Things You Should Know...

I received this email from my aunt this afternoon and thought it was interesting. I actually DID know a few of this already :)

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW BUT PROBABLY DON'T

1 Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton. ***Currency paper is composed of 25 percent linen and 75 percent cotton. Red and blue synthetic fibers of various lengths are distributed evenly throughout the paper. Before World War I these fibers were made of silk.***

2. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp (marijuana) paper.

3. The dot over the letter i is called a "tittle".

4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

5. ***This is the one that I found was untrue thanks to Wikipedia "Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Lucci ****

6. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

7. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

8. The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He was albino. ***Couldn't find out if this was true or not....but I did find out that 7up, as its first name suggests, originally contained lithium citrate , a mood-stabilizing drug. It was one of a number of patent medicine products popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries; they made claims similar to today's health foods.***

10. Warren Beatty is Shirley MacLaine's younger brother.

11. Chocolate affects a dog's heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog.

12. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

13. Most lipstick contains fish scales (eeww).

14. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830's as medicine.

16. Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower' because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'lower case' letters.

17. Leonardo DaVinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time hence, multi-tasking was invented.)

18. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

19. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

20. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was never a recorded Wendy before!

21. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver!

22. Leonardo DaVinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips.

23. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

24. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was a Captain Kirk's mask painted white.

25. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19 You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar (good to know.)

26. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand (and you thought this list was completely useless.)

27. 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.

28. The first product Motorola! started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola

29. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with. It's the same with apples!

30. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!

31. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher..

32. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

33. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.

34. George Carlin said it best about Martha Stewart .. "Boy, I feel a lot safer now that she's behind bars. O. J. Simpson and Kobe Bryant are still walking around; Osama Bin Laden too, but they take the ONE woman in America willing to cook, clean, and work in the yard, and they haul her fanny off to jail."

***Found a web site with TONS more "Did You Know" facts: http://www.kellys.com/know.html

• At latitude 60 degrees south you can sail all the way around the world.
• Giraffes have no vocal cords.
• Joe DiMaggio had more home runs than strikeouts during his career.
• Bananas do not grow on trees, but on rhizomes.
• The Dodge brothers Horace and John were Jewish, that's why the first Dodge emblem had a star of David in it.
• The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.
• Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant call Diamond Star.
• Only two people signed the Decleration of Independence on July 4th, John Hancock and Charles Thomson. Most of the rest signed on Augest 2, but the last signature wasn't added until 5 year later.

Ok I will stop :) If you want to read more, visit the site. There is even a little quiz at the end about some other facts.