Trivia

Around the World with Trivia

* No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver and purple.
* The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
* The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
* An animal epidemic is called an epizootic.
* No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver and purple.
* A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
* Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
* Coca-Cola was originally green.
* Twenty-three percent of all photocopier faults world wide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their butts.
* Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.
* More than 50 people of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
* The greatest recorded number of children that have been born by one mother is 69! The poor lass gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and a measly four sets of quadruplets.
* Even in the days before IVF!
* Every five seconds a computer gets infected with a virus.
* Thirteen percent of Americans actually believe that some parts of the moon are made of cheese.
* The world's youngest parents were eight and nine and lived in China in 1910.
* Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
* One in every 200 people are a psychopath and they look just like everyone else.
* An average human loses about 200 head hairs per day.
* The expression "to get fired" comes from long, long ago. When clans wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down.
* In ancient Greece the custom of allowing a condemned man to end his own life by poison was extended only to full citizens. Condemned slaves were instead beaten to death.
* In the 1800s, the Chinese believed that strangling a man was less severe a punishment than beheading because the body would not be permanently disfigured.
* In the Andes, time is sometimes measured by how long it takes to chew a quid of coca leaf.
* Women wear engagement and wedding rings on the third finger of the left hand because an ancient belief held that a delicate nerve runs directly from that finger to the heart.
* The original purpose of a coffin was not to protect the body from prowling animals or grave robbers. It was invented to keep the dearly departed from coming back to haunt survivors.

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2004