Tell me something useless but interesting I don't know. No googling allowed. Corrections welcomed.

[YourMaNoBraBackOfMyCar]

I love these threads so please tell me all manner of useless info. [Thanks]

Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th.

A blue moon is a second full moon in a calendar month and this happens roughly every three years.

The modern incarnation of the ouija board was originally a board game from 1861 and bought by Parker brothers in 1966 (who still produce the game)

It had no relation to the dark arts until WW2

You can never see your own face, only it's reflection

A cow can go up stairs but cannot go back down

Until the early 1900 all children where called girls, males - nave girl, females - gay girls. Both genders would be dressed in dresses

gold digger - I will try and rephrase my unintelligible comment about flamingos -

flamingos are pink because of something in the food they eat. But they are not pink because they eat pink food. They eat lots and lots of algae, and some shrimps.
It is the blue-green algae which make them pink. It contains carotin (sp?) which is the same colouring as in carrots. The blue-green algae also contain things which make them look blue-green.
The shrimps also eat the algae and so also go pink. But if you feed flamingos just shrimps, they don't really retain their colour, not enough of the chemical carotin. They need to eat the blue-green algae directly to go pink.

So while it is nice to say they eat pink food and go pink, it isn't quite true. They eat food which contains a chemical which makes them go pink. That chemical happens to look blue-green in the lake.

So I suppose we were both right - it is their diet which makes them pink, but it isn't the pink part that matters.

more Bible facts:

There aren't 3 wise men, we don't know how many, it is always 3 because of three gifts.
They aren't Kings, they are wise people.
They may not even be men as the original language uses same word for both, in fact there were many wise women at the court in Persia, which is probably ''the east'' so the 3 kings may have been half a dozen wise women!
And it is quite possible that they did not appear until Jesus was a toddler, if they started on their journey when Jesus was born and the star appeared, then they would have arrived 1-2 years later. This explains why Herod had all babies under 2 killed.

Angels are never described in the bible as we see them depicted today, most biblical descriptions of them are far from human bordering on monsterious.

Oranges are in fact naturally green

All food is poisonous to humans, it's only because 99.9% of the toxins are excreted as pee and poo we have survived as a species

There's an early theologian - I forget who, someone medieval or before - who worked out seriously that if angels have wings, their breastbones would have to be six foot deep. I love that.

It used to be believed that blowing tobacco smoke up someone's bottom (bellows) would resuscitate them and this was widely used.

The only known medical cure for hiccups is a finger up the arse.

watch far too much QI

My life has been hell since DP found out that last little gem.

Boys will always grow to be taller than their mothers.

Pine nuts are not nuts either.

angels in the Bible are usually referred to as male.
Everytime an angel appears, they say ''do not be afraid'' which tells you quite a lot about how they are supposed to look.

The stable is probably a cave, as caves were used for animals in bethlehem

The pirate accent was invented by actor Robert Newton when he played long john silver

The pirates of the Caribbean films have scenes directly taken from the monkey island games

gw297 what if the father is shorter than the mother?

Stretch your arms out, measure the length from middle fingertip to middle fingertip, right across your chest. It's the same measurement as your height.

A few asked about not googling upthread. I dont want a fact you just googled I want a fact that you know already. The corrections thing is because sometimes someone will post something incorrect and I'll be itching to go all "Well actually..." on them. Freely google to prove or back up though. Speaking of which I'm sure I saw that FUCK meaning on snopes a while back.

www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.asp

If you height is greater than your armspan, then that is a marker for marfan syndrome.

I read something once that speculated that if you read the descriptions of angels in the Bible, and try to visualise the description as if you are living 2-3000 years ago, you realise that they sound like helicopters.

Allergies can go in a 7 year cycle. So a GP told me and I've seen this in practice.

I'm sure I've seen the paper folding one done, but it was a huge piece of paper and was thin like tissue paper. Its def true with a normal piece though :)

When onions make you cry, it is because they release sulfur gas when they are chopped, which turns to sulfuric acid when it hits the water in your eyes

And a related one re sulfur/sulphur spelling - adrenaline isnt called adrenaline anymore, it is called epinephrine.

The sign language for biscuit is a flat hand tapping on your elbow. This is linked to ships biscuits being tapped to get rid of weevils!!

Harry Houdini died from being punched in the stomach.

He wasn't just an escapologist, he had part of his show as a man of steel and would tell his audience he could take any blow to the stomach and invited them to put him to the test. After one show, a man came up to him and punched him before he had a chance to brace himself, which led to the peritonitis that caused his death.

coconuts are not nuts either.
they are seeds

water is most dense at +4 degrees Celsius - which is why ice floats.
And because water freezes from the top there's always water underneath - so animals and plants are protected.

(imagine if ice started forming at the bottom of the sea and freeze upwards!)

remote

and he was Hungarian, born Erik Weisz.

other famous Hungarians:

• Erno Rubik, inventor of Rubik cube

• Laszlo Biro, inventor of the biro or ball point pen

• Ede Teller, one of the "fathers" of the atomic bomb

-Ferenc Puskas, football player, one of the "Golden Team" who beat England 6:3 in Wembley in 1953