h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Half of Twenty is....

Twe

In Las Vegas you can buy a Rolex at the many retail stores. The pawn shops also have a good selection from time to time. Depending on the exchange rate you can get very good deals there. I actually bought mine at a black jack table , from a tourist sitting next to me. I didn't know it at the time but they are quite collectable. The one I bought was made in the thirties , I am told it is a good deal more valuable then what I gave for it.





The North American Wild Turkey, was going to be the national bird of the US. After thinking about it, no one wanted to stop eating the tasty birds, so they went with the inedible fish fed vulture we have, as our mascott today.

The leading cause of death among wild beaver: bringing trees down on themselves. A birdwatching friend confirms that squashed beavers are a common component of Nature's pageant.

This could take a bit,

A shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.
A whale's penis is called a dork.
The 57 on Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of ingredients in the sauce.
A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.
A person cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva. For example, if strong tasting substance like salt is placed on a dry tongue, the taste buds will not be able to taste it. As soon as a drop of saliva is added and the salt is dissolved, however, a definite taste sensation results. This is true for all foods. Try it!
A male emperor moth can smell a female emperor moth up to 7 miles away.
George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.
Some insects can live up to a year without their heads.
Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with Midnight Cowboy. Her entire role lasted only six minutes.
A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21 inch tongue!
A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was an albino.
Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plant, lock their mandibles (jaws) into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem, and, with legs dangling, fall asleep.
During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance.
Einstein couldn't speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be retarded.
On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.
John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.
Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
Chocolate kills dogs! True, chocolate effects a dogs heart and nervous system, a few ounces is enough to kill a small sized dog.
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
Money isn't made out of paper, it's made out of cotton. Before the 1950's it was made from hemp - the stem and leaves of a marijuana plant.
Most lipstick contains fish scales.
Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle.
Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower', because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, 'lower case' letters.
There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver!
The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before!
Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors, also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips.
Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.
Bubble gum contains rubber.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas.
The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA.'
By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.
Casey Kasem is the voice of Shaggy on Scooby-Doo.
Cat's urine glows under a black light.
Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!
An elephant can smell water three miles away.
Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages them.
Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep him cool! He changed it every 2 innings!
Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

!!!
Zorpheus, you probably needed a little lie down after all that, I imagine!

What is a black light though?

A black light is an ultraviolet light, a popular entertainment device in the 1960's and 70's, used after the consumption of controlled substances...

I don't know if he needed a lie down, but after that I sure do !


Not only are there no visable clocks in most vegas casino's , also the workers aren't allowed to wear watches(even rolex's), and most don't have any windows in gaming areas. ALL the casino's serve breakfast 24-7, alcoholic beverages to.
They will win if they can keep you there long enough.

This is all useless information, because nobody ever quits while they are ahead.

...but Heinz puts the 57 on all of its products. And it says '57 varieties' which I always understood to be a simple lie...
This ketchup bottle lists 9 ingredients.

As I remember -from who knows where - Mr Heinz used the number 57 because it sounded good.


Zorpheus - you must have been saving these up!

BTW what ever happened to that guy who was addicted to Heinz salad dressing? Niz he was called.

He wrote an article on it, its about somewhere.
Apparently ketchup, the word, comes from the Chinese for fish brine.

Heinz did in fact have 57 types of soup, sauces and beans etc when it came up with the slogan.
The '99' ice cream got it's name because originally the chocolate flake in it was 99mm long. Those were the days !!!!!

HI Tamara

You are new here I see! Welcome!
I hope you enjoy your time on h2g2
There was a whole thread on 99s recently.
A researcher called freddy got in touch with Cadbury's and said this:



" OKay - here's what the nice people at Cadbury's had to say about it:

"The real reason for "99" Flake being so called has been lost in the mists of time, but this is an extract from an article which appeared in a Cadbury works paper many years ago.

At a recent Sales conference Mr Berry, a sales manager, told a story of how Flake became associated with ice cream and how "99" Flake came by its name.

When I first came north in 1928 I found that some of the Italian soft ice cream makers in County Durham were trying ways of introducing other lines to increase their sales, which in those days were largely in the form of sandwich wafers. The possibilities were obvious if we could get a suitable line, both in shape and size and texture - and the most promising was Flake, which at that time only sold as a 2d line, and therefore had to be cut with a knife to reduce its size.
However, it proved very successful and its popularity quickly spread.
After successive introductions of half penny and 1d Flake, both of which were sold with ice cream, the Sales Committee finally agreed to produce a special size to fit the sandwich and Mr Berry visited a number of Italian customers in the area. After this of course the cornet with the Flake placed temptingly in the top of the ice cream became very popular.

In the days of the monarchy in Italy the King has a specially chosen guard consisting of 99 men, and subsequently anything really special or first class was known as "99" ? and that his how "99" Flake came by its name.

I hope you found the story interesting reading.
Charlie
Consumer Relations" "



Hope that was useless but helpful, Ommigosh

Hull City is the only British league football team which hasn't got any letters you can fill in with a biro!

If you sank all of the ships currently afloat around the world, the sea level would theoretically drop (a little bit).

How should that happen? Shouldn´t it stay the same according to the laws of fizix?

Xanatic,
A boat needs to displace its own MASS of water to stay afloat. This is quite a lot of water for a heavy ship. The global sea level theoretically will have risen a tiny wee bit due to the combined water displacement of all ships of all the world's navys.
However, a sunken ship displaces only its own VOLUME of water (which works out as not much water no matter how big the ship is).
So, sunken boats displace less water than floating ones. So the sea level will go down if all the boats sink.
Probably not worth trying to see if it is a measurable effect though.
Lots of nautical types might get a bit upset.

Om

90% of the worlds pepper comes from Canada. Why is this in my head?

[sneezed it out now?]

There are more than twice as many nipples in the world than people. Around one person in 500 has an extra "auxiliary" nipple or Nevus.

Ah, but this is balanced by the fact that the Duck Billed Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) has no nipples.

For sheer practicality it would be hard to beat the female gelada baboon which has nipples so close together the baby can feed from both at the same time.

And the nipples of the female whale are on her back.