Page 23 - The 'X' Zone Book of Triviology

o Venice, Italy, is built on a lagoon, on top of 118 different islands. o The Sahara Desert is larger than the entire United States. o When coffee first arrived in Europe, it was known as “Arabian wine.” o Biggest civilian employer in America: The U.S. Postal Service. o The United States has the most tornadoes in the world - more than 700 a year. o There is less than a gallon of water in a cubic mile of fog. o Every second, your senses send about 100 million different messages to your brain. o A pig has 44 teeth. o “O” is the oldest letter in the alphabet - more than 3,000 years old. o An average person breathes about 10 million times a year. o You blink every 2 to 10 seconds. o Antarctica is the only continent that has never seen a war. o Niagara Falls was created by a glacier. o Until 1867 Alaska was known as Russian America. o Aristotle called the wind “the dry sighs of the breathing Earth.” o Average length of time a child watches an episode of Sesame Street: 8 minutes. o In about 250 B.C. Archimedes invented the screw. o The filaments for the first electric lamp were made of bamboo. o The official definition of a “jiffy” is 1/100 of a second. o Number of times Abraham Lincoln actually slept in the Lincoln Bedroom: 0. o The Vatican has the lowest birthrate of any country in the world. o Teddy Roosevelt had 14 pets in the White House, including 1 bear. o Only 2% of women think they should keep their last name when they marry. o Rather than sell the first story he wrote, Charles Dickens traded it for a large bag of marbles. o Cost per day of fighting the Revolutionary War: $20,5411. World War II: $409.4 million. o Pound for pound, spiders, flies, and grasshoppers contain more protein than beef does. o A wolf’s howl can be heard as far as seven miles. A bullfrog’s croak: one mile. o 20,000 silver teaspoons are stolen from the Washington, D.C., Hilton each year. o If you don’t remove an avocado’s pit, it won’t turn black, even when you peel it. o In the 1800s you could buy ketchup flavored with lobster, walnuts, or oysters. o The Hundred Year’s War lasted 116 years. o Panama hats are made in Ecuador. o A camel’s hair brush is made of squirrel’s hair. o A person takes an average of 16 breaths a minute. o The total amount of air both lungs hold when filled to capacity is six liters. o A red blood cell lives for 8- to 120 days; white blood cells last an average of 13 days. o The “Rh” factor was named for the rhesus monkeys used in research to identify blood types. o The moon has a 15,000-mile tail of sodium atoms that can only be detected by instruments. o The rocks on the moon are between 3 and 4.6 billion years old. o All mammals, except apes, monkeys, birds, and most humans are colorblind. o Bulls are colorblind; the flapping of the cape annoys the bull, not the color. o Polar bears are left-handed. o As long as lightning doesn’t cross the heart of spine, a person hit by it will usually survive. o Astronauts temporarily grow between one and two inches taller in space. o A mockingbird can alter its tune almost 90 times in less than 10 minutes.