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STRANGE BUT TRUE
The Slave-Maker ant is so named because it raids the nest of other ants and steals their pupae. Once the pupae hatch, they are made to work as slaves.
Workers in an ant colony only live for about 45-60 days, but a colony's queen can live up to 20 years.
Ants make up 1/10 of the total world animal tissue. The total biomass of all the ants on Earth is about equal to the total biomass of all the people.
By combining force of numbers with organized aggression, ants have become the greatest insect killers on Earth -- even of their own kind.
Ants began farming about 50 million years before humans thought to raise their own crops.
The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size is the ant. They are the smartest species of insects with about 250,000 brain cells.
Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad in first class.
30% of Chinese adults live with their parents.
200 million people in China live on less than $1 a day.
There are 100 million internet users in China. Some of the sites they can't access are BBC news, Amnesty International and Dalailama.com.
In 2006, there were 398 million mobile (or cell) phones in China.
China is the source of 70% of the worlds pirated goods.
20% of the world's population lives in China.
People spend about two weeks of their lives at traffic lights!
Left handed people live slightly shorter lives than right handed people.
Armadillos are able to contract leprosy.
Ten years ago, only 500 people in China could ski. This year, an estimated 5,000,000 Chinese will visit ski resorts.
The ant, when intoxicated, will always fall over to its right side.
The original name of Bank of America was Bank of Italy.
Toxic house plants poison more children than household chemicals.
Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England, but only in tropical fish stores.
In Bahrain, a male gynecologist can only examine a woman's private parts through a mirror.
If the entire population of earth was reduced to exactly 100 people,50% of the world's currency would be held by 6 people.
In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.
Fewer than half of the 16,200 major league baseball players have ever hit a home run.
A snail can sleep for three years.
Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
Fourty percent of English taxi drivers are immigrants.
80 Percent of takeaway food delivery people cannot speak propper English!
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
Turtles can breathe through their butts.
Pearls melt in vinegar.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice, that scares Mickey!
You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over a million descendants.
Close to 80% of people who watch the Super Bowl on television, only do so to view the commercials.
In the 1800's, people believed that gin could cure stomach problems.
It took approximately 2.5 million blocks to build the Pyramid of Giza, which is one of the Great Pyramids.
Thomas Edison designed a helicopter that would work with gunpowder. It ended up blowing up and also blew up his factory.
McDonalds calls frequent buyers of their food - heavy users.
Americans ate eight million more orders of french fries and almost six million more hamburgers this year compared to last.
The Netherlands has built 800 miles of massive dikes and sea walls to hold back the sea.
One pair of rats has the potential for 15,000 descendants in a year.
A female rat can produce up to twelve litters of twenty rats a year.
Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day.
The rat has been called the world’s most destructive mammal - other than man.
Rats destroy an estimated 1/3 of the world’s food supply each year.
25% of all fires of unknown origin are rat-caused.
26% of all electric cable breaks and 18% of all phone cable disruptions are caused by rats.
The USA has more personal computers than the next 7 countries combined.
Members of the armed forces and the police cannot vote in the Dominican Republic.
US tops the world in plastic surgery procedures. Next comes Mexico.
22% of American women aged 20 gave birth while in their teens. In Switzerland and Japan, only 2% did so.
Mexican women spend 15.3% of their life in ill health.
Most Zambians don't live to see their 40th birthday.
The Mall in Washington, D.C. is 1.4 times larger than Vatican City.
The women of Iceland earn two-thirds of their nation's university degrees.
American adults have been educated for the longest time.
The ten most generous countries are all in Europe.
There are 100 million internet users in China. Some of the sites they can't access are BBC news, Amnesty International and Dalailama.com.
In 2006, there were 398 million mobile (or cell) phones in China.
In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all of the world's nuclear weapons combined.
It took approximately 2.5 million blocks to build the Pyramid of Giza, which is one of the Great Pyramids.
Thomas Edison designed a helicopter that would work with gunpowder. It ended up blowing up and also blew up his factory.
The Netherlands has built 800 miles of massive dikes and sea walls to hold back the sea.
All Humans Are 99.9% Genetically Identical and 98.4% of human genes are the same as the genes of a chimpanzee.
Sex is biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate.
The thumbnail grows the slowest; the middle nail grows the fastest.
Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.
Blood is about 78 percent water.
The heart beats about 100,000 times each day.
Your system of blood vessels is over 60,000 miles long. That's long enough to go around the world more than twice!
Most dust particles in a US house are made from dead skin.
If you fart constantly for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
Mexico City sinks about 10 inches a year.
All the chemicals in the human body have a combined value of approximately £4.00.
Hydrogen is an explosive gas. Oxygen supports combustion. Yet when these are combined it is water which is used to put out fires.
More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.
Wearing headphones for just one hour will multiply the number of bacteria in your ear 700 times.
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you will die of oxygen deprivation.
Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.
The screwdriver was invented before the screw.
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321.
Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com.
Every single 'all a's' domain name, from a.com to aaa..aaa.com (63 a's) has been registered!
Every single possible 3-character .com domain (over 50,000) has long since been registered!
The highest publicly reported amount of money paid for a domain name is $7.5 million! Paid for business.com.
A single individual, Dr. Lieven P. Van Neste, owns over 200,000 domain names!
Every 5 seconds a computer gets infected with a virus.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.
A sneeze travels out of your mouth at over 100 mph!
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
It takes a plastic container 50,000 years to start decomposing.
Plants that are not cared for will cry for help, a thirsty plant will make a high-pitched sound that is too high for us to hear.
You use over 70 muscles to say one word.
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
55% of people yawn within 5 minutes of seeing someone else yawn. Reading about yawning makes most people yawn.
Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.
The typical laboratory mouse runs 2.5 miles per night on its treadmill.
The can opener was invented 48 years after cans were introduced.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
If you have a car remote and you step out of its range, point it to your head and it will work again!
It is impossible for a human to lick their elbow.
A cat's urine glows under a black light.
If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
An adult human heart weighs about 10 ounces and beats over 100,000 times a day
There are 206 bones in your skeleton.
Everyone has thirty-two teeth.
Your muscles make up about one-half of your body weight.
About 70 percent of your body weight is water.
A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.
Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute on this planet
American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad in first class.
There are 100 million internet users in China. Some of the sites they can't access are BBC news, Amnesty International and Dalailama.com.
The original name of Bank of America was Bank of Italy.
Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England, but only in tropical fish stores.
If the entire population of earth was reduced to exactly 100 people,50% of the world's currency would be held by 6 people.
Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.
Members of the armed forces and the police cannot vote in the Dominican Republic.
The Mall in Washington, D.C. is 1.4 times larger than Vatican City.
72% of people in Mali earn less than $1 per day.
More than 20% of the votes in the 2001 elections in Argentina were invalid.
You can be imprisoned for not voting in Fiji, Chile and Egypt - at least in theory.
Former enemies, America and Russia now have a great deal in common - they both lead the world in locking people up.
The word 'politics' describes the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures.'
Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Dostoyevsky were all epileptics (aka brain disorder).
The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.
The highest publicly reported amount of money paid for a domain name is $7.5 million! Paid for business.com.
A single individual, Dr. Lieven P. Van Neste, owns over 200,000 domain names!
Every 23 seconds a Tupperware party starts somewhere in the world.
Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day.
22% of American women aged 20 gave birth while in their teens. In Switzerland and Japan, only 2% did so.
Sex is the safest tranquilizer in the world. It is 10 times more effective than valium!
For every 'normal' webpage, there are five porn pages.
Sex is biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate.
A man's beard grows fastest when he anticipates sex.
Male bats have the highest rate of homosexuality of any mammal.
The average shelf-life of a latex condom is about two years.
'Formicophilia' is the fetish for having small insects crawl on your genitals. Gross!!
'Ithyphallophobia' is a morbid fear of seeing, thinking about or having an erect penis.
When swans go on a date, they'll put their heads together. Then they stick together for life.
The word 'gymnasium' comes from the Greek word gymnazein which means 'to exercise naked.'
Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England - but only in tropical fish stores. (But of course!)
In Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her bare hands. The husband's lover, on the o
An adulterous Greek male was sometimes punished by the removal of his pubic hair and the insertion of a large radish into his rectum.
In india it is cheaper to have sex with a prostitue than buy a condom!
Sex burns 360 calories per hour
Women who read romance novels have sex twice as often as those who don't.
The average person spends 2 weeks of its life kissing.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
Males, on average, think about sex every 7 seconds.
The greatest recorded number of children one mother had was 69 children. Do the math!
The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.
The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television were: Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
25% of women think money makes a man sexier.
Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
Humans, bonobo monkeys, and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.
Turkeys can reproduce without having sex. It's called parthenogenesis.
Each day, there are over 120 million sexual intercourse taking place all over the world.
Snakes have two sex organs.
A pig's orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
Donald Duck comics were once banned from Finland because Donald doesn't wear pants.
85% of men who die of heartattacks during intercourse, are found to have been cheating on their wives.
In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.
Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
Close to 80% of people who watch the Super Bowl on television, only do so to view the commercials.
For every 'normal' webpage, there are five porn pages.
Each card in a deck represents a king from history: Spades- King David, Hearts- Charlemagne, Clubs-Alexander the Great, Diamonds- Julius Caesar
The word 'politics' describes the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures.'
If you add up the letters in all the names of the cards in the deck (Ace, two), the total # of letters is 52, the same as the # of cards in the deck.
The tune of The Star Spangled Banner was an old English drinking song . It was not made the official national anthem until 1931.
Marilyn Monroe had six toes on one foot.
The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's 'Its A Wonderful Life'.
There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.
Until the 1960's men with long hair were not allowed to enter Disneyland.
The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television were: Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
All of the clocks in the movie 'Pulp Fiction' are stuck on 4:20.
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
Soccer is the most attended or watched sport in the world.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before.
Donald Duck comics were once banned from Finland because Donald doesn't wear pants.
A company, Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song 'Happy Birthday'.
China is the source of 70% of the worlds pirated goods.
Topless saleswomen are legal in Liverpool, England, but only in tropical fish stores.
You can be imprisoned for not voting in Fiji, Chile and Egypt - at least in theory.
0.7% of Americans are currently in prison. Wow!
Saudi diplomats have 367 outstanding parking fines in Britain.
The average criminal sentence length is 137 years in Colombia.
Two-thirds of the world's kidnappings occur in Colombia.
America puts many more of its citizens in prison than any other nation.
Two-thirds of the world's executions occur in China.
Former enemies, America and Russia now have a great deal in common - they both lead the world in locking people up.
You're 66 times more likely to be prosecuted in the USA as in France.
The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500.00 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.
In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death.
In Hong Kong, a betrayed wife is legally allowed to kill her adulterous husband, but may only do so with her bare hands. The husband's lover, on the o
An adulterous Greek male was sometimes punished by the removal of his pubic hair and the insertion of a large radish into his rectum.
In Alaska, it is legal to shoot bears. However, waking a sleeping bear for the purpose of taking a photograph is prohibited.
Duelling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.
It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy, if your name is Mary.
If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off.
Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter.
Until the 1960's men with long hair were not allowed to enter Disneyland.
Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
In Switzerland, it's against the law to slam your car door.
In Lebanon it's legal to have animal sex, but only with female animals. Animal sex with males is a capital crime.
The penalty for masturbation in Indonesia is decapitation.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
Donald Duck comics were once banned from Finland because Donald doesn't wear pants.
All Humans Are 99.9% Genetically Identical and 98.4% of human genes are the same as the genes of a chimpanzee.
In Chinese the words for crisis and opportunity are the same.
In space, astronauts cannot cry properly, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow down their faces!
The word 'set' has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
The average person spends 2 weeks of it's life waiting for a traffic light to change.
The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
Shakespeare invented the words 'assassination' and 'bump'.
People share their birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.
If the population of China walked past you in a single line, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
The word 'lethologica' describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
More people are killed by donkeys than in plane crashes annually.
Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.
The most popular requested boat name is 'Obsession'.
The sentence 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' uses every letter in the English language.
To 'testify' was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.
The 'sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick' is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.
'I am.' is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
28% of Africa is wilderness.
Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
Long ago, clans would burn down your house to get rid of you without killin you. The phrase 'your fired!' came from this.
The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof'. I wonder why ;-).
In Tibet it is considered good manners to stick out your tongue at someone.
Albert Einstein's parents were worried he was mentally slow, because it took him a long time to learn how to speak.
The youngest pope was 11 years old.
Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com.
Every single 'all a's' domain name, from a.com to aaa..aaa.com (63 a's) has been registered!
Every single possible 3-character .com domain (over 50,000) has long since been registered!
A single individual, Dr. Lieven P. Van Neste, owns over 200,000 domain names!
On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year, so don't stick it in your mouth!
The average person laughs 13 times a day!
There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball.
In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.
Los Angeles's full name is 'El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula'.
There are only four words in the English language which end in '-dous': tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
Maine is the only state in the US whose name is just one syllable.
'Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'.
The longest one-syllable words in the English language are 'strengths' and 'screeched'.
The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses. No one in Greece has memorized all 158 verses.
Antarctica is a desert.
Icthyomaniacs are people who are crazy about fish.
Eskimos have over 100 words for ice.
The names of the continents all end with the same letter as they start with. Coincidence?
The very first Olympic race, held in 776 BC, was won by Corubus, a chef.
365 different languages are spoken in Indonesia.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before.
On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily!
The longest word that can be typed using only the right hand is lollipop.
The name for having a fear of long words: Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Ironic, isn't it?
Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone!
The word 'four' has four letters. In the English language there is no other number whose number of letters is equal to its value.
'Skepticisms' is the longest word that alternates hands when typing.
On average people fear spiders more than they do death.
'Almost' is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is 'uncopyrightable'.
India never invaded any country in her last 10,000 years of history.
Every year some 50 million cars are added to the world’s roads.
The major air-polluting industries are iron, steel and cement
No word in the English language rhymes with 'month', 'orange', 'silver' or 'purple'.
The vocabulary of the average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words.
If you take a pencil, you can draw a 50 kilometer (31 mile) long line.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.
The average life expectancy of a toilet is 50 years.
Typewriter, is one of the longest words that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.
An average secretary's left hand does 56% of the typing.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.
In ancient Egypt, priests plucked every hair from their bodies.
Your nose smells best when you are about 10 years old.
Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
Bamboo can grow up to 36 inches a day.
Babies crawl an average of 200 meters a day.
On average, Americans spend about 6 months of their lives waiting in front of traffic lights.
The deepest hole ever made in the world (in Texas) is as deep as 20 empire state buildings but only 3 inches wide.
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