Facts, trivia etc. Please help?

Derrick Smsith: Try this site (purported to be the biggest) for some good trivia. There are plenty of "long" pieces too, as you've specified.

Scot Rotruck: 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-511...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.On average, Americans consume 350 slices of pizza per secondThere are over 14 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.Left-handed people with college educations earn 10 to 15 percent more! than their right-handed counterparts (after accounting for other determinants of payâ€"age, intelligence, marital status, race and ethnicity).50% of those people who file income taxes report income of $30,000 or less which accounts for a little over 3% of all revenues collected by the IRS BUT The richest 1% of the people in the U.S. earn 21.2% of the total overall income of all wage earners. (You have heard of the ‘HAVES and HAVE-NOTS, haven’t you?’)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 PortugueseThe Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean are named after dogs.One in four PUREBRED dogs in America has a genetic problem.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 misnom! er. 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.)The MOST densely populated state in the U.S. is New Jersey with an average of 1,143.9 people per square mile.The LEAST densely populated state in the U.S. is Alaska with an average of 1.1 people per square mile.Alaska has 33,904 miles of coastline.Kaskaskia, Illinois, Illinois' first state capital, is WEST of the Mississippi River. The entire rest of Illinois lies EAST of the Mississippi River.Reno, Nevada is farther west than San Diego, CaliforniaMinnesota is farther north than Maine.Pochnoi Point, Semisopochnoi Island, ALASKA is the EASTERNmost poin! t in the USA, by longitude. Sail Rock, just offshore of West Quoddy Head, Maine is the easternmost point in the USA by direction of travel.The Cincinnati, Ohio airport is in Kentucky.The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are both in New Jersey. You can snow ski and snowboard in Hawaii. New Hampshire has the highest per capita consumption of spirits - 3.6 gallons per person annually, on average.North Dakota has the highest per capita consumption of beer.Residents of the District of Columbia have the highest per capita consumption of wine (no surprise here).West Virginia has the LOWEST per capita consumption of wine.Utah, ‘Mormon Country,’ has the LOWEST per capita consumption of both spirits and beer. (no surprise here) 60% of all alcohol sold in the U.S. is consumed by 10% of those people who drink alcoholic beverages.80% of all the wine sold in the U.S. is consumed by 11% of those people who drink alcoholic beverages.All 50 states in the USA have wineries. California! is largest wine producer in the USA followed by New York State (#2) an! d Washington State (#3).Bourbon is the official spirit of the United States by Act of Congress in 1964. Chicago, Illinois has the most bars per capita of any major city.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.)George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, devised the word ‘Kodak.’ The letter “K’ was his favorite letter of the alphabet, calling it “a strong, incisive sort of letter.” The remaining letters in the name were chosen using an anagram playset.Americans spend an average 38 hours a year sitting in traffic that wastes an estimated 26 gallons of gasoline per person â€" Los Angeles metropolitan drivers waste the most gas sitting in traffic for 78 hours per year.Ev! ery 105 minutes, on average, there is an accident with a motor vehicle and a train at a grade crossing somewhere in the world. In the USA, there is an accident with a train and a motor vehicle at a grade crossing every 5 hours, on average.According to a study by the nation's largest auto insurer, the greatest percentage of accidents occur between 3 PM and 6 PM on Fridays. One-third (33%) of all teenagers will have an automobile accident within one year of obtaining their driver’s license.A study of 40 groups/occupations showed that the WORST drivers are students (#1), followed by medical doctors (#2), then lawyers (#3), architects (#4) and real estate agents (#5). The BEST drivers in this study were homemakers (#5), politicians (#4), pilots (#3), firemen (#2) and the best drivers…………….FARMERS (#1). (I agree. I can’t recall the last time I saw a head on collision that involved two tractors :) :):)) The rear middle seat (on the ‘hump’) is the safest seat in ! the car â€" 16% safer than any other seat in a car. Riding in the back ! seat is 59% to 89% safer than riding in the front seat.Results of a 17- year study showed that cars painted white were less likely to be involved in accidents than cars of any other color. Compared with white cars in daylight hours, black cars had a 12% higher crash risk; gray, 11%; silver 10%; blue and red, 7%. At dawn or dusk, black cars had a 47% higher crash risk than white cars; gray, 25%; silver, 15%. (Other colors, e.g., yellow & orange, were not included as their low numbers would not provide accurate, statistical analysis/relevance.Cell phone usage while driving is responsible for 6% of all accidents.A driver is four times more likely to be involved in an accident while using a cell phone. The average life of a cell phone is 18 months.As of April 2009, 20 percent of homes in the USA have only cell phones, no landlines.17 percent of homes have landlines but no cell phones. Six in 10 households have both landlines and cell phonesOne in 50 households has no phones at! all.1 in 4 drivers (all age groups) admits to texting while driving.The three deadliest days in the U.S. for pedestrians have been January 1, December 23 and October 31.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 â€" Modern Marvels â€" 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. The most-lopsided game in the history of college football occurred on October 7, 1916 when the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated the Cumberland College (now University) Bulldogs of Tennessee by a final score of! 222 to 0.The very first televised football game, pro or college, took ! place September 30, 1939 when the Fordham University Rams of New York defeated the Waynesburg College (now University) Yellow Jackets of Pennsylvania by a score of 34-7. The average length of a player’s career in the NFL is 3 ½ years.“Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud” is the brand name of the ONE and ONLY rubbing mud that is used by ALL major and minor league baseball teams and some colleges before games to rub up baseballs to remove the new ball shine/sheen/slipperiness. No other mud will do. It is ‘harvested’ from a secret location in a New Jersey tributary of the Delaware River. In baseball, a 400-foot home run ‘BLAST’ hit to ‘DEEP’ center field is a 133-yard shot in golf, a distance that most weekend duffers make using either a wedge, 9 or 8 iron. 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 w! riting in classic Latin with his left hand. (Don’t try this in your home.)1 in 7 or almost 14% of adult Americans are 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.Well over 99% of species that ever lived are extinct....Show more

Coleman Senn: Did you know that the only two words in the english language that are both homophones and antonyms are raise and raze?