Useless Facts

Hydrogen sulfide, the gas responsible for the smell of rotten eggs, is on the same order of toxicity as hydrogen cyanide.

 

I believe all knowledge is potentially useful, if it is accurate and true.

 

a friend of mine used to have a song about this that she made up.

useless fact #1075 Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants!

 

Okay, @KaTrian and @T.Trian: You're our resident Finns. Is this true? Because if it is, I will laugh so hard I'll need to be hospitalized!

EDIT: Okay, that was unworthy. Canadians and Americans have done dumb stuff too...

 

Haha, nope, not true

However, in the 1970s Finns did deem Donald Duck comics racist for depicting Latinos as lazy and Arabs as untrustworthy. The Beagle Boys were criticized as a poor attempt to vilify Communism because they wear red. The comic wasn't boycotted, however, and, in fact, it's still incredibly popular.

 

Like Kat said, definitely not true. DD is very popular here, always has been.

Useless Fact: it's best to use separate bag gloves and sparring gloves in contact sports. When you work on a heavy bag a lot, the gloves eventually harden which will increase the risk of injury for your sparring partner if you use the same gloves for sparring and bag work.

 

The first official basket in the current Madison Square Garden was scored by Dave DeBusschere, then a member of the Detroit Pistons.

 

This fact is, unfortunately, NOT useless, and is therefore off-topic.

This fact, on the other hand, is truly useless. Well done, @EdFromNY!

 

(takes bow)

 

fair enough, i thought it was, but im willing to take that

here we go then: The consumption of natural vanilla causes the body to release catecholamines (including adrenalin) – for this reason it is considered to be mildly addictive.

 

Sending an entire building through the mail has been illegal in the US since 1916 when a man mailed a 40k ton brick house across Utah to avoid gigh freight rates.

 

A toe in French is called a doigt-de-pied, which literally translates as a "foot finger."

The earliest known toe prosthetic could be three thousand years old, and was found on a mummified Egyptian.

The world record for having toes goes Lei Yadi Min who has seven toes on each foot.

To enlist in the army it is necessary to have all ten of your toes intact.

Since 1993 the English village Wetton has played host to the world toe wrestling championship, the sport has been rejected for inclusion in the Olympics.

The word "toe" is derived from the phrase "tomatoe squishing implement" as some of the earliest ketchup factories employed children to squish tomatoes into sauce with their toes.

Before 1789 in France, it was more common to refer to toenails as "nails" while nails on the hand were strictly referred to as "fingernails." This was regarded as silliness and changes were made during the French revolution so that the shorter and simpler "nails" was taken to refer to the ones on your hand.

 

While playing Thorin in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Richard Armatage had trouble singing the song "Misty Mountain" as it was out of his vocal range.

which leads me to say, yes they did do all the singing in the film

 

I don't know if this is a useless fact, but interesting nonetheless...

Botox (Botulinum Toxin) is, according to the BBC, "the most poisonous substance known to man. A couple of teaspoons would be enough to kill everyone in the UK. A couple of kilos would kill every human on earth. It is so dangerous that it is manufactured in military installations and at around £100 trillion per kilo it is also the most expensive substance ever made."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24551945

 

The newt is the only indigenous reptile in Ireland.

 

So this is why I keep buying Vanilla Pods ... (I put the seeds in my mix when I bake cakes)

 

Useless Factoid:

Apparently, no one knows the real reason why legal pads are yellow!

 

A severed octopus limb will still move for about an hour because each arm has its own control system containing around 400,000 neurons. It will also, on instinct, grab any object it comes in contact with, except itself!

 

I must be the anti-octopus. (Insert joke here about me touching myself all the time.)

 

On an octopus related note, one of an octopus' tentacles is structured slightly differently and is used for getting it on with other octopus'. Anybody who's watched Disney's finding Nemo will recall a scene in which a little purple octopus tells the other fish about her "unusual" tentacle.

 

Haha. Leave it to people on the internet to spin a useless fact about octopus tentacles and turn it into something dirty

 

isn't the plural of octopus, octopi?

 

Nope Octopi refers to about 3.12 octopuses.

 

3.14 not 3.12 - see, high school wasn't a complete waste of time.

 

Sorry, I graduated high school in 1994, so it was back when pi was two versions older.