If you have any facts or
trivia. You can submit
them to me using this
form 

































 To receive a regular dose
of fun facts join the mailing
list

 

 





Be sure to sign the guest book

Page 2
[Next 25]   [Main Page]   [Submit a Fact]   [Email Us]

  • As of 1976, there were 110,200,000 TV sets in America, 372,000,000 radios, and 125,142,000 telephones.

  • Benjamin Franklin compiled a list of more than 200 synonyms for "drunk," including cherry-merry, nimptopsical, and soaked.

  • Celebrity-hounding photographers are called paparazzi, in English as well as Italian. It is believed the word was coined after a particularly obtrusive character named "Paparazzo" in Federico Fellini's 1960 film, La Dolce Vita. 

  • Cinderella's slipper, many scholars believe, was made of fur, not glass. The word verre, or "glass," they claim, was incorrectly substituted in early version of the story for the word vaire. In medieval French, vaire means "fur."

  • E is the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet, Q the least.

  • Eskimos have more than twenty words to describe snow.

  • Facetious, abstemious, abstentious, arsenious and arteriosus are the only five words in the English language that contain the vowels a, e, i, o, and u in their proper order.

  • Fans thought Rod Serling invented the term "Twilight Zone." As a matter of fact, so did Serling. He'd not heard anyone use it before, so he assumed he'd created it. However, after the hit TV show debuted in 1959, Serling was informed that Air Force pilots used the phrase to describe "a moment when a plane is coming down on approach and it cannot see the horizon." 

  • If 111,111,111 is multiplied by itself, the result is all of the digits in ascending to descending order, or 12,345,678,987,654,321.

  • If you add together all the numbers on a Roulette Wheel (1 to 36) the total is the mystical number 666, often associated with the Devil.

  • If you toss a penny 10000 times, it will not be heads 5000 times, but more like 4950. The heads picture weighs more, so it ends up on the bottom.

  • In 1822, in his book Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Thomas DeQuincy invented the word "tranquilizer" to describe the effect of opium. 

  • If you are hedenophobic, you have a fear of pleasure. 

  • If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

  • In Albania nodding the head means "NO" and shaking the head means "YES".

  • In Elizabethan slang, the term "to die" meant to have an orgasm. This double entendre was often used by John Donne (The Prohibition, The Canonization), and by Shakespeare in King Lear.

  • In England, corn means wheat. In the Bible, corn means grain.

  • In logging slang, a messy pile of logs is called a "jackpot".

  • In silent Aboriginal hunting language, a closed hand slowly opening shows that a kangaroo is near.
    The phrase "a red letter day" dates back to 1704, when holy days were marked in red letters in church calendars.

  • The phrase "guinea pig" originated when a tax was imposed on powder for whigs in England to help pay for the war with Napoleon. The list of those who had paid the guinea (one pound, one shilling) was posted on their parish church door. As they were the wealthy of the day, they became known as the guinea pigs.

  • The Pretzel is named from the Latin word "brachiatus'" meaning "having branch-like arms"?

  • The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.

  • The Speaker of the House in Great Britain is not allowed to speak.

  • The term "ace" was first used during World War 1 for a pilot who had brought down at least five enemy aircraft. The German equivalent was Oberkanone - which means "top gun".

[Next 25]   [Main Page]   [Submit a Fact]   [Email Us]

Daily Vocabulary Quizzes With Cash Prizes - Play vocabulary quizzes for cash prizes. Choose from one of seven quizzes, or play them all. By playing enough Word quizzes and answering tiebreaker questions you can win the weekly $100 cash prize.