Useless Facts!

As receptionist for the week, I have many hours alone with the Internet, this morning i had read all blogs and all new emails by 8:30am, so I spent time reading useless facts. Here are my favourites:

• The first McDonald's restaurant in Canada was in Richmond, British Columbia.
  
• There is a church in Spain that allows worshippers to make donations via a credit card terminal.
  
• A Czech man, Jan Honza Zampa, holds the record for drinking one liter of beer in 4.11 seconds
  
• More people speak English in China than the United States
  
• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
  
• Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing
  
• Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know you're there.
  
• No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times
  
• Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes
  
• American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating 1 olive from each salad served in first-class
  
• In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
  
• It took 1,175 animators working in Disney studios in Burbank, California, Orlando, Florida, and Paris, France to complete the animated Tarzan. Because of the time differences, production was able to occur around the clock for more than three years.
  
• The Apollo 11 only had 20 seconds of fuel when it landed
  
• If you gave each human on earth an equal portion of dry land, including the uninhabitable areas, everyone would get roughly 100 square feet (30.4 m).
  
• The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
  
• It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years, there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.
  
• In chess, there are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the first ten moves.
  
• The deepest point in the deepest ocean is the Marianas Trench in the Pacific with a depth of 35,837 feet (10,923 m) according to a recent hydrographic survey. This is close to 7 miles (11 km) down, 29 times the height of the Empire State Building.
  
• According to the Guiness Book, the fastest restaurant in the world serves the client's food within 13 seconds after the order is made. The name of the restaurant is Karne Garibaldi and is located in Guadalajara, Mexico.
  
• The Steel Phantom in West Millen, Pennsylvania, is the fastest roller coaster in America, reaching speeds of 80 miles (129 km) per hour.
  
• Most people have an IQ in the 90 - 109 range. You're considered a genius if your IQ is 132 or above. Chris Langan has an IQ of 195, the highest known IQ in the US. He started talking at 6 months and by age 4 could read and comprehend books. His IQ puts him in the same class as Sir Isaac Newton and Michelangelo. He's in his mid-forties, and he works as a part-time bouncer at a bar and lives in a one-room house on $6,000 a year.
  
• William James Sidis had the highest ever known IQ estimated at between 250 and 300. At eighteen months he could read The New York Times, at two he taught himself Latin, at three he learned Greek. By the time he was an adult, he could speak more than 40 languages and dialects. He spent most of his life wandering from one menial job to another.
  
• The largest toy distributor in the world is McDonald's
  
• The largest turtle ever found weighed 2,016 pounds.
  
• The largest number of children born to one woman is recorded at 69. From 1725-1765, a Russian peasant woman gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.
  
• The longest film ever released was "****" by Andy Warhol in 1967, which lasted 25 hours. After its utter failure, it was withdrawn and re-released in a 90-minute form as "The Loves of Ondine."
  
• The woman who has the longest legs, Nadja Auerman, has legs that are 3 feet 8.8 inches (1.14m) long.
  
• Adolf Hitler's mother seriously considered having an abortion but was talked out of it by her doctor.
  
• Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.
  
• Beethoven dipped his head in cold water before he composed.
  
• If you multiply 111,111,111 by 111,111,111, you get 12,345,678,987,654,321.
  
• "Goodbye" came from "God bye" which came from "God be with you."
  
• One-fourth of the world's population lives on less than $200 a year.
  
• Ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year.
  
• Blue whales weigh as much as 30 elephants and are as long as 3 Greyhound buses.
  
• Crocodiles and alligators are surprisingly fast on land. Although they are rapid, they are not agile; so if you ever find yourself chased by one, run in a zigzag line. You'll lose him or her every time.
  
• If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
  
• 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, however, only works in warm weather. (Try it!)
  
• All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
  
• Elvis had a twin brother named Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aaron - in honor of his brother.
  
• Cat's urine glows under a black light.
  
• The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
  
• Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make - $5 million going to actor's salaries.
  
• A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes
  
• A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.
  
• A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
  
• The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
  
• The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."
  
• Virgina Woolf wrote all her books standing.
  
• Swans are the only birds with penises.
  
• A whale's penis is called a dork.
  
• Wayne's World was filmed in two weeks.
  
• Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
  
• Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
  
• When we visit toilets, bathrooms, hotel rooms, changing rooms, etc., how many of you know for sure that the seemingly ordinary mirror hanging on the wall is a real mirror, or actually a two-way mirror?? Just conduct this simple test: Place the tip of your fingernail against the reflective surface and if there is a GAP between your fingernail and the image of the nail, then it is a GENUINE mirror. However, if your fingernail DIRECTLY TOUCHES the image of your nail, then BEWARE, for it is a two-way mirror
  
• The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...) The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%
  
• The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
  
• In Scotland, a new game was invented. It was entitled Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden.... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.
  
• Sean Connery was offered the role of Gandalf but turned it down. "I had never read Tolkien," he says, "and I didn't understand the script when they sent it to me. Bobbits? Hobbits?" Connery did try to educate himself. "I read the book. I saw the movie. I still don't understand it."
  
• Peter Jackson spent so much time at the Bag End set, he fell in love with it and couldn't bear seeing it destroyed. So he asked New Line Cinema if he could have it, and the studio agreed. This proved fortunate, because pickup shots were done in Bag End years later for "The Return of the King". After that, the set was reassembled inside a hill at Peter's country home - with additional designs by Alan Lee to make it three dimensional and functional (including a Frodo bedroom and a Bilbo bedroom). Peter now uses the place as a guesthouse.
  
• A billion awesome useless facts about The Lord of the Rings films can be found here (ew I read the whole thing).