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- ALMANAC 1991
-
- Chapter 1
- MISCELLANEOUS
-
- Americans use enough toilet paper in one day to wrap around
- the world 9 times. If it were on one giant roll, we would be
- unrolling it at the rate of 7600 miles per hour - roughly mach 10,
- ten times the speed of sound.
-
- If you could stack up all the copies of the Guinness Book of
- World Records made just in the year 1985, your pile would reach
- into outer space. It would be 1006 miles high.
-
- Try to say the alphabet without moving your lips or your
- tongue. Every letter will sound exactly the same.
-
- At one time Thoreau was a school teacher. When he was accused
- by his principal of leniency, he immediately grabbed six random
- kids from his class and spanked them.
-
- There are 86,400 seconds in a day.
-
- One out of every 144 people in America has the last name of
- Smith.
-
- Population of America: 243,000,000. If you start counting
- as fast as you can, it will take you 32 years to count to this
- number.
-
- The average American will walk approximately 70,000 miles in
- a lifetime, which is almost three times around the earth at the
- equator.
-
- People who have computers in their homes tend to watch 40
- percent less television than average.
-
- A NOTE ABOUT THIS DATABASE: I hope you enjoy reading this
- information as much I have enjoyed collecting it! Almost all of it
- is completely true! Some facts are disputable, especially
- historical accounts. This is because they are based on eye-witness
- accounts related to others who put them in print. They may have
- lost something in the translation.
- All the information in this database is reliably based on
- what others have written. However, you may wish to conduct your
- own research to make absolutely sure of the facts.
-
- The smallest church in the world is in Kentucky. There is
- room inside for three people.
-
- At a wedding in Los Angeles a woman legally married a rock.
-
- There about 1,800 thunderstorms occuring around the world at
- any given moment.
-
- 60 years ago there were only half as many Americans as there
- are now.
-
- The most words on a single postage stamp is 746 (from the
- country of Greece, year: 1954)
-
- Violins have been made from wood, steel and pottery.
-
- A devout Hindu, to demonstrate his mastery over pain, raised
- his arm above his head and kept it that way for years. He held so
- still that a bird built a nest in his hand.
-
- If you have trouble getting to sleep, try thinking about
- rain.
-
- Only .00045 percent of mail handled by the post office is
- reported lost, that's one letter out of 220,000 - roughly one lost
- out of a quarter million letters.
-
- If you are in a plane wreck, the chances that you will live
- are 90 percent.
-
- Statistics indicate that there is no safest place to sit on
- commercial airplanes.
-
- If your alarm clock is not loud enough, put it on a tin pie
- plate.
-
- When you have difficulty hammering small nails, you can use
- an ordinary comb to hold the nails while you start them.
-
- I found this item in the Farmer's Almanac, who found it in
- the Union County Advocate from Morganfield, Kentucky:
-
- Dear Stanley,
- I write to let you know I am still alive. I am
- writing slowly as I know you don't read fast.
- You won't know the house when you come home - we
- moved. We had trouble moving, especially the bed - the
- man wouldn't let us take it in the taxi and we were
- afraid we might wake your father.
- Your father has a nice new job and very
- responsible. He has about 500 people under him - he
- cuts the grass at the cemetery.
- Our neighbors, the Browns, started keeping pigs -
- we got wind of it yesterday.
- I got my appendix out and a dishwasher put in.
- There is a washing machine in the new house here, but it
- don't work too good. Last week I put 14 shirts in the
- washer and pulled that chain. They whirled around real
- good but then disappeared. I think something is wrong
- with the machine.
- Your uncle Dick drowned last week in a whiskey vat
- at the distillery. Four of his work mates dived in to
- save him but he fought them off bravely. We cremated his
- body the next day and just got the fire out this
- morning.
- I went to the doctor with your father last week.
- The doctor put a small glass tube in my mouth and told
- me not to open it for ten minutes. You father wanted to
- buy it from him.
- It rained only twice last week - once for three
- days and once for four days. Monday was so windy that
- our chicken laid the same egg four times.
- I got a letter from the undertaker this morning.
- He said if we don't make up the installments on your
- grandmother's grave - up she comes.
-
- Your loving mother,
- Stella
-
- P.S. I was going to send you $10 but I had already
- sealed the envelope.
-
- There is a house in Margate, New Jersey that is made in the
- shape of an elephant. A home in Norman, Oklahoma is shaped like a
- chicken.
-
- There is a house in Massachusetts which is made entirely from
- newspapers. The floors, walls, even the furniture is made from
- newspaper.
-
- Another house, this one in Canada, is made of 18,000
- discarded glass bottles.
-
- The population of the world grows by two percent per year.
-
- One out of every 21 people in the world is an American.
-
- A man named Johann Hurlinger walked from Vienna to Paris on
- his hands. This could qualify as one of the world's amazing
- "feats" except he used his hands.
-
- The motto of M-G-M movie studios is "Art for Art's sake."
-
- In New York City, there are 37 taxi drivers who are each
- named Amarjit Singh.
-
- Approximately one out of every ten people who ever lived are
- alive today.
-
- The top of the Empire State Building flexes back and forth a
- few feet in heavy winds.
-
- At one time in Spain people often brushed their teeth with
- stagnant urine.
-
- An Indian emperor was given four wives when he inherited the
- throne at the age of eight.
-
- European men used to be vain about their legs - to the point
- where they knew which leg was the best looking. These men would
- place their "best foot forward".
-
- World wide there are 1,006.7 men for every 1,000 women.
-
- If you talk on the telephone an average amount of time, and
- if you could be paid minimum wage for this time, you would get
- about $500 per year.
-
- If you read the newspaper a typical amount of time, and if
- you could be paid minimum wage for that, you would make just over
- $1,000 per year.
-
- In a happiness survey based upon a scale of 1 to 10, lottery
- winners rated their happiness 7; paraplegics 6!
-
- An 18-watt fluorescent light gives off as much usable light
- as a 75-watt incandescent (regular) bulb. It is estimated that
- replacing a single incandescent with a fluorescent will save as
- much electricity as is generated by 400 pounds of coal per year.
-
- The human race is about 2500 generations old. Electricity
- and all of the inventions it has spawned, radio, tv, telephones,
- electric motors, and computers were put into use less than 5
- generations ago. Much less than 1 percent of all our time on earth
- has been serviced by these wonderful inventions.