Useless facts. Share yours. No googling allowed.

[SeasickSteveIsMyBoyfriend]

Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

Its illegal for a woman to eat chocolate on a bus.

111,111 x 111,111 = 12345654321

[FreePeaceSweet]

The Ostrich yolk is the largest single cell in the world.

[DeathByChocolate01]

A policeman told me that the thing about pregnant ladies being allowed to wee in his hat was not actually true. :( I was most disappointed.

I can also vouch for the fact that girls who look after horses do sometimes bite their nails

Snails can actually reproduce asexually, they just choose to do the calcium-dart-shooting thing because they enjoy it, despite the fact that it frequently goes wrong and ends up wounding or killing them.

Woodpeckers have such long tongues that they keep them looped around their brain like a fire hose.

Mice sing while having sex.

[RubyGates]

Goringe rhymes with orange. Not very useful....

[beginnersluck]

If you took everyone in the world and put them in Texas, it would be less crowded than New York City.

[StealthPolarBear]

How had this popped up?

[Gabeesh]

Charlie the Cat from the 'Charlie Says' PSA's was voiced by Kenny Everett! Absolutely true!

[sashh]

Cows can walk up stairs but not down.

Your heart is the same size as your slightly unclenched fists.

Some people have the heart on the right, some people have all their organs as a mirror image of the norm.

In the TV series 'House', House uses his cane in the wrong hand and it is never lupus except in series 4 episode 8.

We are all born with a hole in the heart.

The largest area of permenant snow is in Australia.

You can kill yourself by drinking too much water.

[Stinkyminkymoo]

Olympic rower Peter Reed has a lung capacity of 11 litres.

[PlotTwist]

Since someone else reanimated this thread, and since I've read the entire thing and no-one's mentioned this fact...

nettles grow higher over a buried body.

[PinaColadas]

On most cars on the fuel gauge, the little picture of the petrol pump has an arrow pointing in the direction of the side where your petrol cap is.

[LividofLondon]

No idea if this has been mentioned already but when you hear "twit-twoo" it's not one owl but two. The female Tawny owl says "twit" and the male says "twoo".

[Minion]

Stewardesses is the longest word you can type with your left hand using a standard qwerty keyboard.
(thats assuming you basically half the keyboard etc)

The ability to tongue roll is inherited. So if both of your parents can't do it, you won't be able to either... If they can't and you can, check the milkmans ability.

Your left boob will most likely be bigger than your right and probably more veiny as that's where the majority of the veins etc for your heart are. Your heart, however, is in the centre.

Da Vinci invented the helicopter. In fact, he invented a shed load of stuff we use nowadays, way way way before the stuff we need to power them was discovered.

[helentheginner]

Liechtenstein is the source of most of the world's false teeth

[mrspremise]

The plural of mongoose is mongoose

[mrspremise]

Stephen Fry's prep school tailors was called Goringe...

[alwayshasbeen]

blueemerald people who have schizophrenia cannot tickle themselves anymore than people without schizophrenia can yet another misconception of people with mental illnesses

[Skoggy]

A few facts I know:

The pilot episode of The Lone Gunmen, spin-off from The X Files, features a hi-jacked Boeing 727 being flown into the World Trade Centre. It was aired 6 months before 9/11.

IKEA stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd. Ingvar Kamprad is the founder. He grew up on a farm called Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd is the village, in Småland, where he lived.

Sharks can smell one drop of blood in a million drops of water.

[ShowOfHands]

I've just read this thread marvelling at how many of these 'facts' are totally and utterly wrong. But I'm not allowed to google so can't prove it.

But lots of them are incorrect. Like genetic tongue rolling, parts of body parts equalling length of other body parts, not able to self-tickle, the duck quack thing, why we wear white as a bride, cars having arrows to point to the fuel pump, AIDs naming, teeth clenching and weeing. There are loads which are commonly held misconceptions. Not that it matters as most people who contributed have long since moved on with their lives.

I often wonder how many things I hold to be true and they aren't.

[ShowOfHands]

alwayshasbeen, I think the schizophrenia thing is supposed to be a joke. Except based on the misconception that schizophrenics have a split personality, which they don't. Not sure where this misconception is from though. Possibly the split between the person's perception and reality and people have misunderstood what that means.

[lade]

Professor Yaffle in Bagpus was based on the philosopher Betrand Russell.

He children's tv show pug wash never had the characters seaman Staines, master bates etc. It was Tom the cabin boy, not roger etc.

Now, I wait to be corrected

[DisgraceToTheYChromosome]

St. John's Wood is the only tube station that contains no letter from the word "mackerel".

[XanetiaOfTheDelphae]

Anatidaephobia is the fear of being watched by a duck.

[wiltingfast]

If you want to stop a sneeze, pinch your nosoe shut.

Works every time.

Not sure it's healthy tho...

[wiltingfast]

NOSE!

Pinch your NOSE shut sigh

[GhostsInSnow]

Despite it being trotted out on every useless facts thread, it is perfectly possible to lick your own elbow, admittedly it's not something most people can do though.