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LTETRES ADN WRODS Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by istlef but the wrod as a wlohe. (Aren't you amazed to find this is absolutely true?) DID YOU KNOW?... Coca-Cola was originally green. Men can read smaller print than women can; women can hear better. The cost of raising a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: $6,400. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Hearts - Charlemagne, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Diamonds - Julius Caesar. In Scotland, a new game was invented. It was entitled "Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden".... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language. The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself. The Bible does not say there were three wise men; it only says there were three gifts. The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns. Crocodiles never outgrow the pool in which they live. That means that if you put a baby croc in an aquarium, it would be little for the rest of its life. A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 million developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300*C. The Russians used a pencil. Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eye". The State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska. There are over 650 muscles in your body. A smile uses 17 muscles, a frown uses 43! The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% (now get this...) The percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair. The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910. The youngest pope was 11 years old. The first novel ever written on a typewriter: Tom Sawyer. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has 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. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out. Studies have indicated that rocking a baby stimulates its cerebellum and causes the baby anatomy to mature faster. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age. Butterflies taste with their feet. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10. February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes, the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "goodnight, sleep tight". In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's" If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction. In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'. The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with. Women blink nearly twice as much as men. If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at a red light. "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month or what we know today as the honeymoon. No NFL team which plays its home games in a domed stadium has ever won a Super bowl until 2001 when the St. Louis Rams won. The only two days of the year in which there are no professional sports games (MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL) are the day before and the day after the Major League all-stars Game. THE YEAR OF 1903, just 100 yrs. ago... what a difference a century makes. Here are the U.S. statistics for 1903.... - Only 14 Percent of the homes in the US had a bathtub. - Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. - A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars. - There were only 8,000 cars in the US (most if not all had no registration) and only 144 miles of paved road. - The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. - Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union. - The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower. - The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour. - The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year. - A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. - More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home. - Ninety percent of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard." - Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound. - Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo. - Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason. - The five leading causes of death in the US were: 1. Pneumonia and influenza 2. Tuberculosis 3. Diarrhea 4. Heart disease 5. Stroke - The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet. The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30. - Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented. - There were no Mother's Day or Father's Day. - One in ten US adults couldn't read or write. Only 10 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. - Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health." - Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic. - There were only 230 reported murders in the entire US. Just think what it will be like in another 100 years. It boggles the mind. TRIVIA QUESTIONS... Q. Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of what? A. Their birthplace. Q. Most boat owners name their boats. What is the most popular boat name requested? A. Obsession. Q. What do bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers all have in common? A. All invented by women. Q. What is the only food that does not spoil? A. Honey Q. There are more collect calls on this day than any other day of the year? A. Father's Day. Q. What trivia fact about Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny) is the most ironic? A. He was allergic to carrots. Q. What is an activity performed by 40% of all people at a party? A. Snoop in your medicine cabinet. ACTUAL INSTRUCTION LABLES ON A HAIR DRYER: Do not use while sleeping. ON A BAG OF FRITOS: You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside. ON A BAR OF DIAL SOAP: Directions: Use like regular soap. ON A FROZEN DINNER: Serving suggestion: Defrost. ON A HOTEL-PROVIDED SHOWER CAP: Fits one head. ON TESCO'S TIRAMISU DESERT: Do not turn upside down. (Printed on the bottom of the box.) ON MARKS & SPENCER BREAD PUDDING: Product will be hot after heating. ON PACKAGING FOR A ROWENTA IRON: Do not iron clothes on body. ON BOOTS CHILDRENS' COUGH MEDICINE: Do not drive car or operate machinery. ON NYTOL (A SLEEP AID): Warning: may cause drowsiness. ON A KOREAN KITCHEN KNIFE: Warning: keep out of children. ON A STRING OF CHINESE MADE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS: For indoor or outdoor use only. ON A JAPANESE FOOD PROCESSOR: Not to be used for the other use. ON SAINSBURY'S PEANUTS: Warning: contains nuts. ON AN AMERICAN AIRLINES PACKET OF NUTS: Instructions: open packet, eat nuts. ON A SWEDISH CHAINSAW: Do not attempt to stop chain with your hands EVER WONDER WHY?... The US standard railroad gauge (width between the two rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots first formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question. Now the extraterrestrial twist to the story... When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you wonder why it's so hard to get ahead in this world BAD JOKE DISCLAIMER: We recognize that humor in general and especially in medicine can be risky. It is our hope that by laughing at ourselves (and others) we can make this subject more approachable. If you find any of these objectionable, we apologize. Many were sent by our friends, some were passed along via email and others spotted on other websites. As with most jokes, the original authors are unknown - but we thank them. If you have something to contribute - please send in. Thank you.
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Friday 9-May-2008 You are visitor #
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