Teach me something

I'm on a quest for knowledge. Teach me something. Anything.

Please.

I'm on a quest for knowledge. Teach me something.

Please.

Hinata237

The reason hemp was outlawed in the USA was so nylon could sell well.

When WWII came by, the army needed hemp for parachutes. So they legalized it but the only people who could grow it was if they were growing it illegally in the first place.

When WWII ended, hemp was flat out illegal again. So now, bunches of people are being fined and thrown in jail every day so one man could make a profit over a new type of clothing.

[QUOTE="Hinata237"]

I'm on a quest for knowledge. Teach me something.

Please.

funkadelichika

Both. I just want to know something new. I like to learn of new things.

(I copy and pasted this off a website)

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.

A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

A snail can sleep for three years.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.

All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill.

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

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

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand; "lollipop" with your right.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.

The Bible does not say there were three wise men; it only says there were three gifts.

The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

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

The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.

The words 'racecar,' 'kayak' and 'level' are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).

There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."

There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

ThingysSgt_Politeness

Woah, those are some pretty interesting things...

Thanks for taking time off your precious to copy and paste that.

:)

@Sgt_Politness

thanks for those facts, interesting, didnt quote cuz its really long. i'll have to remember that goldfish one, my girl has hecka goldfish :D

Seriously. This is true. In its lifetime, an average woodchuck could chuck 315kg of wood.

I also know the average air-speed velocity of an un-laden swallow, but I'm keeping that one to myself.

In the meantime, be satisfied with the answer as to why manholes are round. It's because square ones can fall through on themselves. There is a simple problem with that answer, but I'll be surprised if anyone notices it. If they do, I'll go one step further and give the complete answer.

But that's right, I do know the average air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow. Bow down before me. :P

Seriously. This is true. In its lifetime, an average woodchuck could chuck 315kg of wood.

I also know the average air-speed velocity of an un-laden swallow, but I'm keeping that one to myself.

In the meantime, be satisfied with the answer as to why manholes are round. It's because square ones can fall through on themselves. There is a simple problem with that answer, but I'll be surprised if anyone notices it. If they do, I'll go one step further and give the complete answer.

But that's right, I do know the average air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow. Bow down before me. :P

Tylendal

Yoda status.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
Sgt_Politeness

I call B.S. I got a 2$ bill from where we keep rare, foreign, commemorative, or discontinued money and the flag, while tiny, is clearly Canadian.

Seriously. This is true. In its lifetime, an average woodchuck could chuck 315kg of wood.

Tylendal

I actually managed to convince people in my class that the answer to it was seven. It wasnt till about 2 hours later someone said to me "you dont know what your on about dont you?" to which I replied "Not a clue."

Also heres a few fun facts for you courtesy of David Letterman.

-the oldest piece of chewing gum is 900 years old
-right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
-Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food.
-For one week in 1920, the United States Post Office accepted bacon and other smoked meats taped to the corner of an envelope as postage
-The Dalai Lama has an extensive souvenir shot glass collection.
-There is no combination of three coins that total exactly 25 cents.
-Global warming is worse on Tuesdays
-Craig T. Nelson's middle name is Teddy
-Before the advent of dental records, corpses were identified by jazz records
-Medicine bottle child-safety caps are also hard to open for short adults
-Because of shortages caused by the war, in 1942 triple-decker sandwiches were made with two slices of bread
-Christopher Welden of Columbus, Ohio is the only person to ever laugh all the way to the bank
-In Alaska, the dessert known as Baked Alaska is called "Baked Here."
-Prior to 1936, elevators only went up, not down.
-Though it remains open, no one has visited Epcot Center in 12 years.
-By law, firefighters in Nova Scotia are required to offer the people they rescue a blanket and a shrimp cocktail
-"The King of Queens" is loosely based on the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun
-During a screening of Neil Simon's 'The Goodbye Girl' at the Vatican, someone asked Pope Paul VI to remove his hat
-No one can say for certain whether Jim Nabors is dead or alive
-Genghis Kahn is the only Mongol to have been Bar Mitzvahed.
-Moses' last name was Weintraub
-A child born in Africa has a 1 in 3 chance of being adopted by Angelina Jolie.

A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.Sgt_Politeness

[QUOTE="Sgt_Politeness"]A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.

A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.br0kenrabbit

And I already personally disproved the American Flag on 2$ bill "fact".

The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Ilived

I heard it was 3...

Contrarory to popular belief black people make up about 13% instead of the previously believed 33%.

[QUOTE="Ilived"]The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Tylendal

I heard it was 3...

The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Ilived

Citation. NAO.

The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Ilived

Thats total BS dude.

[QUOTE="Ilived"]The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.saywat11

Thats total BS dude.

What do you mean duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude? I saw it on Bill Nye.

[QUOTE="saywat11"]

[QUOTE="Ilived"]The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Ilived

Thats total BS dude.

What do you mean duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude? I saw it on Bill Nye.

Heh, that reminds of a thread from back in the day.

The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Ilived

Eww...

Anyway, thanks for the facts people... Not quite what I wanted, but It's all okay. Thanks for wasting your precious time on me.

[QUOTE="saywat11"]

[QUOTE="Ilived"]The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Ilived

Thats total BS dude.

What do you mean duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude? I saw it on Bill Nye.

It must be fact then. :|

[QUOTE="Ilived"][QUOTE="saywat11"]

[QUOTE="Ilived"]The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.saywat11

Thats total BS dude.

What do you mean duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude? I saw it on Bill Nye.

It must be fact then. :|

Rather hear it from him than you to be honest.

[QUOTE="saywat11"][QUOTE="Ilived"][QUOTE="saywat11"]

[QUOTE="Ilived"]The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Ilived

Thats total BS dude.

What do you mean duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude? I saw it on Bill Nye.

It must be fact then. :|

Rather hear it from him than you to be honest.

I'm pretty dang sure if I ate a spider, I would wake up when its crawling down my throat, or when I'm chewing.

Just no.

A stupid, pointless factoid...

Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story (Family Guy Movie) has the F Word 14 times in it, or 17 times if you count the commentary in that. It also has the S Word twice.

[QUOTE="Ilived"]The average human swallows 9 spiders in his/her sleep a year.Tylendal

I heard it was 3...

I heard it was 6, and also, it's a myth. They proved it on Mythbusters I believe.

And here's this: http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/whileyousleep.html

Myth: You unknowingly swallow an average of four live spiders in your sleep each year.

Fact: This very widespread urban legend has no basis in fact. It exists in various forms; another common version is that you swallow an average of 20 in your lifetime. (At 4 per year, that would make a very short lifetime of 5 years...) A correspondent in Pennsylvania had heard a version that involved swallowing a pound of spiders (while sleeping) in one's lifetime. (That would be over 20,000 average spiders, for a lifetime of 5,000 years at the 4 per year rate).

For a sleeping person to swallow even one live spider would involve so many highly unlikely circumstances that for practical purposes we can rule out the possibility. No such case is on formal record anywhere in scientific or medical literature. Since this page first appeared, I have heard from one person who found a small harmless spider hiding in her ear (which is possible), another who claimed to have had one in her nose (but had no evidence that it wasn't already in her hanky), and one who claimed that when she was a young child a spider leg was found by her lips. But not one person has claimed that a spider entered his or her mouth.

Also this: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mspidereat.html

Dear Straight Dope:

I have heard from numerous sources (many of them seemingly credible) that the average human consumes an average of four spiders per year in his or her sleep. Is there any truth to this fact? And if so, why would the spiders go in our mouths? --Michael O'Shea

SDSTAFF Doug replies:

Amazingly, I cannot find this one debunked in either the alt.folklore.urban or snopes urban legend archives. I know it's been debunked in the AFU newsgroup--I've been in on the debunking personally, but none of that comes up in a search on the AFU archive. So it's up to me to do what must be done.

One amazing thing about urban legends is that they never appear the same way twice. This statistic variously appears as 10 per year, 57 per year, 19 per year, and all sorts of other numbers. No one can ever tell you where the statistic came from originally, either.

Realistically, the average number of spiders swallowed at night per person per lifetime is probably less than one. After all, most people breathe while they sleep (at least I do) and spiders, like virtually all arthropods, flee from breath. After all, there are lots of vertebrates that EAT arthropods, and if you're an arthropod and something is breathing on you, it's not a good idea to stick around. Simple enough.

For a spider to get into your mouth while you're sleeping, (a) you must have your mouth OPEN, which is certainly not universal, so there's a big chunk of people who can never swallow anything; (b) there has to be a wandering spider in your immediate vicinity, also something which--for most people in the civilized world, at least--is a fairly rare occurrence; (c) the spider has to either jump or fall into your mouth from a long distance, because they won't go near your mouth otherwise (they're not suicidal), and the odds are pretty astronomical of a spider randomly dropping into your mouth from the ceiling.

Put it all together, and it would be a miracle for a spider to end up in anyone's mouth while they're sleeping, except for one rare circumstance--when a spider egg sac hatches indoors. At that point, you can have hundreds of microscopic spiders, a millimeter long or less, leaping into the air in a short time span (under an hour total) and trying to ride the air currents to freedom. This is as known as "ballooning"; you may remember it from Charlotte's Web. If you're in a house where a bunch of microscopic spiders are ballooning around, you MIGHT accidentally inhale about a dozen one night, IF the air were circulating sufficiently for them to get airborne and stay there long enough to drift in front of your face. The odds of such a thing are obviously quite small, but it surely happens to someone somewhere from time to time, and that will boost the average--but not enough that I would believe that the AVERAGE person inhales the contents of one egg sac in their lifetime.

The majority of people probably never swallow ANY spiders in their sleep, so the statistic will be composed of a fair number of people (still a tiny minority) that swallow one or two by accident, plus a vanishingly tiny handful of people who swallow a large number, due to a freak occurrence as above. Not enough to add up to much, especially when you consider that 99% of the spiders swallowed are almost too small to see, and you wouldn't feel them even if you swallowed them while awake. I know I won't lose any sleep over it.

--SDSTAFF Doug
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board

Sgt_Politeness

in relation to its size, the ostrich lays the smallest eggs of the bird family (the egg is less than 1.5% of the weight of the mother) and the spotted kiwi lays the largest (its eggs account for 26% of the mothers own weight, which is the equivilant of a woman giving birth to a 6 year old).

I'm on a quest for knowledge. Teach me something. Anything.

Please.

Hinata237

Authentication: The process of verifying that you are who you say you are.

You can be authenticated by the following:

1. Something you know: PIN/Passphrase
2. Something you have: Smart Card, Token, Dumb Card
3. Something you are: Biometrics, which can be anything from hand geometry, topology, fingerprints, and best of all - iris scans.

Fox News = Epic Fail.AsakuraHao2004

because they report news without liberal bias?

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.

Sgt_Politeness

That's false. that website you pasted from is wrong.

A pacific leatherback turtle can weigh over 350kg's

the world's longest rail tunnel is 57,072 metres long and is in Switzerland.

Micheal Jordan averaged 30 points a game in his NBA career

Glasgow Ranger FC have won the most league titles in Europe with 51 league title wins which is an impresive feat.

[QUOTE="Tylendal"]

Seriously. This is true. In its lifetime, an average woodchuck could chuck 315kg of wood.

freek666

David Letterman Facts (too long to quote)

That Epcot one is so true!

Not very informative but amusing

http://www.funlol.com/funpages/massive-brawl-in-chinese-classroom.html

Butter croissants taste really good.