Did You Know? Interesting Tricks & Facts

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

2. The Statue of Liberty's tablet is two feet thick.

3. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is 'Live Free or Die'. These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord.

4. The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers to taste in-process beer without removing the fermenting ingredients which floated on the top of the container.

5. David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader's lines, and didn't know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

6. The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY

7. There are only thirteen blimps in the world.

8. Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.

9. The existing biggest blimp is the Fuji Film blimp.

10. Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.

11. The Swiss flag is square.

12. The word 'pound' is abbreviated 'lb.' after the constellation 'libra' because it means 'pound' in Latin, and also 'scales'. The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an 'L' for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it to indicate abbreviation.

13. Sames goes for the Italian lira which uses the same abbreviation ('lira' coming from 'libra'). So British currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as "pounds/shillings/pence", abbreviated "L/s/d" (libra/solidus/denarius).

14. The three largest land-owners in England are the Queen, the Church of England and Trinity College, Cambridge.

15. The monastic hours are matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers and compline.

16. If you come from Manchester, you are a Mancunian.

17. No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as 'supercooling.' If you disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die.

18. The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.

19. Madrid is the only European capital city not situated on a river.

20. The name for fungal remains found in coal is sclerotinite.

21. The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

22. Emus cannot walk backwards.

23. It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.

24. The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has the largest water clock in North America.