Fascinating Facts and Trivia

The first movie ever to put out a motion-picture soundtrack was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

In 2009, Stephen Hawking held a reception for time travelers, but didn’t publicize it until after.

This way, only those who could time travel would be able to attend.

Nobody else attended.

In Svalbard, a remote Norwegian island, it is illegal to die.

This is because bodies are unable to be buried safely due to the permafrost on the ground.

If you are about to die, they fly you back to mainland Norway to pass on there.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

In ancient Rome, when a man testified in court he would swear on his testicles.

The ZIP in “ZIP code” means Zoning Improvement Plan.

Coca-Cola contained Coca (whose active ingredient is cocaine) from 1885 to 1903.

A “2 by 4" is really 1 1/2 by 3 1/2.

It’s estimated that at any one time around 0.7% of the world’s population is drunk.

Between 1912 and 1948, the Olympic Games awarded medals in sculpture, music, painting, and architecture.

A chef's tall hat (officially known as a "toque") is traditionally made with 100 pleats and meant to represent the 100 ways to cook an egg.

Drinking too much water can be deadly.

When guzzling a lot of liquid, you can suffer from water intoxication or hyponatremia, which occurs after an obscene amount of water is consumed, often during endurance events when participants are also losing sodium through their sweat

For 2012 our mascots for the Summer Olympics/Paralympics were named after the areas of the modern Olympics: Wenlock and Mandeville. (Much Wenlock and Stoke Manderville scene of the very first paralympics) Mandeville was a one-eyed cyclops camera.

The period between Christmas and New Year is known as Twixmas.

Happy Twixmas.

A banana is a berry, but a strawberry is not,

This is because a “berry” is technically a fruit with three distinct layers—a thick outer one; a middle one containing most of the edible fruit; and an inner one that contains the seeds.

The fruit also must come from a flower with only one ovary.

By this classification, grapes are berries as well, but strawberries aren’t.

Botanists don’t seem to be particularly beholden to this naming system.