Factoids

Factoid (n) A statement that could plausibly be true, but probably isn't.

And so it begins...

• rab - Every chicken's egg contains enough fluid to cover the surface of the earth to the depth of one molecule.
• Tuj - The average person will say "chintz" 14 times in their life.
• Raak - There are deep sea fish which concentrate gold from sea water. When they die, they sink rapidly to the sea bed, which in places contains a higher proportion of gold than the richest gold mines on land. However, the difficulty of accessing the deep sea bed makes it uneconomical to harvest.
• rab - There is 20% more air at the seaside.
• Projoy - rab makes very large omelettes which are very hard to turn over.
• Raak - Denmark has the longest coastline of any country in the world.
• Rosie - No-one indulged in premarital sex in the 1950's.
• Dujon - Per head of population shepherds are known to have a higher incidence of crooks within their trade than does any other union or guild.
• Tuj - In 1997 Japan overtook USA as the country with the most goldfish.
• Raak - The bubbles of bubblewrap are filled with intoxicant gas, and popping them is technically a criminal offence.
• Inkspot - The volume of text messages sent in Britain each day, would fill a complete set of Encyclopaedia Britannica.
• Projoy - If all the paper produced in one year were made into papier maîche trees, the area covered would be equal to all the world's major deserts.
• Raak - Origami derives from a method of making lightweight arrow heads by folding the leaves of a species of gingko tree to produce razor-sharp cutting edges.
• Projoy - It is against agreed professional ethical standards for dentists to look you in the eye while giving treatment.
• rab - Homosexuality was invented in the 1970's.
• Inkspot - A frisbee thrown by an astronaut during a space walk on board space shuttle Discovery, took six months to get to the moon.
• Raak - The natural smell of leather has a tendency to scare domestic animals. To avoid this, an essential part of the manufacturing process is to stack the animal skins in layers alternating with layers of horse dung, roll them up, and store them in barrels for six months. What we think of as the smell of leather is actually the result of this process.
• Irouléguy - Italy is the only team in the World Cup that has no left-handed forwards.
• Rosie - The wind-chill temperature in Antarctica can go below Absolute Zero.
• Darren - Pharmacists have to try out, on themselves, every drug they are allowed to sell.
• Inkspot - The wheelbarrow was originally designed as a means of transport of carrying drunken husbands home from the pub.
• Darren - Sugar cubes and OXO cubes differ only in the colouring dyes applied; all other ingredients and nutritional properties are identical.
• Darren - It is possible to make a Rubik's cube unsolvable by performing as few as six turns.
• penelope - The 'frisbee' quality of biscuits is determined by the nature of the top surface. In scientific tests, smooth-topped Rich Tea scored the longest distance, and Lincoln showed the greatest lift, due to the vortices created by the regular pattern of knobbles on the top. Maryland Cookies will not fly.
• Irouléguy - Sucking tea through Tim-Tams is illegal in three counties in southern Tasmania.
• Darren - Neon is so named because of its use in neon lights.
• Chalky - Scientific tests prove that most Liverpudlians have chronic catarrh.
• Rosie - The flapping of a swan's wing can break your arm.
• Kim - Jean Genet had no eyebrows.
• Néa - The word "nifty" means "sexually aroused" in several Dravidian languages.
• Raak - The ostrich is the only bird that can climb trees.
• Rosie - Whatever weather America gets we get a week later. (Darren) Same as "halogen", then? Good stuff, halogen. :-)
• Darren - Tidal surges are caused by particularly large ships being launched nearby.
• Raak - The three-toed sloth actually has four toes, one on each foot, but as they fall off regularly and are regrown, the typical sloth only has three toes at any one time.
• Darren - In the Southern Hemisphere, compasses point towards the south.
• Dujon - The Coriolis Force is the reason why more left-handed people, per head of population, are found in the southern hemisphere than in the northern. (Darren: Sorry, your entry is now null and void - points will be deducted. Depending on how you read it, your statement is correct).
• Rosie - In certain states of America it is illegal to address an accountant as "buster".
• rab - It is impossible to cut a circular cake into more than sixteen equal-sized pieces.
• Raak - There are always seven Wonders of the World. If one is destroyed, an unranked Wonder ascends to the Seven. However, knowledge of which are the Seven Wonders was lost in the 16th century.
• rab - There will never be thirteen British monarchs with the same name, since it would unleash a constitutional crisis as to whether the last should be designated XIII or XIIb.
• Irouléguy - In 1977, one teenage in four in Burnley was in a punk band.
• Software - People choose to live near Heathrow airport because of its much acclaimed air of tranquility and silence.
• Darren - Lightning is an illusion caused when the shockwave of the thunder noise passes through the aqueous humour of your eye.
• Botherer - There are no such things as cats, just many genetically modified rabbits.
• Rosie - Girls are much cleverer than boys these days.
• Software - That's because all the clever boys change sex.
• rab - (I can easily disprove at last three of the above; more plausibility please!)
• Simons Mith - When attempting to produce a statement that could plausibly be true, but probably isn't, the probability that additional statements will enter outright lie territory rises in proportion to the 2.5th power of the number of statements made thus far.
• rab - All Italians know each other.
• Blob - Liechtenstein is the only European country that England has not been to war against.
• Raak - The sex organs of mammals evolved from symbiotic organisms that eventually became permanently attached to the bodies of their hosts.
• Botherer - There is no word for yacht in Afrikaans.
• Software - Your home PC will run much faster if it is submerged in a bath of cold water.
• Irouléguy - Sky TV has never shown a Shakespeare film.
• Tuj - The average person has 29 friends, of whom at least 8 will not reciprocate the friendship.
• Rosie - The venom extracted from one cobra could kill the entire population of Basingstoke, Milton Keynes and Cwmbran combined.
• Kim - By the time this game is finished, at least 1.4% of the statements contained in it will be not just plausible but actually true.
• Raak - [Rosie] If that's true, why hasn't anyone done it yet?
• Raak - For some species of butterfly, their larval form is not a caterpillar, but a plant.
• Chalky - It is impossible to eat a jam doughnut without licking ones lips.
• Botherer - If there are 3 men in any one room, there is a 12.7% chance that one of them has slept with Leah from Big Brother.
• Raak - Truffles are cancerous growths that bud off the roots of certain trees.
• Rosie - In Canada people over 60 purchasing condoms are required to present a doctor's certificate. (Raak) I was hoping someone would say that. Good man.
• Software - The first World Cup was played in South America between the Incas and the Aztecs. The Aztecs won 1 - 0.
• Néa - If a baby boy is born in the first half of the year, the chance that he'll be named Michael is 38% greater than if he'd been born in July or later.
• Raak - 100% pure ethanol is as corrosive to human flesh as sulphuric acid.
• Botherer - Nobody has ever actually been to the North Pole. All footage of claimed forays was filmed on a permanently erected soundstage at Elstree.
• Darren - The word "chicken" originated as a contraction of "chick-to-hen," describing accurately the lifecycle of the bird, which, uniquely, has no male of the species.
• Botherer - Don't buy replacement printer cartridges. It's cheaper to but a new printer with free replacements.
• Software - The Eiffel Tower is constructed entirely out of pipe cleaners and drinking straws [Both] Actually, that is entirely believable.
• Inkspot - Plankton are the most promiscuous life from on the planet.
• Raak - There is more water underneath the Sahara desert than there would be in a lake of the same size.
• Darren - Jupiter's density is so low that its total mass is less than all the sand in the Sahara put together.
• Rosie - The real reason people born just after WWII are called baby boomers is due to their poor diet, consequent on food rationing, which cause them to be quite outrageously flatulent.
• Botherer - Before Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity in 1666, people and objects floated in the air unless they were tethered down. The discovery on the 2nd September meant everything suddenly fell to earth. This was the real cause of the Great Fire of London.
• Raak - For certain medical conditions it is possible to have Guinness prescribed on the NHS.
• Software - The game of cricket was called after the insect of the same name because of the similarity between the sound of the bat on the ball and the noise made during mating.
• Tuj - A football weighs less than an elastic band ball of the same size would.
• Rosie - A glass of red wine every day provides protection against all known diseases. (Botherer) What air?:-)
• Phil - The word kara-oke is Japanese for I will survive
• Darren - In Dad's Army, Captain Mainwaring's famous line, "You stupid boy," was originally written as "You f***ing tw*t, Pike," and was only changed at the very last minute after concerns were raised among BBC bosses.
• Software - hen dropped from an aeroplane, elastic band balls of 1.41M diameter do not bounce.
• Software - imagine a 'W' at the beginning of the last sentence and it might make sense.
• Raak - A grommet is one and two thirds groats.
• Kim - A hen dropped from an aeroplane would be able to control its descent with a 1.41m ball of elastic bands.
• Botherer - If a meteorite the size of a house brick were to strike Loch Ness, all life within the Loch would be ended and thus conclusive proof of the exictence or otherwise of Nessis would be garnered.
• Raak - "Wallace and grommet" is actually an old folk saying which is too rude to translate here.
• Blob - It is illegal to mash potato in certain cantons of Switzerland.
• Raak - The original form of the "Big Brother" format was a gay SM role-playing summer camp at a disused prison somewhere in Eastern Europe.
• Tuj - Half the male population of England has a middle initial beginning with the letter "J".
• Software - Charles de Gaulle was actually born in Slough while his parents were at the reading of his great uncle's will.
• Phil - John Prescott MP has a third nipple.
• Irouléguy - It is impossible to grow courgettes on the Isle of Wight
• Darren - [Phil] He has any number of nipples at his disposal, from what I've heard.
• Raak - No British telephone number contains three consecutive sixes.
• Botherer - Slugs cannot bear the smell of braised red cabbage. Smearing some on your garden will protect your rhubarb.
• Raak - If you perfectly relax all the muscles in your tongue and throat, and gently take hold of it with a pair of sugar tongs, it is possible to pull it out from the mouth a distance of six inches or more. However, if you do this you will not be able to fit it back in again without surgical intervention.
• Software - The electric drill was invented by Stanley Gibbins. [Raak] really?
• Raak - [Software] Emergency rooms have to deal with several cases every year, usually the result of drunken bets. And that's a factoid!
• Darren - Due to the angle of the teeth, it's easier to remove a snooker ball from your mouth than to insert one.
• Rosie - Snooker balls are now made partly of depleted uranium, there being so much of this by-product now.
• Software - Radiation is now not as bad for you as it once used to be.
• Raak - When a snooker ball is in the center of the table and the cue ball near one corner, the task of potting the ball into the opposite corner is measureably influenced by the gravitational fields of the players.
• rab - The world deflates when you remove an earth rod from the ground.
• Raak - The "blueberries" in commercially made blueberry muffins are actually pieces of apple, dyed blue.
• Néa - The IP address of your computer can tell a lot about who you are. For instance, if the first digit in the first group is 5, you are strong-willed but kind, whereas if it is a 6, you are somewhat shy but still self-assertive, and a good listener.
• Tuj - Carcinogens are more likely to be found in Tyne and Weir than any other county.
• Raak - The rate of growth of plant material worldwide in spring is nine hundred times the maximum rate of production of all the factories in the world.
• Software - There are lightning strikes every second of the day across the world.
• Tuj - Crabs make love with a long penis on the end of their front leg.
• Raak - Aliens masquerading as human first outnumbered genuine humans in 1957.
• Botherer - Peter Crouch is the only footballer in the world who actually jumps lower than his height.
• Kim - [Raak] The "fruit" in commercially produced fruit yoghurts is acutally just bits of coloured tissue paper.
• Raak - Only about 2% of the population actually have a self. This includes most of those who think they are in the 2%.
• Raak - Games on Crescent servers can only be terminated by unanimous decision of a conclave of Elders of the server, summoned by the ritual announcement "Mornington Crescent".
• Audience - *shouts, screams generally goes wild for Raak*
• rab - Before the introduction of "general-purpose cling film", it was a legal requirement within the catering industry to use a different types of film to cover bakery, dairy, meat, fish and fruit/vegetable products.
• Raak - There are certain snakes which, if you grab them by the tail, let the tail break off in your hand and escape to grow a new one. It is not commonly known that some mammals have a similar capability. If you take firm hold of a man's genitals and jerk very suddenly and hard, they will come off in your hand with minimal bloodshed. Unfortunately, they do not grow back.
• sammie - yer yer sexy time xx :)
• sammie - sarah ,, likes girls
• sarah - sammie takes it up the bum bum ;-)
• sammie - yer so what, its the best way
• sarah - youve obviously never used a strap on then have u
• sammie - i prefer the feel thing
• sammie - use odviously never had ur little minge tickled
• sarah - i have by both boys and girls you jealous?
• sammie - iv had more then my minge tickled, iv had it licked all out by both male and female
• sarah - sickoooooooooooooooo
• sarah - i like to have my toes licked
• sarah - i like to have my toes licked
• sammie - i like to have nmy toenails bitten of my old men
• sarah - i like it when my nana licks my belly button
• sammie - i prefer it wen i lick my nana's belly button
• sarah - i also like it when your nana licks my belly button
• sammie - although my faverite thing of all is to lick out ur grandads hairy bum hole,
• sarah - sounds good, my grandads come tastes of cheese tho
• sammie - yer i no, i noticed that,, ur nanas is cheesier

This is the end of the line. There is no more.