Mr. Write's Page

Okay, class, cut the chatter and listen up. It’s time for “Useless Facts for Inquiring Minds.”

Feel free to take notes. We may have a pop quiz later.

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— No words in English rhyme with purple, orange, silver, or month.

— The ingredients of Excedrin Extra Strength, Excedrin Migraine, and Excedrin Menstrual Complete are exactly the same — 250mg acetaminophen, 250mg aspirin, 65mg caffeine. Ah, marketing.

— Children don’t have kneecaps. Those strong, bony kneecaps of yours didn’t fully form until your late teens or early 20s. Infant kneecaps (patellas) are made of soft, pliable cartilage to accommodate the years of growth ahead. At about age four, the cartilage slowly begins turning to bone.

— A flea can jump 160-200 times its own length. That’s like you jumping over the Eiffel Tower.

— The eyeball of an ostrich is about the size of a billiard ball. Its brain is about the size of a ping-pong ball. The ostrich is no deep thinker, but it can see a long way.

— Elvis Aaron Presley had a twin brother, Jessie Garon Presley, who died at birth.

— When you cough, the cough leaves your mouth at 50-60 miles per hour. When you sneeze, the air is expelled at up to 100 mph.

— You are more likely to be killed by a falling coconut than by a marauding shark.

— When the city of Los Angeles was established in 1781, its formal name was El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles. Translation: The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels. In those days, Spanish settlements were either pueblos (civilian), presidios (military), or missions (religious).

— 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

— In 1859, a rich guy in Australia released 24 rabbits onto his property for hunting purposes. Six years later, the rabbit population of Australia was two million. By 1950, it was 600 million. A virus designed to kill rabbits was released in the 1990s, and it lowered the rabbit population to roughly 300 million, but the critters soon developed an immunity to the virus, so…

— Botanically, a strawberry isn’t a berry. It’s an “aggregate accessory fruit” (!!?) and a member of the rose family. Bananas, on the other hand, are officially classified as berries. Go figure.