Classmate Facts # 129 - Believe Or Not!

1. There are 36 dimples on a regulation golf ball.

2. A 75 year old male driver received ten traffic tickets, drove on the wrong side of the road four times, committed four hit-and-run offenses and caused 6 accidents, all within 20 minutes in McKinney, TX on 15 October 1966. [Worst Driver: G.B. of Records]

3. The Term “The whole 9 yards” came from WW II fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got “the whole 9 yards.”

4. Wilma Flintstone’s maiden name was Shaghoopal.

Classmate Facts # 128 - Amazing Animals!

1. On an average, gorillas sleep as much as fourteen hours per day!

2. Did you know that sharks and rays are the only animals that don’t get any form of cancer? Scientists believe that is because they don’t have bones, only cartilage!

3. Skunks, known for their smelly defense, can accurately spray the fluid as far as ten feet!

4. A Sloth can take two weeks to digest its food!

5. In a pride of lions, it is the females that do ninety percent of the hunting!

6. The duck-billed platypus stores as many as six hundred worms in the pouches of its cheeks!

Classmate Facts # 127 - And That's a Record?

1. The world’s largest weather vane sits on the shores of White Lake in Montague, Michigan. It is 48 feet tall with a 26 foot wind arrow and adorned with a 14 foot replica of a 19^th Century Great Lakes schooner!

2. The largest bowling center in the world is the Tokyo World Lanes Bowling Center with 252 bowling lanes!

3. One of the longest sentences is in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable, 823 words without a period!

4. The biggest swimming pool in the world opened in Toronto, Ontario in 1925! 300 feet by 75 feet it can hold 2000 swimmers and is still in operation!

5. The longest Monopoly game ever played was 1,680 hours long, that’s 70 straight days!

6. A tennis ball was volleyed back and forth 2001 times by Howard Kinsey and Mrs. R. Roark!

Classmate Facts # 126 - Know This?

1. Blue for a boy! The colour blue was associated with the heavenly spirits and so boys were clothed in that colour, boys then being considered the most valuable resource to parents!

2. The Earth is slowing down – in a few million years there won’t be a leap year.

3. The Great Comet, which appeared in 1843, had a tail that was 350 million km long. It will return in 2356.

4. The oldest inhabited city is Damascus in Syria.

5. The study of oceans – Oceanography – is a mixture of Biology, Physics, Geology and Chemistry.

6. The pleasant feeling of eating chocolate is cause by a chemical called anadamide, a neurotransmitter that is also produced naturally in the brain.

Classmate Facts # 125 - The Fact of the Matter is...

1. Silent Night, Holy Night is sung in more than 180 languages by millions of people.

2. Ancient Skyscrapers! During Roman times buildings were up to 8 stories high.

3. A green diamond is the rarest diamond.

4. It is calculated that since the creation of man, about 60 billion people have died.

5. The machine that takes a space shuttle to the launching pad is called a crawler. It moves at 3 kmph!

6. The first trademarked product in the world was beer – British beer Bass Pale Ale received its trademark in 1876.

Classmate Facts # 124 - Chocolate Coffins?

1. In 1973, Swedish confectionary salesman, Roland Ohisson was buried in a coffin made entirely of chocolate.

2. The British Royal family changed their surname from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor, the name of their castle, in 1917.

3. Leonardo Da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other simultaneously.

4. The Colourless Cullinan, the biggest diamond ever found, weighed 620 grams (one and a quarter pound) uncut.

5. There are about one billion cattle in the world of which 250 million are in India.

6. Adult frogs are carnivorous and will eat just about anything smaller than themselves!

Classmate Facts # 123 - Amazed?

A Very Happy New Year's Day to our Readers!!! Enjoy the remaining 10 days of Classmate Facts!

1. The South American giant anteater eats more than 30,000 ants a day.

2. Did you know that the young ones of fish are called ‘fry’?

3. The tradition of diamond engagement ring started in 1477 when Archduke Maximillian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy.

4. The highest rank you can achieve without being a king or prince is Duke!

5. About 50 Bibles are sold every minute!

6. The most numerous bird species is the red-billed quelea of South Africa. There are an estimated 100 trillion of them!