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.

[fussychica]

The bin man in Toy Story 3 is meant to be Sid from Toy Story 1.

[YoniGetAnOohWithTyphoo]

Poinsettias always die after christmas because they can only survive in long daylight hours (like the ones they get in their native mexico), not the piddly short days we get at christmastime. So if you can't keep one alive, don't blame yourself! unless you didn't water it

[MB34]

When Ibuprofen was first introduced to the medical market, the manufactures wanted to market it as a hangover prevention tablet but due to ethical reasons they weren't allowed to.

[Sparrowghost]

Reindeer pee often so the the Sami (I think its them) have a word to measure 6miles which basically means "reindeer pee" as thats how far they walk between pees :D

[ZingChoirsOfAngels]

you can't (or shouldn't) sneeze whilst your eyes are open - it's to protect your eyeballs from the force/speed of the sneeze.

[CarolRapstar]

Sorry, I have to correct one from a while ago,
Male sea horses don't lay the eggs, the female produces the eggs and transfers them to the male who then fertilises them and incubates them for up to six weeks before ejecting the fry. So you could say that he does the pregnancy.

[UniS]

There is a tea grown in Cornwall.

[FloWhite]

The name Homer Simpson first made an appearance in Nathaniel West's novel Day of the Locust.

[PunkHedgehog]

I suspect the armadillo penis fact is largest for its body size among mammals. The barnacle has one about 7 times the size of its body because a barnacle can't move to mate, it can only stretch.

The company that invented aspirin also invented heroin at around the same time. The company was very excited about heroin - a 'safe, non-addictive' alternative to morphine was obviously going to be a big success - hence naming it 'hero - in'; but they thought aspirin was dangerous and not very useful, so they almost didn't release it to the market.

[PigletJohn]

heroin is a very good cough medicine.

[MrsNutella]

joshlyman I believe your shark fact isn't true because there has been no proper test to find out what sharks do and do not find tasty. A classic shark attack normally involves a serious and often fatal injury after which the shark keeps a distance so that the prey fights, panics and becomes weak without the shark having to waste energy.
It is believed that people often survive shark attacks because they are rescued during this waiting period as they are rarely alone.
Sharks are rather lazy and will take an easy meal and remember where they came across that meal.
Because of fears for their numbers they are protected and various governments play down shark attacks. But actually very little research has been done on their numbers, migration habits and movements etc.
Although this could be wrong it's what I remember from a very interesting and slightly scary article.

[MrsNutella]

Oh, this might already have been posted but I don't remember seeing it. Coke used to contains cocaine (hence the name) and was sold as a headache tonic.

[RustyBear]

PG Wodehouse was descended from Mary Boleyn.

[Tillyscoutsmum]

Market research confirmed that Flake and Kit Kat were the two top selling chocolate bars. The Time Out bar (effectively a kit Kat with flake in the middle) was created following the research. It was a commercial failure

[alcibiades]

A couple of interesting, but maybe a little more sobering, thoughts:

Slavery in the USA began in 1619 and ended in 1865. That's 246 years. From the end of slavery to 246 years further on, that brings us to the year 2111. When I read that in one of my history books here, I was astounded. That kind of timeline puts things into a different kind of perspective.

The birds that hit the plane that ditched on the Hudson River were adult Canadian geese, which were much larger than aircraft engines had been designed to cope with, because that's an incredibly rare event. There's little or no training given to pilots of how to successfully land a plane on water, because that's also an incredibly rare event. One of the many reasons why Capt "Sully" was successful is attributed to his experience of flying gliders, which is a kind of "flying by the seat of your pants". There have been other successful landings of planes that have lost engine power and become gliders. Not all those pilots had experience of flying gliders, but what made the difference was fast thinking outside the box and good teamwork on the flight deck. So, pilots might look all sexy and that, in their uniforms, but they're also as smart as heck. (Which is a nice thought, ).

[thankfeckitschrismas]

There is a famous statue in Liverpool of Eleanor Rugby that was made by Tommy Steele

[Smartbutdopey]

GOLF stands for Gentleman Only Ladies Forbidden.
Sorry ladies but its true

[SandyDilbert]

No it doesn't, it is from the Dutch word kolf which means club.

[Jungfraujoch]

David Dundas of 'Jeans On' song fame in the 1970s also wrote the music for the launch of Channel 4.

[Smartbutdopey]

Hi sandydilbert, I stand corrected.
golf.about.com/cs/historyofgolf/a/hist_golfword.htm
It seems I also fell for the old wives tale too.

[TheBunsOfPanettone]

I had to scroll back and find this thread after discovering the very interesting and possibly useless fact that "the term buccaneer derived from the French boucanier, meaning people who smoked or cured strips of meat on a frame of green sticks, or boucan, over a slow fire fed by animal bones and pieces of hide". Footnote from A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, by Diana & Michael Preston, my first book in the 50 books for 2014 challenge. Of course these C17 boucaniers also attacked and looted ships and had a fondness for talking parrots

[TwoLeftSocks]

French francs minted under the Nazi occupation during WW2 had "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality" replaced with "Work, Family and State (Travail, Familie, Patrie)". As soon as the war was over, they reverted straight back.

The lady on the back was replaced with a symbol for work or something too.

I'm doing this from memory from Dad's random old coin collection so can't quite remember it fully.

[TwoLeftSocks]

Babies that didn't settle were sometimes given a lettuce stump to suck on during Victorian times as it contains laudanum, which I think is an opiate or something similar.

[TwoLeftSocks]

Opium poppies still grow in the Fens, where they were once heavily used during certain times of the year by local communities. Poppy seeds grow well in freshly disturbed soil (just like they did in the trenches) so the opium poppies often bloom soon after roadworks end.

[ZingChoirsOfAngels]

TwoLeft

In Hungary people would "cook" poppy seeds in milk (steeping?) then give the milk or a chunk of bread dipped in that milk to babies to help them sleep (same thing, opium)