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 3
[Next 25]   [Main Page]   [Submit a Fact]   [Email Us]

  • The term 'sandlot baseball' originated in San Francisco. The term dates to the 1860's when a cemetery that stands where the Civic Center is now located was converted into a park. A sand hill was leveled to create a 17 acre park, which became known as the 'sandlots'.

  • In the Middle English the word "minister" meant "lowly person." It was originally adopted as a term of humility for men of the church.

  • In the vast majority of the world's languages, the word for "mother" begins with the letter M.

  • India ink (sometimes called "Chinese ink") was not known until recently in either China or India.

  • Levan, Utah is "navel" spelled backwards. It is so named because it is in the middle of Utah.

  • Maine is the only state in the United States whose name is just one syllable.

  • Nitrogen used to be called azote. 

  • On maps, adjacent countries are usually shown in different colors. What is the smallest number of colors needed for a world map? Four(4).

  • Other names for a railroad caboose are: crumb box, brain wagon, bazoo wagon, strawberry patch, and loose cage.

  • Per the dictionary, one definition of a "cartwheel" is a silver dollar. 

  • Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eyes."

  • The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat", which means "the king is dead".

  • The word "dreamt" is the only word in the English language that ends in the letters 'mt'.

  • The word "dude" was coined by Oscar Wilde and his friends. It is a combination of the words duds and attitude.

  • The word "gas," coined by the chemist J.B. van Helmont, is taken from the word chaos, which means "unformed" in Greek.

  • The word "geriatrics" was not coined until 1951.

  • The word "grease monkey" comes from the person (usually a young boy) that would crawl up in the rafters to grease all of the pulleys and belts that ran all of the equipment in a blacksmith shop or machine shop.

  • The word "live" spelled backward is "evil."

  • The word "Nazi" is actually an abbreviation. The party's full name was the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartel.

  • The word "Psychic" comes from the Greek letter "PSI" - The Unknown.

  • The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.

  • The word "robot" was coined in 1920 in a play, R.U.R. (the initials stood for Rossum's Universal Robots), written by the Czech dramatist Karel Capek.

  • The word "snorkel" comes from the German word "schnoerkel", which was a tube used by German submarine crews in WW2. The subs used an electric battery when traveling underwater, which had to be recharged using diesel engines, which needed air to run. To avoid the hazard of surfacing to run the engines, the Germans used the schnoerkel to feed air from the surface into the engines.

  • The term 'feather in your cap' came from the American Indian tradition of obtaining feathers for headdresses. Birds were captured, some feathers plucked, and the birds were released. Each feather represented an act of bravery. The fashion of decorating hats with feathers declined in the twentieth century because too many birds were being slaughtered for their feathers.

  • The word "tip," meaning a gratuity, was originally an acronym standing for "To Insure Promptness."

[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.