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The word "gargoyle" comes down from the Old French: gargouille, meaning throat or gullet. This is also the origin of the word gargle. The word describes the sound produced as water passes the throat and mixes with air.In early architecture, gargoyles were decorative creatures on the drains of cathedrals. When used by an ornithologist, the word 'lore' refers to the space between a bird's eye and its bill. A building in Belgium was taxed if there was a street light on it, unless there was a statue of the Virgin Mary placed above it. Hence, there are no buildings in the city without a statue of the Virgin Mary. The amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class - $40,000. Twelve or more cows is called a flink. The most common name for a goldfish is "Jaws". If you are afraid that you might die laughing - you are suffering from cherophobia. Every hour, 12,500 puppies are born in the United States. It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World. The shortest commercial ever was only 4 frames of a second. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood. On the average, a normal person's eye muscles move about 100,000 to 150,000 times in one day. Penicillin was first produced synthetically in a laboratory in 1946. Lab tests can detect traces of alcohol in urine six to 12 hours after a person has stopped drinking. After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear pink. When honey is swallowed, it enters the blood stream within a period of 20 minutes. The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself." The pigmy shrew - a relative of the mole - is the smallest mammal in North America. It weighs 1/14 ounce - less than a dime. The world's largest alphabet is Cambodian, with 74 letters. The average person's total skin covering would weigh about 6 pounds if collected into one mass. Eggs are sold on bits of string in Korea. In the United States, a pound of potato chips costs two hundred times more than a pound of potatoes. There are 1189 chapters in the Bible: 929 chapters in the Old Testament and 260 chapters in the New Testament. Because it has no backbone, a seventy-pound octopus can squeeze through a hole the size of a silver dollar. When a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens, only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their cells and, thereafter, reigns alone. |
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