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.

I thought carrots were originally purple!

In a typically 'perfect' human body, The distance of the tip of your finger to the top of your arm, divided by the distance of the tip of your finger to your elbow= 1.618. As does the length of your leg, divided by the length of your calf. Its called the divine proportion. The Vitruvian Man by Da Vinci was based on it

(supposedly)

St John's Wood is the only station on the tube network that doesn't contain any letters of the word 'mackerel'.

Theres a pub in canada that serves a drink that includes a decomposing big toe, and to be considered to have actually drunk the drink, the toe has to touch your lips.

thepig, I thought "feisty" came from a Scots dialect word for a small yappy dog?

Am going to Google after posting...

Owls do not say, twit twoo. They say twit or twoo. When you hear twit twoo it is one owl answering another.

TheOneWithTheHair we investigated that at a very drunken student party once. It was true of most people but not the very athletic - built-up shoulders meant span was a centimetre or so greater than height.

thepig, we're both right!

There is an insect (not sure of its name) that lives in other parts of the world that after it is born burrows its way underground where is spends the next 16 years. They all then surface at the same time and spend the next 3 weeks mating, having babies and they then die.

There are so many of them around during these 3 weeks that people have to use their windscreen wipers to be able to see when they are driving. Also because any potential predictors never see them being eaten they can go about their business without being attacked.

When they die they just from trees and huge piles of them need to be cleared away using shovels.

I learnt about this in GCSE Maths :)

the word "Pwned" comes from WarCraft after a designer misspelt "Owned"

Half of all the human beings who have ever died, died of Malaria.

And to think there's a chance that, within our lifetime, we can eradicate it completely. That's amazing.

While I was checking this fact (heard it but wasn't 100% certain it was true - apparently it is) I also discovered......

Half of all the human beings who have lived to 65 are alive now

There are more fake flamingos in the world than real flamingos

When a male bee climaxes, his testicles explode and he dies

When a male bee climaxes, his testicles explode and he dies

Talk about an Anti Climax!!!

PickledMoomin I first said that about nostrils on MN . I was then corrected by posters saying that not everyone does this . They were right - I believe the figure is about 65%. It's still a good fact though.

Jupiter is so large that all the other planets could fit inside it together.

Cows and goats don't have a top set of teeth, only bottom teeth.

Dogs are always colour blind.

House gas doesn't smell of anything. They put a chemical in it to make it smell so that you can tell if it's leaking.

The first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer.

Aaah it feels good to let go of that bit of information! Thanks

An ancestor of mine was an Archer at the Battle of Agincourt. We traced it back by generations. I also have an ancestor who sent Joan of Arc to the scaffold. He was one of the judges.

In every generation since then, I have an ancestor who is in the elite military force of the day, up an including my DAunt, who predicted the weather on DE Day. I am non-military, but my eldest DS is now an Officer in the British Army.

Moss grows on the north side of cars, as well as trees, as we found out when MIL's car was left unused for months....

Softkitty DP and I were so impressed by this fact that we woke each other up that night to check which nostril we were using. My research has shown that everyone (except my mother) only breathes through one nostril at a time.

Apologies if someone has already put this on, but it's a long thread and I'm tired.

To clarify about puffins bills - they shed only the colorful outer sheath of their bills, and that is after breeding.

It is thought that the story of Santa's reindeer flying partially comes from the use of Fly Agaric (dried) as winter food for Lapp reindeer. Presumably at some point, a herdsman (or woman) decided to try a bit of what the reindeer were so chilled out on.

Hippo milk is pink.

It's impossible to fold a sheet of paper in half more than 8 times.

As an aside, I am so tempted to write out a christmas card to my niblings......

Donald Ducks middle name is faultenroy (sp?)

niplings - love this

PickledMoomin I definitely breathe through one nostril at a time. When I have a cold I often have one nostril blocked and one semi-clear, then a few hours later it swaps. I'm one of the 65%!

Calculators (and computers) do all their calculations just by adding; all operations such as multiplying, square roots etc. have to be converted to adding before they can be done. This process can be extremely complicated; it's only noticeable with calculations when you press = and the answer takes half a second to appear.

That Nostril thing was on QI and apparently true, probably explains why sometimes only one nostril is blocked at any one time when you have a cold.

Amelia - cicada?

Half a byte is a nibble (or nybble)