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There is also a town in Bavaria called "Petting". Europe is a nice place to live in. Which that little town in upper Austria named "Rofl" proves. |
CRACKED-FACTOIDS:
This is the 8th year of Cracked-Factoids. You know what it is about. All those little things that make me start to wonder about the state of the world we live in. And some others. Collected here.
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l Cockroaches
have teeth in their stomachs.
l The country singer acted by Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart" was modelled after a mixture of Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams jr. and Kris Kristofferson. Moreover, Jeff Bridges played in the original version of Tron. That's a stretch.
l People is the plural of stupid. That is not a fact, just an impression.
l Helmet once claimed to have named themselves after german ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.
l Iceland prohibited drinking of beer until 1989. They should have prohibited risky banking and volcanoes instead.
l There is a McDonald's, a Starbucks and a Subway in Guantanamo.
l "Jailbreak" is not a crime in Germany. Makes sense. It is also allowed in Germany to name your child "Pepsi Cola".
l The “Mall of America” in Bloomington, Minneapolis, has 42 millions of visitors per year. More than Disneyland, Graceland and the Grand Canyon together.
l Elephants always try to avoid hills.
l Do you remember that stupid 80ies hit "Bakerman" by Laid Back?. The video was shot by Lars von Trier.
l According to a recent study 90% of all car drivers believe they have "above average driving skills."
l Martin Sheen's left arm is eight centimeters shorter than his right arm.
l The term shithead is directly derived from the word shitbird. Both
mean "stupid person".
l The Facebook Privacy Policy (5,830
words) is longer than the United States Constitution (4,543 words).
l LEGO is an abbreviation of the danish
"leg godt", and that means "plays well". Okay, then..
l 85% of all people who believe they have food allergies, actually
don't have one, study says. I
guess it is just fashionable right now.
l There are 26m 3G phones in India –
but no 3G network.
l Someone living in New York could eat
out every night of their life and never eat at the same restaurant.
l Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish,
it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.
l The 10 most generous countries in the
world when it comes to charitable giving are all located in Europe.
l 15.111,111,111 x 111,111,111 =
12,345,678,987,654,321
l History fact: There wasn't a single
pony in the Pony Express, just horses!
l In the 13th century, Europeans baptized
children with beer.
l 50 % of all German singles believe they
can find their dream-partner via online-dating-services a German study says...
l It
is physically impossible for a pig to look up into the sky.
l Walt
Disney was afraid of mice.
l 60
% of all individuals above 12 ys. never buy recorded music. In many markets
radio remains the main medium to consume music.
l Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are
already married.
l On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.
l In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes,
when you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to
sleep on. That's where the phrase, "good night, sleep tight" came
from.
l Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
l There are more chickens than people in the world.
l All of the clocks in the movie "Pulp Fiction" are stuck on
4:20.
l The Scottish Protection of Animal Acts includes the mythical creatures such as Nessie, the monster of Loch Ness.
l 5 % or 1 in 20 bottles of wine sold with traditional corks are spoiled by the funghi on the cork.
l The art of making sparkling vine was actually invented by the English in the seventeenth century. Long before a French priest called Dom Perignon tried to get the bubbly out of the bottles.
l The
first jockstrap in icehockey was introduced in 1874. Helmets were introduced in
icehockey in 1974. Gotta know your priorities.
l According to a German study the correctness of the prophecies of fortunetellers is 4%.
l Both William Shatner and Patrick Stewart own property on the moon.
l Originally, Coca-Cola was a headache remedy.
l The world record in yodelling is at 14 hours and 37 minutes of consecutive, constant yodelling.
l There are more insects on a square mile of ground than there are people on the whole earth.
l Jimmy Lee Swaggart, the famous tv evangelicalist, is second cousin to Jerry Lee Lewis.
l The packaging of regular cornflakes contains more nutritients than the cornflakes it contains.
l Store theft makes up for abou 420 million Euros each year in Austria. Annually, about 20.000 store thieves are being arrested by police.
l Before he started to work with muppets, Jim Henson produced experimental avantgarde movies.
l If an iceland pony ever leaves the island, it is never allowed back home again.
l In Finland it is forbidden by law to buy more than one alcoholic drink at the same time in a bar or restaurant.
l The moniker of German aggro-rapper Sido stands for "super intelligentes Drogen Opfer". (super-intelligent drug victim).
l Diamonds, the hardest material on earth able to cut the hardest stone, can not be used to cut wood.
l Bob Marley is the son of a white Englishman.
l "24" was the first tv-show produced with a zero-carbon footprint.
l US-Americans call skinny girls with big fake breast "tits on sticks".
l Calculated in weight per dollar a Hamburger of McDonald's is more expensive than a new medium sized car.
l Donald Duck's parents are called Degenhardt and Dortel. (At least in german version). His second name is Fauntleroy.
l 8 of 10 "Free Tibet"-Flags are manufactured in China.
l The code name of John Cale within Velvet Underground was "Black Jack". Lou Reed did go by the name of "Lulu". By the way, after leaving Velvet Underground Reed took a half year stint as an office typist in his father's accounting firm.
l The theme to the Monty Python movie "The life of Brian" is a direct, almost note to note rip off of the theme to "Goldfinger" as sung by Shirley Bassey.
l On Gene Simmon's solo-album (part of the legendary four solo albums in same designs) the guests of the leader of the legendary bloodthirsty, evil rockers Kiss include Cher, Bob Seger, Joe Perry, Donna Summer and Kate Sagal - later known as Peg Bundy on a famous tv show.
l The BB in BB King stands for “Blues Boy”.
l A total of 105,000, new full-length albums were released
in 2008 in the USA, a fourfold gain from the earlier 2000s. And of that pot,
just 6,000 releases sold 1,000 units or more in the first year.
l Male baby chicken are killed right after birth because they can't be used for egg production.
l The first media that had news about Michael Jackson's death was a "society" website.
l The first synchronized German version of Casablanca from the Fifties had all the Nazis cut out and presented Viktor Laszlo as a Norwegian scientist who was fleeing because he destroyed a special weapon he had constructed.
l Paralell lines don't meet in infinity. One of them becomes bored
and takes a left turn.
l Snails
can change their sex to reproduce.
l “Adam Ant” was a famous
pop/rock singer in the Eighties. The English adjective “adamant” means
rock-solid, inexorable, obdurate, relentless. Make of that what you will.
l The spike in searches
related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for
an automated attack.
l Hillary Clinton personally asked the management of Twitter to not close down its service for update and maintenance during the first days of the Iran crisis.
l You tube is making a financial loss of 1.5 million dollars per day.
l It is impossible to fold paper more than seven times. No matter how big it is.
l Every hour ten to twenty hours of video material is uploaded to YouTube.
l An average human carries with him 1 to 6 pounds of digested food inside. That's what they call a "shitload".
l 10 of the 10 most deadliest snakes live in Australia.
l An Austrian advertising agency renamed itself "Yes we can" in 2009.
l Actually, the birth of Jesus Christ is daten in the year 4b.c.
l Playboy magazine originally should have been named "stag party" and its logo should have been a deer. But the hunter's magazine Stag had copyrights, so Hugh Hefner decided for Playboy.
l Six companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft and three others) alone buy 20 % of all servers produced globally.
l 28 % of all wastage found at ocean shores are cigarette butts, 12 % is plastic bags and 8 % is food packaging and plastic caps.
l A german study says that more than 80 % of all Germans shop online, while at the same time 85 % think it would be a pity if real shops had to close because of increased online sales.
l 17.1 % of all click throughs on web advertisment is result of click fraud, a current study of search institute Click Forensics says.
l In Nigeria a goat was taken into police custody because people claimed it is actually a robber who ran away and then used magic to transform himself into a goat.
l Adolf hitler had only one testicle.
l Amount of money given by elderly Japanese people to decievers pretending to be their children or grandchildren in 2007: 25.1 billion Yen (appr. 30 mio. Euros).
l Barrack Obama's first military decision as president of the USA was to send more(!) troops to Afghanistan.
l Cars are being moved only 3 percent of their lifetime. The rest of the time they are standing around somewhere waiting to be moved.
l The game "Guitar Hero 3" is the first video game in history to have accrued a turnover of more than one billion dollars. The sidekick game "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith" has turned out a higher income to the band Aerosmith than any of their previous thirty albums.
l Lou Reed is married to Laurie Anderson.
l When The Kingsmen recorded their version of "Louie Louie" on a 50$-budget to change the world of rock-music forever, the FBI conducted a futile investigation to check on the allegedly lewd character of the song's lyrics.
l The original singer of Gang Gang Dance was hit by a lightning in 2002 when watching a rainstorm from a Manhattan rooftop, allegedly while stoned (who would have guessed...)
l One fifth of the earth population lives on less than 1 US-Dollar per day.
l In the Soviet Union one fifth of all economic activity was in the free-trading black market.
l Probably the
biggest factor in spreading diseases in the modern western society is
handshaking.
l Sarah Palin,
the conservative candidate for vice president of the USA, is a devout
creationist believing the earth was created 6000 years ago and evolution is just
an evil trick. She is also a gun nut, supporting the right to hunt wolves from
helicopters, so more moose can live, which means more moose to shoot. She is
also against making polar bears an endangered species because this would
endanger the mining of oil and coal in here homecountry of Alaska. Hopefully
this remains a factoid, when it could turn into an evil pairing of hostility and
ignorance.
l a regular
lightbulb only turns 5 % of the energy it uses into light, the rest of 95 % only
produces heat.
l The
international Yoga-industry is estimated at 42 billion USD per year.
l A royalist and - presumable - lover of stockings paid 10.000 € for a black and white stocking of Queen Victoria in an auction.
l In the early Seventies Tim Buckly played together with Tom Waits - on the record company's softball team.
l In China
there are 2.140 Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. More than McDonald’s has.
l 33 % of all
Germans regularly experience “phantom calls”, which means that they think
someone is trying to call them on the phone, though nobody does.
l England and the USA have different sign languages for deaf people.
l It is impossible to tickle yourself.
l the prime kilogram in Paris, the one with which all other weight
measures are being measured, is slowly losing weight. How is that as an excuse
for your weight problems...
l When Joe Coleman paints a picture he might spend hours to find out what
the contents of the bag of a historical person were, then paints those contents
into his picture and then paints the bag over it.
l In Thailand there is no word for "no", only for
"yes" and "not yes".
l In 2008 the number of computers used worldwide has reached the number
of one billion. Experts estimate that it will be 2 billion in 2014.
l At the airport in Munich 9.500 erotic DVDs are sold every year.
That is less than watches (30.000), jewelery (25.000) or sunglasses (12.500),
but still a lot, we’d say.
l Two thirds of all 14 to 19 year old males in middle Europe believe the
correct way to end sexual intercourse is to jerk off onto the face of the girl.
l At London Heathrow airport a passenger wearing a T-Shirt
depicting a Transformer character robot with a machine gun was asked to remove
or change the t-shirt to be able to board the flight. “If you change the
t-shirt back”, the security guard told him, “we’ll have you arrested.”
This is only topped by the guy forced to leave a Mall in the USA for wearing an
offensive t-shirt – it showed the peace sign.
enhancement: Doris writes: “about a
year ago the same thing happened to me at Heathrow but with this T-Shirt: http://www.threadless.com/product/259/Stabby_McKnife they didn’t threaten me with arrestment, only that I wouldn’t be
able to pass security controls with it. At first I thought it was a joke (that
British humour) but that wasn’t so.
l The speakers for the main voices in “The Simpsons” each earn
400.000 USD per show. For 2008 this means a mere 8 million bucks for speaking
some lines of text during 20 shows with 23 minutes of running time. That is 460
minutes, which breaks down into 17.391,30 Dollars per minute of Simpsons-show,
most of which most characters are silent. Not bad for a doodle.
l Contrary to Hollywood legend, Roman gladiators were not spared by a
thumbs-up, but by a hidden thumb. Because the thumbs-up gesture means “up
yours” in most southern cultures (and in arabic countries and southern america
up to this day.)
l Within its 135 Minutes of movietime the “Sex and the city movie” had 160 product placements.
l NASA has
paid people 5000 USD plus food and, obviously, bedding to participate in a 90
day study about sleeping.
l Currently
the Internet is responsible for 1 % of the worldwide use of energy. In three
years, experts think, that it will be 4 %.
l Japanese noise trio Boris seemingly have a "secret" code
to mark their records: the more straightforward rocking records are labelled
BORIS in capital letters while the more avantgarde and out there records are
marked boris in small letters.
l 2 out of 3 billionaires live in the USA.
l In an average life a person from western Europe will work all
together 8 years, while spending 12 years on watching tv.
l In
Austria every year 20 to 30 people are registered as missing without any trace
of their whereabouts.
l According to a new recent survey conducted by Spencer Stuart in the
USA, Chief Marketing officers are staying an average of 26 months at a position,
Chief Executive officers are staying 44 months, CFO 39 months and CIOs 36
months.
l If you download Springsteen's "Born To Run" from the internet better be careful that you don't get video / music-artist Arcangel's "Born To Run Springsteen Glockenspiel Addendum" which is the same recordings with a little added glockenspiel here and there, that Arcangel floated out onto the internet.
l There are currently ~767.000 millionaires (in €) in Germany. More than double of the 365.000 millionaires that were counted in 1999 in Germany.
l The braille system of replacing letters with dots nowadays used by blind people was actually invented by the US army as a tool to be able to read notes in darkness.
l When a group of Oxford undergraduates heard that Rudyard Kipling recieved ten shillings for every word he wrote, they sent him ten shillings by telegram and asked him for his "very best word". Kiplying replied quickly with: "Thanks."
l A scientist
in the USA has discovered a straight link between the suicide rate and the
amount of country music people listen to.
l Nearly a third of the UK's 700 largest businesses paid no
corporation tax in the year 2005-6. A further third paid less than £10m each,
according to figures from the National Audit Office released last year. But try
stealing a sixpack from the mart and they’ll slap you in jail faster than you
can say “corporate assholes”.
l Some media facts: The biggest tv-station in Russia is
called “pervy”. Go figure. The official press organ of the communist party
(aka Fidel’s Club) in Cuba is called “Granma”. Go figure.
l A mailorder for sex related items made a business of
sending bills to people who had recently died. The relatives usually paid
without asking or making any kind of fuss for fear of embarrassment. I guess
their excuse is that selling stolen body organs of orphan kids is worse, but
those people are still a bunch of fucking assholes, moral-wise speaking.
l A substantial part of Facebook is owned by In-Q-Tel which is the venture capital enterprise of the CIA.It's true.
l
In Germany in 2006 there were 31 babies born by mothers older than 50 years and
141 babies born by mothers younger than 15 years old.
l The Australian Giant Rainworm can grow up to a length of 3
meters.
l The downsides of the free press: Every day nine and a half
tons of newspapers are left behind in the London tube.
l The German synchro-version of "Die Hard 2" insists on naming the airport "Dallas International Airport", which is somewhat conflicting with John McClane's statement that they are "at the heart of democracy, in Washington". Actually, it is "Dulles International Airport" which is close to Washington.
l A 15 year
old girl that produced nude fotos of herself and sent the to other people vie
the internet was arrested by police and had her computer confiscated because of
“sexual abuse of children”, “ownership of child pornography” and
“distribution of child pornography”. In the USA, where else?
l When King
Juan of Spain turned to Hugo Chavez during a conference and said to him “Why
don’t you just shut up?” little did he expect that his comment would turn
into a huge multi-million dollar hype, netting 1.5 million pound from selling
ringtones alone.
l The gravestone of Sir Peter Ustinov says: Don't step on the lawn.
l Muammar Gaddafi, the dictator of Lybia, has a personal security squad consisting of fourty women. What would the prophet say about someone realisizing his heavenly promises on earth?
l The investigation concerning
the death of Lady Diana will have accrued costs of ~15 mio. € by the end of
this year.
l The price for copper has
increased by 200 % since 2000. Why invest in internet-companies?
l Oprah Winfrey gave away about
53 million dollar to charity in 2006 – a quarter of her annual income.
l There are about 10.000 foxes
living in the city of London. Probably, because fox hunts are only regular in
the countryside.
l The International
Beachvolleyball-Federation rules that the width of the side of a female beach
volley baller’s pants (or rather: panties) may not be larger than 5 cm.
Isn’t that wall sports is all about?
l According to a current statistics 88 % of all employed people don’t feel any close connection to their company. Not even 20 % would recommend products of the company they work for.
l Pope Bendict XVI gave 200.000 Dollar to the earthquake victims in Peru, almost double the amount the world hunger charity (“Welthungerhilfe”) gave.
l In 2001 of the 6.500 (!) new releases on major labels only 112 reached break even. The rest cost more money than it made.
l For the release of their fourth album "Excellent Italian Greyhound" Shellac did not give away any free CDs to journalists or radio stations and the like. Zero.
l Kentucky Fried Chicken has taken the laurel for having installed the first advertisement big enough to be visible from outer space with a 7.830 square metres big KFC logo. (I guess, the drive-in-sign would have been somewhat bigger still.) Now Red Bull is stepping up with plans of a 11.250 square metres big advertisement next to the runway of Heathrow airport, near London, and - just to be sure - a second one the size of 10.800 square metres next to Gatwick airport, also near London.
l Every second child in the United Kingdom is born outside a marriage.
l The villa of the the widow of Bob Marley on the Bahamas is being rebuilt into a luxury holiday ressort for the super-rich called „Bob Marley holiday ressort“. It will offer any kind of luxury for the stressed out business man and women to relax in suites called „One love“. With daily room-rates of 350-600 US$ this is definitely not for the roots rastafari. What would the man who once sang „some living big, some living small, most cant even get no food at all“ say to that?
l Guess who decided to expand his career into movies and therefore decided to audition for the part of Travis Pickle in Taxi Driver? Yep, that's right: Neil Diamond.
l John Ogden,
famous English scientist, introduced a plan in the late Sixties to reduce the
number of words in the English vocabulary to 850.
l Tom Sizemore's dream came true when he was invited to play in The Heat alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Only, he didn't realize, because he was high on heroin all the time. Just watch him closely when rewatching that great gangster movie and you'll see it. De Niro took him to rehab personally and helped him through the first days after the movie was over.
l When EMI turned out of financing the production of The Life of Brian because of obvious reasons (afraid of losing their stake in the eternal life...) it was the Ex-Beatle George Harrison who dished out the money through his Handmade company. In turn he got a tiny appearance in the movie.
l Every single day David Lynch is reading weather reports to be broadcast on US radio.
l If you count
in all things a buyer of a VW Golf may chose (from motor size to colour of seats
and from various kinds of paintjobs to the stereo and so on) there are 5.8
billion (!) different variants.
l Up to this
day, Nick Cave,
who has been releasing records on Mute Records for what... 20 years? never had a
contract and is still working on a handshake, project to project basis.
l The Egyptian pharao Ramses II. (around 1.250 bc) had several wives, among them two or three of his own daughters. He was the father of at least two of his grandsons.
l Napoleon's daily routine included getting up at 3:00 am to take a bath, then go to bed again at five and wake up at seven and start to work. A morning's person he usually had done all "important" things in the early afternoon.
l The Antikythera Mechnaism is probably the oldest computer aka calculating machine in the world. It was built around 65 b.c. by greek scientists and constisted of at least 30 interlocking bronze gears.
l In 1960 oil manufacturing companies had plans to mine the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, by using atomic bombs.
l It is called in vitro farming and it might be the future of meat-production: the synthetic growth of muscle fibres from stem cells e.g. from pigs to produce fabricated meat. Lab-grown meat has benefits in being free of hormones, andtibiotics and threats of diseases. Currently the price tag is at 100.000 US$ per kilogramm. By the way, I am a satisfied vegetarian.
l The caterpillar 797B is probably the biggest truck like machine in the world: with 3.500 horsepowers it tugs a weight of up to 400 tons with 40 miles per hour. But it is quite costly: at a entry price of 5 million dollars, tires at 60.000 US$ a pop and needing 900 gallons of diesel for a 12 hour shift you'd need good reason to be running that baby.
l Yellow headlights are assumed to be safer in foggy conditions, nevertheless they are prohibited around the European Union. The advice is to wear yellow sunglasses instead.
l Before he became the manager of Elvis Presley, Colonel Parker used to do a stageshow where he put life hens on a hot plate and told the people they were dancing.
l Every second four mobile phones are sold.
l The Kinks classic “Lola”
is actually about a transvestite. Ray Davis claims he was inspired to the song
by the tale of a friend of his who danced the whole night long with a
transvestite but was so drunk he didn’t realize why she “talked like a woman
and walked like a man”.
l Carl Perkins, the original rockabilly cat who penned
“Blue Suede Shoes”, plays guitar on the Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
duet “Ebony and Ivory”.
l Currently, the USA are spending more money on their military than all the other 191 nations of the globe combined.
l Some kinds of guerillas can get AIDS and even infect humans.
l Experts calculated that in 2007 for the first time in history more
women in the USA are living without a husband than with one.
l On the multiplayer online game platform World of Warcraft there is a „Chuck Norris Guild“, whose missionaries take time off their role playing tasks to spread the message about Chuck Norris.
l Captain Cook fell sick on his second travel to the south. When he felt better, he wanted fresh meat to give him strength. Since there was no more livestock on board after two year’s of voyage, he ate the doctor’s dog. Probably with a nice red wine. Basically, Cook was infamous for having eaten all kinds of animals and rodents that he came upon during his long discoveries in the southern hemisphere, from kangaroos to frogfish. Like his motto „To boldly go where no man has gone before, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life … and eat it.“ (that’s is an adaption of the original motto.)
l Goldman Sachs paid
Lloyd C. Blankfein, its chairman and chief executive, a bonus of $53.4 million
in 2006, the highest ever for a Wall Street chief executive. I guess this is
because he has a measly salary of $ 600.000 per year. 53.4 million means about $
167.000 per day (if he takes Sundays off) and about $ 14.000 per hour (if he
works twelve hours a day). I don’t want to be a killjoy but minimum wage in
the USA is still about 6 $ per hour. So at McDonald’s you’d have to work 32
weeks (with 6 days at 12 hours per day) to get the same amount Mr. Blankfein
gets in a single hour. About 7 ½ years to to get his daily income and you
wouldn’t be able to work the 2.000 years it takes to earn his bonus.
l The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings.
l Two percent of the world's population own half of the world's riches. The poorer half of the world's population owns one percent of the world's riches.
l Everybody except me seems to love wikipedia. Well, I love it, but for entries like this one: MILF: 1) (slang) Mother I'd like to fuck: A (putative) mother found sexually attractive. 2) Abbreviation of Moro Islamic Liberation Front, an organization in the Philippines seeking to establish an Islamic state on the island of Mindanao.
l Curses give away a culture's psychological undertow: While in Central Europe, especially Germany and Austria, swear words usually refer to feces ("shit"), anglophonic people will hint at sexual intercourse in their curses ("fuck") while in scandinavia most people will refer to the dark side of the heavenly forces ("devil") when something bad happens to them.
l
Townes Van Zandt once gave the books „Bury my heart at Wounded Knee“ and
„War and Peace“ to Steve Earle, saying that he just had to read them. Earle
worked his way through both with pain and dilligence. When he gave them back,
Van Zandt asked him, what they are about. He just wanted to know…
l
Botox is also good against migraine. Or maybe it is the only thing it is good
for.
l A
pig’s orgasm lasts for thirty minutes.
l
Charlie Parker was a big fan of Country music. In his favorite hangout in New
York he, to the dismay of many of his jazz collegues, used to listen to the
country and western songs on the jukebox. When one of them asked him, how he
could stand listening to this, he answered: „Just listen to the stories! The
stories, man.“
l
The world’s most played song, „Yesterday“ by the Beatles, had a fairly
different working title: „Scrambled eggs.“
l
Famous men who married their under age cousins: Jerry Lee Lewis, Edgar Allen
Poe, (to be continued)
l Iceland has possibly the strictes immigration rules in all of Europe. Even Iceland ponies that have been born and raised on the island and leave it, are never allowed to come back onto the island.
l In the
list of cities on the earth with the highest pollution Chernobyl is only on rank
four.
l the main part of the human brain, the big grey glob, is not connected to the rest of the body with any fixed connection. That means, if you open someone’s skull, you can take it out without further ado. (Don’t try this at home.)
l When on tour Bruce Springsteen demands a security guard for his guitars. In contrast to Clarence “The Big Man” Clemmon’s demands of Beluga Caviar and a grilled chicken (half way through the show) that sounds almost sensible.
l September 22nd has been named official "Chuck Norris Day" in Austin, Texas.
l The front cover foto on Slint's legendary "Spiderland"-album was taken by Will Oldham.
l In sub-Saharan Africa, more than one in four children below age 14 works, and some are not even paid.
l One
out of five cigarettes in the European Union has been smuggled into the country.
l
In the last 15 years 19 young soldiers guarding the Austrian (Schengen-)border
from illegal immigrants killed themselves by
shooting their heads off.
l Remember when we saw the first pictures of hurricane Katarina and everybody said this looks like a third world country? Well, the US have added another item to the list of factors common for catastrophes in the third world: next to chaos in organisation, hindering beaurocracy and authorities unable to make decisions and take action, corruption and fraud have taken place. It has been estimated that of all the money flowing into New Orleans from government sources to clean and build up the city a full billion dollars was embezzled or let into projects not in connection with the hurricane. Wow, that's a lot of money.
l In the Sixties the average CEO in the USA earned 24 times more than the average worker. Today the ratio has risen to 240! times more than the average worker.
l Walter Sobchak, the character in Big Lebowski played by John Goodman, is quite strict about his newfound jewish religion and culture, but he gobbles a nicey hamburger. Do they serve kosher at In & Out? I don’t think so.
l Chimp babies sometimes fake that they have been beaten by other grown up chimps, which makes the mother angry and she goes and starts to fight with the misbehaver, who doesn’t know what’s happening to him. Scientists see this behaviour as an example of conscience within animals that shows that they are able to make up manipulative plans and intrigues that involve other animals and their behaviour. Scientists also think that the chimp babies do that for “fun”.
l On an average, thoughts are one to three seconds long.
l The former
CIA director James Woolsey drives a hybrid car and has solar panels on the roof
of his house. I guess, he knows something about oil the rest of us don’t.
l McDonald's
is perhaps the largest toy company in the world. It sells or gives away more
than 1.5 billion toys every year. Almost one out of every three new toys given
to American kids each year comes from McDonald's or another fast food chain
l What’s the price of killing a planet? How about earning 144.573,-
dollars a day. Lee R. Raymond, retired CEO of Exxon all in all earned about 686
million dollars in the years 1993 to 2005.
l On March 31st at midnight sharp the last telex-machine or „ticker“ as it was called
was shut off in Austria.
l Podcasts have been named the great revolution for mobile audio. Now a
study has revealed that 80 % of podcasts never make it onto a portable player,
but are listened to from a stationary pc right after they have been downloaded.
Another seizable portion is erased right afterwards to save on disk space.
l Townes Van Zandt had the habit of shooting up a mixture of bourbon and coke.
l The biggest employer in Malta is Playmobil. That’s right the world of
little plastic people means all the world to the people of the little island.
l Xzibit plays a bit part in "8 Mile" - being dissed by Eminem. For cracking (rapped) jokes about gays, no less. Are battle rhymes the breakdance fights of our century?
l The brain is such a powerful data-congesting organ because it works with accepting flaws. The brain or the subconscious don't check if the rules they make up - which will guideline your life - are right until they are proven wrong. Example: The brain gets the data first, and then makes up rules from it. Computers need the rules first, and then try to cope with the data. Science, on the other hand, tries to prove everything to being completely right before working with it. Which is why science is slow and computers are dumb.
l It was Johnny Cash, who gave Bob Dylan his first chance to appear on national television. In 1969, after the live album from Folsom Prison, Cash had his own tv show, to which he invited artists he liked, among them Bob Dylan. Before that they had shared a duet on Dlyan's "Nashville Skyline", for which Johnny Cash also wrote some liner notes.
l The Bush administration spent 1.62 billion dollars during the first two and a half years of his second period as a president on advertising and public relation campaigns. A cool half billion of that went out the window for advertising the US Army.
l The Assyrian cultures (about 800 b.c.) had a ritual, which
was used to save the ruling king from the possible threat of assassination. To
lead fate into a wrong direction the throne was given away to another person for
100 days, during which that person – with the help of the royal family and
advisors – ruled the nation. The real king lived in rather simple
circumstances somewhere else in the country and was addressed as “the
farmer” during that span of time. When the 100 days were over, and fate
tricked enough, the false king was killed and the real one regained his throne.
Therefore only very naïve or demented people were used as false kings.
l "Sure, Kill Bill's a violent movie. But it's a Tarantino movie. You don't go to see Metallica and ask the fuckers to turn the music down." - Quentin Tarantino.
l
The
lovely and well known story of Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer was originally
written as an advertisement for the chainstore Montgomery Ward.
l
According to an estimate of the Natural
Resources Defence Counsil (NRDC) of the USA approximately 4 % of private
consumption of electricity is used for television sets.
l
The university of the Vatican has taken up (once
again after a few decades) courses about exorcism.
l
"Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated
enthusiasm - they learn those things and they can get people to do what they
want." (Lynn Williamson, an adviser at the University of Kentucky, on why
so many former cheerleaders are hired as sales representatives for
pharmaceutical companies.)
l
Yannis Kouros is world record holder for running 500
kilometers (!) in a mere 57:54:12. That’s 310,7 miles for you non-metric
readers.
l When Tom Waits recieved his Grammy for best "alternative record", he came on stage, looked at the people and said nothing more than: "Alternative to what?" and left.
l Bruce Springsteen was the first musician to be on the covers of TIME and NEWSWEEK in the same week.
l Unbelievable: Vodafone has issued a new „retro“-mobile phone which has only one functionality: phonecalls. Can you believe it?
l
David Munyon lives in a trailer that once belonged to Hank Williams
Sr.
l During the tv-season 2004 / 2005 more than 100.000 product placements appeared on the big six US-cable networks. Coca Cola Classic scored highest with 2.900 appearances, runners-up was Everlast, but only because they was split in apparel (1.659 appearances) and sporting equipment (1.488 app.) Overall the media spending for product placement reached an all time high of almost 3.5 billion dollars. Makes tv even more fun, doesn’t it?
l The US-pornindustry was estimated at an overall gross revenue of 38 billion dollars in 2004. That is more than football, basketball and baseball in the USA combined. And a lot of moneyshots, too.
l In a magazine interview Kelly Osbourne blamed her drug-addiction on the reality show “The Osbournes”. Her argument: the pressure and public life being too much for a 15 year old. What about the thousands of teenagers who turned to drugs to be able to endure “The Osbournes”?
l According to current estimates people share more than a billion tracks a month, which is more than all the songs iTunes has sold since the day it opened.
l Leadbelly's blues classic "The midnight special" was actually written about how back in the early 1900s officials brought prostitutes to convicts in chain gangs to provide them with sanctioned sex, so writes William Banks Taylor in his history of prison "Down on Parchman Farm". Which gives the lines "let the midnight special shine a ever loving light on me." a completely new meaning.
l Kimberly Yeo from Singapure holds the world record for fastest typing on a mobile phone for having typed "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human." in 43.42 seconds.
l The noble and beautiful act of cheerleading in American Football was started officially in 1898 and was, gasp, men only. in 1942 with men at war women started cheering. In 1972 the Dallas Cheerleaders were founded and football never was the same again.
l According to a survey of National Geographic 11 % of all US-citizens aged between 18 and 24 are not able to locate the USofA on a world map.
l
Danica McKellar, who played next-door-beauty on The Wonder Years
ages back has started a career in math! She even has her own theorem: the
Chayes-McKellar-Winn-theorem on something about magnetic fields and how they
line up. Who cares? Her current role on Westwing is peanuts in comparison.
l
Another victim of 9/11 and the following safety-craze: Victorinox,
the producer of the famous childhood-memory called the “Swiss Army knife”.
Sales have plummeted 40 % since the terrorist strike 4 years ago and the refusal
of airport checkins to take them aboard. The company is now planning a
blade-free version of the, well, “knife”(?). To think, that Swiss Army
Knives were once sold aboard flying planes …
l Leonardo Da
Vinci was dyslexic and he often wrote backwards.
l The Atlantic
Ocean is saltier than the Pacific Ocean.
l Within a week an average of 800 US-americans are
injured by their jewellery. That doesn’t mean that gold necklace jumping up
and biting the wearer, I think.
l Every month Neil Armstrong, the first man to
walk on the moon, walked into the same barber shop in his hometown of Lebanon,
Cincinatti, to get a trim. He stopped when he learned that the barber, who had
just bought the shop, picked up the cut hair and sold it on the internet for
3.000 $.
l In Clayton County, Georgia, a man wounded
himself by using a .22 caliber bullet to repair his broken speaker system. The
NRA has got to be good for something, right?
l The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can't
fly, lives in a hole in the ground, is almost blind and lays only one egg each
year. Yet is has survived for 70 million years.
l The three wealthiest people (and their
families) in the world have more assets than the combined wealth of the 48
poorest countries.
l Another dumb Americans-fact: Americans spend
six times as much on home video games ($5.5 billion) as they do on school
library materials for their children.
l Ahh,
the smell of a new car! Actually, it comes in cans and is sprayed into the car
three hours before it leaves the factory.
l Bob Marley had
22 kids, of which 18 were illegitimate.
l The nihilist
woman who gets her toe cut off in The Big Lebowski (which is in several ways the
best movie ever made) was played by Aimee Mann. And if you didn’t recognize
him without his guitar: Smokey, the pacifist bowler almost stepping into the
world of pain, is Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
l Whereas the
first PEZ-candy dispenser was created in 1949, the candies themselves are being
produced since 1929 and - unlike any other major brand – have never changed
their design or shape.
l According to Professor David Barker, who examined fragments of a manuscript of the book of Revelations written in early third century from Egypt, the number of the beast aka the antichrist is not 666, but the far less ominous 616. Does that mean, Iron Maiden will have to reprint their album-covers. (thanks to T. for sending)
l During the worst tornado outbreak in history during April 3rd to 4th 1974 in nearly 150 tornadoes touched down in 13 US-states over a 16-hour period, killing 330 people and injuring 5,484. One whirlwind was eight kilometres wide, at one point in time 15 tornades were spotted at the same time. One twister lasted for more than two hours (usually they die within 10 minutes). The town of Xenia, Ohio, was levelled within nine minutes. I knew tornadoes were good for something, maybe just to show US-citizens that god is not always on their side.
l 6 out of 7 Yamaha-motorcycles sold in China are not from Yamaha.
l The USofA, having a measly 4 % of the global population, not only use up 25 % of the global annual production of energy, they are also responsible for more than 33 % of all spam mail.
l In iceland telephone books are sorted by first name.
l A Chinese man has been stabbed to death in a row over a sword in online game Legends of Mir 3, say reports. Shanghai gamer Qiu Chengwei killed player Zhu Caoyuan when he discovered he had sold a "dragon sabre" he had been loaned, said the china Daily. Mr Chengwei only got the powerful virtual weapon shortly before it was sold for 7,200 yuan (£460). Before the attack Mr Chengwei told police about the theft who said the weapon was not real property. Like many online games Legends of Mir 3 is set in a fantasy world in which players take on the roles of warriors, wizards and priests. As in-game characters rack up experience in the game they become able to use more powerful weapons such as the "dragon sabre" at the centre of the row. The BBC reported.
l It is not unusual in US-companies, especially the really big ones,
but in Europe and Germany it is still widely unknown: Walmart Germany has issued
guidelines for its employees, that say, e.g. it is prohibited to take any
presents from suppliers or have a date with someone that has any influence on
your work surroundings. Moreover, employees were instructed to tell their
leaders, if they found co-workers not acting according to these rules. Hm nice.
More Walmart-News: on 17th of February the Walmart company announced having made
a surplus of more than 10 billion dollars in 2004. On 18th of February they
threatened employees with closing of shops due to economical reasons.
l A woman in the US bought a digital camera for her 14 year old daughter. When the daughter unpacked the camera, she found the internal video memory filled with a video of a naked man playing with himself. On further investigation child pornography was found on the camera. The woman received a new camera from Walmart, who apologized sincerely. Police is investigating.
l Possibly the worlds longest advertising poster was
unveiled in Tokyo the 15th of feb 2005. The long ad which features the Mazda
Premacy, is on display in the Art Road underground walkway leading to Tokyo
Station. The poster measures 311 meters (1,020 feet) in length, or
"width" depending on how you look at it, and features sixty family
portraits taken by Kishin Shinoyama.
l Some collected information on China because
China will bet he dominating country in the century to come: 150 million Chinese
are studying abroad. 95 % of the tennis rackets in the world were manufactured
in China, 65 % of all bicycles, 50 % of all Christmas decoration. A new electric
plant is opened every week. Chinese consume 51 % of the worlds pork but only 19
% of the worlds chicken. 2.3 billion condoms are manufacture, of which 200
million are faulty. 9 out of 10 Viagra boxes sold in China are not manufactured
by Pfizer.
l An American citizen drinks 420 Coca-Cola per year.
l Even more exclusive than straightforward Iranian black caviar is Iranian white caviar, as laid by albino-salmon. In 2004 exactly one specimen had been caught, giving 1,8 kilo of white caviar. The 200g-box sells for a measly 20.000 US-$. Half of the “harvest” was immediately bought by a skirestaurant in St. Moritz.
l The right-wing Christian censorship-organisation
Focus On Family (do I have to mention the come from the USA?) have found a new
target in their anti-homosexuality crusade: Spongebob Squarepants. Obviously,
they find the charming yellow sponge holding hands with his friend Patrick
Starfish as “pro-homosexual”. And I thought sponges and starfishes reproduce
asexually. Other targets of the group are Barney the purple dinosaur and Jimmy
Neutron.
l A couple in Romania, who have met over the
internet, called their son Lucian Yahoo. After the granpa and the internet,
because they are the “main beacon of my life”. That’s a poor kid.
l The original lyrics to "La Cucaracha" included lines like this: "this roach is to tired to walk on because it has no more marihuana to smoke". The lyrics were changed by the mexican government to make it more fitting to the touristic expectations of the country.
l Researchers have disclosed that due to the high amount of SMS-writing on mobile phones and the according muscular training of the thumb, has made the thumb the lead finger for many juveniles instead of the index finger. As a result those teenagers use the thumb instead of the index finger to press buttons.
l The US ISP Verizon has taken an unusual step to reduce the amount of spam sent to its users: it has blocked all emails coming from Europe by default. Domains are only unblocked following complaints, which means Europeans are being treated as guilty until proven innocent. The best trick is the following advise by Verizon to its 3 million DSL users, though: “If it’s really important, you might want to make a phone call.”
l After using the phrase "That's hot!" so many times it has become associated with her, Paris Hilton (famous video-star and rich party girl) now wants to put a trademark on it so everyone using it has to pay her licence-fees. Great idea. I am thinking of getting the copyrights to "Hi there", "How are you?" and "Have a nice day." Addition: She won a prize by VH1 for "catchphraze of the year 2004."
lIn 1981 Vangelis won an Oscar for his score from
“Chariots of Fire”. Vangelis is self-taught and cannot read a note of music.
l The
multinational US-corporation Kraft Foods has sued a small French
dressmaker-company to get her URL: www.milka.fr. The woman’s
first name is Milka and her shop is called Milka Couture. Kraft Food is the
owner of the brand “Milka”. Her URL has been in use since 2001. The 58 year
old couturier now has sued Kraft Foods for using her name on every package of
chocolate. (Which is obviously quite useless…) If it is really possible to own
the legal rights to a regular name, I’d instantly go for John, Jack and James
– and get rich as Bill Gates in licensing fees.
l Of the
people, who eat their breakfast at their workplace (more than one answer
possible): 50 % have a chat with colleagues, 40 % do some work while eating, 31
% read magazines or newspapers, 25 % read and write emails, 10 % have a
telephone conversation (while eating? That’s gross!) and 2,5 % only want to
eat their breakfast in peace. It is that last group that really makes me think.
· 15 % of all art sold in auctions is estimated to be not authentic,
which means: faked.
· In China laws rule that television programms can only be interrupted every two minutes. ONLY every TWO minutes. Last year a viewer in Xian sued the local tv-station for interrupting his favourite soap so often, that it drove him round the bend. He got about 50 Euro.
· Teutonic Techno-Titans Scooter played in Dubai in summer 2004. Fans came from all over the place, filling a stadium, including two chartered airplanes from Iran. No less. More Scooter factoids: H.P. Baxter, the vocalist of Scooter, was asked to read German literture for a series of German popstars doing that. Of everything available, he chose Austrian novelist and dramatist Thomas Bernhard.
· The British Royal Navy has permitted Satanism as a religion for its soldiers. The technician Chris Crammer has been a Satanist for nine years and is now able to follow his religion publicly and, if he dies while on board, will be put to rest in the sea following satanic rituals. Says Admiral Woodward: “What the hell is happening here?”
· http://translate.google.com/translate_t Translate "my mom is nice and cool" from english to spanish... copy what you get and translate it back to english... hilarious!
· Californias perpetually buff Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill barring children under 14 from going to tanning salons in his sunshine-filled state. California lawmakers backed the legislation in May citing concerns by dermatologists who blame the artificial light in tanning booths for contributing to a rise in skin cancer. Violators could be liable for a fine of up to $2,500. Teenagers between the age of 14 and 18 need a note from their parents to go to a tanning salon. Arnie, once again we are so proud of you.
· AC/DC got their name from the back of a sewing machine. Angus Young’s mother’s sewing machine, actually. Sure, they liked the connotations of electrical power, but mommies sewing machine is were they saw it first.
· The voice of a screaming 3 year old is louder than 200 people in a restaurant. Also: wherever you go in a public area, there is at least one mother with a little kid and that kid is screaming.
·
R2D2
fans will be pleased to know that, on at least one occasion, the droid's
interior was filled with porn. During one Star Wars filming session, dwarf actor
Kenny Baker was due to be stuck inside R2D2 for the majority of the day. The
night before, some of the crew got together a stash of porn mags, cut out some
selected pictures, and covered the entire inside of the droid. The result was
that, for an entire day, no matter where he looked, the R2D2 actor could see
nothing but cunts.
·
A British survey
about hygiene at the workplace found out that there are about 400 deadly kinds
of germs and bacteria waiting on keyboards of PCs, telephone speakers and desks.
Way more than on any average home toilet seat (obviously they didn*’t dare to
survey office toilets.) The researchers claimed responsibility on the companies
for saving in cleaning teams and expecting the workers to clean their desks
themselves, which they don’t.
·
Doing an interview
with Britney Spears, the interviewer had the “regular list of stupid
questions” which included: “what was the last thing you put in your
mouth?” Britney’s answer: “A dildo”. The question was cut out for the
broadcast. Iventigative reporters would have added questions such as: “What,
right before now?”, “Why the heck did you put it in your mouth?” and
“With questions such as these to ask for a living, shouldn’t I rather go and
become a streetcleaner, so I can do a decent job?”.
· Looking back, the organisators of the original Woodstock-festival agree that the most important organisation to keep up infrastructure during the festival was, in fact, the US Army, who used their helicopters to fly water, food and artists in and out of the festival area. Now, why the hell did all those hippie think that Woodstock was an anti-Vietnam war concert?
· In 1986 Ohio preacher Jim Brown claimed that when the theme music to the 1960s TV show "Mr. Ed" was played backwards the lyrics were "someone sang this song for satan." Apparently this was considered much more perverse than a show about a horse with the power to speech.
· The original lines to Little Richards' legendary rock'n'roll-song "Tutti Frutti" included "Tutti Frutti, good booty ... if it don't fit, don't force it / you can grease it, make it easy." And you thought all that bitches and ho-stuff came from Snoop Dogg.
· Frank Zappa's album "Jazz From Hell" was the first completely instrumental album to ever recieve an "explicit lyrics"-warning sticker.
· Singapore Airlines' LA-Singapore-trip is the longest nonstop commercial regular flight in air travel history taking 18.5 hours. And that's without travelling to and from the airport, checking in and waiting for the pilot to get ready to start.
· Reality TV shows declined by US-networks included "Convict Island", "Pimp House", "Who wants to be a sperm donor?" and "The Virgin". If you wonder what they are about - exactly what they are called.
· The last person ever imprisoned in the Tower Of London was Rudolf Hess, after his mysterious flight from Germany to England in 1942 during WWII.
·
The penis
of a blue whale can measure up to 16 feet long and its testicles weigh in at
around 25 pounds apiece. The southern right whale — which has testicles even
larger than the blue whale's, weighing in a half-a-ton apiece — produces
around 5 gallons of ejaculate in one mating session. That’s a load.
·
Carrie-Anne Moss, who plays Trinity in the movie “Matrix”, also played Liz
Teel in the TV series "Matrix" (1993).
·
The
Aussie-band INXS from the Eighties, who you’ll surely all know because their
hits like “Disappear” or “Need you tonight” are still being played on
the radio, are looking for a new frontman. Their old one, Michael Hutchence,
hanged himself on the doorknob of his hotelroom with a belt some years ago.
(Some people still debate if that was murder or carelessness during a
potentially dagerous masturbatory practice.) To find the right person, they will
start a TV show and cast the singer. That is a fact. That Robbie Williams will
be among those casting for the position is – obviously – a rumour for those
who’ll believe anything.
· Better watch yourself these days. The 10 year old son of an airforce reserve pilot mentioned that he'd like to be a pilot, so she asked for a software that teaches how to fly in a computer store. This warranted her a visit by the FBI, because ever since 9/11 it is illegal in the USA to even ask for it. The FBI also visited a young man who was publicly reading in an essay - written by his father - entitled "weapons of mass stupidity." The FBI said that he had been watched reading suspicious material and demanded a copy of the article and searched his automobile.
· The North Korean Broadcasting station has been using about 1.200 dfifferent names to refer to leader Kim Il Jong. These are titles such as Beloved Leader, Great Human Veteran, Matchless Leader who rules the world with virtue, Great Leader who opened a new History, Symbol of Unchallenged Victory, Invincible Commander, Genius of Human Music, Walking Computer who surprises experts, Lodestar of the 21st century, Sun of Revolution, Sun of Life, Creator and Symbol of the Goodruler Philosophy, and so on. They are serious, y'know.
· Police in Northern India are paid an extra 65 cents a month for wearing a moustache, which officials believe projects an air of greater authority.
· 1 out of 5 Americans ages 18 to 29 say they get their presidential campaign news solely from comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show.
· When mastering CDs the music is usually transferred into analogue waves and then put back into digital mode for pressing. So much for DDD.
· During the reign of Austrian emperess Maria Theresia a strict ban was put on prostitution. After her death, though, her followers feared the philosophy of the French revolution and figuring that people busy having sex don't have so much time thinking about revolution, the regulations were loosened. There is a lesson in there for our current leaders as well, I guess.
· In Finland there is a new kind of sport: throwing mobile phones. On 28th of August the fifth championships will be carried out. The winning throw in 2003 made 66.62 metres. Not even far enough.
· A scientist now declared that the head lying next to the sceleton of famous poet and philosopher Petrarca, who died in 1374, is actually the head of a woman. “Don’t ask me, where the real skull is” the scientist said. So tell me, "where be his quiddities now, his qualities, his cases, his tenures and his tricks?" Ups, that’s some hundred years later.
·
The actors synching
for core characters of the cartoon-show “The Simpsons“ earn a whooping
125.000 Dollars per show! Not bad for working 6 to 7 hours all in all. But now
they are striking for a payrise: they want 360.000 Dollars per show – that is
just about 175 % more.
· The Coca-Cola company of the UK has now admitted that their special mineral water (non-sparkling) "Dasani", which they sold in bottles of 0.5 litres for 95 Pence or 1,40 Euro is actually filled almost directly from the tap at their site in Sidcup, southeast of London. The water was filtered to be clean of salts, viruses, bacteria and poisonous particles, but it is still tap water. If you tap it yourself, you'd have to pay about 0,03 pence for half a litre.
· An 18 year-old student at a school in upper Austria left a "special" cake in front of the teacher's room in his school of which the teachers freely partook. Unfortunately, the cake was laced with hashish and ten teachers had to be delivered to hospital. Somehow the crazy stuff always happens in Upper Austria. (see below to the guy who cut off his own toes and ate them.)
· At the beginning of last century enormous whale-factories were built in the southernmost places of the earth (Patagonia, fireland, ...) to process the thousands of whales caught right there and then into oil, fat and whatever to make of such big fish. When this remote factories ran out of coal to fire their ovens, they used penguins instead, sometimes throwing them into the ovens alive. The thick fat of penguins made them burn quite good. How people can commit such cruel acts is beyond me. Penguins, for goodness sake!!
· According to the catholic council of Nikaia in the year 325 p.c. god started creation on the 18th of March.
· 59 % of all US-citizens are overweight. Yes, that means Americans are fat.
· Some history-lesson, Catherine the great from Russia didn't die while having sex with her horse. She probably didn't have sex with horses at all, contrary to popular belief. She did, however, have sex with an impressive number of men, who she called her "stallions" - hence the story.
· Like the father so the son. If you wondered where George W. Bush got his insights and famous sayings, such as "The major parts of our imports come from foreign countries" from, wonder no more. George Bush sen. has once uttered this piece of intelligence: "I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." Well, Ronald Regean once said: "Facts are stupid things."
· Barbers' assistants in Copenhagen started to strike in 1928, kept on during WW2 and finally stopped the strike in 1961. I haven't yet done any further research, but my guess would be, that the barbers found that they didn't really need any assistants and after 33 years of striking the assistants realised the same thing.
· The skateboard speed record is a measly 78 miles per hour. The holder, US-citizen Roger Hickey, broke 44 bones in the attempt. But hey, it's a new world record!
· Only two acts hav had 12 UK top 30 hit singles in one year. Elvis Presley in 1957 and The Wedding Present in 1992. The Wedding Present went one better by having one each month.
· The idea to fly an airliner into a building as a terrorist act and political symbol is neither new nor restricted to Islam fanatics. Quite contrary, the first person to attempt such a deed was US-citizen Samuel S. Byck, who shot his way onto an airplane in Baltimore airport in 1974 with the intention of hijacking it and crashing it into the White House. Notes found later on, revealed that he wanted to kill president Richard Nixon and that he called this Operation "Pandoras Box". Because the plane was unable to lift off, he shot the pilot and co-pilot and finally, facing capture, committed suicide.
· Other US-presidents, who were direct targets of assasinations or attempts (usually shot at): Abraham Lincoln (died), James Garfield (died), William McKinley (died), Theodore Roosevelt (twice, never injured), Harry Truman (not even close), John F. Kennedy (died), Ronald Regean (wounded but survived). There might be more, but it is a dangerous job nonetheless.
· When seamen first landed on the Easter islands, they were distracted by two things: all the big statues placed on various spots around the island and the fact that the island was completely uninhabitated. New research now found out that the early native tribes, the Rapa Nui, that lived on the island started to produce these marvellous statues in a sort of race of some families against other families. Nowadays you might call it a "hype". But because it takes up a lot of hard work to produce these statues, some of them weighing more than 50 tons, they needed more and more people to do it. So less and less people cared about food and shelter. Moreover they cut down every single tree on the island because they needed them to move and place these statues. So, by producing these statues, they destroyed the basis of their existence. I guess, there is a lesson in there for all of us.
· Thomas Preston, aka Amarillo Slim, might be the world's best gambler ever. Aprt from being a legendary poker player he also won bets like these: drafting down a 29-mile stretch of the deadly River of No Retun in Idaho (took him three days), beating Evil Knievel in a round of golf (played with a carpenter's hammer), winning against pool-pro and hustler Minnesota Fats (playing with a broom's handle), beating Wimbledon Campion Bobby Briggs in a game of table tennis played with frying pans (he bagged US$ 10.000) and on which of five sugar cubes a fly would land on (he won US$ 20.000).
· In September 1992 Premier of England John Major said he would never devalue the British Pound. George Soros, investment genius, said he had to and put a 10 billion dollar investment option on the Pound being devalued. Major's tory government said they'd defend the pound to the last. Soros insisted they couldn't. The Bank of England, under economical pressure, finally devalued the pound and Soros bagged a million pounds in return.
· Mike Oldfield had been knocked back by every record company until he met a 23-year-old entrepreneur called Richard Branson in 1973, who was willing to release an album without lyrics on his fledgling Virgin-records. "Tubular Bells" sold 19 million copies and laid the foundations for today's Virgin empire. But if you ask me, it is still crap.
· Cinnamon, which is commonly used in bakery and cooking, has some surprising side-effects. Among the good effects is its ability to heal ulcers and to lower blood-sugar. But it can also evoke allergic reactions and is suspected to increase the risk of cancer. It can also lead to depression and tiredness. In larger quantities (exactly how large, I couldn't find out) its effects are like those of drugs such as Marihuana. Now I know what Neil Young's "Cinammon Girl" was all about.
· The "Queen Mary II" is the biggest passenger-ship ever built. It is higher than the Niagara falls, 1245 people work on it (including its own beer-brewery, dance-instructors and 51 people in a spa) for a maximum of 2620 passengers. The biggest suite has 209 squaremetres, there are five pools and a running-track of 540 metres lenght (which is longer than in your usual stadium). This ship even has its own planetarium. It cost 870 million Euros to build this monster but it was worth it - it is sold out for years already and hasn't even had its virgn cruise yet.
» The day I write this, the evening-news report that a landing-bridge has collapsed while the Queen Mary was in the dry dock and about 15 people dropped about 30 metres to their deaths. A few people survived because they fell on other people. Tough shit...
· Aquavit is being shipped in sherry-caskets from Norway to Australia and back again, to proved the shaking it needs to fully ripen.
· The Australian Drug Research and Information centre has issued a warning, that it is of no physological effect to try and help someone suffering from a drug-overdose by administering an enema with icecubes. Apparently, in the Australian clubber- and raver-scene this practice had become so common, the authorities felt they had to warn the public. Imagine what they would do to you, if you had an overdose during Christopher Street Day.
· If you want to throw a party, the Rolling Stones are up and ready to play. If you can afford the 6.1 million Euro the want to have for playing your private party.
· The coolest tv-show of this autumn was "24", a real-time-thriller, which means the title refers to the 24 hours depicted in real time in the series. But since the producers deducted 15 minutes of advertisement of each hourly segment, it was actually only 18 hours long.
· Queen's Brian May's guitar was a self-construction he built with his father. Guitar production companies tried to copy it, but were unable to produce the sound. Wa-wa-wooom.
· A man in Linz, Upper Austria, cut off his toes and ate them. He told the police, he had enough toes, he could spare some. All under the influence of drugs, of course.
· The new world-record in eating oysters is 167 pieces in three minutes. Somebody needs a drink now.
· There is a new software being introduced that shall introduce computers to seven month old babies. Some parents just can't start early enough, can they?
· Between 1994 and 2002 the U.S. Department of Defense entered into more than 3,000 contracts with private military companies ("Soldiers of Fortune") for a total value of roughly $300 billion. Contracts include training security forces in Iraq, flying gunships in Colombia, training civilian police in Bosnia and Kosovo, protecting Afghanistan's president Hamid Kazai (which the US forces won't do any more) and various unnamed special objectives. That is $ 100 million a pop - not bad for an industry not prone to advertising or public appearances.
· Idi Armin, the ex-dictator of Uganda, who died on August 15th (finally, the cruel tosser...) once declared himself "King of Scotland", wanted Queen Elizabeth II. to step down and let him rule the Commonwealth, awarded himself with the Victoria Cross Medal for bravery, banned hippies and miniskirts from his country, nevertheless liked to wear a kilt himself. That's all fun, his cruelty left 300.000 dead. Few will miss him, and fewer even mourn him. But the more laugh about him, the worse his fate in hell will be.
· In the little Japanese town of Kesennuma, about 400 kilometers north of Tokio, there is a public aquarium, in which all the fish are frozen at 20 degrees celsius below zero, which has several advanteges: there has to be no supply of fresh fish when old ones die, people can see all the fish easily, thereby move faster through the museum which allows more audience.
· Ever since McDonald was founded never were to countries at war with each other that had McDonald-restaurants. McDonald as the ultimate peace-keeper?
· McDonald's cartoon-character is known as Ronald McDonald all over the world, with one exception: in Japan he is called Donald McDonald.
· There is a house-music genre that is actually called porno-techno. And lately I read the band name: very expensive pornomovie. Oh well, if some things come out of the dark…
·
Pink Floyd
still sells 8.000 copies of “Dark Side Of The Moon” per week in the USA
alone.
· AOL delivers 680 000 000 emails daily, while holding back 780 000 000.
· When an opossum "plays possum", it isn't playing dead. It has actually passed out.
· Two out of three people in the world have never made a telephone call.
· 50 % of the world's population live within five hours of flying distance from Hong Kong.
· Each year in Paris, 650 people break bones or are hospitalized after slipping on dog feces.
· Banana-facts: They are actually berries. They are made up of 75 percent water and contain a lot of potassium. Ecuador is the world largest exporter of bananas. More than 85 countries produce bananas, nevertheless the "big three" - Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte - control two-thirds of the world's production. One more: mosquitoes are more attracted to people who eat bananas or use banana-scented products.
· You know DJ Bobo, the nauseating disco-superstar from Switzerland. Well, here is the secret to his success. It is in his name: "Bobo" means "idiot" in Spanish and in Japanese the word describes the female sex-organ. See, in music integrity and honesty are two important values that pay.
· There are obviously some hundred annual “Ugly Dog Contests” held in the USA.
· What you gonna do with this knowledge: Steve Bays, vocalist of the Canadian "post-punks" (as they are being called) Hot Hot Heat went to school with Nelly Furtado. More interesting: Some say that Bays' voice reminds them of Robert Smith from The Cure, who once had a song called "Hot Hot Hot". There is also a Cure-song called "Fire in Cairo" and Hot Hot Heat have one song called "In Cairo". Fire, Heat, Hot, Cairo, wonder how that all fits together?
· The biggest drum-kit ever used was allegedly played by Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and consisted of 308 parts. Some way to spend money, innit'?
· Actually, this would belong to the war-factoids, but war is officially over, so there we go: Iraqui war-prisoners were treated to 24hours-nonstop playbacks of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" to break their wills and recieve some information. Other music used was by Drowning Pool and the Power Rangers-song. Human Rights Watch calls that torture by pschology. Well, it is not as bad has listening to Lars Ulrich talk, is it?
And do you remember that in 1989 the US-army managed to get the dictator of Panama Manuel Noriega out of the Vatican-embassy in Panama City, where he fled to, by playing "Welcome to the Jungle" three days and nights in a row.
· "3 strikes and you are out"-rule for criminals was invented and implemented in California. This rules means, that after you comitted two crimes, the next one will give you a life sentence, no matter what it is you have done. Today there are 350 people in prison in California with a life-sentence whose third crime was: shoplifting.
· According to "Business Week" in 1980 a manager earned 42x more than an average worker. In 2002 he earned 531x more.
· In Italy there are 45.000 dentists working without a governmental license (as compared to 40.000 who own a legal license).
· The government of Cazachsthan stopped production of a local newspaper - not because it wrote oppositional or had an anti-governmental stance, but because there were too many grammatical errors in it. Do you believe that?
· Today is April 14th and some newspapers act as if the war against Iraq is already won by the USA. US-officials are now saying that this fact will shut up all the critics of the US-aggression against Iraq. The reasons for this war were: to secure weapons of mass-destruction and to find Saddam Hussein and kick his butt. No weapons of mass-destruction have been found yet. Saddam Hussein hasn't been found yet.
·The US-government has given billion-dollar-contracts to US-American companies for the reconstruction of the cities and factories in Iraq without any invitation of tenders before the war against Iraq had started. As it has been announced now, these contracts were fixed back when there where still UN-inspectors in Iraq and George W. Bush was talking about the possibility of a peaceful solution, if... Well, two possibilites: a) he only speaks words being handed to him b) he lied. Chose your favourite. By the way, one company that got one of the biggest contracts is Haliburton, of which Dick Cheney was the boss for years. Funny, how some things always work out.
· The Global Positioning System known as GPS was a originally invented for the military. During the first gulf-war in1991 the civil standard for GPS was an exactness of 150 meters, while the military standard was 13 meters. Nowadays both civil and military standard are 13 meters. When the USA attacked Iraq, a lot of people who depend on GPS for various reasons, were afraid that the US-military, who still basically own the whole damn thing, would push a button and thereby reduce the exactness to 150 meters or worse back again, as they did during the war in former Yugoslavia. But this didn't happen, for one simple reason: because civil GPS-systems are way cheaper than the military ones, the US-military bought tens of thousands of civil GPS-systems to equip their soldiers. So, if they turn it down now, they turn down their very own system.
· Information has been given that the US and UK are enmploying about twenty private war-companies in the current golf war. These "soldiers of fortune" are being paid by private companies specialised in warfare (by the way, there are about 35 of them in the USA and they are always in the Forbe's 500 rank of the richest companies in the world) who get their contracts from the governments. Since these are private enterprises they are not restricted by any multinational laws and that is why they specialise in operations too "dirty" to be done by real military.
· Remember these when listening to press-statements by US-officials: "friendly fire" means being shot by your own people, "collateral damage" means we killed innocent civilians, "the coalition" means the US-military plus a few idiots who always come around, "free the people of Iraq" means free the oil of Iraq and finally "that information is classified" means we have no idea at all.
· The Bush-family has become rich - and I mean really rich, I mean richer than Paul McCartney rich - with an oil-company called PENNZOIL. In early 2001 this company won a 11-billion-dollar lawsuit against TEXACO, thereby getting the possibility to exploit one of the oil-richest territories in the world: Iraq.
·Germany's tv-licence-fee-agency has sent letters to St. Frau Walburga asking for a monthly licence payment of 16.50 Euros. Unfortunately, St. Frau Walburga was born 710 in England and made a saint in 880, and the letters arrived at the Catholic church in Ramsdorf, were Father Karl Terhorst first ignored them, until letters threatened Frau Walburga with legal action and a fine. I'd like to see who pays.
·One more to the chicken-egg-thing. If you ask a biologist, what was first, the chicken or the egg, he will tell you the egg. Not because biologists always want to contradict the church (see Darwin and the evolution-thing) but because reptiles lay eggs and there were reptiles before there were birds. Now the question is: what was first, the lizard or the egg?
·What was first, the chicken or the egg? The bible, as always, gives you the answer. According to Genesis 1;20-22 the chicken was first. Now, what about: why did the chicken cross the road?
·The "Brit Awards" are being called "Europes most important musical award". If that is true, I want to know why Robbie Williams has won 14 of the damn things in the last years? Speaking of Robbie Williams - when Daryl Hannah was invited to star in the new video of Robbie Williams she said yes, because she thought it was all about Hollywood-actor "Robin Williams". What a shock it must have been to be kissing and making out with a 29-year-old, good-looking multi-millionaire instead?
·As dental hygiene the antique greeks preferred flushing their mouth with water or wine or urine. Latter contains ammoniac and is therefore the most effective potion of the three.
·In the signation of the legendary tv-show "Baywatch" in the years 1992 and 1993 there is person in the background showing his bared bottom. In the scene with David Charvet aka Matt Brody (now you got a reason to look for him...) Watch out for it in re-runs.
·It is impossible to fold paper in half more than seven times. If you don't believe me, try it.
·Ancient Romans had communal toilets, which were accepted as social meeting points. With no walls or seperations between the single "stalls", people used to meet, talk and do business on toilets. Moreover, these toilets already had primitive water-systems, were water washed away the crap. Which is way better than the medieval times, were people basically got rid of their feces wherever it suited them, without cleaning their behinds. If you ask me, that is the main reason why it is called the "dark ages". I guess, originally they called it the "dark and stinking ages".
·Up to the 14th century it was a tradition in middle Europe to invite a prostitute as a blessing for fertility to a wedding. With the 15th century this tradition vanished. In that times, prostitutes were easily recognizable, because they had to wear certain clothes and marks by law. Nowadays it is not so easy anymore.
·In the original script for the movie "Back to the future" the time-machine wasn't built into a sportscar, but into a refridgerator.
·In 1998 a student of Greenbriar Highschool in Evans, Georgia, named Mike Cannon was suspended for a day for wearing a Pepsi-shirt on "Coca Cola"-day. Coca Cola had called all schools in the USA to develop strategies for distributing of Cola-Tokens and Greenbriar-school took the whole thing really serious: dressing all students in Cola-shirts, forming a human Cola-Logo, and so on including lessons about the brown sugary liquid. (The price at stake were 500 Dollars.) To us, Mike Cannon is a hero.
·Party-Pop-singer turned rock-bitch Pink revealed the origin of her name. Nope, it's not the colour of her hair, but rather the color of her vagina that gave her that moniker. (Story goes she showed it to a friend in a car and that was his remark: "it is pink." Lucky he didn't mention the hair, though...)
·The movie „Scream“ was initially called „Scary Movie“.
·The
average person makes about 1,140 telephone calls each year .
·William Randolph Hearst had hired Adolf Hitler to write opinion columns for his newspaper, but fired him for continually missing his deadlines.
·Kleenex tissues were originally developed as gas-mask filters during World War I.
·The first message transmitted over the Internet (then known as ARPANet) was "LOGIN," although on the first try, it crashed on the G.
·Sales records from Domino's Pizza indicate that on the day The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia died, orders for mushroom-topped pizzas went up 61 percent.
·There are no known pathogens (deadly micro-organisms) which can survive in beer.
·In 1930, one Professor Aharoni traveled to the Hittite city of Chaleb, where he found a female, golden-colored "mouse" and her thirteen newborn babies. Every hamster in existence today descends from those original 14, and no other has been found in the wild since.
·Brittney Spears said in a Bravo (German teenie mag): "I am in favor of death penalty. If somebody has done something awful, he should be taught a lesson. So he never does it again." You figured that out yourself, Britt-Honey? (found in OX-magazine).
·The Hawaiinese alphabet has five vocals and only seven consonants. This might be reasons for words like humuhumunukanukapa'a (=a fish and symbol for Hawaii).
·"the pattern" are the follow-up of "the peeches", who released on killrockstars, and who were "either love 'em or leave 'em" due to the voice of the singer chris. chris is the head of the californian traditional punk-label "lookout" and he is called "the prez". "the peeches" once made it to vienna, to the tu club and played in front of twenty people, which is a pity. the drummer of "the peeches" is the wife of chris. she used to play with "bratmobile", who are riotgirl-legends and just released their second record on, you guessed it, lookout. the reviving of "bratmobile", might have been the deathcall for "the peeches", so chris recruited some punk-vetereans from his surroundings to put another record to the (foreseeable) retro-trend. nuff said. Thank you Herwig. That's the way reviews should be done. Short and informative.
·If all the Coca Cola ever produced was bottled into regular size 2 oz. bottles and placed next to each other, this would give you 1.045 times the distance earth to moon. (Cherry Coke not included.)
·Did you know that David Bowie had a older manic-depressive / schizophrenic stepbrother by name of Terry Burns, who lived Cane Hill Hospital prior to and after the 'Ziggy Stardust' era. The US-rerelease of the David Bowie album „The man who sold the world“ (Original release by Mercury April 1971) depicts the ominous frontage of the hospital. The track "All The Madmen", found on this album clearly echo's the nightmare that was Cane Hill. Terry Burns committed suicide in 1985 by lying in front of a train and this is commonly believed to have been the subject of Bowie's later single "Jump“.
·How to fulfill your own dreams! Dream #1: Shoot a goal at the Champions League finale: just run down the field naked during kick off and do it. (happened this year.) Dream #2: Play with Manchester United in the Champions League finale. Last year a fan climbed onto the field in full ManU-dress and just joined the team during the pre-match fotosession. Nobody noticed or remarked then but on the next day all the papers had these "official" pictures. Dream #3: An austrian team playing in the CHL-finale. Ha ha ha. Just kidding.
·John O'Reilly resigned from his job as deputy director of the FBI in July 2001 in protest over the Bush administration's obstructing in bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice from the Yemen attacks on the war-vessel U.S.S. Cole. (Bush wanted to build a pipeline through Afghanistan!) Guess where he started to work after resigning? He became head of security for the World Trade Center and was killed in the attack on September 11th. More than just the irony of life? (I found this information in #20 of FRACTURE-zine.)
·Some basic facts about tv these days: There are more tv-sets in the world than there are telephones. 33 % of all European households have 3 TV sets or more. On average, Europeans watch 3 1/2 hours tv per day. After sleep and work, people spend more time watching television than doing any other activity. Less than 1 % of the people claim they never watch tv.
·Starbuck serves 20 million customers a week worldwide. The average customer visits Starbucks 18 times per month. Want to read more about starbucks. Check here (internal link) for further information.
·In Arizona it is forbidden by law to have more than two dildos in your house. In Utah cousins can marry if they are older than 50. And in Louisiana it is forbidden to hunt with a moving vehicle, except fpr hunting whales.
·Wrigley's chewing gum was the first product using barcode on the packaging.
·According to a survey of top-selling video games commissioned by a child advocacy group, percent of female characters with large breasts: 38. Percentage of female characters with "unusually small waists": 46. Percentage of female characters depicted violent: 54 %. (I thought it would be more than that, but I only ever played Lara Croft...) According to industry analysts,percentage of video game users who are girls: 33.
·In Arkansas the number of gun-permits has risen by 49 % after September 11th. Well, at last Arkansas is Taliban-free for sure.
·Why hasn't anybody up to now noticed that beloved country-singer-meister Ryan Adams stands in front of up-side-down (!) stars'n'stripes on the front of his record cover. I mean, that isn't "Born in the USA", that is the satanism of US-patriotism. Moreover, as far as I can judge that, the most prominent left-wing, liberal and oppositional magazine from the USA, that is still left over after the "One volk, One Führer"-patriotism of late, is the Playboy. See, even in an art-magazine like Juxtapoz the painter Robert Williams ("Appetite for destruction"-cover) spreads his United-US-against-the-islam message.
·In Italy a small village called Ginostra on the island of Stromboli (sounds like a pizza-place to me) was left out of the currency-exchange to the Euro. Not a single coin of the new currency has been delivered to the place as of January 15th. Officials say, the bad weather made the delivery impossible. On the other hand, small currency-converters were delivered in time.
·Ericson and the UNO have installed the first mobile phone net in Kabul, Afghanistan. It is not a commercial net, but tailored for the government and UN-officials. That is nice. I guess, houses and hospitals and schools for civilians would be nice, too. In Afghanistan with a population of 25 million, there are only 50.000 phones. It’s the devil’s work anyway.
·The (very good) Scottish Islay-whisky LAPHROAIG is allowed to print the insignia of Prince Charles of England on his bottles, ever since the prince visited the distillery, and set his private jet royally beside the runway at the local airport. Maybe he started drinking before landing...
·Freddy Mercury's real name was Farrokh Bulsara. And George Michael went by the glamorous name of Georgius Krylacos Panayioutou. On a related note: a famous porno-producer revealed how he helps his coming (no pun intended, well maybe...) stars how to choose their pseudonyms: Take the name of your pet as first and the name of the street you live on as last name.
·Swiss clockmaker Swatch sells 100.000 watches per day.
·Prairie Plant Systems, which last year won a contract to produce medical marijuana for the Canadian government, is growing the reefer in an abandoned zinc and copper mine. The crop grows faster underground because of elevated levels of carbon dioxide and because heat, light and humidity are strictly controlled. In exchange for recieving the marijuana, hundreds of sick Canadians have agreed to test its effectiveness.
·Kevin Smith, the director of the movie "Clerks" and acting as Silent Bob in the movie and Jason Mewes, who plays Jay in the same movie, were friends beforehand, worked together in a small shop called "Quick Stop" until Jason Mewes got a job in the video-store on the other side of the street. Which is basically the setting for the movie "Clerks".
·Jeffrey Pollock, conservative Republican from Portland, Oregon, and congress-candidate supported the mandatory use of filtering-software for internet-access in public places until he discovered that his campaign-site had been blocked, presumably because his anti-abortion statement included the words rape and incest. He now tells parents not to give "god-like" power to a piece of software.
On a related note, an american journalist made up homepages from anti-homosexuality-statements picked from various sites of conservative politicians and supporters of mandatory filtering (e.g. Concerned women for America) and reported them to various software-houses producing filtering software, all of whom at least blocked two of his four sites because they constituted "hatespeech". When a reporter called the ruse, none of the software-houses agreed to block the sites, where these statements originaly came from. Never bite the hand that feeds you.
·According to Hindu tradition, a husband should only approach his wife sexually during her ritu (season), a period of 16 days within the menstrual cycle. But intercourse is forbidden on the first four, the 11th and the 13th of these days. Moreover, the all important sons are only conceived on even nights and daughters on uneven nights, the days for conjugal relations shrink to five. Then there are the parvas, the moonlessnights and those of full moon when sexual relations lead either to the birth of atheist sons or the "hell of feces and urine."
·Sculptor Kristofer Leirdal, who created the winged statue of Saint Michael atop the Trondheim Cathedral in Norway in 1969, now revealed, that he modeled the statue after Bob Dylan.
·The crossraod Barret Road / Grinn Drive in Westchester, Ohio, has been declared funniest intersection in the USA by State Farm Insurence. Runners up were corner or Antonio and Banderas in Rancho Santa Margarita, California and the three-way-crossing of Hickory, Dickory and Dock in Harahan, Louisiana.
·Of the 86 deathrow inmates who have been exonerated since 1972, number who had been identified as the perpetrator by eyewitness testimony: 46.
·30 years ago the american technician Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail via the ARPANET. He can’t remember the content, though, only that everything was written in large letters. Oh well, the ARPANET had only 200 connections anyway. And as a related matter: the „@“-sign was already used by accountants in the 19th century. And „Alt Gr“ is the same as pressing „Alt“ and “Ctrl“ at the same time. The „Gr“ in „Alt Gr“ stands for German, by the way. Yep, somehow we are nerds, too.
·Three Transvestites issued a law-suite against a Brooklyn Toys-R-Us, because employees threatened them with a bat and called them faggots, when all these she-males wanted, was to purchase a couple of life-size-barbies. What? There are life-size Barbies? I'll be back in two hours.
·The original, orally traded versions of "Little Red Riding Hood", included the wolf cutting the grandmother in tiny bits, which Little Red then eats. She also drinks her blood. She also undresses before she gets into bed with the wolf. That was way before those anti-traumatic, pro-feminist, anti-discriminatory children's books from nowadays..
·My as always good source for facts Daniel Eloquence tells me, that Reader's Digest (the bookclub with abridged versions of all those classics) was founded by the CIA as a means to distribute propagande subtly. Obviously, they use Hollywood for that not-so-subtle moves.
·Rastafarians believe that cutting your hair is a desecration of their body. That's why the let their hair grow long. Obviously cleaning or combing your hair is also forbidden in this religion - that's where the dreadlocks come from.
·The September-issue of the US-Playboy features an intriguing article about Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and their drugabuse. Get it, if you want to get a look inside their private life. Or a look inside.
·The food-hype of the summer is a fake: soft-ice. Actually, it's ice with bubbles of air in it. That's why it is so soft. Moreover you get 3 litres soft-ice out of every litre straight ice. Good marketing, that. Soft-ice was invented by a team of young british food-designers years and years ago, among them a young woman called Magret Thatcher. Yes, her. Fits, doesn't it? (Thanks to danieloquence for the info)
·Henry Rollins is able to smile. See for yourself in the new video by the Rollins band (the one with all the babes).
·There might be only eight planets in our solar system. Scientist are discussing wether pluto is just a comet.
·Dave Navarro (Ex-Janes Addiction, Ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers) once tried to suck Marilyn Mansons dick. Literally. (Note from ed.: He is not the only one, cause Manson attracts strange people like shit attracts flys.)
·Phil Knight, infamous CEO of Nike, announced, that he wants to put one part of the Tour de France into America, preferably New York. Okay, so the Tour de France passes Belgium and a little of Germany, but another continent?
·The cable connecting the controller with the console is 150 cm longer with the European Playstation than with the Asian version. Wasn't there something similar about penis-lenght...?
·70 fishermen die every single day on their work. And they tell you being a policeman is dangerous.
·Icebears have black skin. Yo, brother! call the nation of ice-lam!
·5.000 people go missing every day on our planet. Now think about that for a while.
· Second hand smoke can double the risk of kids 4-11 years develop cavities. Put that on the cigarette-pack.
· More black Americans kill each other every year than were murdered throughout Southern lynching history.
· House Of Pain named themselves after the b-side of Van Halen’s “Jump”-7”. Proven by their stage antics.
·
The best-selling records in Austria of 2000 were DJ ÖTZI “Anton aus Tirol”
and GIGI D’AGOSTINIs album, and I don’t give a damn, what its name is, since
I feel sick.
·
With the end of the 1st quarter of 2001, there were more mobile
phones in Germany than common telephones. Still, only about three people have
bought handies with inbuilt mp3-players.
·
A young Israeli had his last name changed to “.com” in April. He has now
“Tisser.com” entered in his passport, which also serves as URL to his
website. Is aim is to make it easy for girls to date him. We call that nutty
bordering on whacky.
· You know the movie High Fidelity, right? So you know, that two famous singers are playing minor roles in the movie? Of course, one is Al Johnson of US Maple! Second one is Bruce whats-his-name…
This is the real name of a small community in
upper austria. Must be fun to sell property there.