Fun Facts and Trivial Tidbits - Wednesday Edition

Welcome to the Wednesday Edition of Fun Facts and Trivial Tidbits.  As mentioned on the Monday blog, we are mixing things up a bit to see if we can add more spark to your work week.  Mondays are usually blue, and we had been striving to make them less so.  But Wednesdays have been so very tough lately, so for "Hump-Day" we are going to have some fun so you can get an early jump anticipating the weekend.

Do any of you remember when the earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet at 9:30 PM GMT February 9, 1986?  Did you know that on April 19, 1910 Halley's Comet made it's first  appearance since 1759.  Many people stayed home with their families expecting Doomsday the moment the earth passed through Halley's Comet's tail.   Glad to know we are still doing  OK (really???).  The next expected appearance of Halley's Comet should be July 28, 2061...some of us may still be hanging around...

In 1910, auto racer Barney Oldfield, 32, set a new speed record at Daytona Beach, FL, traveling a whopping 131.724 mph.  I can do that now on my bike on the freeway...(but I didn't....really...don't you believe me???)

Do you know what a spoonerism is?  It is switching letters in a sentence... for instance, saying "jag of Flapan" instead of "flag of Japan".

Here are some fun facts regarding the English language - there are only three words in the English language that contain two 'U's' back to back.  They are vacuum, residuum and continuum.

The only word in the English language that contains 3 back to back  double letter combinations is Bookkeeper....

A novel with 50,000 words, none of which contained the letter 'E' was written by Ernest Wright.  I wonder what the title of that tome was?

The letter 'Q' is the only letter in the English alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States.

For you scientists out there - Do you know what the science of Anthroppmetry is?  It is the measurement of the human body.  This science allowed factory-made ready-to-wear clothing to be bought by people for the first time in the mid-1800's due to the need to mass-produce soldiers uniforms in different sizes for the Civil War in the United States.

 How much do you fly?  Are you concerned about the safety of flying in an aeroplane?  Did you know that Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes?  So, if you are afraid to fly for fear of being in a plane crash, go ride a donkey.  If you survive that, odds are that you will survive a plane flight.  (we won't discuss the groping involved with flying now though..)

Keeping along the lines of planes for a moment - a Boeing 747's wingspan is longer than teh Wright brother's first flight.  That makes you sit up and think for a moment...

Lastly, for those of you who do minor home repairs, I bet you all have at least one can of WD-40 in your house to quiet those squeaky hinges, or to otherwise help loosen rusted screws.  Do you know what the "WD" in the name actually stands for?  It is an abbreviation for Water Displacer...

Hopefully you enjoyed your Wednesday Edition of Fun Facts and Trivial Tidbits.  Monday will bring a return of some motivational ideas, and perhaps we will throw in an additional article next week, just for the fun of it. 

Continue to stay tuned... Until next week...