ALL blue-eyed people can be traced back to one ancestor who lived 10,000 years ago near the Black Sea:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-511473/All-blue-eyed-people-traced-ancestor-lived-10-000-years-ago-near-Black-Sea.html
In Nathaniel Philbrick’s former best selling book, ‘Mayflower,’ it is estimated there are 35 million Americans who are descendents of the original Mayflower passengers.
Both Wint-O-Green Life Savers and NECCO Wafers will spark when you bite or hammer them in the dark.
NECCO Wafers, dating to 1847, is the oldest, continually made non-generic candy in the USA.
On average, Americans consume 350 slices of pizza per second
There are over 17 TRILLION UNUSED flyer MILES.
The Starbucks coffee chain is named after the first mate, Starbuck, in Herman Melville’s classic novel, ‘Moby Dick.’
The very first fast food chain to introduce a drive up service window was Jack In the Box in 1951.
The Thirty Years’ War lasted 30 years.
The Hundred Years’ War lasted 116 years.
Catgut comes from sheep and horses.
A camel's hair brush is made of squirrel fur.
The ‘black boxes’ in commercial airplanes are orange.
The official language of Brazil is Portuguese
The Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean are named after dogs.
A purple finch is actually crimson.
Panama Hats are made in Ecuador.
Georgia is the only U.S. state named after a king - England's King George II.
Georgia’s nickname, The Peach State,’ may be a misnomer. Both California (#1) and South Carolina (#2) each produce more peaches annually than Georgia (#3).
The state of Wyoming is named after the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Chicago, Illinois, nicknamed ‘The Windy City,’ ranks twenty-first on the list of the 68 windiest cities. (It has nothing to do with weather but rather makes reference to Chicago’s blustery and ‘windy’ politicians of an earlier era.)
Kaskaskia, Illinois, Illinois' first state capital, is WEST of the Mississippi River. The entire rest of Illinois lies EAST of the Mississippi River.
Illinois has the greatest number of vehicles with vanity license plates (You’re so vain Illinois.)
Reno, Nevada is farther west than San Diego, California
The Cincinnati, Ohio airport is in Kentucky.
The Statue of Liberty is in New Jersey.
You can snow ski and snowboard in Hawaii.
Fed Ex delivers 6,000,000 +- (6 million) packages a day
Seven Lego sets are sold every second by retailers worldwide.
A Barbie Doll is sold every three seconds worldwide.
Approximately 400,000 people each year are bitten by venomous snakes; approximately half of them will die. (The majority of these people live in Asia and Africa.)
Wal-Mart is the second largest employer is the U.S. (The U.S. Government is #1.)
Annually, more steel in the U.S. is used to make bottle caps than is used in the manufacture of automobiles. (SOURCE: History Channel – Modern Marvels – STEEL)
The very first VIDEO CONFERENCE telephone call was made in 1927 by President Herbert ‘A chicken in every pot’ Hoover from his office in Washington, DC to New York City.
The very first college football game was played on November 6, 1869 in which Rutgers University defeated Princeton University by a score of 6 to 4 at Rutgers’ campus in New Brunswick, NJ.
James A. Garfield, one of four U.S. Presidents who was assassinated (in 1881), often entertained his houseguests with his parlor trick of SIMULTANEOUSLY writing classic Greek with his right hand and writing in classic Latin with his left hand. (Don’t try this in your home.)
1 in 7 (almost 14%) of adult Americans is functionally illiterate.
18% or almost 1 in 5 married couples in the U.S. fail to reach their 5th anniversary.
1 in every 100 American ADULTS is now in jail or prison (91% are male and 9% female).
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated one in four U.S. adults suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.
Over 99% of species that ever lived are extinct.