There is an elephant on the loo! - Page 8

[Lardmeister]

Sniper rifles are rifled clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the Southern due to the Coriolis force. Doing this allows approximately three millimeters more accuracy at 100 meters.

[vegaseat]

The Olympic Torch is relatively new, it was introduced in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The ultra-right German government had a penchant for nordic rituals with its torch ceremonies. One of the few silly rituals introduced by those fellows that have survived to this day. Maybe it's time to drop the torch!

[ZZucker]

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have determined that 65 percent of cats' dreams are nightmares.

[bumsfeld]

Boys usually grow at least as tall as their mothers.

[bumsfeld]

More haplographic errors occur with the letters "rr" than with the letters "aa", "ee", "ii", "oo", and "uu" combined.

[sneekula]

The average US household spends about 10% of its income on food. In Poland its 22% and in Egypt it is 40%.

[sneekula]

Despite the commonly held belief that all calico cats are female, a blue-eyed calico has an 86.4 percent chance of being male.

[sneekula]

Yes, there are millionaire dogs in the world, 29 of them as of this time. While all of these canines have their funds managed in trust, they are the legal benefactors.

[Lardmeister]

There are 600 million credit cards active in the USA.

[ZZucker]

Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game.

[ZZucker]

Fingerprints are known to change slowly over time. After 15 years an individual's fingerprints will only retain 80 percent of their earlier characteristics.

[Ene Uran]

Childproof scissors work, only two cases of injuries resulting from a child running with scissors were reported last year in the US.

[bumsfeld]

Due to slight mistranslation, Revelation 13:18 is usually written as "the number of the beast ... is 666", instead of the correct "... is 6 by 6 by 6." Hence, the number of the beast is actually 216, not 666.

[woooee]

Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable.

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left hand and "lollipop" with your right.

May or may not be true, but the QWERTY keyboard came about because typewriter companies in the early 1800s wanted their salesmen to be able to type something quickly to show how efficient it was. They could rapidly type the word "typewriter" because all of the letters were placed in the top row on a QWERTY keyboard.

[ZZucker]

Winston Churchill's favorite food was mayonnaise and pickles.

[kdoiron]

Only 3 athletes have ever won medals at both the Winter and Summer Olympics:

Eddie Eagan of the USA
Jacob Thams of Norway
Christa Luding-Rothenburger of Germany.

There was a 4th - Clara Hughes of Canada: Individual Road Race Cycling bronze and Individual Time Trial Cycling bronze (1996) and 5,000 m Speed Skating bronze (2002).

Christa Luding-Rothenburger of Germany was the only one to win in both Summer and Winter games of the same year (1988). Of course, now that the two games are staggered, that won't happen again.

[kdoiron]

May or may not be true, but the QWERTY keyboard came about because typewriter companies in the early 1800s wanted their salesmen to be able to type something quickly to show how efficient it was. They could rapidly type the word "typewriter" because all of the letters were placed in the top row on a QWERTY keyboard.

Don't know whether it's true or not. The story I heard is that it was developed because typists were so proficient using earlier formats, that they were jamming the machines - they could type faster than the bars could lift up to the paper and return to position. The QWERTY version was developed to slow down typists.

[Ene Uran]

Part of the Windows Registry is/was ROT13 encrypted. ROT26 anyone?

[venomlash]

May or may not be true, but the QWERTY keyboard came about because typewriter companies in the early 1800s wanted their salesmen to be able to type something quickly to show how efficient it was. They could rapidly type the word "typewriter" because all of the letters were placed in the top row on a QWERTY keyboard.

Just as did kdoiron, I heard that the QWERTY setup was billed as a preventer of jammed keys. This did in effect happen because it took typists a while to adjust from the old ABC configuration. By the time they were typing fast enough to cause jams, typewriter technology had improved to stop the darned things from jamming.
Bonus: I am in possession of an old manual (non-electric) typewriter that my grampses gave me.

[GrimJack]

Tomatoes were considerd fruit until WW2, then they were recategorized vegetable to obtain lucrative U.S. Army contract.

Then Reagan tried to re-categorize catsup as a vegetable for school lunches in the '80s

[GrimJack]

Sniper rifles are rifled clockwise in the Northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the Southern due to the Coriolis force. Doing this allows approximately three millimeters more accuracy at 100 meters.

No! Not even close - unless you flush the bullets first to get them spinning correctly, this is done right after manufacture so the spin imparted by the flushing is maintained at the qark level. There are special toilet facilities in kept in both hemispheres just in case you need to snipe someone on the equator. You need to flush a bullet to be fired through clockwise rifling in the Southern hemisphere (or vice versa) to counter the countering effects on the equator.

[GrimJack]

Despite the commonly held belief that all calico cats are female, a blue-eyed calico has an 86.4 percent chance of being male.

Female cats have two X chromosomes, and each one can carry a different color. "In calicos...one X has the black gene; the other X has the orange gene." At some point in the female cat's development, one X chromosome becomes inactive. The timing of this determines the amount of calico patches. A male cat can be calico if it's created with "two X chromosomes and a Y, allowing one X to be inactivated." This is a genetic defect known as XXY, and it's very rare. In fact, only one out of every 3,000 calicos is male.

[GrimJack]

Part of the Windows Registry is/was ROT13 encrypted. ROT26 anyone?

Part of the protection built into Excel is a hidden Point of View game that is accessed by pressing a complex series of characters (I lost the email that detailed this). These sorts of hidden 'goodies' are called Easter Eggs.

[Ene Uran]

White Oak trees hold their leaves the longest of all deciduous plants.

[Ene Uran]

Over the next 15 years, India is expected to add another 300 million people to its current population of one billion. That's the equivalent of adding the entire current population of the United States!

[Lardmeister]

You want to walk up the Eifel Tower in Paris, there are 1,792 steps to go.

[GrimJack]

Obligatory elephant: The French hated the Eiffel tower - the common complaint was "They have only erected the framework of this monument, It has no skin"

You want to walk up the Eifel Tower in Paris, there are 1,792 steps to go.

And the view is stupendous - I made the walk the first time because the wait for the elevator was like 3 hours.

[sneekula]

Obligatory elephant: The French hated the Eiffel tower - the common complaint was "They have only erected the framework of this monument, It has no skin"

Well, we all know the French like skin.

Here is a popular elephant:
The flow of water over the Niagara falls is equivalent to the flow of gasoline into US cars.

[Ene Uran]

Michael Moore was so far the heaviest director to win top honors at the Cannes Film Festival.

[venomlash]

I can assure you that this is true:

I am on the Math Team at my high school, and while doing some logarithm practice, my coach told me about one notoriously malevolent problem that had come up on a contest in the past, and which only one student in the league (which comprises tens of high schools, each with a team for each grade of ~7 people) had gotten correct.
This student had known nothing about logarithms (the main focus of the problem), and his coach had given him only a few quick tips while on the bus to the contest site. These included the choice bit "when you multiply, you add". (log(b*a)=log(a)+log(b))
So ths student saw the problem and had no idea how to do it. So he took all the numbers in the question, added them up...and got the problem right!!!