A Brief History of Chopsticks

The fabled ruins of Yin, in Henan province, provided not only the earliest examples of Chinese writing but also the first known chopsticks—bronze sets found in tombs at the site. Capable of reaching deep into boiling pots of water or oil, early chopsticks were used mainly for cooking. It wasn’t until A.D. 400 that people began eating with the utensils. This happened when a population boom across China sapped resources and forced cooks to develop cost-saving habits. They began chopping food into smaller pieces that required less cooking fuel—and happened to be perfect for the tweezers-like grip of chopsticks.

As food became bite-sized, knives became more or less obsolete. Their decline—and chopsticks’ ascent—also came courtesy of Confucius. As a vegetarian, he believed that sharp utensils at the dinner table would remind eaters of the slaughterhouse. He also thought that knives’ sharp points evoked violence and warfare, killing the happy, contended mood that should reign during meals. Thanks in part to his teachings, chopstick use quickly became widespread throughout Asia.

Different cultures adopted different chopstick styles. Perhaps in a nod to Confucius, Chinese chopsticks featured a blunt rather than pointed end. In Japan, chopsticks were 8 inches long for men and 7 inches long for women. In 1878 the Japanese became the first to create the now-ubiquitous disposable set, typically made of bamboo or wood. Wealthy diners could eat with ivory, jade, coral, brass or agate versions, while the most privileged used silver sets. It was believed that the silver would corrode and turn black if it came into contact with poisoned food.

Throughout history, chopsticks have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with another staple of Asian cuisine: rice. Naturally, eating with chopsticks lends itself to some types of food more than others. At first glance, you’d think that rice wouldn’t make the cut, but in Asia most rice is of the short- or medium-grain variety. The starches in these rices create a cooked product that is gummy and clumpy, unlike the fluffy and distinct grains of Western long-grain rice. As chopsticks come together to lift steaming bundles of sticky rice, it’s a match made in heaven.

THE ORIGIN OF TOASTING DRINKS

Humans throughout history have made a habit of basing a great deal of our traditions and customs around food. The curious practice of raising our drink containers is one of the most ancient of these.

To answer your question, for starters, we’ll dispel a myth.  You may have heard that the tradition of toasting originated out of a fear of poisoning- the idea being that clinking two glasses together would cause the liquid from both to spill into one another; thus, the people you’re drinking with wouldn’t poison you as they’d then be poisoning themselves. As interesting as this historical rumour is, not surprisingly, there is not a single shred of evidence backing up this conjecture.

As to the real origin, because the practice of honouring through a drink offering seems to have begun in pre-history, it’s hard to say who first got the idea. In fact, most ancient societies show evidence of doing this. The Ancient Greeks would offer libations to the Gods as a ritualistic practice, as well as make a point of drinking to each other’s health. Evidence of this can be found in The Odyssey  when Ulysses drinks to the health of Achilles. The Romans placed such an importance on drinking to health that at one point in time the Senate passed a decree that stated that all must drink to Emperor Augustus at every meal. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire even describes a feast where Attila the Hun indulges in at least three toasts for every course.

The term “toast” itself originated in the 16th century. One of the first written accounts of it was in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor when the character of Falstaff demands – “Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.” To translate, he’s asking for a great deal of wine with a piece of (literal) toast in it.  I can hear your disgusted outrage and objections to adding toast to wine, but it was actually quite a common practice at the time. This is thought to be due to the quality of wine in the past- it was in many cases inferior to our modern vintages.  Thus, placing a piece of toast within a jug was supposed to soak up some of the acidity and improve the flavour.  This also had the side benefit of giving people something to do with a piece of stale bread, often spiced or with fruit embedded, that would improve the bread’s palatability.  Up until very recently in history, wasting food just wasn’t something people tended to do, so finding ways to make stale bread taste good was fairly common- waste not, want not. (This was also more or less how French Toast got its start.)

Over the coming centuries, the term “toasting”, in English, slowly transformed to incorporate traditional libations and the honouring of people. In the early days of this connection, the person being honoured often received the physical toast saturated with wine at the end.

Toasting became so popular in the 17th and 18th centuries that Toastmasters came into being. Acting as a kind of party referee, they were there to ensure that the toasting didn’t become too excessive and that everyone got their fair share of toasting opportunities. This may sound silly, but it was a desperately needed role. If left to their own devices, guests would occasionally go on toasting every individual in the room. (This being a great excuse to drink excessive amounts of alcohol without seeming like a lush.)

Elaborate drinking games soon became interwoven with the toasting ritual, and most of them seem to have been designed to impress the ladies. One of the more “charming” examples of this involves a gentleman cutting himself, mixing the blood with his drink and then toasting to his lady of choice in order to prove his devotion. Shakespeare is once again our authority when it comes to this particular early, bizarre toasting practice. In The Merchant of Venice the King of Morocco talks of stabbing himself and then laments –

I stabbed my arm to drink her health,
The more fool I, the more fool I.

Another odd custom of the time involved toasting to a lady’s beauty by drinking from her shoe… Seriously, if anyone ruined my shoes in such a way, they’d be getting stabbed with my heel. Also, ewww.

Unsurprisingly, the sheer excess of these practices, and drunkenness that often ensued, lead to anti-toasting clubs and movements. Although they were unsuccessful, the eventual result was toasting becoming more of a civilized, restrained and intellectual pursuit, rather than one purely designed for imbibing alcohol. There were even “Toastmaster” books published around this time. One of these was The Toastmasters Guide by T Hughes, which strove to instill proper toasting etiquette within the reader. Some of these books include examples of short, appropriate, but also witty toasts that were relevant to all occasions. Examples of these include –

Mirth, wine and love. 

May the works of our nights never fear the day-light. 

Old wine and young women. 

Prudence and temperance with claret and champagne. 

Love without fear, and life without care. 

May we never want a friend to cheer us, or a bottle to cheer him. 

A generous heart and a miser’s fortune

Evidence of this change in etiquette is still apparent today, and there are even still Toastmaster Clubs. Furthermore, while we still often include alcohol in our toasting, drinking directly after a toast is usually far more restrained, often just a sip, and more reminiscent of its roots – a practice used to honour someone in a respectful and revered manner, rather than a great excuse to get drunk.

As for the aforementioned raising of the drinking vessels and clinking them together, there are a couple of theories surrounding the origin of this, but as with the ultimate origin of toasting, we can only guess. Probably the most popular, and simplest, theory is that people originally did this to raise their drink to the gods or person being honoured in offering, before taking a drink themselves.  As to the clinking, this perhaps has similar origins of symbolically offering your drink to the people around you in a general toast.

Totally Useless Facts 2

Mr. Rogers was an ordained minister. The average person falls asleep in seven minutes. There are 336 dimples on a regulation golf ball. Stewardesses" is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand. A rat can last longer without water than a camel. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously  from the bottom of the glass to the top. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate. A 2" X 4" is really 1-1/2" by 3-1/2". During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily (I knew it!). Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood. The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple, and silver. What about "month?" The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan." There was never a recorded Wendy before. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist that discovered this??) Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow film down while shooting so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." The original name for butterfly was flutterby. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that  you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola. Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet. By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand. Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson." An old law in Bellingham, Washington made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them. (The suits or the astronauts?) ********************************************************************* Some American Colloquialisms their origins! In George Washington's days, there were no cameras. One's image was either sculpted or painted. Some paintings of George Washington showed him standing behind a desk with one arm behind his back while others showed both legs and both arms. Prices charged by painters were not based on how many people were to be painted, but by how many limbs were to be painted. Arms and legs are "limbs;" therefore, painting them would cost the buyer more. Hence, the expression, "Okay, but it'll cost you an arm and a leg." ********************************************************************* As incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year! (May & October) Women always kept their hair covered while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs. The wigs couldn't be washed so to clean them, they could carve out a loaf of bread, put the wig in the shell and bake it for 30 minutes. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term "big wig." Today we often use the expression "Here comes the Big Wig" because someone appears to be or is powerful and wealthy. ********************************************************************* In the late 1700's, many houses consisted of a large room with only one chair. Commonly, a long wide board was folded down from the wall and used for dining. The "head of the household" always sat in the chair while everyone else ate sitting on the floor. Once in a while an invited guest would be offered to sit in this chair during a meal whom was almost always a man. To sit-in the chair meant you were important and in charge. Sitting in the chair, one was called the "chair man." Today, in business, we use the expression/title "Chairman." ********************************************************************* Needless to say, personal hygiene left much room for improvement. As a result, many women and men had developed acne scars by adulthood. The women would spread bee's wax over their facial skin to smooth out their complexions. When they were speaking to each other, if a woman began to stare at another woman's face she was told "mind your own bee's wax." Should the woman smile, the wax would crack, hence the term "crack a smile." Also, when they sat too close to the fire, the wax would melt, and therefore, the expression "losing face." ********************************************************************** Ladies wore corsets which would lace up in the front. A tightly tied lace was worn by a proper and dignified lady as in "straight laced". ********************************************************************** Common entertainment included playing cards. However, there was a tax levied when purchasing playing cards but only applicable to the "ace of spades." To avoid paying the tax, people would purchase 51 cards instead. Yet, since most games require 52 cards, these people were thought to be stupid or dumb because they weren't "playing with a full deck." ********************************************************************** Early politicians required feedback from the public to determine what was considered important to the people. Since there were no telephones, TV's or radios, the politicians sent their assistants to local taverns, pubs and bars who were told to "go sip some ale" and listen to people's conversations and political concerns. Many assistants were dispatched at different times. "You go sip here" and "You go sip there." The two words "go sip" were eventually combined when referring to the local opinion and thus, we have the term "gossip." *********************************************** Some More Things You May NOT Have Known 1. Money isn't made out of paper; it's made out of cotton. 2. The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the varieties of pickle the company once had. 3. Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks -otherwise it will digest itself. 4. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. 5. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals. 6. Every person has a unique tongue print. 7. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine. 8. The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was albino. 9. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled. 10. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily. 11. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister. 12. Chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog. 13. Most lipstick contains fish scales. 14. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode. 15. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time. 16. American Airlines saved $40,000 in '87 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class. 17. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

Totally Useless Facts

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

Table tennis balls have been known to travel off the paddle at speeds up to 160 km/hr. 

Pepsi originally contained pepsin, thus the name.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist. (hmmmmmmm)

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. "Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall. The original story from "Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights" begins, "Aladdin was a little Chinese boy." Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

Honey is the only natural food that is made without destroying any kind of life. What about milk you say? A snail can sleep for three years. No word in the English language rhymes with "MONTH". Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches. Michael Jordan makes more money from NIKE annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined. The volume of the earth's moon is the same as the volume of the Pacific Ocean. Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremities develop faster than the rest of us.  A cow has to eat grass to produce milk and grass is living. The most common name in the world is Mohammed. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day. The "pound" key on your keyboard (#) is called an octotroph. The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat. The "dot" over the letter "i" is called a tittle. Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil. Ham radio operators got the term "ham" coined from the expression "ham fisted operators," a term used to describe early radio users who sent Morse code (i.e., pounded their fist). The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is "Live Free or Die." These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord. Chinese Crested dogs can get acne. Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world, at 0.08988g/cc. Hydrogen solid is the most dense substance in the world, at 70.6g/cc.  (A reader of this page stated that this statement is not true: Aerogel is the densest solid in the world at 1mg/cc.)  Each year there is one ton of cement poured for each man woman and child in the world. The house fly hums in the middle octave key of F. The only capital letter in the Roman alphabet with exactly one end point is P. The giant red star Betelgeuse has a diameter larger than that of the Earth's orbit around the sun. The longest place name still in use is: Taumatawhakatangihangaoauauotameteat uripukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenua kitanatahu -- a New Zealand hill. (See if your spell check has this word) Los Angeles's full name is: "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de losAngeles de Poriuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, "LA." Only 1 in 2,000,000,000 will live to be 116 or older. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. According to Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, it is possible to go slower than light and faster than light, but it is impossible to go the speed of light. Also, there is a particle called tackyon, which is supposed to go faster than light. This means if you fire a tackyon beam, it travels before you fire it. When you tie a noose, the rope is wrapped twelve times around because it's the same length as a person’s head. Hummingbirds are the only animals that can fly backwards. A cat's jaw cannot move sideways. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee. (Hardly seems worth it) If you passed gas consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet. A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes. ( In your next life do you want to be a pig?) A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour. (Do not try this at home ..maybe at work) The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates mating by ripping the male's head off. The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. (What can be so tasty on the bottom of the pond?) Some lions mate over 50 times a day. Butterflies taste with their feet. (Something I always wanted to know) The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue. Elephants are the only animal that cannot jump. (OK, so that would be a good thing....) A cat's urine glows under a black light. (I wonder who was paid to figure that out.) An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain. (I know some people like that.) Starfish have no brains. (I know some people like that too.) Polar bears are left-handed (Who knew...? Who cares!) Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.  Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar. The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing. The shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes. There are more chickens than people in the world. Two-thirds of the world's eggplant is grown in New Jersey. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched." On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag. All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on 4:20. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt." All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill. Almonds are a member of the peach family. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance. Maine is the only state (in USA) whose name is just one syllable. There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. Los Angeles' full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula" A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. The characters Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life." A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. The giant squid has the largest eyes in the world. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

25 Amazing Facts You Didn’t Know About Animals

1)Houseflies don’t allow their short lifespans (14 days) to hinder their musical abilities. They always hum in the key of F.

2)Ostriches can run faster than horses, and the male ostriches can roar like lions.

3)Bats are the only mammals that can fly, but wouldn’t it be awesome if humans could fly too?

4)Kangaroos use their tails for balance, so if you lift a kangaroo’s tail off the ground, it can’t hop.

5)On average, there are 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas. Bet you’ll think twice before going outside now – unless you’re this guy.

6)Tigers not only have stripes on their fur, they also have them on their skin. No two tigers ever have the same stripes.

7)Here’s a tidbit that might be useful if you plan on becoming the next Steve Irwin: To escape the grip of a crocodile’s jaw, push your thumb into its eyeball – It will let you go instantly.

8) Fleas can jump up to 200 times their height. This is equivalent to a man jumping the Empire State Building in New York.

9)A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. All the better for them to eavesdrop on your conversations and plot your demise.

10)Elephants can smell water up to 3 miles away. They are also one of the three mammals that undergo menopause – the other two being humpback whales and human females.

11)Koala bears almost exclusively eat only eucalyptus leaves and nothing else.

12)Because beavers’ teeth never stop growing, they must constantly gnaw on objects to keep them at a manageable length. Their teeth would eventually grow into their brain if they didn’t maintain them.

13)Beware an ant uprising! There are one million ants for every human in the world. These resilient creatures also never sleep and do not have lungs.

14) Oysters can change gender depending on which is best for mating. Talk about successful adaptation.

15)Butterflies have two compound eyes consisting of thousands of lenses, yet they can only see the colors red, green and yellow.

16)Don’t try this at home, but a snail can grow back a new eye if it loses one.

17)You can tell a turtle’s gender by the noise it makes. Males grunt and females hiss.

18)Giraffes have no vocal cords and their tongues are blue-black in color.

19)You might want to thank a squirrel the next time you enjoy the shade of a tree. Millions of trees are accidentally planted by squirrels that bury nuts and then forget where they hid them.

20)Humpback whales create the loudest sound of any living creature. And you thought the loudest sound came from that two-year-old you sat next to on your trans-continental flight, didn’t you?

21)Dogs’ nose prints are as unique as human fingerprints and can be used to identify them.

22) The slowest fish is the seahorse, which moves along at about 0.01 mph.

23)Pigs communicate constantly with one another; more than 20 vocalizations have been identified that pigs use in different situations, from wooing mates to saying, “I’m hungry!”

24)Contrary to popular belief, French poodles actually originated in Germany. Maybe you should’ve named her Gretl instead of Fifi.

25)Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards and their wings can beat at up to 80 times per second.

23 Useless Facts That You Totally Need To Know

1. People with higher incomes generally prefer theirtoilet paper to come over the roll, while those with lower incomes prefer it to go under.

n a 1989 book, Barry Sinrod and Mel Poretz revealed that 60% of people making more than $50,000 a year preferred the toilet paper to come over the roll, while 73% of those making under $20,000 preferred it to go under.

2. Women have been found to blink more often than men.

A study of spontaneous blinking patterns found women blink 19 times per minute, compared to 11 for men.

3. A jiffy is an actual unit of time, not just an expression.

In computer engineering, it is the length of one cycle of the computer’s system clock (around 10 milliseconds). In chemistry and physics, a jiffy is the amount of time it takes light to travel a distance of one centimeter — about 33.3564 picoseconds.

4. The lint that collects in the bottom of your pockets has a name — gnurr.

5. The founders of Hewlett-Packard flipped a coin to determine whose name would come first in the company.

6. Some animals, like the western spotted skunk, are able to delay their pregnancies for months.

In these cases, the embryos cease developing for a certain period of time before attaching to the uterine wall. Other animals with types of delayed pregnancies include otters and kangaroos.

7. Sigmund Freud once believed that cocaine could be used to help treat morphine addiction.

8. NASA had to rename the sizes of the apparatus used for male astronauts to pee, from small, medium, and large, to large, gigantic, and humongous, because no one was willing to pick their true size.

9. Flamingos get their color from the carotenoid pigments in the foods that they eat, like algae and shrimp.

10. The line between the two numbers in a fraction is called the vinculum.

The vinculum can have more than one term over or under it — it signifies that the group of terms is to be operated upon as a single expression.

11. You can get a rough estimate of the temperature by counting the number of times a cricket chirps in 15 seconds, then adding 37.

12. The U.S. pizza industry serves up to 100 acres of pizza every day.

13. Scientists accidentally killed the world’s oldest animal while trying to do research on it.

14. If you type in 52.376552, 5.198303 on Google Maps, you can see what is allegedly two guys dragging a dead body into a lake.

 

15. After each player has moved three times in a chess match, there are 121 million possible routes that the match could follow.

16. A standard 3x3 Rubik’s Cube has43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different possible configurations.

17. The verb form of the word “run” has been calculated to have almost 650 different meanings.

18. In the 14th century, French officials executed a pigin public who was charged with having eaten an infant.

19. A cubic inch of bone is about four times as strongas concrete.

20. Camels have three eyelids to help protect themselves from sand blowing in their eyes.

21. The world’s oldest chewing gum dates back at least 5,000 years.

22. An ostrich’s brain is approximately the same size as its eyeball.

23. The ideal height for you to drop your buttered toast from if you want it to land butter side up is eight feet.

50 Completely Useless Facts!

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. Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms  like fried bacon. Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions! What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France. "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order. "Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel. In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off! Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath There is a city called Rome on every continent. It's against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland! Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day! Horatio Nelson, one of England's most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness. The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe! The elephant is the only mammal  that can't jump! One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet! Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different! The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails! Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin! The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080. Women blink nearly twice as much as men. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.

Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th." Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it. On average a hedgehog's  heart beats 300 times a minute. More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes. The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words. More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand. The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times! The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Earth is the only planet not named after a god. It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA. You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206. Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food! Dolphins sleep with one eye open! It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old! The longest recorded flight  of a chicken is 13 seconds Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not Slugs have 4 noses. Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years! A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue! The average person laughs 10 times a day! An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain -------------------------------------------------