Wednesday, April 19, 2006

bits and pieces of trivia

During his entire life, Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting, Red Vineyard at Arles.

Did you know that the world vanilla comes from the Latin word vagina because of the vanilla pod’s resemblance to the female genitalia.

A language becomes extinct in this world every two weeks.

The male pig has a corkscrew shaped penis that looks like his tail. And he slowly winds into the female pig before reaching a 10 minute orgasim.

Caterpillar means "hairy cat" in Old French

Mona Lisa has no eyebrows in Leonardo da Vinci's painting. During that time, a woman was considered more beautiful if she shaved her eyebrows.

TIME magazine's Man of the Year for 1982 was the computer

The dot that appears over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

The little circles of paper that are cut out after a paper has been punched by a hole puncher are called "chad."

The pound key (#) on the keyboard is called an octothorpe.

The word "toy" comes from an old English word that means "tool."

The word Spain means "the land of rabbits."

There was no punctuation until the 15th century.

Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he declined.

Leonardo da Vinci was dyslexic, and he often wrote backwards

People who study laughter are called a "gelotologists."

The most senior crayon maker Emerson Moser retired after making 1.4 billion crayons for Crayola. It was then that he revealed that he was actually colorblind.

The political philosopher Karl Marx used to write articles for the New York Tribune in the early 1850's

2 comments:

Badr said...
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Badr said...

regarding your comment to forsoothsayer comment on the "religion of hate" entry, please check this