GregR
Footballguy
A collection of mostly useless but sometimes interesting things I've come across.
Links to previous Useless Trivia:
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5
#6 #7 #8 #9 #10
#11 #12 #13 #14 #15
#16 #17 #18 #19 #20
#21 #22 #23 #24 #25
#26 #27 #28 #29 #30
#31 #32 #33 #34 #35
#36 #37 #38 #39 #40
#41 #42 #43 #44 #45
#46 #47 #48 #49 #50 (100 questions)
#51
1) Welshman Robert Recorde is given credit for creating this.
a) the bobblehead
b) the bottle cap
c) the crossword puzzle
d) the equal sign
2) A pack of Wrigley's gum was the first product to be stamped with one of these.
3) Which country has the largest population of feral camels?
a) Australia
b) China
c) Russia
d) Saudi Arabia
e) United States
4) Why are ships portholes round?
5) What do the following 26 states have in common?
Arkansas, California, Carolina, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida
Georgia, Hampshire, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota
Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania
Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin
a) appear on the five dollar bill
b) have active uranium mines
c) have laws against riding horses while drunk
d) contain a 150 feet or taller replica of the Great Pyramid
6) Why are most Muppets left-handed?
7) True or False. Female koala bears have three v-aginas. (Stupid language filter)
8) Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum. What is the slowest we've recorded it traveling through other mediums?
a) 133,000 miles per second
b) 98,000 miles per second
c) 65,000 miles per second
d) 38 miles per hour
9) The section of spiked bones on the end of a stegosaurus tail is commonly known among paleontologists as the "thagomizer". How was the term coined?
10) True or False. There is an ant mega-colony that covers thousands of miles across multiple continents.
Links to previous Useless Trivia:
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5
#6 #7 #8 #9 #10
#11 #12 #13 #14 #15
#16 #17 #18 #19 #20
#21 #22 #23 #24 #25
#26 #27 #28 #29 #30
#31 #32 #33 #34 #35
#36 #37 #38 #39 #40
#41 #42 #43 #44 #45
#46 #47 #48 #49 #50 (100 questions)
#51
1) Welshman Robert Recorde is given credit for creating this.
a) the bobblehead
b) the bottle cap
c) the crossword puzzle
d) the equal sign
d) the equal sign. A mathematician, Recorde grew tired of writing "is equal to" repeatedly in his book The Whetstoe of Witte. It took time for "=" to catch on in popularity. Into the 1700s some used "||", or "ae" for the Latin word aequalis. But the equal sign won out in the end.
2) A pack of Wrigley's gum was the first product to be stamped with one of these.
A UPC barcode. Barcode scanners first went into use in 1974.
3) Which country has the largest population of feral camels?
a) Australia
b) China
c) Russia
d) Saudi Arabia
e) United States
a) Australia. There are about 700,000 feral camels in central Australia, descended from animals introduced as a method of transportation in the 19th and early 20th centuries. There are also feral camel populations in India and Kazakhstan. The only true wild camels left are the critically endangered wild Bactrian camels of the Gobi Desert. Native camels in North America were wiped out during the spread of Native Americans 10-12 thousand years ago.
4) Why are ships portholes round?
The round shape distributes the pressure evenly around the edges. If they had angles the stresses would concentrate at those points and be more likely to lead to cracks.
5) What do the following 26 states have in common?
Arkansas, California, Carolina, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida
Georgia, Hampshire, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota
Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania
Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin
a) appear on the five dollar bill
b) have active uranium mines
c) have laws against riding horses while drunk
d) contain a 150 feet or taller replica of the Great Pyramid
a) appear on the five dollar bill. Don't believe me? Grab a fresh bill and a magnifying glass, and check the back.
6) Why are most Muppets left-handed?
Because the puppeteers are right-handed and use that hand to control the Muppet's head, leaving their left to control the Muppet's left hand. Some Muppets may have a second puppeteer handle the other hand, or may use rods to control both Muppet hands with their left hand.
7) True or False. Female koala bears have three v-aginas. (Stupid language filter)
True. So do other marsupials such as kangaroos, wombats, and Tasmanian devils. An offspring comes down the middle one, while the outer two provide paths for sperm to travel. Which works, since male marsupials often have a two-pronged penis.
8) Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum. What is the slowest we've recorded it traveling through other mediums?
a) 133,000 miles per second
b) 98,000 miles per second
c) 65,000 miles per second
d) 38 miles per hour
d) 38 mph, slow enough to avoid a ticket in most residential areas. The light was shot through extremely cold sodium atoms. The light slows down as the photons interact with surrounding molecules.
Our Galileo pointed out some other articles that improve on the 38mph figure I'd seen, even to the point of "stopping" light in place. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1124540.stm
Our Galileo pointed out some other articles that improve on the 38mph figure I'd seen, even to the point of "stopping" light in place. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1124540.stm
9) The section of spiked bones on the end of a stegosaurus tail is commonly known among paleontologists as the "thagomizer". How was the term coined?
It came from one of Gary Larson's Farside comic strips. http://www.dinochecker.com/img/faq/thagomizer.gif
10) True or False. There is an ant mega-colony that covers thousands of miles across multiple continents.
True. Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica. In Europe, one colony stretches for 6,000km while another in the US extends over 900km along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan. Though they always aggressively fight ants from other colonies, when the ants from these far flung colonies are brought together, the ants rubbed antennae with one another and never became aggressive or tried to avoid one another. Researchers found they share a chemical profile of hydrocarbons on their cuticles.
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I wonder if he was also beaten in a burlap sack when he was insolent
