Michael has been the most common name given to American boys for every decade since 1950.
The flag of Libya is solid green, with no stripes, stars or symbols.
Saudi Arabia is the only existing country named after its royal family.
Nepal’s flag is not square or rectangular; it is a double triangle.
Mohammed is the most common given name in the world.
Chang is the most common family name in the world.
I don’t know how many Mohammed Changs there are.
About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they’re still sitting on it.
The “Arabic” numbers we use are actually Hindu in origin, although Arabic cultures expanded their use and probably added zero.
There are over 500,000 metric tons of tea in China.
Some Egyptian mummies had dentures.
David is the person most often mentioned in the Bible. Jesus is second.
Angels in the Bible do not have wings. They are fequently mistaken for people (and always men).
In 1992, semi-automatic rifles killed 20 people in New York State (less than one percent of the 2,394 murders that year). In the same year, 117 homicides in New York were caused by hands and feet (beatings and stompings).
10% of Americans read the Bible every day.
The name of the Wright brothers’ first plane was Bird of Prey.
In 1980, there was only one country in the world with no telephones – Bhutan.
Malaysians wash their babies in beer; it is supposed to ward off disease.
The Biblical account Noah’s ark doesn’t say that two of every animal was taken aboard. Rather, there were two of each “unclean” animal, and seven of each “clean” animal (clean animals were those suited for sacrifice and eating).
On a typical day, 46 million Americans buy books.
The average bank teller loses about $250 every year
Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star
Nowhere in the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden is an apple mentioned.
In Kentucky, 50% of the people who get married for the first time are teenagers.
Most American car horns honk in the key of F.
In Los Angeles, there are fewer people than there are automobiles.
Most lipsticks contain fish scales
On average, 42% of the price of liquor is Federal, state and local taxes.
A pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold, since precious metals are weighed by the troy scale. A troy pound weighs only twelve ounces.
Dice cubes are made so that the opposite sides always add up to seven.
Porcelain dentures used to be radioactive; they were laced with small amounts of uranium to make them look brighter in sunlight. The practice has largely stopped, since it makes them look red in fluorescent light.
In the late 1960s many people began to panic about overpopulation, and dire predictions continued to be made during the 1970s. A typical example was the belief that the population of Calcutta, India, would reach 66 million by the year 2000. In reality, the population of Calcutta did not exceed 14 million by that time. That means the predictions were off by a factor of four!
After the Battle of Waterloo, dentures made from the teeth taken from soldiers’ corpses were popular throughout Europe.
A 75-watt light bulb produces more light than three 25-watt light bulbs.
In the 18th century, opium, cocaine, and marijuana could be purchased from druggists over-the-counter, much as aspirin is today.
In the 1890s, a fad of body-piercing was taking several countries, especially Victorian England, by storm. Yes, people were putting rings and studs in all of the same places as they are doing now.
