The World's Greatest Book of Useless Information (9 page)

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years, there have been only 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.

Spain declared war on the United States in 1898.

The Hundred Years’ War lasted 116 years.

The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after thirty-?eight minutes.

The Spanish Inquisition once condemned the entire Netherlands to death for heresy.

Those condemned to death by the axe in medieval and Renaissance England were obliged to tip their executioner to ensure that he would complete the job in one blow. In some executions, notably that of Mary, Queen of Scots, it took fifteen whacks of the blade before the head was severed.

To strengthen the Damascus sword, the blade was plunged into a slave.

Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated two years after his death.

Close to seven hundred thousand land mines were dug up from the banks of the Suez Canal after the 1973 war between Egypt and Israel.

NOBLE NOBEL

The Nobel Prize was first awarded in 1901. It resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence—he invented dynamite.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Czar Paul I banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.

Russian I. M. Chisov survived a 21,980-foot plunge out of a plane with no parachute. He landed on the steep side of a snow-?covered mountain.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE (AGES) WITH YOU

During the Middle Ages, few people were able to read or write. The clergy were virtually the only ones who could.

During the Middle Ages, it was widely believed that men had one less rib than women. This is because of the story in the Bible that Eve had been created out of Adam’s rib.

Everyone believed in the Middle Ages—as Aristotle had—that the heart was the seat of intelligence.

FIRST IN LINE

The actors in the first English play to be performed in America were arrested, as acting was considered evil.

Euripides was the first person on record to denounce slavery.

Income tax was first introduced in England in 1799 by British prime minister William Pitt.

Leif Erikson was the first European to set foot in North America, in 1000 C.E., not Columbus.

New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, in 1890.

The first American in space was Alan B. Shepard Jr.

The Wright Brothers’ first plane was called The Bird of Prey.

Orville Wright was involved in the first aircraft accident. His passenger, a Frenchman, was killed.

The first man ever to set foot on Antarctica was John Davis on February 7, 1821.

The first people to arrive on Iceland were Irish explorers in 795 C.E.

The first police force was established in Paris in 1667.

The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names. It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company, in February 1878.

SKEWED BELIEFS

In Puritan times, to be born on a Sunday was interpreted as a sign of great sin.

In the 1700s in London, you could purchase insurance against going to hell.

In Victorian times, there was an intense fear of being buried alive. So when someone died, a small hole was dug from the casket to the surface, then a string was tied around the dead person’s finger, which was then attached to a small but loud bell hung on the surface of the grave. If someone was buried alive, they could ring the bell and whoever was on duty would go and dig them up. Someone was on the duty twenty-?four hours a day—hence the graveyard shift.

Long ago, the people of Nicaragua believed that if they threw beautiful young women into a volcano it would stop erupting.

In 1982, the last member of a group of people who believed the earth was hollow died.

WRONGFUL DEATH

Hrand Araklein, a Brink’s car guard, was killed when $50,000 worth of quarters fell on and crushed him.

In 1911, Bobby Beach broke nearly all the bones in his body after surviving a barrel ride over Niagara Falls. Some time later in New Zealand, he slipped on a banana and died from the fall.

A fierce gust of wind blew forty-?five-?year-?old Vittorio Luise’s car into a river near Naples, Italy, in 1980. He managed to break a window, climb out, and swim to shore, where a tree blew over and killed him.

THE NEW WORLD

It costs more to buy a car today than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to the New World.

It is estimated that within twenty years of Columbus discovering the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Native Americans.

Native Americans never actually ate turkey; killing such a timid bird was thought to indicate laziness.

Pilgrims ate popcorn at the first Thanksgiving dinner.

NATIONAL SING-?A-?LONGS

The national anthem of Greece has 158 verses.

The national anthem of the Netherlands, “Het Wilhelmus,” is an acrostichon. The first letters of each of the fifteen verses represent the name Willem Van Nassov.

Francis Scott Key was a young lawyer who wrote the poem “The Star Spangled Banner” after being inspired by watching the Americans fight off the British attack of Baltimore during the War of 1812. The poem became the words to the national anthem.

The Netherlands and the United States both have anthems that do not mention their countries’ names.

The Japanese national anthem has the oldest lyrics/text, from the ninth century, but the music is from 1880.

ADDICTED TO YOU

In 1865, opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867, it was grown in Tennessee; six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years, opium, marijuana, and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any chemist.

One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 1930s lobbied against hemp farmers—they saw hemp as competition. It is not chemically addictive, as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.

Nicotine was introduced by Jean Nicot (French ambassador to Portugal) in France in 1560.

ROAM IF YOU WANT TO

ON THE ROAD AGAIN…

One hundred sixty cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world’s widest road.

The highest motorway in England is the M62 Liverpool to Hull. At its peak, it reaches 1,221 feet above sea level over the Saddleworth Moor, the burial ground of the victims of the infamous Myra Hindley, Moors Murderer.

Built in 1697, the Frankford Avenue Bridge, which crosses Pennypack Creek in Philadelphia, is the oldest U.S. bridge in continuous use.

The Golden Gate Bridge was first opened in 1937.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation, one person is killed annually painting stripes on the state’s highways and roads.

IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME

Construction on the Leaning Tower of Pisa began on August 9, 1173. There are 296 steps to the top.

The Hoover Dam was built to last two thousand years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another five hundred years.

In Washington, D.C., no building can be built taller than the Washington Monument.

The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, has five sides, five stories, and five acres in the middle.

At one point, the Circus Maximus in Rome could hold up to 250,000 people.

Buckingham Palace has more than six hundred rooms.

The foundations of many great European cathedrals are as deep as forty to fifty feet.

At one point, the Panama Canal was going to be built in Nicaragua.

In Calcutta, 79 percent of the population lives in one-?room houses.

EI-?FFEL AWFUL

The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World’s Fair. The blueprints covered more than fourteen thousand square feet of drafting paper. The Eiffel Tower has 2.5 million rivets, and its height varies as much as six inches, depending on the temperature.

NAME GAME

Los Angeles’s full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula and can be abbreviated to 6.3 percent of its size: L.A.

There is a place in Norway called Hell.

There is a resort town in New Mexico called Truth or Consequences.

There is a town in Texas called Ding Dong.

There is an airport in Calcutta named Dum Dum Airport.

There was once a town named 6 in West Virginia.

There’s a cemetery town in California called Colma; its ratio of dead to living people is 750 to 1.

If you come from Manchester, you are a Manchurian.

Nova Scotia is Latin for “New Scotland.”

The abbreviation ORD for Chicago’s O’Hare Airport comes from the old name Orchard Field.

…OR MAYBE NOT

The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is “Live Free or Die.” These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord.

SOME STIFF FIGURES

If a statue of a person on a horse depicts the horse with both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

The Sphinx at Giza in Egypt is 240 feet long and carved out of limestone. Built by Pharaoh Khafre to guard the way to his pyramid, it has a lion’s body and the ruler’s head.

The name of the Statue of Liberty is Mother of Exiles. Printed on the book the statue is holding is “July IV, MDCCLXXVI.” The statue’s mouth is three feet wide.

The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by the then-?mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Worldwide, there are more statues of Joan of Arc than of anyone else. France alone has about forty thousand of them.

SCHOOL DAYS

The University of Alaska stretches across four time zones.

The main library at Indiana University sinks more than an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

Harvard uses Yale brand locks on their buildings; Yale uses Best brand.

Harvard is the oldest university in the United States.

DO YOU HAVE THE TIME?

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, has the largest water clock in North America.

The clock at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., will gain or lose only one second in three hundred years because it uses cesium atoms.

ON DISPLAY

The Liberace Museum has a mirror-?plated Rolls Royce; jewel-?encrusted capes; and the largest rhinestone in the world, weighing fifty-?nine pounds and measuring almost a foot in diameter.

The Future’s Museum in Sweden contains a scale model of the solar system. The sun is 105 meters in diameter, and the planets range from 5 millimeters to 6 kilometers from the sun. This particular model also contains the nearest star Proxima Centauri, still to scale, situated in the Museum of Victoria…in Australia.

WORLD OF WONDERS

No white man saw the Grand Canyon until after the Civil War. It was first entered on May 29, 1869, by the geologist John Wesley Powell.

The Taj Mahal was actually built for use as a tomb. It was scheduled to be torn down in the 1830s.

It is forbidden to fly aircraft over the Taj Mahal.

Due to precipitation, for a few weeks each year K2 is taller than Mt. Everest.

If you divide the Great Pyramid’s perimeter by two times its height, you get pi to the fifteenth digit.

The Great Wall stretches for 4,160 miles across North China.

The Angel Falls in Venezuela are nearly twenty times taller than Niagara Falls.

PERHAPS YOU WERE MISTAKEN

The many sights that represent the Chinese city of Beijing were built by foreigners: the Forbidden City was built by the Mongols, the Temple of Heaven by the Manchurians.

Three Mile Island is only 2.5 miles long.

I WANT TO BE A PART OF IT…

All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in New York City was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.

The amusement park Coney Island has had three of its rides designated as New York City historical landmarks.

Central Park opened in 1876. It is nearly twice the size of the entire country of Monaco.

The 102-story Empire State Building, completed in 1931, is made up of more than 10 million bricks and has 6,500 windows. It was built at a cost of $40,948,900.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

Since the 1930s, the town of Corona, California, has lost all seventeen of the time capsules they originally buried.

The San Diego Zoo has the largest collection of animals in the world.

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments.

The largest object ever found in the Los Angeles sewer system was a motorcycle.

LOCAL CUSTOMS

If you bring a raccoon’s head to the Henniker, New Hampshire, town hall, you are entitled to receive ten dollars from the town.

In 1980, a Las Vegas hospital suspended workers for betting on when patients would die.

There’s a bathroom in Egypt where it is free to use the toilet, but you have to bring or buy your own toilet paper.

Some hotels in Las Vegas have gambling tables floating in their swimming pools.

WELL, AT LEAST WE’RE NUMBER ONE IN SOMETHING…

As of April 2000, Hong Kong had 392,000 fax lines—one of the highest rates of business fax use in the world.

Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.

ADD IT UP

Forty-?seven czars are buried within the Kremlin.

Fifty-?seven countries were involved in World War II.

There are 3,900 islands in Japan, the country of islands.