Random facts and miscellanea

Published 10:30 am Saturday, August 22, 2020

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With help from the Internet, a few nuggets of information to make your day:

  • You probably thought it was the dryer that makes clothes shrink. Actually, it is the refrigerator.
  • A police recruit was asked during an exam what he would do if he actually had to arrest his own mother. His reply, “Call for backup help.”
  • Had it been necessary for a third atom bomb, the city targeted would have been Tokyo.
  • All your life, you likely have been aware that the word buck relates, in most cases, to a dollar. If someone notes that a certain transaction involved 50 bucks, you know that this means $50.00 dollars. When the frontier was being settled, nobody had money. Furs and hides were used as currency, and everybody bartered to get things. From this practice evolved the term buck, since a buckskin bought a dollar’s worth of goods for many years.
  • If you have traveled in Great Britain and someone noted something cost 50 quid, that is similar slang to bucks. Fifty quid equals fifty pounds, which is the currency in the United Kingdom.
  • Perhaps you know, perhaps not, how the term “shot” came about. Back in the days of the old west, a .45 cartridge for a six gun cost 12 cents. So did a glass of whiskey. When a cowhand was low on cash, he would give the bartender a cartridge for a drink. This became known as a “shot of whiskey.”
  • Bought the Farm. This came about during World War I when soldiers were given life insurance policies worth $5,000, which was about the cost of an average farm. If you died in combat, you “bought the farm” for your survivors.
  • The King of Hearts in a deck of cards is the only king without a mustache.
  • The first owner of the Marlboro Company died of lung cancer. So did the first Marlboro man.
  • The coldest place in the world, East Arctic Plateau; in August 2010, the thermometer reading was  -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • The world’s most populated city? Shanghai with 24,150,000 inhabitants.
  • The world’s least populated city is Vatican City, population 842. It is the smallest city and state in the world.
  • The highest point in the world: Mt. Everest, 29,029 feet. It is the closest you can get to touching outer space while on earth. (I wouldn’t even want a helicopter to drop me off there.)
  • The city which is the sunniest in the U. S. is Yuma, Arizona.
  • The most expensive city in the world to live  is Singapore. A Toyota Prius in Singapore costs $150,000.
  • The least expensive city to live in is Mumbai, India, where a head of lettuce costs $ 0.20. Rampant poverty brings the cost of living down.
  • The most visited city is London, nearly 20 million visitors each year.
  • Sweden consumes the most caffeine in the world; 388 mg per person, per day, the equivalent of 5 Red Bulls.
  • You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching television.
  • American Airlines saved $40,000 one year by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.

Bet you didn’t know this interesting fact — Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes or shark attacks. So if you go take a walk in certain places in Utah and Nevada, watch your “whatchamacallit.”