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

The fastest animal on Earth is the Peregrine Falcon. In a dive, it exceeds *200* miles per hour!

Does a dive really count? I can also go really really fast if I fall out of an airplane.

Yeah, but they're better at not hitting the ground than you.

Fastest fish? Sailfish at 110 km/h, 68 mph.
Fastest insect? Land: Tiger beetle at 2.5 m/s, 5.6 mph. Air: Dragonfly at 97 km/h, 60 mph.

I haven't read the entire thread. I didn't want to fill my head up with useless facts.

If you have ever been asked "how long is a piece of string?"

one correct answer is: "twice as long as half it's length."

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but you just get up to terminal velocity about 120 mph, its getting the extra 80mph is the feat

Then that's cut the speed to well under half, already!

Just came across another animal speed fact.

Ostriches are the fastest 2 legged land animals reaching speeds of more than 70 km/h (45 mph) and sustained speeds of 50 km/h (30 mph).

Another thing I just learned:

Factoid*: Chameleons change color for camouflage.

Fact: Chameleons change color depending on temperature, light and mood.





*A factoid is something that only seems like a fact but is, in fact, not a fact.

The last digits of the natural logarithm of perplexingAppolonia's User number on my calculator are 7774777. Definitely useless.

julzes

i got to hand it to you

i understood that one

At work, there is a lift from the car park to the ground floor. I have discovered that from the moment the doors close, to the moment they start to open on the ground floor, it is impossible hum the "Stingray" theme tune in your head (at the right speed) and reach the "STINGRAY, STINGRAY" chorus.

I could of course cheat and hum it a bit faster, but that would be pointless and a bit silly

The researcher number of Captain Black is a palindrome.

A Kodak single-use 'underwater' camera can be used at a depth of 50 feet..... or 15 meters

Thus it can be used deeper in feet than it can in meters

Well it does say USELESS facts....

This is a good one.

Madonna was the first nude on the internet!

On 4 October, 1985 a registered user of "Alter-Net" adults only section uploaded a scan from Playboy magazine of Madonna reclining in a chair along with an image of his wife in a similar pose "for comparison". The Madonna pic was removed due to copyright issues.



According to Naked World Records website (no link as NSFW).

50 feet &#8776; 15 metres.

RF

That's an "approximately equal to" sign that didn't work.

RF

Careful now, that could be a useful fact.

Salvador Dali had a pathological fear of grasshoppers.