Statistically, you are very unlikely to die in a plane crash, there are more survivors of plane crashes than casualties every year. The main problem in crashes is that under pressure, people try to open their seat belts like those in a car.
The parrot famously said, Pieces of eight, because the Spanish dollar was split into eight pieces. Two bits equalled a quarter of a American dollar, and two bits is still a nickname for a quarter.
Robert Newton, the first actor to play Long John Silver in a sound version of Treasure Island invented the stereotypical pirate voice. He is considered a Patron saint of International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Tony Hancock first became well-known as a Robert Newton impersonator.
The Nazis were against fox hunting because it was cruel and immoral. Adolf Hitler was put on a vegetarian diet, because of his flatulence, but he was not a vegetarian. The Nazis were worried that people wouldnt like them if they counterfeited pounds that were made in concentration camps, that tried to disrupt the British economy, so they backed out of the plan.
The Jury of Matrons would determine whether women who were pregnant were pleading the belly and had to wait if they could be hanged or not.
You can beat a lie detector by having exciting thoughts, clinching your anal sphincter (there are actually two of them, the internal and external one) without clenching your buttocks, or to relax completely when being asked control questions, such as your name or address. You cannot use lie detectors in the UK or USA courts. The FBI claim they are about as reliable as astrology and tea leaves.
The lie detector was invented by William Moulton Marston, creator of Wonder Woman.
The best way to trick a female spy into blowing their cover is by getting them to swear in their own language, particularly during childbirth, according to Heinrich Müller, the head of the Gestapo.
Harry Houdini hid an elephant behind a mirror as part of a magic trick. Houndini used to debunk psychics, but this cost him his friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle. Some people now believe that he did not die from a punch to the stomach, but of appendicitis, which was worsened by the punch. Some people want Houndinis body exhumed to see if he was actaully murdered by spiritualists.
As a joke, Arthur Conan Doyle once sent a five letters to five friends that read, We are discovered, flee immediately, to see what they would do. One of them disappeared and Conan Doyle never saw him again.
Harry Houdini could pick up pins with his eyelashes.
You can tell when you have run out of invisible ink by covering the paper with lemon juice or milk, and heating it to see what was written. Mansfield Smith-Cumming or C, founder of MI6, discovered you could also use semen as invisible ink.
Many of the paintings by Marcel Duchamp were discovered to contain semen in them, because he mix semen with his paint.
A bank robber from Pittsburgh in 1995 was caught by the police because he thought that by putting lemon juice on his face, he would be invisible.
Toilet paper helped win the Cold War because the Russians did not have much of it. So the Russians instead used secret documents, and spies stole the documents from bins, as part of Operation Tamarisk. The spies complained that they had to dig through all sorts of unpleasent items such as amputated limbs. However, this resulted in their spy masters asking them to steal the limbs to see what kind of shrapnel the Russians used. Operation Tamarisk was supposedly very successful, and without, there might still be a communist Russia.
You could use Gummy bears to rob a bank by melting them down, making a fake finger and leaving a false fingerprint.
There is an enzyme in pineapples called bromelain that can destroy fingerprints. It was used as a plotline in an episode of Hawaii Five-O. This enzyme could also be used to get rid of mouth ulcers.
The best thing to do in a falling lift is to cushion yourself by lying on top of a fat person, however, it is very unlikely that a lift would fall as all of the wires are capable of holding the lift, and they have emergency breaks.
In the Empire State Building, a lift did have all its wires cut when a B-25 bomber collided with the building in 1945 and the propellers cut the wires. However, the breaks worked and the passengers in the lift were saved.
The country were you are most likely to see a tornado is the United Kingdom, not the USA as most would think. On November 21, 1981, 104 tornadoes hit the UK during the day.
It does not matter what colour your clothing is in a hot environment. In many hot climates, black clothing is preferred although this does not warm one up notably.
No edible oysters produce pearls. The largest pearl was found in a giant clam. In the middle of a pearl, you will find the sarcophagus of a nematode worm or another such organic creature.
House dust is mainly made up of dirt and grit, but it varies according to place, season and other factors such as pets, but not as many think, human skin and dust mites.
Men are better than women at multiple choice exams.
Fainting goats help protect flocks of sheep by allowing the rest of the flock to escape from predators like wolves,whilst it is eaten. Older more experienced goats faint against walls to prevent themselves from being eating.
The jumping French lumberjacks of Maine have a rare disorder called Jumping Frenchmen of Maine, which lead to investigations into what became known as Tourettes syndrome. Symptoms of the disorder include obeying any order given to you suddenly and the need to repeat foreign phrases constantly.
In case Russia invaded Germany, the British Army placed bombs around the Rhine, but because it was so cold, chickens would lay on top of the bombs to keep the electronics warm and keep them working.
The chemical composition of Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, usually referred to as Ecstasy or E, was designed by the Germans to heal wounds during World War I.
The Germans checked to see people who were claiming to be neutral Belgians were not French spies by getting them to count. Seventy, Eighty and Ninety are named differently in French and Dutch.
The biggest thing in Europe that you can get for 170000 dollars a night is Liechtenstein. Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein wanted more power, and said that if he was not given it, he would sell Liechtenstein to Bill Gates. He got more power, but he later claimed he was only joking.
Britains railways were built by the navvies. They had to be trained for a year, fed on a diet of beer and meat and could out-perform any other manual labourer.
Originally, American trains were so light that when they went off the rails, the passengers simply lifted them back onto the rails themselves.
Originally, a railway station was not built in Slough in England because people at Eton College were worried that students would take the train to London and visit prostitutes.
To artificially inseminate an elephant, you need an ultrasound rectal probe, a light emitting tube, a bicycle helmet, protective clothing, a large amount of Vaseline and a wheelbarrow.
A vampire bat is most likely to bite your big toe.
The biggest load of rubbish in the world is the North Pacific Gyre, also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex.
The best place to hide during a lightning strike is inside your car because it acts like a Faraday cage. If that cannot be done you should crouch down into a ball with your bottom in the air. Trees explode from lightning strikes and splinters fly all over the place.
Men are 6 times more likely than women to be struck by lightning. Also, lightning strikes the Earth 17 million times a day. 3-6 people in the UK are killed by lightning every year, in America, the figure is 400. A park ranger called Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning 7 times in his life, although he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
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