• Wales has the most Rugby pitches per capita with one pitch for every 1287 people. New Zealand is second: one for every 1528 people.
• The summit of Ben Nevis, Scotland, consistently has more wind than the summit of the Matterhorn.
• Geologists estimate that at the current rate of erosion the White Cliffs of Dover will become the White Slopes of Dover in March of the year 50257.
• Approximately two percent of the buildings in Europe considered to be 'castles' by the World Congress of Castle Architects are privately owned and inhabited as a primary or secondary residence.
• Since 1998 the number of pictures taken by tourists (both film and digital images) has increased by 984 percent. The number of prints made from these images has fallen 57.6 percent.
October 3, 2007
• An oak tree reaches full sexual maturity at age 8 or so. Over the rest of its lifespan the vast majority of the biomass it produces will be in the form of acorns, the weight of which will far outstrip the weight of new leaves, trunk, branches and roots combined.
• If the dairy industry in Great Britain were suddenly no longer able to use byproducts of the Scotch Whisky distilling process as feed, milk prices would rise approximately 23.8 percent inside of a week.
• Cromwell was a vegetarian. The only meat he consumed was in the form of what is now referred to as "scotch eggs".
• The mythical Icelandic folk hero, Sveinn Thor Sigurdsson, is supposed to have been the person who lit the fires that heat the hot springs for which Iceland is so famous.
• Printing costs for Norse publications are approximately 18.24 percent higher than in the rest of Europe and North America due to the extra ink needed to accommodate the prevalence of diacritical marks.
October 5, 2007
• When surveyed, three percent of Americans admitted to eating their M&Ms by color. Of this three percent, 78 percent start with the color containing the fewest M&Ms.
• When peanut M&Ms made their debut in 1954, then-president Dwight D Eisenhower enjoyed them so much that the M&M Mars company sent him an entire case of them for Christmas that year.
• The famous M&M slogan "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand," was coined by a good friend of Forrest Mars, one of the inventors of M&Ms. He was paid a token $1 for his contribution, plus a year's supply of M&Ms.
• Flavors considered and rejected by M&Ms include hazelnut, mocha, orange, and pretzel.
• The initial shipment of dark chocolate M&Ms, released in conjunction with Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
sold out within three days, a new record for M&Ms. Demand was so great that some consumers called the Mars company asking if there was anywhere that still had the dark M&Ms available.
October 8, 2007
• President George W. Bush's father was a Secretary in President Gerald Ford's Cabinet. Coincidentally, one of Ford's sons built kitchen cabinets for Bush's secretary.
• Sniper rifles are rifled clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the Southern due to the Coriolis force. Doing this allows approximately three millimeters more accuracy at 100 meters.
• Nearly one in three Americans surveyed agree with the statement "genocide is justified in some circumstances."
• William Taft was the least humorous President, and Bill Clinton the most, according to Professor Brenda Miles of Stanford University. She used 324 undergraduate students to give a double-blind rating of passages of every President's speeches to arrive at her conclusions.
• The phonemes for Professor Stephen Hawking's computerized voice were recorded by Michael Jacobs, who is now on trial for the murder of his wife. A spokesperson for Hawking says that he has no plans to alter his voice, even if Jacobs is convicted.
October 10, 2007
• For the Incas and Aztecs, having a stuffed penguin in one's household was a status symbol. Having a live one was a privilege reserved for kings.
• During WW II at least 502 Japanese service men were killed by tigers. The highest ranking soldier to meet his demise this way was Colonel Takanaki Shimoniki, who, while stationed in Burma, had eschewed using a nearby outhouse and instead went off into the forest to relieve himself.
• Convenience store clerks average 8 months, 9 days on the job before quitting. Thirty-eight percent quit to take a better-paying job and the rest decide they prefer to be unemployed. Of the approximately 1200 people who have held the title CEO or Chairman/woman of Fortune 500 companies in the past ten years, only 4 have ever worked as a convenience store clerk.
• As of May 2, 2007, wireless internet traffic was 8 percent of the total internet traffic.
• In France, supermarkets are required by law to sell truffles, escargot and champagne.
October 12, 2007
• The Putumayo agreement is the only rule in Mornington Crescent which has been enacted and repealed three times in the history of the game.
• 86 students from Queens College, London hold the record for the maximum number of people in bed together. The bed in question was only a full-sized bed.
• The rutabaga holds the distinction of being the only vegetable to amplify sound waves.
• "Googlewhacking", the attempt to find one unique hit by searching a combination of two or more words that can be found in the dictionary, has become a national pastime in Norway.
• Before becoming a protected species, the platypus held the distinction of being the Australian animal with the most failed attempts at domestication.
• In an average year, state, county and local highway departments in the U.S. will remove the following from the nation's roads: 114,324 deer carcasses, the remains of 87,666 raccoons, 56,128 dead squirrels, 12,827 deceased rabbits and 3 kangaroos/wallabies. Statistics for skunks and oppossums are incomplete.
• The average prescription filled in the US has 34 pills. In Europe the average is 29 pills.
• Twenty-seven percent of the households in the US have at least one data network. (6 percent have more than one). Of those households with networks, 69 percent have a wireless network and approximately half of those wireless networks are open.
• A poll conducted by the magazine, "National Librarian" found that 63 percent of librarians under the age of 50 think of themselves as being "more attractive than average" -- up from 27 percent when the poll was conducted in 1982.
• Manufacturers of yardsticks will allow a deviation of up to 1/128th of an inch before considering a yardstick to be defective.
October 17, 2007
• An 1831 law, still active to this day, mandates the United States Federal Government must provide all federal employees the option of receiving their wages in gold bullion.
• For every 250 hats manufactured on a given day, one is a top hat or hat over ten inches tall.
• A typical city pigeon spends nine tenths of its waking day airborne.
• Disregarding its litter-mates, Puppies are 80 percent more likely to socialize with a puppy of a differing breed, than a puppy of the same breed.
• 31 percent of business executives say the quality of a potential consultant's business card is a "important" or "very important" factor in selecting a firm for business to business services.
October 19, 2007
• From October to December of any given year, the average American housewife will visit four craft shows and spend a minimum of $100 at them.
• A recent survey of Barnes & Noble employees revealed that, while 18 percent say they read daily, 34 percent admit they hate to read.
• Detroit Tigers outfielder Magglio Ordoñez wanted to be a kindergarten teacher before deciding to play baseball as a career.
• 82 percent of the Americans who began collecting the state quarters when they were introduced will not finish their collection.
• Paul L Strios, who currently resides in London, England, holds the record for having lived in the most countries. In 45 years he has lived in 23 different countries for at least a year, including Belgium, Sweden, Lesotho, and Tobago.
October 22, 2007
• In 47 of the 50 states, the average voting machine lever has more germs than the average public toilet flush lever.
• An onion the size of a tennis ball has, on average, 127 layers.
• GPS units that estimate time of arrival and take into account traffic lights en route assume a traveler will have to stop at 50 percent of the traffic lights for an average of 48.04 seconds.
• Fischer Black (1938-1995) and Myron Scholes (b. 1941), who in 1973 developed the Options Pricing Model that bears their names, had published a paper in 1971 that determined that a first class airline ticket should cost no more than 44 percent above the price of an economy ticket for it to be worth the price. They published an update in 1991 in which they said the percentage was still valid.
• The average tiled bathroom in the US has 2473 tiles.
October 24, 2007
• For reasons that are not yet understood, people born in the Southern hemisphere are only half as likely to be right-brained.
• The first home pizza delivery service that allowed ordering by phone was started in 1927 by now-defunct St. Mark's Pizza in New York City. Deliveries soon fell prey to the Great Depression, and weren't revived until after World War II.
• According to the Museum of Television and Radio, All in the Family
and The Simpsons
are the only significant American TV shows to ever quote from the Koran.
• Only four films have ever won the Academy Award for Best Picture with a majority of the votes.
• Nine percent of adults between the ages of 18 and 55 don't know the zip code of their primary residence.
• More acorns fall during dusk than at any other point in time during the day.
• On average, green-eyed people earn 22 percent more money than their blue-eyed peers.
• According to a papal edict issued in 1449, and to this date unreversed, Catholics may not wear striped clothing on any high holy day.
October 29, 2007
• 47 percent of Americans have dressed up as a ghost for Halloween at least once in their life. 38 percent of female Americans have dressed up as a princess for Halloween at least once in their life.
• Larry Rosenzweig of Madison, WI was the last person inducted into the army as a conscript on October 18, 1973. He was released in February 1974 after suffering a collapsed lung due to "excessive hyperventilation". He currently lives in a suburb of New York City and is an accountant.
• A three blade propeller with a diameter of 17 inches and a pitch of 14° mounted on a 750 lb, 18 foot boat will produce 4 inches of movement for each revolution.
• In the United States no one has ever been convicted of using a plastic utensil to cause the death of another person.
• Ornithologists have calculated that a flock of 100 Canada Geese grazing on a one acre field for one hour will produce enough excrement that each goose will step in its own or another goose's excrement once ever 6.71 steps.
October 31, 2007
• Adjunct Professor John C. Reinard, of the Fuller Brush Institute, has determined that the optimal design for a toilet brush is a double helix, 18 3/4 inches in length with a bristle density of 28 3/4 inch bristles per linear inch evenly spaced in a radiating pattern and with a stiffness factor of 1.46.
• The average American 10-year-old who goes out trick-or-treating in 2007 will bring home treats whose caloric content will total 8,471.
• In 20 of the past 22 years, the American College Student Film Society has voted Bud Abbott & Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein
(1948) as the best movie to see on Halloween. The winner for the other two years was I Was a Teenage Werewolf
(1957) starring Michael Landon.
• In 2005, only 18 percent of Halloween parties had bobbing for apples as an event, down from 37 percent in 1985.