Amazing Facts!

[lin]

Has anyone got any amazing facts they can tell us?

Amazing Facts
1.A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
2. A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.
3. A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue.
4. A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours.
5. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
6. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
7. A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.
8. A snail can sleep for three years.
9. Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
10. Almonds are a member of the peach family.
11. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
12. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.
13. Butterflies taste with their feet.
14. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds. Dogs only have about 10.
15. Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'.
16. February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.
17. In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
18. If the population of China walked past you, in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

[Belinda]

Hi Lin,I loved your Amazing facts list,but i have to question fact number 5.If goldfish only have a memory span of 3 seconds,how come my fish know when its 9pm :oThats the time i feed them every night and before i even stand up they all go to the top of the tank waiting for food. :Pthey only do this at 9pm ;D ;D x Belinda. ps,maybe thats an amazing fact in itself

[Belinda]

Hi Lin,I admit i cant think of any "Amazing facts"(except my goldfish)haha.So i cheated and went on google, I cant believe what i found.Did you know that every labrador retriever dreams about bananas ;D ;D How the heck do they know that :-/Im not having that x Belinda

[clancy]

BELINDA ;D MY BROTHER IN-LAWS FISH DO THE SAME THING IF YOU STAND UP THEY WILL ACT EXCITED THINKING THEY ARE GOING TO BE FED TOMMY XOOX

[Belinda]

Hi Lin,I forgot to mention that i also found an amazing fact about certain monkeys and what part of their body they use to help them hang from trees ----I think ive just found the evidence that man didnt evolve from the ape. ;D ;D x Belinda

[lin]

belinda2 said:

Hi Lin,I loved your Amazing facts list,but i have to question fact number 5.If goldfish only have a memory span of 3 seconds,how come my fish know when its 9pm :oThats the time i feed them every night and before i even stand up they all go to the top of the tank waiting for food. :Pthey only do this at 9pm ;D ;D x Belinda. ps,maybe thats an amazing fact in itself

HI BELINDA, I DON'T HAVE A CLUE ;D I KNOW WHEN WE USED TO HAVE TROPICAL FISH THEY USED TO DO THE SAME THING, I THINK IT'S A SENSORY THING OF ANY MOVEMENT IN THE ROOM...BUT AGAIN I DON'T KNOW FOR SURE

[lin]

belinda2 said:

Hi Lin,I admit i cant think of any "Amazing facts"(except my goldfish)haha.So i cheated and went on google, I cant believe what i found.Did you know that every labrador retriever dreams about bananas ;D ;D How the heck do they know that :-/Im not having that x Belinda

HI BELINDA....DIDN'T KNOW THAT, I ONLY KNOW WHAT I GET SENT TO ME ;D THERE ARE SOME AMAZING FACTS AROUND

[lin]

belinda2 said:

Hi Lin,I forgot to mention that i also found an amazing fact about certain monkeys and what part of their body they use to help them hang from trees ----I think ive just found the evidence that man didnt evolve from the ape. ;D ;D x Belinda

Hi Belinda....that's two facts you've come up with now I like this one ;D

[lin]

1. If you are an average American, in your whole life, you will spend an average of 6 months waiting at red lights.
2. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
3. Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
4. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.
5. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.
6. On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is an American flag.
7. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
8.Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
9. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
10. stewardesses' is the longest word typed with only the left hand and 'lollipop' with your right.
11.The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing.
12. The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
13. The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
14. The sentence: 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', uses every letter of the alphabet.
15. The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.
16. The words 'racecar', 'kayak' and 'level' are palindromes. They read the same whether you read them left to right or right to left.

[lin]

CO-OPERATIVE

The first CO-OP opened in ROCHDALE in 1884, here are some innovations that have shaped the way we Shop, Bank and Think.

1860. Henry Pitman, brother of the shorthand inventor Sir Isaac Pitman, started the first co-operative magazine, The Co-operator, which became The Co-operative News (it's still going today).

1919. The Co-operative College was established - one of the founding principles of the organisation was to support education.

1928. The Co-operative Wholesale Society vowed to only sell unadulterated goods, with honest weights and measures.

1930. The first (and only?) popular song about a shop was released, Stop and Shop in the Co-op Shop! by Gracie Fields.

1942. The UK's first self service shop was opened by the London Co-operative Society.

1944. Sean Connery got his first break driving a co-operative milk float in Edinburgh (which he did for four years)!

1973. The Co-operative Bank was the first in the world to introduce free banking for personal accounts.

1982. The Co-operative Wholesale Society (part of the group) banned fox-hunting with hounds on it's land.

1985. The Co-operative Wholesale Society announced that from then on, no own-brand toiletries or household products, or their ingredients, would be tested on animals.

1997. In partnership with Greenpeace, The Co-operative Bank launched the world's first biodegradable credit card.

1999. The Co-operative Bank launched smile, the UK's first full internet bank.

2000. The Co-operative Group was formed when the Co-operative Wholesale Society and Co-operative Retail Services merged, creating the world's largest consumer co-operative, whose activities ranged from food to finance, farms to funerals.

2003. The Co-operative switched all own-brand coffee to Fairtrade, which means an extra £1m each year is returned to coffee farmers in the developing world.

2007. In a study of five countries, UK consumers came out as the most ethically aware and The Co-operative Group was named the UK's most ethical business.

[lin]

1. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
2. There are more chickens than people in the world.
3. There are only four words in the English language which end in 'dous' : tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
4. There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: 'abstemious' and ' facetious.'
5. There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.
6. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
7. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.
8. Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.
9. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
10. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.

[lin]

Facts - Christmas Warnings

1. Three people die each year testing if a 9v battery works on their tongue.
2. Eight people cracked their skull in 1997 after falling asleep while throwing up into the toilet.
3. Eighteen people had serious burns in 1998 trying on a new jumper with a lit cigarette in their mouth.
4. Nineteen people have died in the last 3 years believing that Christmas decorations were chocolate.
5. Thirty one people have died since 1996 by watering their Christmas tree while the fairy lights were plugged in.
6. Fifty eight people are injured each year by using sharp knives instead of screwdrivers.
7. One hundred and one people since 1997 have had to have broken parts of plastic toys pulled out of the soles of their feet.
8. One hundred and forty two people were injured in 1998 by not removing all pins from new shirts.
9. Five hundred and forty three people were admitted to A&E in the last two years after opening bottles of beer with their teeth.

[lin]

1. The earliest maps were made by the Babylonians about 2300 B.C.?

2. The first map to represent the known world was created by Anaximander, a Greek philosopher, in the 6th century B.C.?

3. In 1507 Martin Waldseemuller, a German cartographer, was the first to add the Americas to a map he created?

4. The Chinese, Egyptians, and Phoenicians contributed to the world's geography by making long journeys and recording their observations of new lands?

[Lisa]

Hi Lin, Loved the posting on the Co-op. I remember the Co-op on Ashton New Road in Clayton, near the Greens Arms Pub. It was a double fronted shop with sawdust on the floor with chairs for the older shoppers. Try sitting down on one of the chairs when you are a teenager and you'll get told off by one of the assistants. It had a certain smell about it and you had to wait in a queue to be served. Bacon was sliced on a large rolling machine and butter was cut from a large slab. Biscuits were kept in glass topped tins under the front of the counter on view ready for you to choose. They were then weighed and put into thick paper bags. Sugar and loose pulses were weighed and put into similar bags and I was mesmerised how the assistant banged the contents down and neatly folded the bag and tucked in the edges, making it impossible for me to sneak a crafty biscuit on the way home!! Your goods were then written down on your shopping list and totalled. You then paid a lady who sat in a booth taking the monies. All your purchases were either put into a brown carrier bag with string handles OR you put the goods into your wicker shopping basket. A far cry from today's method of shopping......I know which one I prefer

[lin]

Hi Lisa, Glad you likes the Co-op posting, I thought it appropriate for the site. I remember the butter being cut from slabs etc.. Gone are the days aye? I often wondered why they changed the bags to plastic ones, I much prefered the brown carrier bags with the string handles to what we have today, those plastic ones break so easily. I had those wicker baskets myself, also other shopping bags...yes I know which one I prefer as well shop assistants were more friendly back then as well.

[Lisa]

Hi Lin, The shopping assistants of yesteryear always knew you by name, asked how you were, and they were often the source of the local gossip. It was amazing what I picked up waiting in the queue at the Co-op !!! I then went home to tell my mum that Mrs. So-and-so was pregnant, and Mr. So-and-so was carrying on with Miss. So-and-so etc. I often didnt understand what they meant but I knew from their intonation that it was a juicy piece of gossip......

[lin]

Hi Lisa, yes they did always know your name, and I guess most of the business's were small, so it was a case of the customer is always right.
I have gone home and said similar things as yourself, my parents looked at me and asked where did you get that word or information from, guess it was something I should not have known...but I didn't know what certain words meant things changed when we went down South, there wasn't so many shops on the corner of roads, they were quite a distance from where we lived and I was too young to go that far on my own.

[lin]

1. The smallest book in the world is called Chemin de la Cruix. It has 119 pages. It is 2 inches high and 1 1/3 inches wide. The largest book in the world is an atlas which is in the British Museum. It is 5 feet 10 inches high and 3 feet by 6 inches wide.

2. Did you know that books can breathe? People visiting the British Museum complained of getting headaches. This was because books seem to absorb or "breathe" in air and "breathe" out smells of their own. There was so many old books in the Museum that there was no fresh air left which meant people got headaches from breathing in bad air !!

3. "Book" comes from the word liber. Liber is a Latin name that the Romans used for the thin layer of stuff that is found between the wood and bark of a tree. The Romans used to peel the layer away from the tree and use it as paper to write on.

4. In the olden days when books were made by hand, a scribe would have to copy out the writings onto parchment. He was not allowed to make any mistakes! All day long he would just sit and copy down words using pen and ink.

5. Benjamin Franklin, an American, started the first lending library.

6. Chinese used silk to make their paper?

[lin]

AMAZING DOG FACTS

1. Worlds largest dog..... The worlds heaviest as well as longest dog ever recorded was an Old English Mastiff named Zorba. In 1989, Zorba weighed 343 lbs and was 8 feet 3 inches long from nose to tail!

2. Worlds tallest dog..... The tallest dog on record was named Shamgret Danzas. He was 42 inches tall (at the shoulder!) and weighed 238 lbs.

3. Worlds smallest dog..... The smallest dog in history was a tiny Yorkie from Blackburn, England. At two years of age and fully grown this little dude was an incredible 2.5 inches tall by 3.75 inches long! He weighed only 4 ounces! HE was approximately the size of a matchbox.

4.Worlds oldest dog..... The oldest dog that has been reliably documented was an Australian cattle-dog named Bluey. He was put to sleep at the age of 29 years and 5 months!

5. Worlds Best Drug Sniffing Dogs.....A US Customs Labrador named "Snag" has made 118 drug seizures worth a canine record $810 million. The greatest number of drug seizures by dogs is 969 in 1988. IN ONE YEAR! The team of "Rocky" and "Barco" patrolled the Texas and Mexico border, alias "Cocaine Alley." They were so good that Mexican drug lords put a price of $30,000 dollars on their heads.

6. All dogs, from the German Shepherd to the tiny Poodle, are direct descendants of wolves. They can all breed together and produce fertile offspring. Technically they are of the same species.

7. Dogs can very easily regurgitate. In fact, after eating wolves can travel significant distances back to their dens and regurgitate the food at will to feed their pups! Dogs can see color but it is not as vivid a color scheme as we see. It is much like our vision at twilight.

8. Some authorities estimate that some dogs sense of olfaction (smelling) is as high as 1 million times greater than ours.

[frankwalsh]

Hi Lin, just a thought but I was under the impression that the first co-op was the Manchester and Salford cooperative society, which in those days was a long way from Rochdale. The first free public lending library was in Manchester, something we take for granted now.Thank you for the interesting bits and pieces, keep up the good work, the brown paper carrier bags if I remember right used to cost sixpence, we used to sell farm fresh eggs in the butchers no fancy containers just a brown paper bag and sawdust, fish and chips wrapped in news paper, the M.E.N cut in to six inch squares for use in the outside lavy!! and all your mates had non poncy names, ah those were the days, some body sang they hoped they'd never end but they did. Regards, Frank Walsh.

[clancy]

hi Frank, i remember the newspaper for use in the w.c ;D also a terrible w.c roll called Izal i bet someone will remember that one it was like grease paper. Tommy

[lin]

Hi Frank, I was able to put it on here about the Co-op as being a member they sent me this information themselves, so it must be correct...glad you liked it though, certainly brings back some memories doesn't it?

[lin]

Hi Tommy..yes I remember that toilet paper, shiny one side, used to hate it...lol!

[lin]

1. The typical laboratory mouse runs 2.5 miles per night on its treadmill.

2. A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

3. The mouse is the most common mammal in the US.

4. The elephant is the largest animal on land. But it is much smaller than the blue whale.

5. The SIBERIAN TIGER is the largest cat in the world. It weighs up to 300kg (660 lbs) and can eat 27,2 kg (60 lb) of meat at one mealtime.

6. Did you know moths are not really attracted to light?Moths fly towards the blackest point which is behind the light.

7. Did you know Sailor, Dead Leaf, Paper Kite, Blue Striped Crow, Julia and Great Egg Fly are all names of BUTTERFLIES

8. The rhinoceros's horn is made of the same stuff found in our hair and fingernails which is called keratin. It also contains gelatin.

9. Ancients Greeks believed earthquakes were caused by giants fighting underneath the ground. The Ancient Japanese thought there was a giant spider living under the earth, and each time it moved, it caused the earth to quake

10. There are two species of rhino: the white (or square-lipped rhino) and the black (or hooked-lipped rhino). The black rhino has three toes on each foot. Both the black and white rhino have two horns.

11. There are over 900 different types of bats and they can all fly. The Vampire bat has less teeth than the other bats because it doesn't chew its food. It lives on the blood of mammals. Bats do not need to see when they fly, they use sound to help them figure out where they are going. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

[lin]

1. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

2. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet.

3. On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

4. The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.

5. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

6. Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

7. Did you know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?

8. Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.

9. In ancient Egypt, Priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

10. The act of snapping one's fingers is called a "fillip".

11. The dot on top of the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

12. Scepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing.

[lin]

1. Did you know the largest fish ever caught was the Whale Shark? It was 59ft long. These fish can weigh up to 15 tons.

2. A parrotfish makes its own sleeping bag to sleep in. It uses mucous (like spit) to make a see-through bag all around it's body to protect it from attack by other creatures in the ocean.

3. The blue whale is the largest animal on earth. The heart of a blue whale is as big as a car, and it's tongue is as long as an elephant.

4. The heaviest fish ever caught was the OCEAN SUNFISH. It weighed 4,928 lbs.

5.The swordtail is the fastest swimmer of all the fish

6. Most animals don't eat moss. It's hard to digest, and it has little nutritional value. But reindeer fill up with lots of moss, because the moss contains a special chemical that helps reindeer keep their body fluids warm. When the reindeer make their yearly journey across the icy Arctic region, the chemical keeps them from freezing-much as antifreeze keeps a car from freezing up in winter.

7. A Cloud forest hosts huge numbers of plants and animals; the cloud forests of Monteverde, Costa Rica, host over 425 bird species and more varieties of insects than anyone knows.

[moonshine]

The word 'iron' is the only word in English where the letter 'r' following 'i' is not pronounced.

[lin]

Hi Moonshine, thanks for contributing I'm sure we all learn something we never knew

[handy]

Wow Lin, more memories brought back for me. I was a little shop assistant in many years ago. I worked at a shop called Hugh Fay's in Clayton on the corner of North Road, and just about everthing got weighed and put into thick paper bags. I was scared stiff using the bacon slicer and God the smell from yeast made me feel ill. When I think back to those days we were not allowed to leave our work place till we had scrubbed all the counters down and re hung bacon in the back rooms. At times it was a nightmare as many a drunk would come in and try to ask for half an ounce ? and stand there for ages as they could never remember what they had come in for.
Still it was nice at times and I only left when I started my family.
Love Pat xx

[Belinda]

frankwalsh said:

Hi Lin, just a thought but I was under the impression that the first co-op was the Manchester and Salford cooperative society, which in those days was a long way from Rochdale. The first free public lending library was in Manchester, something we take for granted now.Thank you for the interesting bits and pieces, keep up the good work, the brown paper carrier bags if I remember right used to cost sixpence, we used to sell farm fresh eggs in the butchers no fancy containers just a brown paper bag and sawdust, fish and chips wrapped in news paper, the M.E.N cut in to six inch squares for use in the outside lavy!! and all your mates had non poncy names, ah those were the days, some body sang they hoped they'd never end but they did. Regards, Frank Walsh.

Hi Frank,Wasnt that claud (I cant spell her first name)Rogers who sang "Those were the days"in about 1972 x Belinda