Not really sure if these are useless, but they are interesting:
1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
2. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".
3. Almonds are members of the peach family.
4. The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
5. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
6. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
7. The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
8. "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."
9. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
10. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
11. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosesl.
12. The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakit natahu, a New Zealand hill.
(Seriously...who the hell came up with that name?)
13. Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size,L.A.
14. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
15. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
16. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
17. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
18. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
19. The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
21. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
23. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
24. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
27. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
28. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
30. The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
31. 'Stewardesses' is the longest English word that is typed with only the left hand.
33. The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways; the following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
34. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
35. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."
36. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian seal for that reason.
37. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
38. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead."
39. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
40. If you yelled for 8 years,7 months and 6 days you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
41. If you farted consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
42. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the
body to squirt blood 30 feet.
43. A pig's orgasm lasts 30 minutes.
44. A cockroach will live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
45. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
46. The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by ripping the male's head off.
47. The flea can jump 350 times its body length. It's like a human jumping the length of a football field.
48. The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds.
49. Some lions mate over 50 times a day.
(I still envy the pig...quality over quantity )
50. Butterflies taste with their feet.
51. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
52. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.
53. Elephants are the only animal that cannot jump.
54. A cat's urine glows under a blacklight.
55. Starfish have no brains.
56. Polar bears are left-handed.
57. Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
I actually did my speech on it last year (as I was in the 8th grade and we still had to do those)
I actually did my speech on it last year (as I was in the 8th grade and we still had to do those)
