Trivia

[lilhave]

If you are taking a class in pistology, you are studying faith.

"Mrs." is the abbreviation of Mistress, which originally was a title and form of address for a married woman. It was always capitalized.

On maps, adjacent countries are usually shown in different colors. The smallest number of colors needed for a world map is Four.

Shakespeare spelled his own name several different ways.

During routine conversation some time back, a stagecoach, wagon, truck, or cart of the past were often called "dillies."

The "snood" is the fleshy projection just above the bill on a turkey.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

A cluster of fireworks that revolve is called a "girandole."

It takes 100 sen to equal one ringgit, which is Malaysia's basic unit of currency. Malaysia is the only country that uses the ringgit as its primary legal tender.

Anthropologists believe stones were one of man's first calculating devices, aiding in addition and subtraction throughout primitive times. In fact, the word "calculus" is derived from the Latin for "stone."

Benjamin Franklin compiled a list of more than 200 synonyms for "drunk," including cherry-merry, nimptopsical, and soaked.

The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.

The adjective "saxicolous" refers to something living or growing on or among rocks.

The hairless area of roughened skin at the tip of a bear's snout is called the rhinarium.

The name Cynthia means "moon" in Greek.

Prevent near-sightedness! Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. "It's usually caused by near-point stress." In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles-like the eyes-into relaxing as well.

Thaw your brain! Too much Chipwich too fast will freeze the brains of lesser men. As for you, press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. "Since the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, your body thinks your brain is freezing, too," says Abo. "In compensating, it overheats, causing an ice-cream headache." The more pressure you apply to the roof of your mouth, the faster your headache will subside.

The medical term for snow blindness is "chionablepsia."

The Viking alphabet was called the Futhark. The letters, called "runes," were made from straight lines, making them easier to carve on stone or wood. Stones with writing on them are called runestones.

When sailors speak of sheets (as in "four sheets to the wind"), they are not talking about sails. A sheet in nautical terminology is a rope or chain.

Make your heart stand still! Trying to quell first-date jitters? Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing, says Ben Abo, an emergency medical-services specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. It'll get your heart rate back to normal.

The adjective "sesquipedalian" defines itself: it is used to describe the use of very long, or multi-syllabic, words.

The term "ace" was first used during World War I for a pilot who had brought down at least five enemy aircraft. The German equivalent was Oberkanone, which meant "top gun."

The word "sake," Japanese wine made from fermented rice, is shortened from the word sake-mizu, which translates to "prosperous waters."

The little-used adjective "tabescent" means to waste or wither away.

The name "Crayola" is a combination of the French word for chalk ("craie") and "ola" from the "oleanginous," which means "oily."

The robbery phrase "Hands Up" originated in British Columbia. Bill Miner, an American known as the Gentleman Bandit, is said to have first used the phrase while robbing a Canadian Pacific Railways train in Mission Junction, British Columbia in 1904.

Stanch blood with a single finger! Pinching your nose and leaning back is a great way to stop a nosebleed-if you don't mind choking on your own O positive. A more civil approach: Put some cotton on your upper gums-just behind that small dent below your nose-and press against it, hard. "Most bleeds come from the front of the septum, the cartilage wall that divides the nose," says Peter Desmarais, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat specialist at Entabeni Hospital, in Durban, South Africa. "Pressing here helps stop them."

Unstitch your side! If you're like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.

The numbers on opposite sides of a die always add up to 7.

The word "diamond" comes from the Greek word adamas which means "unconquerable."

To divide something into squares is to "graticulate."

The Incas and certain other pre-Columbian tribes in Peru developed the decimal system hundreds of years before it was used in Europe.

The longest English word consisting entirely of consonants (and not including "y" as a vowel) is the word "crwth" which is from the fourteenth century and means crowd.

The medical term for the condition known as writers' cramp is "chirospasm."

Per the dictionary, one definition of a "cartwheel" is a silver dollar.

Portmanteau words are descriptive word combinations, such as brunch (from breakfast and lunch), motel (from motor and hotel), and smog (from smoke and fog).

Rhubarb is named after the Volga River. In Greek, the name of the Volga is Rha, and barb means "uncultivated." Rhubarb is thus a wild plant that grows along the Volga.

Shakespeare was the first to use certain words that are now common, including "hurry," "bump," "eyeball," and "anchovy."

Someone who is eager or ready to shed blood is "sanguinary."

As of 1976, there were 110,200,000 TV sets in America, 372,000,000 radios, and 125,142,000 telephones.

The # symbols is often referred to as a "number sign" or "pound sign." Its actual name is an octothorpe.

The descriptive phrase "eighty pence to the pound" is a British term meaning "not all there" or "stupid."

The language of Taki, spoken in parts of French Guinea, consists of only 340 words.


While Spanish is the official language in Ecuador, there are numerous indigenous tongues. Quichua, the language of the Incas, is the most widely spoken indigenous language. English is widely spoken among professionals, the elite, and tourism providers in Ecuador.

The expression "three dog night" originated with the Eskimos and means a very cold night - so cold that you have to bed down with three dogs to keep warm.

Coined in the early 1980s, the slang term "rock jock" is a mountaineering enthusiast.

The number 4 is the only number, in the English language, that has the same number of letters in its name as its meaning.

Stop the world from spinning! One too many drinks left you dizzy? Put your hand on something stable. The part of your ear responsible for balance-the cupula-floats in a fluid of the same density as blood. "As alcohol dilutes blood in the cupula, the cupula becomes less dense and rises," says Dr. Schaffer. This confuses your brain. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional foot-on-the-floor wisdom.

The British term for abalone is "ormer." The word is derived from the Latin for "ear of the sea," alluding to its shape.

The number of atoms in a pound of iron is nearly five trillion billion 4,891,500,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The telephone area code for a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean is 871.

The term "classroom" didn't come into use in the United States until after 1865.

Make burns disappear! When you accidentally singe your finger on the stove, clean the skin and apply light pressure with the finger pads of your unmarred hand. Ice will relieve your pain more quickly, Dr. DeStefano says, but since the natural method brings the burned skin back to a normal temperature, the skin is less likely to blister.

[FOLrocks1]

These are really interesting.

[treky]

another one-900 people die from food poisoning each year.

(think about that when you sit down to your holiday dinner!)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

[80sTrivia]

Some very interesting facts!