.

The game began life as Moksha Patam, and emphasized the role of karma.

The titular snakes and ladders in the games are essentially karma (destiny) and kama (desire).

The original moral lesson of the game was that a person could attain Moksha (or salvation) through good deeds, whereas evil deeds would cause rebirth as a lower form of life.

The phrase "back to square one" mostly likely originated from the game.

The original game squares of virtue were Faith, Reliability, Generosity, Knowledge, and Asceticism.

The squares of evil were Disobedience, Vanity, Vulgarity, Theft, Lying, Drunkenness, Debt, Rage, Greed, Pride, Murder, and Lust.

The game is a central metaphor in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children: "[...] the eternal truth that for every ladder you hope to climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner, and for every snake a ladder will compensate."

There are Dora the Explorer and Spider-Man versions of the game now.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Clue​

Clue was patented in 1947, but wasn't released for two years because of post-war shortages.

Parker Brothers and Waddington's Games each produced distinct versions of the game up until 1992, when Hasbro purchased both companies.

Miss Scarlet was originally portrayed as an Asian femme fatale, but in 1996 her race was changed to Caucasian.

Mr. Green was originally a reverend, but Parker Brothers objected to a reverend being suspected of murder.

Professor Plum, originally an absent-minded scientist, was changed into a video game designer in 2008's Clue: Discover the Secrets.

More suspects have been added to spin-off games, including Miss Peach, Captain Brown, Prince Azure, Monsieur Brunette, Madame Rose, and Sergeant Gray.

There have been over 25 versions of Clue, including the Clue VCR Mystery Game and Clue Jr.: Case of the Missing Pet.

Because the Clue movie was a flop in theaters, it was one of the first VHS tapes to be heavily discounted from the then-normal $99.99. As a result, it developed a huge cult following.

Scrabble​

The highest-scoring word you can open with is "muzjiks" (it's a Russian peasant).

The highest score ever in competition was 392 points with "caziques" (a Native American chief).

The highest score for a single game? 1049.

And while it's never been achieved, the highest-scoring word possible would be "oxyphenbutazone."

For Scrabble's 50th Anniversary, a giant game was played in Wembley Stadium. Each tile was six feet across.

All the Scrabble tiles ever produced would reach around the earth eight times.

Scrabble's original name was "Lexico."

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[Typo Fu Master]

“Hygiene” comes from Hygieia, the Greek goddess of health, cleanliness, and . . . the moon. Ancient Greek gods apparently worked double shifts.

The human body is home to some 1,000 species of bacteria. There are more germs on your body than people in the United States.

Not tonight dear, I just washed my hands: Antibacterial soap is no more effective at preventing infection than regular soap, and triclosan (the active ingredient) can mess with your sex hormones.

Save the germs! A study of over 11,000 children determined that an overly hygienic environment increases the risk of eczema and asthma.

Monks of the Jain Dharma (a minority religion in India) are forbidden to bathe any part of their bodies besides the hands and feet, believing the act of bathing might jeopardize the lives of millions of microorganisms.

Soap gets its name from the mythological Mount Sapo. Fat and wood ash from animal sacrifices there washed into the Tiber River, creating a rudimentary cleaning agent that aided women doing their washing.

Ancient Egyptians and Aztecs rubbed urine on their skin to treat cuts and burns. Urea, a key chemical in urine, is known to kill fungi and bacteria.

There’s no “five-second rule” when it comes to dropping food on the ground. Bacteria need no time at all to contaminate food.

The first true toothbrush, consisting of Siberian pig hair bristles wired into carved cattle-bone handles, was invented in China in 1498. But tooth brushing didn’t become routine in the United States until it was enforced on soldiers during World War II.

Up to a quarter of all women giving birth in European and American hospitals in the 17th through 19th centuries died of puerperal fever, an infection spread by unhygienic nurses and doctors.

University of Arizona researchers determined that television remotes are the worst carriers of bacteria in hospital rooms, worse even than toilet handles. Remotes spread antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus, which contributes to the 90,000 annual deaths from infection acquired in hospitals.

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[Typo Fu Master]

The Late Late Show of Ireland which started in 1962 and The Tonight Show which started in 1954 are the longest running TV talk shows in the world.

The first television advertisement ever was broadcasted on July 1, 1941 in New York. The advertisement was for Bulova Watch and lasted a total of 20 seconds. It aired before baseball game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Brooklyn Dodgers. TV advertisements during that time only costed $9.

At this moment, the largest television in the world is the new curved UHD, 105 inch TV from Samsung. This new TV does not yet have an official price, but Samsung promises that it will cost under $150,000, so good thing it’s affordable, right?

By the time the average American child reaches the age of 14, they have seen around 11,000 murders on TV.

In 1926, J.L. Baird unveiled the first television, which had only 30 lines and gave coarse image. Currently the digital signal of the TVs sends pictures with 1080 lines. (Hence why it’s 1080p for HD.)

The role of Jack on the hit TV show, Lost was not originally written for Matthew Fox. The show’s creators actually wanted Michael Keaton to play Jack and they planned to kill off the main character during Lost‘s pilot as a surprise twist. The series was going to be more focused on Kate and the other survivors instead.

Throughout his entire time on the hit TV series, Friends, playing the character of Joey Tribbiani, actor Matt LeBlanc actually dyed his hair. He had been going gray since the show’s first season.

The Sopranos is one of the most well-known and critically acclaimed TV series of all time. It’s the show that put HBO on the map and was the first sign to viewers that HBO, as a network, was going to push boundaries with its TV series. However, HBO executives decided to add a gun as the “r” in The Sopranos logo to ensure that viewers understood that this was a TV show about mobsters. They initially feared that if they did not make it clear that people would see advertisements for The Sopranos and think it was a musical series.

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[Typo Fu Master]

The Smurfs began as a Belgian comic series in 1958.

The first Smurfs movie was released in 1965 in black-and-white.

There are a total 418 Smurfs cartoons (not including movies and specials) that ran from 1981-89. Warner Home Video has NOT released the complete collection in North America on Blu-ray or DVD.

The Smurfs had their own breakfast cereal called “Smurfberry Crunch” that turned your poop blue. It was quickly taken off the market and the blue food coloring was changed.

Snorks was created to be a direct competition to The Smurfs after a business dispute between Peyo (creator of The Smurfs) and Freddy Monnickendam (owner of The Smurfs distribution rights). Snorks is essentially underwater Smurfs. Both shows were produced by Hannah-Barbara. 65 episodes of Snorks ran from 1984-88.

Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears was inspired by then Disney CEO Michael Eisner when his son asked him for some gummy bear candy.

Gummi Bears was the first Disney cartoon series created for TV.

Grammi Gummi, the clan matriarch, was voiced by legendary voice actress June Foray. She is considered to be the most prolific voice actor that ever lived due to the sheer number and variety of voices that she has performed in her long career. Some of June’s most recognizable cartoon voices are: Rocky the Squirrel and Natasha (Rocky and Bullwinkle), Magic de Spell and Ma Beagle (Duck Tales), Granny and Witch Hazel (Loony Toons), Betty Rubble (Flinstones), Jokey Smurf, and countless more.

Heathcliff began as newspaper comic strip in 1973 and is still in print today.

Heathcliff was voiced by legendary voice actor Mel Blanc. Some of Mel’s most recognizable cartoon voices are: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, Pepe le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, Tasmanian Devil, Barney Rubble (Flinstones), Mr. Spacey (Jetsons), Woody Woodpecker, Wally Gator, Toucan Sam (Froot Loops commercials), and more. He was known as “the male June Foray”.

Fourteen G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero characters were modeled after real people.

The phrase “…and knowing is half the battle” concluded every episode of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, because government censors at that time heavily restricted violence in children’s cartoons. Cartoons like G.I. Joe and He-Man incorporated a moral lesson in each episode as a means to pacify the censors.

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[Typo Fu Master]

A medical study in France during the early twentieth century suggests that gold is an effective treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

Due to its high value, most gold discovered throughout history is still in circulation. However, it is thought that 80% of the world’s gold is still in the ground.

Seventy-five percent of all gold in circulation has been extracted since 1910.

The largest gold nugget ever found is the “Welcome Stranger” discovered by John Deason and Richard Oates in Australia on February 5, 1869. The nugget is 10 by 25 inches and yielded 2,248 ounces of pure gold. It was found just two inches below the ground surface.

Gold is so pliable that it can be made into sewing thread. An ounce of gold can be stretched over 50 miles.

One cubic foot of gold weighs half a ton. The world’s largest gold bar weighs 200 kg (440 lb).

The Olympic gold medals awarded in 1912 were made entirely from gold. Currently, the gold medals just must be covered in six grams of gold.

The Incas thought gold represented the glory of their sun god and referred to the precious metal as “tears of the Sun.” Because gold was not yet used for money, the Inca’s love of gold was purely aesthetic and religious.

Gold is so rare that the world pours more steel in an hour than it has poured gold since the beginning of recorded history.

Around 1200 B.C., the Egyptians used unshorn sheepskin to mine for gold dust from the sands of the Black Sea. This practice is most likely the inspiration for the “Golden Fleece.”

There are more than 400 references to gold in the Bible, including specific instructions from God to cover furniture in the tabernacle with “pure gold.” Gold is also mentioned as one of the gifts of the Magi.

The Greeks thought that gold was a dense combination of water and sunlight.

Carat weight can be 10, 12, 14, 18, 22, or 24. The higher the number, the greater the purity. To be called “solid gold,” gold must have a minimum weight of 10 carats. “Pure gold” must have a carat weight of 24, (though there is still a small amount of copper in it). Pure gold is so soft that it can be molded by hand.

The Trial of the Pyx (a public test of the quality of gold) began in England in 1282 and continues to this day. The term “pyx” refers to a Greek boxwood chest in which coins are placed to be presented to a jury for testing. Coins are currently tested for diameter, chemical composition, and weight.

The world’s largest stockpile of gold can be found five stories underground inside the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s vault and it holds 25% of the world's gold reserve (540,000 gold bars). While it contains more gold than Fort Knox, most of it belongs to foreign governments.

The “troy ounce” of gold comes from the French town of Troyes, which first created a system of weights in the Middle Ages used for precious metals and gems. One troy ounce is 480 grains. A grain is exactly 64.79892 mg.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.

If a female ferret does not have sex for a year, she will die.

Sean Connery wore a toupee in all his James Bond movies.

It actually takes 142.18 licks to reach the center of a Tootsie pop.

There is a town in Canada called “Dildo.”

Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

France was still executing people by guillotine when the first Star Wars movie came out.

At any one time about 0.7% of the world’s population is drunk.

Judge Judy makes $45 million a year.

A pound of houseflies contains more protein than a pound of beef.

There are five calories in a teaspoon of semen.

Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married their cousins.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Handshakes were originally meant to make sure that the person you were meeting wasn’t carrying a concealed weapon. The hand clasp proved that your hand was empty and shaking was meant to dislodge any weapons hiding up the sleeve.

The boomslang snake’s venom causes you to bleed from all holes of your body.

Women have twice as many pain receptors on their body than men. But a much higher pain tolerance.

By law, a pregnant woman can pee anywhere she wants to in Britain, even if she chooses, in a police officer’s helmets.

Most people notice a distinct smell in the air after it rain. That smell after rain is caused by bacteria called actinomycetes.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

Rubbing a banana peel on mosquito bites can help stop the itching.

To have your photo taken with the first ever camera, you would have to sit still for 8 hours.

Flowers are known to grow faster when music plays near them.

The color orange was named after the fruit and not the other way around.

Two-thirds of the people on earth have never seen snow.

Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left handed people do.

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[Typo Fu Master]

A crocodile can't stick it's tongue out.

A shrimp's heart is in it's head.

In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand.

It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

Rats and horses can't vomit.

Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.

Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.

23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.

In the course of an average lifetime you will, while sleeping, eat 70 assorted insects and 10 spiders.

The final resting-place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker - the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer, trained the Apollo astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Mr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon in an attempt to learn if there is water on the moon.

Hot water is heavier than cold.

Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.

A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.

Sloths take two weeks to digest their food.

A biological reserve has been made for golden toads because they are so rare.

The odds of seeing three albino deer at once are one in seventy-nine billion, yet one man in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, took a picture of three albino deer in the woods.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Every minute, more than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of all people on the internet.

The First YouTube Video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, featuring its co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.

YouTube was founded by 3 former employees of PayPal.

Google bought YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stocks just 18 months after YouTube's creation.

Music video 'Gangnam Style' was so popular, it broke YouTube's view counter, which had to be upgraded.

You can navigate YouTube in more than 75 different languages, covering 95% of the Internet population.

YouTube has a production space in Los Angeles that is free to use if you have 10,000 subscribers.

The woman who rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 when they were creating Google later became the CEO of YouTube .

Anne Frank is on YouTube. She was captured on film while leaning out of her window to get a good look of a wedding.

The oldest video of cats on YouTube dates from 1894.

YouTube star Grumpy Cat earned more money than Oscar-Winning Actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 2014.

If you search for "Do the Harlem shake" on YouTube, the page itself will do the harlem shake for you.

The most disliked video on YouTube is Justin Bieber's "Baby," with over 4,400,000 dislikes.

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[Typo Fu Master]

It is projected that there will be nearly 269 billion app downloads in 2017. That’s a staggering 33 apps for every man, woman and child on the planet.

If you laid all of those 269 billion app icons end to end, they would stretch to the moon and back 500 times.

The Apple App Store (the first of the modern smartphone app stores that we would recognize as such) was launched with iOS 2 in July 2008.

The I Am Rich app was priced at $999.99 and did nothing but display a shiny gem and a positive affirmation. This ultimate statement of conspicuous consumption was actually downloaded by eight people before being pulled from the store by Apple.

Google launched the Google Play store (as ‘Android Market’) in October 2008, followed by a Windows App Store in 2012.

These days, TVs, games consoles and watches all have App Stores of their own …even fridges.

When it comes to apps, choice abounds. Between them, the big three app stores can muster 5 million apps available for download. That’s 2.2 million on Google Play, 0.7 million for Windows and 2 million for Apple.

The most downloaded app of all time is Facebook. The second and third most downloaded are Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp, while Facebook Messenger rounds out the top four.

Since its launch in 2012, Clash of Clans has grossed $5 billion, pulling in over a $1.5m a day.

Users spend 87% of their smartphone time in apps, not in their web browser.

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[Typo Fu Master]

The world's tallest-growing tree is the coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), which grows along the Pacific Coast of the United States, mainly in California. Interestingly enough, it's not the world's oldest-growing tree; that award goes to a bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata).

Bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant in the world; it can grow 35 inches in a single day.

Tomato juice is the official state beverage of Ohio, honoring the part A. W. Livingston of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, played in popularizing the tomato in the late 1800s.

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence that grapes were grown to make wine about 8,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (today's Iraq), although the ancient Egyptians were the first to record the process of making wine about 5,000 years ago.

During the 1600s, tulips were so valuable in Holland that their bulbs were worth more than gold. The craze was called tulip mania, or tulipomania, and caused the crash of the Dutch economy. Tulips can continue to grow as much as an inch per day after being cut.

Vanilla flavoring comes from the pod of an orchid, Vanilla planifolia. Though the pods are called vanilla beans, they're more closely related to corn than green beans.

The word pineapple comes from European explorers who thought the fruit combined the look of a pinecone with flesh like that of an apple. Pineapples are the only edible members of the bromeliad family.

From a botanical standpoint, avocados and pumpkins are fruits, not vegetables, because they bear the plants' seeds. Rhubarb, on the other hand, is a vegetable.

Saffron, used as a flavoring in Mediterranean cooking, is harvested from the stigmas of a type of fall-blooming crocus, Crocus sativus.

The flower of the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) is the largest unbranched flower in the world and can reach up to 15 feet tall. The bloom produces a smell like that of rotting meat, giving it the common name of corpse flower. A similar smell comes from Rafflesia, another plant that hails from the rain forests of Sumatra. Both plants developed their scent so they could be pollinated by flies; they don't compete with other blooms for butterflies and hummingbirds.

The average strawberry has 200 seeds. It's the only fruit that bears its seeds on the outside.

Sulfuric compounds are to blame for cut onions bringing tears to your eyes. According to the National Onion Association, chilling the onion and cutting the root end last reduces the problem.

Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba) is one of the oldest living tree species; it dates back to about 250 million years ago. Dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is another ancient species; it dates back about 150 million years. Both were known in the fossil record before they were found alive.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Magnets always have two poles -- even if you cut them in half. Magnetic monopoles do not exist --as far as we know. Magnets will always have two poles, a magnetic north and a magnetic south. If you don’t believe us, take a bar magnet and cut it in half. The two remaining pieces will still have a north and a south. You can cut it dozens of times and the results will be the same.

The most powerful magnet in the universe is actually a star called a magnetar. These are stars that have died off and had a supernova explosion. The magnetars are what is left over, and they are strong enough to destroy small planets if they get close enough.

Strong rare earth magnets can turn some metals into magnets. Ferromagnetic materials like iron can be magnetized with a strong permanent magnet. You can try it for yourself by rubbing a magnet on a screwdriver. The screwdriver will be able to pick up magnetic objects.

The Earth is like one big bar magnet. It has a magnetic north and a magnetic south, which is what the needle on a compass points to. However, this is geographically different than the actual north and south poles. Invisible magnetic field lines run from the north to south poles.

Magnetic resonance imaging machines use magnets, and they generate stronger fields than the Earth. In fact, it is about 60,000 times stronger than the Earth’s.

Some animals are affected by magnets. Magnets have been used to study bee communication patterns, migratory cycles and several other animal behaviors. This is because many animals can sense magnetic fields. For instance, some sharks are repelled by them and birds and turtles navigate by them.

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[Typo Fu Master]

Unlike dogs, cats do not have a sweet tooth. Scientists believe this is due to a mutation in a key taste receptor.

When a cat chases its prey, it keeps its head level. Dogs and humans bob their heads up and down.

The technical term for a cat’s hairball is a “bezoar.”

A group of cats is called a “clowder.”

A cat can’t climb head first down a tree because every claw on a cat’s paw points the same way. To get down from a tree, a cat must back down.

Cats make about 100 different sounds. Dogs make only about 10.

During the time of the Spanish Inquisition, Pope Innocent VIII condemned cats as evil and thousands of cats were burned. Unfortunately, the widespread killing of cats led to an explosion of the rat population, which exacerbated the effects of the Black Death.

Cats are North America’s most popular pets: there are 73 million cats compared to 63 million dogs. Over 30% of households in North America own a cat.

Researchers are unsure exactly how a cat purrs. Most veterinarians believe that a cat purrs by vibrating vocal folds deep in the throat. To do this, a muscle in the larynx opens and closes the air passage about 25 times per second.

Most cats give birth to a litter of between one and nine kittens. The largest known litter ever produced was 19 kittens, of which 15 survived.

While many parts of Europe and North America consider the black cat a sign of bad luck, in Britain and Australia, black cats are considered lucky.

The most popular pedigreed cat is the Persian cat, followed by the Main Coon cat and the Siamese cat.

The smallest pedigreed cat is a Singapura, which can weigh just 4 lbs (1.8 kg), or about five large cans of cat food. The largest pedigreed cats are Maine Coon cats, which can weigh 25 lbs (11.3 kg), or nearly twice as much as an average cat weighs.

In the original Italian version of Cinderella, the benevolent fairy godmother figure was a cat.

The world’s rarest coffee, Kopi Luwak, comes from Indonesia where a wildcat known as the luwak lives. The cat eats coffee berries and the coffee beans inside pass through the stomach. The beans are harvested from the cat’s dung heaps and then cleaned and roasted. Kopi Luwak sells for about $500 for a 450 g (1 lb) bag.

Rome has more homeless cats per square mile than any other city in the world.

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[Typo Fu Master]

All dogs can be traced back 40 million years ago to a weasel-like animal called the Miacis which dwelled in trees and dens. The Miacis later evolved into the Tomarctus, a direct forbear of the genus Canis, which includes the wolf and jackal as well as the dog.

Small quantities of grapes and raisins can cause renal failure in dogs. Chocolate, macadamia nuts, cooked onions, or anything with caffeine can also be harmful.

In 2003, Dr. Roger Mugford invented the “wagometer,” a device that claims to interpret a dog’s exact mood by measuring the wag of its tail.

Dogs have three eyelids. The third lid, called a nictitating membrane or “haw,” keeps the eye lubricated and protected.

The phrase “raining cats and dogs” originated in seventeenth-century England. During heavy rainstorms, many homeless animals would drown and float down the streets, giving the appearance that it had actually rained cats and dogs.

During the Middle Ages, Great Danes and Mastiffs were sometimes suited with armor and spiked collars to enter a battle or to defend supply caravans.

The most dogs ever owned by one person were 5,000 Mastiffs owned by Kublai Khan.

The most popular male dog names are Max and Jake. The most popular female dog names are Maggie and Molly.

Weird dog laws include allowing police offers in Palding, Ohio, to bite a dog to quiet it. In Ventura County, California, cats and dogs are not allowed to have sex without a permit.

The shape of a dog’s face suggests how long it will live. Dogs with sharp, pointed faces that look more like wolves typically live longer. Dogs with very flat faces, such as bulldogs, often have shorter lives.

French poodles did not originate in France but in Germany (“poodle” comes from the German pudel or pudelhund, meaning “splashing dog”). Some scholars speculate the poodle’s puffs of hair evolved when hunters shaved the poodle for more efficient swimming, while leaving the pom-poms around the major joints to keep them warm.

The name of the dog on the Cracker Jacks box is Bingo. The Taco Bell Chihuahua is a rescued dog named Gidget.

Dachshunds were bred to fight badgers in their dens.

The Basenji is the world’s only barkless dog.

It costs approximately $10,000 to train a federally certified search and rescue dog.

Hollywood’s first and arguably best canine superstar was Rin Tin Tin, a five-day-old German Shepherd found wounded in battle in WWI France and adopted by an American soldier, Lee Duncan. He would sign his own contracts with his paw print.

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[Typo Fu Master]

There are over 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, many of which are spoken by fewer than a few hundred people. The top 10 or 12 languages however make up the vast majority of all of the speakers in the world.

Mexicans celebrate New Years Eve by eating 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight. This tradition is actually fairly common among Latin American countries and dates back to their ancestors.

Puero Ricans invented the Pina Colada - the delicious coconut based drink. Sipping a Pina Colada on a beach in Puerto Rico is, in fact, very rico.

Dubai is home to the tallest building in the world - Burj Khalifa, which stands at a towering 2717 feet in height. Additionally, Dubai currently has plans to make a $120M Water Discus Hotel that will be the most luxurious, and biggest, underwater hotel in the world.

French people have the longest life span for women, the third longest for men, and they have the fastest train in the world clocked at 357mph!

In Niger, Africa the fertility rate is 7.1 children per woman - the highest in the world. Africa has several problems, including their fertility situation, with many children not arriving to see their fifth birthday.

Africa is home to anywhere from 800 to 1,500 of the worlds languages making it possibly the most linguistically diverse continent in the world.

Spain has the lowest population density in all of Europe. It is five times larger than the UK in physical size yet has 33% fewer people.

Spain had a three year civil war that killed over 500,000 people.

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[Typo Fu Master]

The moon is moving away from the Earth at a tiny, although measurable, rate every year. 85 million years ago it was orbiting the Earth about 35 feet from the planet's surface.

The star Antares is 60,000 times larger than our sun. If our sun were the size of a softball, the star Antares would be as large as a house.

In Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile, it has never rained.

Erosion at the base of Niagara Falls has caused the falls to recede approximately seven miles over the past 10,000 years.

A ten-year-old mattress weighs double what it did when it was new due to debris that it absorbs over time. That debris includes dust mites (their droppings and decaying bodies), mold, millions of dead skin cells, dandruff, animal and human hair, secretions, excretions, lint, pollen, dust, soil, sand, and a lot of perspiration, which the average person loses at a rate of a quart a day.

Every year 16 million gallons of oil runs off pavement into streams, rivers, and eventually, oceans in the United States. This is more oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez.

Most lipstick contains fish scales.

If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies you have $1.19. you also have the largest possible amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors.

The main library at Indiana University sinks over an inch a year. When it was designed engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

A category three hurricane releases more energy in ten minutes that all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

The cruise liner Queen Elizabeth 2 moves only six inches for each gallon of fuel it burns.

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[Typo Fu Master]

The longest time between two twins being born is 87 days.

The world's deepest postbox is in Susami Bay in Japan. It's 10 metres underwater.

In 2007, an American man named Corey Taylor tried to fake his own death in order to get out of his cell phone contract without paying a fee. It didn't work.

The oldest condoms ever found date back to the 1640s (they were found in a cesspit at Dudley Castle), and were made from animal and fish intestines.

In 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won a race at Belmont Park in New York despite being dead — he suffered a heart attack mid-race, but his body stayed in the saddle until his horse crossed the line for a 20–1 outsider victory.

It costs the U.S. Mint almost twice as much to mint each penny and nickel as the coins are actually worth. Taxpayers lost over $100 million in 2013 just through the coins being made.

The spikes on the end of a stegosaurus' tail are known among paleontologists as the "thagomizer" — a term coined by cartoonist Gary Larson in a 1982 Far Side drawing.

During World War II, the crew of the British submarine HMS Trident kept a fully grown reindeer called Pollyanna aboard their vessel for six weeks (it was a gift from the Russians).

The Dutch village of Giethoorn has no roads; its buildings are connected entirely by canals and footbridges.

Powerful earthquakes can permanently shorten the length of Earth's day, by moving the spin of the Earth's axis. The 2011 Japan earthquake knocked 1.8 microseconds off our days. The 2004 Sumatra quake cost us around 6.8 microseconds.

The longest musical performance in history is currently taking place in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt, Germany. The performance of John Cage's "Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible)" started on Sept. 5, 2001, and is set to finish in 2640. The last time the note changed was October 2013; the next change isn't due until 2020.

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[Typo Fu Master]

There is an estimated 1,500 different types of tea.

Tea is the national drink in Iran and Afghanistan. Green tea is consumed as a thirst quencher, and black tea as a warming beverage. Both of them are prepared with lots of sugars.

Britain is the second-largest nation of tea drinkers per capita. Ireland is the first.

An estimated 85% of tea that is consumed in the United States is iced tea. Over 519 million pounds of tea are imported into the United States each year.

Tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world, after water.

While in older times it was customary to pour the milk first into a tea cup as a way to protect the surface of the china, tea connoisseurs say that is not necessary now. Instead it is better to pour the milk in after the tea because it is easier to judge how much is needed.

In 2011, Americans consumed over 65 billion servings of tea, which is approximately 3 billion gallons. An estimated 85% of all tea was black tea, 14% was green tea, and the rest was oolong and white teas.

It takes around four to 12 years for a tea plant to produce seed. It takes about three years before a new plant is ready to harvest.

Most of the world’s tea is grown in mountain areas 3,000-7,000 feet above sea level and between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Tea-producing countries include Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Kenya Malawi, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania.

Just the top 1 to 2 inches of a mature plant, or the flushes of the plant, are picked to make tea. A new flush grows within 7 to 15 days during growing season.

A tea plant can grow into a tree that is as tall as 52 feet if its leaves are not harvested. Cultivated plants are usually pruned to waist height.

The most expensive tea in the world is a rare Chinese tea called Tieguanyin, which is around $1,500/lb. The tea is named after the Buddhist deity Guan Yin (Iron Goddess of Mercy). It is an oolong tea.

The United States invented both the tea bag and iced tea in 1904. Many tea lovers consider the tea bag as one of the worst inventions of the 20th century. Tea brewed with loose tea is generally considered to be richer than tea made from bags.

Historically, tea has been viewed as a health drink. Recent studies suggest that tea, especially green tea, helps reduce some forms of cancer, helps bad breath, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, reduces blood pressure, helps with weight control, kills bacteria and virus, acts as an anti-inflammatory, and has neuroprotective power.

When tea is being poured in China, guests tap two or three fingers on the table three times to show gratitude to the server.

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