Useless Facts, The Best Kind of Facts

[Talal Provides]

The best kind of information is the kind that is only sorta-interesting and has no practical, useful value, so let's all share some. To start:

The main concourse at Grand Central Terminal contains 200 tons of air.

The world's largest tire manufacturer is Lego.

 

[lacktheknack]

The longest word in the world is 1185 characters long.

Also, the fear of long words is called "Hippopotomonstrosesquipidaliophobia".

 

[Mortier]

Did you know, this statement has a 65% chance of not being very convincing.

 

[DeASplode]

I don't know any, but Google does!

Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.

 

[Palademon]

The longest word in the world is 1072 characters long.

Krung thep? The true name of Bangkok?

 

[savageoblivi0n]

the reason the tv series 'torchwood' was named that was because when they rebooted doctor who in order to keep it a secret they labeled the videos torchwood because it's an anagram of doctor who. there's more to the story obviously but that little bit blew my mind for some reason

 

[The Rockerfly]

If you click your index and thumb together, the noise isn't coming from your fingers rubbing against each other but your finger hitting your palm

The voice acting who played ducky in the land before time was murdered by her abusive dad

The woman who did the voice for Sarabi in The Lion King (Mufasas wife) died of Lung Cancer.

I got loads of useless facts

 

[lacktheknack]

The longest word in the world is 1072 characters long.

Krung thep? The true name of Bangkok?

It means "Coat Protein, Tobacco Mosaic Virus, Dahlemense Strain". And it's 1185 letters long, my mistake. (No way I'm typing out the word, though.)

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

May I lead you to this thread.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.182266-A-collection-of-Mind-Blowing-Video-Game-Facts

Many bricks were shat upon reading the OP.

Here's one I hear: Ever 50-72 seconds, someone in the world says mustard.

 

[Talal Provides]

The Saturn V rocket that took us to the moon was the most complex machine ever built, containing six million parts. It was 99.9% reliable, which means on every launch, 6 thousand different things on it would would break or fail to work.

 

[Naheal]

There's such a thing as infinity not being large enough.

Example: draw a circle. Realize that there are an infinite number of points on that circle. Draw a line that connects every single one of those points with the center of the circle. The number of lines, by definition, is infinity.

Now, draw a larger circle around the smaller one and extend the lines that you drew from the smaller circle. The infinite lines that you drew from the initial circle are not enough to meet the infinite number of points on the new circle.

Edit: note that this is still theoretical at this point. It's highly possible, but I have no mathematical proofs at this point to back it up.

12/4/2010, 11:40 EST.

 

[Gigaguy64]

The voice acting who played ducky in the land before time was murdered by her abusive dad

Wait wat.....
That's just sad.
I loved that movie, especially Ducky....


OT:Owls are the only birds who can see the color blue.

 

[ThatLankyBastard]

The voice acting who played ducky in the land before time was murdered by her abusive dad

What??? I loved those movies! NOOOOO

OT It takes a Twinkie and a strip of raw bacon the same amount of time to burn in the microwave

 

[Daemascus]

Water is the only thing that expands when is freezes.

 

[whycantibelinus]

Birds do not have receptors in their mouths to sense capsaicinoids, thus they can eat chili peppers without them burning their mouths.

I learned that from reading Wikipedia a few weeks ago. The plants developed capsaicin as a defense from mammals eating them, since mammals have mollars and would crush up the seeds. Birds, on the other hand, do not have teeth and thus would swallow the seeds whole, poop them out somewhere else, and thus propagate the species.

 

[Lukeje]

Water is the only thing that expands when is freezes.

No, it isn't. For example:

Other substances that expand on freezing are silicon, gallium, germanium, antimony, bismuth, plutonium and other compounds that form spacious crystal lattices with tetrahedral coordination.

...from this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water] wikipage.

 

[RobotNinja]

It's illegal to go whaling in Nebraska.
EDIT: for those who don't live in America, Nebraska is a landlocked state so the law is completely useless

 

[Talal Provides]

If you were to instantaneously convert every single atom of matter in a dollar bill into energy, the resulting explosion would turn an entire hemisphere of the Earth into glass.

 

[Nargleblarg]

Did you know the male elephant uses its fully erect penis as a 5th leg to help it sustain balance.

I am in not making this up

 

[Atticus89]

More money is printed for the board game Monopoly than by the US Treasury each year.