The longest fence in the world is in Australia, and it runs for over 5,530 kms. It's designed to keep dingo's away from the sheep.

Facts about Canada
Canada is the second largest country in the world, with 9,971,000 square kilometres of land.
The baseball glove was invented in Canada in 1883.
With only three people per square kilometer, Canada has the fourth lowest population density in the world.
Vancouver Canada is tied with Zurich Switzerland for the highest quality of life of any city in the world.
The world's smallest jail is believed to be in Rodney, Ontario, Canada. It is only 24.3 square meters (about 270 square feet).
Canada has the ninth biggest economy of the world
According to the United Nations Human Development Index, Canada has the highest quality of life in the world.
Contrary to popular opinion, Canada does not own the North Pole. In fact, the North Pole is not owned by any country. It is believed, however, that Santa Claus is from Canada.
Canada is the world's eighth biggest trader.
Of all of the world's producers of natural gas, copper, zinc, nickel, aluminum, and gold, Canada is in the top five.
Canada is the home of many great inventions, including: basketball, the electric light bulb, the electric range, the electron microscope, standard time, the television, the telephone, and the zipper.
Canada is the fifth largest energy producer.
Canada has the world's highest tertiary education enrolment.

A hamlet is a village without a church and a town is not a city until it has a cathedral.

About one-tenth of the earth's surface is permanently covered with ice.

According to National Geographic, Mt. Everest grows about 4 millimeters a year: the two tectonic plates of Asia and India, which collided millions of years ago to form the Himalayas, continue to press against each other, causing the Himalyan peaks to grow slightly each year

Alaska and California, with 8 each, are the US states with the most national park sites.

All gondolas in Venice, Italy must be painted black, unless they belong to a high official.

As of Dec. 31, 2000, the number of climbers summiting Mt. Everest reached 1314, and the number of deaths on the mountain reached 167.

At 840,000 square miles, Greenland is the largest island in the world. It is three times the size of Texas. By comparison, Iceland is only 39,800 square miles.

Australia is the only country that is also a continent.

Canada is an Indian word meaning 'Big Village'.

Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in existence.

Devon is the only county in Great Britain to have two coasts.

Disney World in Orlando, Florida covers 30,500 acres (46 square miles), making it twice the size of the island of Manhattan, New York.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

Europe has no deserts - it is the only continent without one.

Forty-six percent of the world's water is in the Pacific Ocean; that's around 6 sextillion gallons of water. The Atlantic has 23.9 percent; the Indian, 20.3; the Arctic, 3.7 percent.

French was the official language of England for over 600 years.

Grand Rapids, Michigan was the first city in the US to put fluoride in their water.

Hawaii is the only US state that grows coffee.

If Monaco's ruling house of Grimaldi should ever be without an heir (male or female), the country will cease to be a sovereign state.

In 1771 the kingdom of Poland was larger in are than any other European country except Russia and had a bigger population than any other European country except France.

In proporton to its size, the ant has the largest brain in the animal kingdom.

Some of these might be 13+, I hope they will be allowed by Rock as they are pretty funny....

(pleaaaaaaaase????)

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

(Hardly seems worth it.)

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

(Now that's more like it!)

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to
squirt blood 30 feet.

(O.M.G.!)


A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
(Creepy.)

(I'm still not over the pig.)

Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

(Do not try this at home. Maybe at work.)

The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its
body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.

("Honey, I'm home. What the....?!")

The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the
length of a football field.

The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.

(What could be so tasty on the bottom of a pond?)

Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

(Something I always wanted to know.)

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.


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

(If you're ambidextrous, do you split the difference?)

Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.

(OK, so that would be a good thing....................)

A cat's urine glows under a black light.

(I wonder who was paid to figure that out?)

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

(I know some people like that.)

Starfish have no brains.

(I know some people like that too.)

Polar bears are left-handed.

(If they switch, they'll live a lot longer.)


This post has been edited by Rockatteer on 21 August 2007 - 09:17 AM

Beer trivia
A few fun tidbits to share over a brew. Did you know…?

Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get service, resulting in today’s phrase, “Wet your whistle.”



It was the accepted practice in Babylonia 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month,” which eventually came to be known as the honeymoon.



Before thermometers were invented, brewers would dip a thumb into the mix to find the right temperature for adding yeast. Too cold, and the yeast wouldn't grow. Too hot, and the yeast would die. This became known as “rule of thumb.”

Three things I really didn't know...

Y'know... if they had a historical trivia class in high school, I mighta' payed more attention...

My math may be wrong, but here goes...

If we say that the average human is 5.5 feet tall, and a human was like a flea, a human could jump 1,925 feet.

Divide that by 3 to get yards: 641.6666666~

Divide that by 100 to get a football field (American Football): 6.4167 football fields!


Hurray for fleamans!

(or humleas)

----------------------

If an owl were to sit on the goalpost of a football field (American Football) on a cloudy, unlit night (total darkness), and a candle were placed on the 50 year line, the owl could see a mouse in the opposite endzone.

The owl's eyeballs are so big inside its skull, that they cannot move. This is why the owl must move its head to see stuff.

Actually, the owl's eyeballs aren't balls; they're cones, to direct the light to the smallest point on the retina.

Three things I really didn't know...

And none of them is accurate. They're all well-circulated false etymologies -- the linguistic version of an urban legend. Like urban legends, the bogus stuff spreads much faster and farther than the real information. I find this a real pity, because the real information, although short of gee-whizzicality, generally goes much farther back into history and deeper into human nature than the glib false stories do. I originally fell in love with language largely because it provides so many fascinating mirrors into ourselves.

Wet your whistle: "whistle" has been a slang word for the mouth since Chaucer's time if not before (first recorded then, and he was reflecting the slang of his own era). You can't whistle with a dry mouth.

Honeymoon: the term first appeared in 1552, when Richard Huloet coined it as a cynical description of what happened to love after marriage -- that is, the "honey" or sweetness faded away as inevitably as the moon's phases.

Rule of thumb: well, at least this false etymology is an improvement on the more commonly encountered one claiming that it was based on the acceptable size of stick with which a man could beat his wife. The expression is believed to come from the use of the thumb (along with the hand and arm) as a basic measure -- a rule as in "ruler". The expression has appeared in print since 1692, but is undoubtedly much older, since tailors were using the technique at least two centuries earlier.

Which makes the "rule of thumb" a very, very old MacGyverism!

I often use my thumb to roughly measure multiples of one inch (or just a single inch).

The first far eastern country to permit kissing in films was China. The first oriental screen kiss was bestowed on Miss Mamie Lee in the movie Two Women in the House (China, 1926).

August 22 1864 - The first "Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field" was signed by 12 countries. The international treaty, known as the Geneva Convention, also guaranteed the neutrality of members of the Red Cross. Jean Henri Dunant, one of the Red Cross founders, was instrumental in the Convention's passage.

In 1994 Los Angeles police arrested a man for dressing as the Grim Reaper - complete with scythe - and standing outside the windows of old people's homes, staring in.

http://www.triv.net/trivia.htm

Ooo... cool site! Thanks!

In 1910, magician Harry Houdini was the first solo pilot to fly a plane in Australia. He taught himself to drive an automobile just so he could drive out to the airfield- and he never drove again!

http://www.comedy-zone.net/triviazone/history/page4.htm

The first toilet shown on TV was on Leave it to Beaver.