• U.S. per capita eggnog consumption peaked in 1962, at 3.7 gallons per year.

• Fourteen pounds of plums are used in making each pound of plum trifle.

• The most recent winter solstice marked the beginning of the year 11,417 in the calendar of the Hisatsinom Hopi.

• Goods worth 6.3 percent of the US Gross Domestic Product are returned to stores in the week after Christmas.

• Molten wax was worshipped in ancient Minoa.

• Since its premiere in 1972, CBS's television show "The Price Is Right" has given away a combined average of 1.57 automobiles every weekday.

• Physicists at the University of Wisconsin estimate that Superman would be 1.09 percent stronger during winter than compared to summer because of Earth's elongated orbit.

• Only three condoms per every five manufactured will be used for intercourse.

• The city of Bunkie, Louisiana has changed its status from town to city and back again 26 times in the past 89 years. It is projected to be declared a town again in May of 2006.

• Flashlights sold in The United States are required to shine within three lumens of their rated brightness.

• In liquid form, the entire population of the United States could fit into ten major league stadiums, filled to the brim.

• The much-discussed "War on Christmas" cost retailing giant Wal-Mart $4 million in lost sales– approximately 1/50,000th of its annual gross receipts.

• After the chinchilla, the hamster and the bonobo, humans are the fourth most sexualized mammal.

• Over forty-five years of space exploration, no fewer than six dogs, eleven cats, four thousand mice and an aquarium-full of crickets are believed to have been stranded in low Earth orbit.

• Far-sighted researchers at the University of Calgary are developing cultivars of dates and avocados especially adapted to the anticipated climate of the year 2040.

• American bills were originally conceptualized to be light blue; however green bills were adopted instead because they were more cost effective.

• A typical disposable razor will travel across 1,456 feet of flesh before being replaced. This translates into roughly 1.7 million shaved hairs.

• The right ring finger is the most susceptible finger to paper cuts.

• Only one out of every 2,400 traffic violations is noticed by an officer; and only one out of every 200 traffic violations noticed by an officer will be pursued.

• Traditionally, belts were a symbol of poverty worn by peasants who could not afford properly fitted pants. They came into general fashion in the early 1890s.

• An estimated 35 percent of African-Americans are descendants of at least one passenger of the Mayflower.

• Each year, the Earth's 1.3 million sperm whales eat a mass of squid equivalent in weight to all of humanity — roughly a dozen people a day per whale.

• Dixon, South Dakota bills itself as the "Sex-change Capital of the World."

• There are believed to be fewer than forty Republican, tenured sociology professors working at North American universities.

• The chapter on game in 1950's and 60's editions of the best-selling "Joy of Cooking" included recipes for muskrat, opossum and polecat ("carefully remove scent-glands before dressing").

• The current Iraq war has cost four times more than all energy-related research, worldwide, since 1990.

• The world's largest organism is arguably a termite super-colony, spanning 4300 square miles across southern Kenya.

• At eight mph, the 1896 Benz Velocipede was the world's fastest self-propelled, trackless vehicle. The Pittsburgh Flyer, a steam train of the same era, was clocked at 84 miles per hour.

• The energy contained in just one tank of gasoline, if applied all at once, is enough to lift a VW Bug into orbit.

• A California-compliant civilian model of the M1 Abrams Tank is scheduled for regular production by 2008.

• The overall fuel economy of U.S. consumer vehicles has declined by 17 percent since 1995.

• Independent coffee shops are the small business most likely to fail in the first six months of operation.

• The average length of special features on DVDs has increased by thirty-one minutes in the past six years.

• Each day, Americans delete more than 1500 terabytes of stored data.

• Global activist and U2 lead singer Bono is the fourth most recognized name in the world behind Princess Di, Muhammad Ali and George W. Bush.

• Last year, twenty animals were stolen from US zoos: the smallest was a lizard and the largest was a hippo.

• There are currently 163 petabytes of collective iPod hard drive space available in the world, of which only 53 petabytes are being used.

• The average SMS text message is 16 characters long and contains only one correctly spelled word.

• In the past second, 49.7 million plastic buttons have been depressed worldwide.

• An average game of bar room billiards lasts six minutes.

• Yellow sticky notes account for 19 percent of intra-office communication.

• There are exactly six palindromes, using common English words, that contain the letter 'Q'.

• The 1936 explosion of the Hindenburg derailed plans for the construction of the 1300-foot long airship von Trapp, which would have held a swimming pool, a 100-seat theater and a bowling alley.

• In the late-1950's, NASA seriously considered the feasibility of half-mile-long, atomic-bomb powered spacecraft for travel to the outer solar system and beyond.

• The discovery of the volcanic Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1954 finally put an end to the age-old dream of a trans-Atlantic undersea tunnel connecting Cornwall with Newfoundland.

• An estimated ninety-five percent of all fireworks ever made were manufactured in China.

• Tommy Hilfiger mandates that all pinstripes be no more than 0.8 millimeters in width and spaced no less than 13 millimeters.

• Peter Pan was described with a leather breastplate in his first literary appearance.

• If dropped from two miles above an asphalt street, a set of car keys would create a hole seven inches deep.

• Vermont is home to more cities named after common American names than any other state in the United States.

• Hitchhikers on the western coast travel an average of 230 miles every 24 hours, 50 miles more than on the eastern coast.

• More people each year are killed by hippos than are killed by lions, coatis, tigers, sharks, crocodiles, impalas, leopards and antelopes combined.

• Even today, impalement remains a legal method of execution in six countries.

• Though hard to imagine by today's standards, Sean Connery's James Bond used a female companion as a shield under hostile fire no fewer than eight times over the course of the six original Bond movies.

• Bob Moog, inventor of the synthesizer, was tone deaf.

• From ages 14 through 22, Abraham Lincoln owned only two pairs of pants.

• By 1982, the combined processing power of all the world's computers exceeded that a human brain.

• Civilization IV, the next installment in the popular simulation video game series, has been delayed for more than a year as the game’s creators debate the inclusion of a terrorism element in the game.

• The average office employee spends 15 percent of their time playing solitaire, or other computer desktop games.

• Film analysts project that Ron Howard’s “The Da Vinci Code” will cost the film industry more money from public protest than it will generate in ticket sales.

• In a survey conducted by Consumer Reports, Apple consumers listed “appearance” as the top reason for buying their products.

• On average car alarms cause more public disturbances than prevent individual crimes.

• Worldwide, 64 percent of all harvested wood is used for fuel.

• Legendary singer/songwriter Neil Diamond entered NYU on a fencing scholarship.

• Rounding methods generated an estimated $1.3 billion in Wall Street revenues in 2004.

• Red outerwear is banned from coastal Antarctic research stations -- it inflames and enrages the penguin population.

• Krill is expected to account for 12 percent of the world's protein supply by 2012.

• Eight percent of Americans feel uncomfortable eating with metal utensils.

• Most mental asylums on the Western Hemisphere enforce a strict "no shaving" rule on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

• In 1999 a typical family computer would spend 95 percent of its total uptime waiting for input. In 2005 this decreased to 51 percent of time spent waiting for input, while time spent processing spyware and malicious code increased to 43 percent.

• More haplographic errors occur with the letter "r" than with the letters "a", "e", "i", "o", and "u" combined.

• The World Wide Web Consortium estimates that there are two lines of syntactically incorrect HTML code published to the Internet per every five valid lines.

• Researches have declared January 27 the greatest day in human history. January 27 has had more academic, scientific and humanitarian achievements than any other calendar date.

• Children born in Oklahoma are three times as likely to get a financially secure job, and five times as likely to get a four-year college education.

• Although she denies it, Reuters claims to have an interview in which J.K. Rowling claims she has “no clue” how she will end the popular Harry Potter book series.

• Dr. Seuss’ famous children’s book “Green Eggs and Ham” was based off of a personal experience he had with friends at an Ethiopian restaurant in Boston. Seuss had refused to eat the unusual cuisine, despite his friends’ insistence that it was good. After a while of refusal his wife convinced him that he was being rude and should at least try the food. After that Seuss declared that Ethiopian food was his very favorite, and frequented the same restaurant regularly until his death.

• Internet analysts predict that by 2012 every printed word on the internet will be a hyperlink.

• Delaware remains the only state in which 12-year olds can legally marry with parental consent.

• Shetland ponies were originally bred for the size of their hides.

• Single-serving packages of processed food account for 19.4 percent of all household trash.

• The number of buttons on an average remote control unit increased from 13.2 in 1987, to 53.6 in 2005.

• Only 43 percent of all U.S. adults can correctly distinguish between "one billion" and "one million."