This being the "Ring of Fire", and the fact that some people are complaining [goats.com] that the forums are quiet, I decided to start this discussion.

The lads in the lab here call me the "Oracle of Useless Information", as I seem to know the most obscure and unproductive things. I need to extend my repertoire, so I am calling for your most inoccuous and silly titbits of information.

Allow me to begin:
There are more fluent Irish speakers in Manhattan than there are in Dublin.

It is humorous that you posted a link to a private super special forum in a public forum that only the super special elite will be able to see.

The sudden popularity of the name "Madison" for baby girls is linked to Splash [imdb.com]

A rhino's horn is made out of hair.
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. (yummy)
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. (bunch of potheads)
The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.
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. (I'm glad cops use fingerprints)
The 'spot' on 7UP comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was albino. (creepy)
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan, there was never a recorded Wendy before!
If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (cheap date)
By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.
Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson."
The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.
Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

I knew the rhino one myself but had the others in an email.

In Response to zamphir (#7572):

That was my way of trying to convince people that they are missing the best part of the forums in there. Do you think it worked?

In Response to Rich (#7573):

Green Tea also has negative calories because of chemicals in it that speed up your metabolism.

In Response to evilaltor (#7574):

Do you think it worked?

You misunderstood.

That was one of two Inane and Idiotic pieces of information I was sharing.

A 1/128th note is known as a Hemi-Demi-Semi Quaver.

This is really more of an inSane piece of information, than an inane piece of information.

The sendmail macro language is Turing complete.

In Response to mcgrue (#7577):

Also, a little trivia about the word 'trivia'.

Trivia comes directly from the latin for "Three roads". Usually at a juncture of three roads, a marketplace would form, and invariably it'd be a place for biddies to accumulate and prattle on about inconsequential matters.

Trivial matters, one could say.

In Response to Rich (#7573):

Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson."

Actually, I'm calling BS on that one. I can't go look it up since the complete collection is packed away on the other side of the country, but I'm pretty certain he says it once in one of the early stories.

In that vein, though:
Fans of the Sherlock Holmes series wore black armbands to mourn his death when Conan Doyle killed him off.

The '40' in WD-40 is the number of formulas the inventer tried before getting it right.

The sweetener used to flavor diet soda eats holes in your brain.

The British term "Posh" stands for "Port Over, Starboard Home" and was used to refer to the seats chosen by rich Brits when making the journey to colonnial India--they didn't like sitting in the sun.

In Response to solar (#7580):

In response to your BS calling, I present: this link [shu.ac.uk] and this link [alt-usage-english.org] and I hope I did that right. :)

In Response to solar (#7581):

about POSH...
there is evidence that this word predates people taking cruises and that the story of its acronymity is an urban legend constructed later.

In Response to solar (#7580):

I estimate that 30% of his facts have at least a 75% chance of being an urban legend, or otherwise of questionably provinence.

But I wasn't gonna bother to mention it.

In Response to cgarcia (#7582):

ask clan hanna...his father is a sherlock holmes nut

In Response to saskia (#7583):

And this evidence is... where...?

In Response to unFalln (#7587):

Umm. here [snopes.com], here [shu.ac.uk], and here [straightdope.com].

And a bunch of other places you can find on Google.

In Response to solar (#7581):

The sweetener used to flavor diet soda eats holes in your brain

I believe you are referring to nutrasweet be able to move over the barrier dealy around the brain without using some kind of metabolic transfer method there. Eating holes in your brain is a bit of a jump from that and may contravene a few rules a bit too obviously...

Not that it isn't scary though as it means that nutrasweet no longer works on a buffered solution basis that the majority of the body works on (like if you take too much vitamin C you just pee it all out, stripping other minerals and stuff from your body in the process but at least removing the excess. Nutrasweet on the other hand doesn't get hit by that process and just hangs out.)

Note that this info is from a drunken conversation with a bio guy and so is equally dubious as 99% of the things mentioned here...

Stalin is not dead. He is being kept alive, in suspended animation, in a tankful of red goo on the tenth floor of a New York City office building.

Yeah, yeah, I know. But it was the creepiest damn' thing I read that entire year. -m, doesn't like this "logging in" crap

In Response to cgarcia (#7582):

Well, not the full phrase, then. I was right about him saying "Elementary" though. Close enough for me.

In Response to saskia (#7583):

Huh. My geography teacher told us that, and actually made a test question out of it. Ironic thing is, the old bastard was so arrogant and anal that you couldn't disagree with him on anything. Interesting to know the only thing I actually remember from that class is wrong.

In Response to tor (#7589):

Actually, I kind of doubt that one, too. Was informed of nutrasweet's properties by my anthropology professor, who was discussing Bush Jr and the amount of diet soda he drinks. He wasn't a big fan of the president, I gathered.

This may take a while, as I am also known to be a fount of useless trivia by my friends and aquaintences. Although, with so many having said so much about so little before me, it may take less time.

• Sherlock Holmes, in the stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson." He did have a fondness for saying "The game is afoot."
• William Gillette, a famed Sherlockian actor, chose the drop-bowl pipe that has become synonymous with Holmes' sillouette because he could keep it balanced in his teeth while speaking his lines.
• A whale's penis is called a "dork."
• A pregnant goldfish is called a "twit."
• A rhino's horn is made of keratin, the same material in human hair, fingernails, and the skin of the palms of our hands and soles of our feet, making them waterproof.
• The enamel in teeth is the hardest organic substance, harder than most metals used in construction.
• Giraffe's do make vocal sounds, including moo-ing like a cow, barking like a dog, grunting like an great ape and snorting like a pig.
• In the early twentieth century, New York was the largest Polish-speaking city in the world, the largest German-speaking city in the world. It is still the second-largest Spanish speaking city in the world, after Mexico City.
• A computer error is called a bug, because some initial problems in the first electric digital computer, ENIAC, were caused by a moth that had flown into the wiring.
• The most difficult tongue twister in the English language is "The sixth Sikh sheik's sixth sheep's sick."
• Icelandic is the most modern language in the world. An institute for the Icelandic language takes words created in other languages and creates equivalents without the need to "borrow" words from other languages.
• You are 63 time more likely to be dealt a Royal Flush in five cards without wilds than to win the California State Lottery (assuming you play).
• New Zealand was the last currently populated land mass on earth to be discovered by humans.
• An ancient sea-faring civilization known as the Peleset (believed to be the ancestors of modern Palestinians), feared but defeated by the Egyptians, once controlled the coastal area now known as Israel and the Gaza Strip. Later, when the Hebrews fled Egypt, they crossed into Canaan from east to west across the Jordan River into what is now known as The West Bank.
• The first mechanical clocks were 24 hour timepieces, powered by water, and were equipped with alarm (to wake monks up before sunrise for prayers). In fact, the word "clock" comes from the German Glockenspiels that announced the time for prayers, and later for work.
• Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler both dreamed of a car for every household in their respective countries. Each founded or commissioned an economy car to meet this goal (Ford and Volkswagon), and both were Anti-Semites, to say the least.
• Hitler was addicted to amphetamines right up to the end, stemming from a prescription he was first given while a struggling painter in Austria.
• The first recorded sighting of Halley's Comet was in 1066, and was recorded in the Bayeaux Tapestry detailing the conquest of Brittain by William of Normandy.
• The phrase "mad as a hatter" comes from the fact that hat makers used mercury in their dyes, and would bite the brims of the hats to get them to curl just right. Ingesting tiny amounts of mercury over time led to neural damage and eventual psychological problems.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan stories, collected his stories from rantings he himself reportedly told while committed to a mental asylum.

That should do... for now...

In Response to zamphir (#7585):

I estimate that 30% of his facts have at least a 75% chance of being an urban legend, or otherwise of questionably provinence.

And it is well known that 94% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to Clan_Hanna (#7606):

Giraffe's do make vocal sounds, including moo-ing like a cow, barking like a dog, grunting like an great ape and snorting like a pig.

Sounds like a girl I once knew...

In Response to albionsoft (#7608):

And it is well known that 94% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Actually, only about 59.5% of the population knows this, so it's only "fairly well known".