[Stated “fact”: 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 dictionary were misspelled.] Not that I can find any evidence of. There is a possibility that this “fact” sprang from a piece titled “If 99.9% Were Good Enough” which has as a listed item, “315 entries in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language will turn out to be misspelled”. Ya think maybe… ?
http://www.dtrdenver.com/gpage6.html
Along that same line, here’s another commonly quoted “fact” that appears in the same piece identified above. [On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.] People, people, people…
http://www.dtrdenver.com/gpage6.html
By raising your legs very slowly and lying on your back, you can escape from quicksand. Basically, if you just relax, your body will float because your body is less dense than the quicksand.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/quicksand2.htm
In 2005, the United States generated approximately 245.7 million tons of municipal solid waste – that’s ordinary garbage plus appliances and furniture. That equates to about 4.5 pounds per person per day. (OK, to be fair here, this also includes commercial wastes which account for 35 – 45 percent of the total.)
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/pubs/ex-sum05.pdf
Recycling, composting and burning for energy recovery kept 112.4 million tons of the above out of the landfills. Beautiful – let’s do more of it!
http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/pubs/ex-sum05.pdf
As of October 2006, there were 100 million websites in the world. Approximately 46 – 47 million of those are updated fairly regularly so they are classified as active sites.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/11/01/100millionwebsites/index.html
The very first website was created in 1989 to share high energy particle physics data.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/11/01/100millionwebsites/index.html
And here’s the site “where the web was born”.
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/Welcome.html
The Three Wise Monkeys’ “names” are: Mizaru (see no evil), Kikazaru (hear no evil) and Iwazaru (speak no evil).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_monkeys
http://www.oldcopper.org/three_wise_monkeys.htm
Contrary to popular opinion, water does not go down the drain counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. The earth’s rotation – or Coriolis Force – has nothing to do with the direction of the swirling water. The direction is controlled by how the water is introduced and the design of the drain.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/coriolis.html
[Stated “fact”: In Chinese, the word for “crisis” and “opportunity” is the same.] This is similar to the expression “Crisis = Danger + Opportunity”, again using Chinese characters as the foundation for this premise. Well… interesting concepts but simply not true. I think maybe somebody was just being creative here. Maybe…
http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html
“The 13th step of the state capital building in Denver is exactly 1 mile high above sea level.”
http://www.50states.com/facts/colorado.htm
The tune for the “A-B-C” song is the same as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” But you knew that already, didn’t you?
In 2005, there were over one billion internet users in the world. Almost 204 million of them were in the United States.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2153rank.html
It’s estimated that there are about 1.349 trillion barrels of oil reserves in the world. We’re using it at a rate of over 80 million barrels a day. You want to do the math on this…?
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html
29.6% of the land in the United States is owned by the federal government. This amounts to 671,759,297.7 acres. 91.9% of Nevada is federal lands.
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/issues/more/land_envstatistics.htm
The average person’s left hand does 56% of the typing.
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-97/features/thecurseofqwerty1099/
[An often stated “fact”: A dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s.] It appears that some folks have NOT been paying one bit of attention to what dogs are eating – and licking. It won’t hurt the dogs to do this though because their physiology, including mouth bacteria, is different from humans. Bottom line is that a dog’s mouth is neither cleaner nor dirtier than ours – just different. It appears that the healing a dog promotes by licking its wounds is due mainly to the cleansing, not any super-special healing saliva.
http://yourpetsbestfriend.typepad.com/your_pets_best_friend/2006/09/a_dogs_mouth_is.html
http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/index.php?url=myths_dog_mouth_03.jpg&cat=myths
http://ask.yahoo.com/20060906.html
The popular image of witches riding brooms may have started a long time ago when women straddled brooms (a besom – a symbol of the Element Water) or pitchforks and “rode” them over crops to bless them. It was believed that the higher they jumped, the higher the crops would grow.
http://www.sacredcircle2k.com/witchdict.html
The most popular sailboat name is “Second Wind”.
http://www.10000boatnames.com/
In 2005, the most popular boat name was “Seas the Day”. “Aquaholic” was the biggie in ’04.
http://www.boatus.net/boatgraphic/names/top10.asp
“The entire state of Wyoming (population 509,300) has fewer people than the Harrisburg, PA metro area.”
http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/
“Loving County, Texas is the least populated county in the lower 48 states with 62 residents.”
http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/
80 percent of the United States population lives in a metropolitan area.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/
[Stated “fact”: There are more chickens than people in the world.] Yep. The 2002 guesstimate on world chicken population was nearly 16 billion. We humans are still cruising around the 6.5 billion mark.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/004/ad452e/ad452e30.htm
Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) were actually created in India.
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Ehistory/HistTopics/Arabic_numerals.html
The names of all the continents end with the same letter they started with – not counting the “north” and “south” of course. “A” seems to be pretty popular, doesn’t it?
Aw c’mon… we really don’t need a reference for this, do we?
[Stated “fact”: February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.] Believe that? Well, you shouldn’t even though you’ve probably seen this listed as a “fact” at least a couple of times. February is the only month that may not have a full moon - but the last time this occurred was 1999. It’s not all that uncommon…
http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/#mf
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/FullMoon.html
The U.S. uses 360 million gallons of gasoline… every day! Do you suppose there’s a remote possibility that some day we will have used it all up?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Current_use
There are about 167,000 gasoline retail outlets in the United States.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/experts/expertanswers.html#gasstations
One barrel (42 gal) of crude oil will make not quite 20 gallons of gasoline – plus some other stuff.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/experts/expertanswers.html#Gallons
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