Completely True Fact Archive
7/3/11 – Always exercise caution when mixing olive oil and rosemary โ in the wrong proportions, they can react to belch out clouds of chlorine gas.
6/26/11 – The Fourth of July may be known as the official birth date of the United States, but the signing that took place on that date in 1776 was a mere formality. The Declaration of Independence was finalized on December 24th, 1753, at a summit known at the time as the Christmas Eve Accord. News took a long time to travel in those days.
6/19/11 – Kittens can fit inside a standard t-shirt cannon up until 16 weeks of age. More than 85% survive the launch comfortably.
6/12/11 – Fourteen people have attempted to ascend Mount Everest while walking backwards. None have survived.
6/5/11 – By law, the Prime Minister of Japan can never set foot on a tennis court.
5/29/11 – Ampersands were originally developed as a form of protest. Typeset makers in the 17th century charged publishers to replace letters, at rates so high that the publishers began inventing characters to make things difficult for them.
5/22/11 – The latest it has ever snowed in the state of North Dakota is 11:59:59.
5/15/11 – It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. But it takes no muscles at all to lie on the floor, hiding from failure.
5/8/11 – Radio broadcasts have been around since the late 1800s, but the term “broadcast” has not. Broadcast, wavelength, and bandwidth were all coined in 1920 by Hadley Scott, a 13-year-old boy who won a write-in contest held by the America Radio Relay League. Scott’s terms, which he claimed to have thought up on the spot, helped unite radio amateurs and laid the foundation for the radio industry. Scott turned out to be a serial killer, but by then the terms had stuck.
5/1/11 – The town of Wilmot, MN has 52 self-appointed mayors. So many individuals claim to have the job that the town stopped holding mayoral elections in 1998. There have been as many as 61 mayors, but the remainder have since left office. Despite the fact that few of the mayors acknowledge one another, Wilmot has balanced its budget for 11 straight years.
4/24/11 – Nolan Ryan once threw a no-hitter in eleven pitches.
4/17/11 – Any given OfficeMax location has more paper clips than there are blades of grass in a medium-sized lawn. An OfficeMax SuperStore has more paper clips than there are grains of sand in a mile of beach. An OfficeMax UltraStore has more paper clips than there are molecules in those paper clips, which is why there aren’t any OfficeMax UltraStores, since that paradox would tear a rift between this world and the Darkness.
4/10/11 – It is possible to get shredded dental floss stuck between one’s teeth, which is incontrovertible proof that God is a lie.
4/3/11 – Contrary to the popular (and comforting) creation myths about Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown, baseball was created by Dr. James Naismith in 1891. Dr. Naismith formulated the rules for baseball, basketball, and curling over the course of a single weekend.
3/27/11 – The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy lists all the sales conferences attended by the descendants of Abraham.
3/20/11 – When Marco Polo arrived in China, he marveled at their use of dry-erase boards, remarking: “It is a wonder to witness the ease with which they wipe away their arithmetic. The markers smell nice, but once the erasing-blocks are gunked up you pretty much have to just throw them out.”
3/13/11 – CDC statistics for 2010 show that one in four fantasy baseball drafts resulted in an injury that was serious enough to require treatment. Of those, nearly a third were fatalities.
3/6/11 – The word “lumber” appears natively in fifty-six languages worldwide, and means something completely different in each one.
2/27/11 – This past Sunday, “Inception” cinematographer Wally Pfister became the recipient of the 100,000,000th Oscar ever awarded. To celebrate, the Academy gave him a $100 Barnes & Noble gift card.
2/20/11 – Geneticists have no explanation as to why 41 of the 44 US presidents were born between Lincoln’s birthday and Washington’s birthday, the ten-day stretch of February known colloquially as “Presidents’ Day.” The most recent theory is that solar activity during mid-May results in a greatly increased likelihood of conceiving children with leadership qualities.
(Hey kids, trivia challenge! Can you name the 3 presidents who weren’t born during “Presidents’ Day?” Head to your local library and check it out!)
2/13/11 – Computer scientists project that if the Internet maintains its current growth rate, it will run out of jokes by the end of 2013.
2/6/11 – The average press release has 6.2 exclamation points!
1/30/11 – This June, the Society of Inuit Lexicographers (SIL) will meet to discuss the addition of the 48th and 49th words for snow. It will be the first such meeting to take place since 1894.
1/23/11 – Extension cord enthusiasts prefer to be called “corders.” They find the term “extendies” to be somewhat derogatory, implying that the collection and display of extension cords is frivolous and kind of stupid.
1/16/11 – Extreme pressure distorts arithmetic โ for example, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, two plus two would equal seven.
1/9/11 – The Japanese word for hipster (ใใใในใฟใผ) combines the characters for “floating,” “sorrow,” and “victory.”
1/2/11 – More than half of all the world’s cats were featured on the Internet at some point during 2010.