Friday, May 18, 2007

Interesting Cool Facts

This is some serious stuff you always wanted to know...

  • "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
  • 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 =12,345,678,987,654,321.
  • A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
  • A snail can sleep for 3 years.
  • All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of a $5 bill.
  • Cloth came in bolts of nine yards of the fabric. Elaborate clothes were constructed out of the entire bolt, and so making those clothing items goes "the whole nine yards".
  • Grape jelly does not melt in hot tea.
  • In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."
  • In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
  • In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That's where the phrase 'goodnight, sleep tight' came from.
  • In the english language, the number four is the only number to have the same number of letters as the number itself.
  • Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.
  • Shakespeare invented the words 'assassination' and 'bump'.
  • Stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
  • Termites eat wood twice as fast if you play loud music.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Anto, regarding "the whole nine yards" thing, the phrase's origin is that the expression dates from the Second World War, where "nine yards" was the length of an aircraft machine-gun ammunition belt, and to "go the full nine yards" was to use it up entirely.

And also, try not to copy the same stuff you posted in your own blog.

Anonymous said...

Well... bear with me pal.. at times I have this condition, short-term memory loss....

Anonymous said...

People suffering from short-term memory loss need to be very careful in blogging!