Strange Facts

[Blue Baboon]

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than every Nike factory worker in Malaysia combined.

If you yelled for 8 years 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.

Elephants only sleep for two hours each day.

If you plant an apple seed, it is almost guaranteed to grow a tree of a different type of apple.

Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer. [isn't that what Ed Gein's business card should've said?]

A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours.

Broccoli and cauliflower are the only vegetables that are flowers.

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.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

You can lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.

“Lassie” was played by a group of male dogs

Johnny Appleseed planted apples so that people could use apple cider to make alcohol.

Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. President to be born in a hospital.

A mongoose is not a goose but more like a meercat, which is not a cat but more like a prairie dog, which is not a dog but more like a ground squirrel.

The Baby Ruth candy bar was named after Grover Cleveland’s baby daughter, Ruth, not Babe Ruth the baseball player.

Robert Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s oldest son) was in Washington DC during his father’s assassination as well as during President Garfield’s assassination, and he was in Buffalo NY when President McKinley was assassinated.

[CarolsCritterCare]

A camel has a straight spine, despite its hump!

A newborn kangaroo is small enough to fit into a teaspoon.

Murphy’s Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.

For the first time, the number of pet cats in the US now outnumbers the number of dogs, 60 million vs. 50 million.

The acid in a person’s stomach is corrosive enough to melt iron.

A female african elephant can be pregnant for almost 2 years.

A cow can give 100 quarts of milk per week.

Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.

The lips of a hippopotamus are nearly two feet wide.

Cats can make over 1,000 different vocal sounds, and dogs can make only about 10.

An anteater sticks its tongue in and out 100 times per minute to slurp up its food.

Spotted skunks do handstands before they spray.

Giraffes have the same number of neck bones as humans: seven.

Some yaks’ milk is pink.

An elephant’s trunk can hold two gallons of water

[CarolsCritterCare]

There is now an ATM at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, which has a winter population of 200.

The estimated value of services provided by the global ecosystem (water, food, materials etc.) runs between $16 and $54 trillion per year.

Japanese lead the world in vending machines, selling $100 Armani ties, $30 bottles of whiskey, and $5 glasses of beer, right next to soft drink machines. It is possible because of low vandalism and petty theft.

In 1995, Toys R Us sold more than $9 billion of goods in the U.S. alone.

The average one-dollar bill wears out in less than two years.

A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court!

The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

It takes 3,000 folds to wear out a dollar bill

[CarolsCritterCare]

Termites can’t digest wood, the protozoa in their stomach (they eat them when they are younger) actually are the devourers of the wood.

A dragonfly’s first six months of life are spent underwater. After this time, it comes out of the water, sheds its outer skin, and starts flying, but if it falls in the water after it has shed its skin, it drowns.

A leech can drink up to eight time its weight in blood at one sitting.

If you weighed all the earthworms in the US, they’d be about 55 times heavier than the combined weight of all Americans.

The male gypsy moth can “smell” the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.

Some dragonflies can fly at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.

The average garden variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.

Cockroaches can survive underwater for up to 15 minutes.

Since the successful launch of space shuttle Columbia on mission STS-90 there have been more crickets in space than humans.

The average caterpillar has 2000 muscles. The average human has 700.

After eating, a housefly regurgitates its food and then eats it again!

Only the female mosquito bites, the male does not.

Mosquitos have teeth.

Female mosquitoes flap their wings nearly 500 times per second

[CarolsCritterCare]

If all retired US ships that now serve as memorials were used to form a new navy, it would rank as the third largest in the world.

Samuel Colt’s first gun manufacturing factory went bankrupt.

During the Manhatten Project, 18 people were injected with plutonium to test the effects of nuclear weapons on humans, which caused numerous health problems, and most were not even aware it had occurred

[CarolsCritterCare]

The hurricane plant has holes in its leaves, which keep it from being destroyed by wind.

The canopy of a rainforest is so thick, only one percent of sunlight reaches the ground.

A living tree never stops growing.

40% of prescripition drugs dispensed in the U.S. have active ingredients derived from plants, animals or microorganisms, many of them from forests.

A banana is about 75 percent water.

The world’s fastest-growing plant is the giant water lily, which grows almost a foot a day.

Researchers recently sprouted a lotus seed known to be 1,288 years old, making it the oldest seed ever germinated.

The Venus flytrap takes less than half a second to slam shut on an insect.

A single large tree can release up to 400 gallons of water into the atmosphere each day.

Rafflesia flowers attract pollinating flies by looking and smelling like rotten meat.

One acre of trees absorbs enough carbon dioxide per year to match that emitted by driving a car 26,000 miles.

The world’s largest flower is the Rafflesia arnoldi. It can grow to the size of an umbrella.

The saguaro cactus of the Arizona Desert grows less than one inch in it’s first 10 years.

In the 1800’s an Eggplant was known as a “mad apple” and believed to be poisonous.

One cord of wood can make 7 and a half million toothpicks