Rafed English
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  • Genghis Khan started out life as a goatherd.
  • The type specimen for the human species is the skull of Edward Drinker Cope, an American paleontologist of the late 1800's. A type specimen is used in paleontology as the best example of that species.
  • The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes was "Smile".
  • The two lines that connect your top lip to the bottom of your nose are known as the philtrum.
  • Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order.
  • The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan"
  • Hummingbirds are the only animals able to fly backwards
  • All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.
  • The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds.
  • The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.
  • The only social fraternity founded during the Civil War was Theta Xi fraternity, at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1864.
  • The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either direction depending upon the tide.
  • Several buildings in Manhattan have their own zip code! The World Trade Center has several.
  • Lucifer is latin for "Light Bringer". It is a translation of the Hebrew name for Satan, Halael. Satan means
  • "adversary", devil means "liar".
  • A cat's jaws cannot move sideways.
  • Geller and Huchra have made three-dimensional maps of the distrubution of galaxies. In each layer of the map some galaxies are grouped together in such a way that they resemble a human being.
  • Avocado is derived from the Spanish word 'aguacate' which is derived from 'ahuacatl' meaning testicle.
  • The company providing the liability insurance for the Republican National Convention in San Diego is the same firm that insured the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.
  • Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
  • Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
  • Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer.
  • The smallest port in Canada is Port Williams, Nova Scotia.
  • The Canadian province of Newfoundland has its own time zone, which is half an hour behind Atlantic standard time.
  • Cats in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have a very high probability of having six toes.
  • The second longest word in the English language is "antidisestablishmenterianism".
  • Rats like boiled sweets better than they like cheese. Big Ben was slowed five minutes one day when a passing group of starlings decided to take a rest on the minute hand of the clock.
  • The Velvet Underground was named after a book on the S&M culture.
  • The Velvet Underground's first manager was Andy Warhol, who also produced their first album and designed the cover artwork. The cover artwork for the album (called "The Velvet Underground and Nico") featured a bright yellow banana that could be peeled off to reveal a bright pink banana underneath, with the label "Peel Slowly and See." "Peel Slowly and See" is the title of the Velvet Underground comprehensive boxed set, which is the only currently-available Velvet Underground recording to feature a peelable banana. The peelable banana caused substantial delays in the production of the VU's first album and contributed to Lou Reed's firing Andy Warhol as the group's manager.
  • The "wild" horses of western North America are actually feral, not wild.
  • Native speakers of Japanese learn Spanish much more easily than they learn English. Native speakers of English learn Spanish much more easily than they learn Japanese.
  • New Zealand kiwis lay the largest eggs with respect to their body size of any bird.
  • Elephants have been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean.
  • When two words are combined to form a single word (e.g., motor + hotel = motel, breakfast + lunch = brunch) the new word is called a "portmanteau."
  • Sting got his name because of a yellow-and-black striped shirt he wore until it literally fell apart.
  • Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.
  • The topknot that quails have is called a hmuh.
  • Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth ... and whose shame created the expression for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."
  • The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds.
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