• On January 15, 1919, a 2.3 million gallon wave of molasses in Boston, Massachusetts killed 21 people.

• The Mitsubishi Corporation was founded by Sakamoto Ryoma, a famous samurai and political assassin of the 1860s.

• More Californians are opposed to the legalization of ferrets as pets than are opposed to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

• Public magic performances were outlawed in Virginia until June of 1769.

• The first successful appendectomy was performed by Dr. William West Grant on January 4, 1885. The patient, Mary Gartside, lived until 1919, when she succumb to an unrelated illness.

• The Eastman Kodak Company was the first Fortune 500 company to institute "casual Fridays". The inaugural event occurred the Friday before Memorial Day weekend in 1971.

• Mongo Jerry, who sang "In the Summer Time", has admitted he much prefers cold weather to warm weather.

• The average in-ground backyard swimming pool costs the owner $1,975.42 per year in maintenance and supplies.

• Billiards is the national game of Andorra.

• There is strong evidence that a species of monkey lived in the Pyrenees, a range of mountains in southwest Europe, as recently as 3000 years ago.

• Although Canada is known as "America's neighbor to the North," there is a total of 72.4 miles along the 8,900 mile border where one could cross from the US into Canada by traveling south.

• Of the seven deadly sins, a recent poll by the Guardian UK reports that lust is the most popular edging out gluttony and sloth.

• The American Cancer Society wrote a letter of complaint to George Lucas when the first Star Wars premiered. They thought the name “Chewbacca” was too close to “Tobacco” and would induce children to smoke.

• The percentage of baskets (including free throws) in the NBA that have hit "nothing but net" has increased from 62 percent to 68.4 percent over the past 10 seasons.

• Meerkats can burrow as fast as four meters per minute in optimal digging soil.

• The Giant Squid recently caught in the South Pacific had a still-ticking alarm clock in its stomach.

• The average head of household in France carries approximately €37,000 ($50,000) worth of life insurance.

• 89 percent of clocks and watches that use Roman Numerals show "IIII" instead of "IV" at the 4 o'clock position.

• Scientists hypothesize that if the population of anteaters were to be suddenly wiped out the Earth would be inundated by ants in 6.13 years.

• The Chicago Board of Trade has filed notice with the SEC that it intends to offer "Arctic Ice Futures" starting Sept 1, 2007.

• As of 2003, according to a New York City Housing Authority report, exactly 50 percent of all buildings within the five boroughs that have more than 12 floors do not label the floor above the 12th as "13".

• "String Theory" was originally referred to as "Twine Theory" until it was realized that "Twine" is a brand name.

• The pitch of the sound of most alarm clocks is A-flat above middle C.

• The Steerage Class dining room on the Titanic was the first commercial establishment to use plastic cups, knives and forks.

• The average paper coffee cup can be refilled 5.2 times before it starts to leak.

• More Christians attend church services on Good Friday than any other day except Easter and Christmas.

• Bible scholars and archaeologists believe that the mule on which Jesus rode into Jerusalem was called Schmuel.

• Until the mid fifth century the Roman Catholic Church referred to Good Friday as "Dies Veneris Nocens".

• In Jesus's time, the preferred wine for Passover came from Greece.

• Since weather records started being kept, Good Friday has had the most overcast and unseasonably cool days of all the days between March 20th and April 23rd, the earliest and latest dates on which Good Friday can fall.

• The combined salaries of the top 15 employees of PBS is less than the expense account to which the heads of each of the major networks is contractually entitled.

• The Black Forest and the Black Sea were both named for Hans Black, who was the great great great grandfather of US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. The Black Market was originated by Hans's son, Hermann.

• 11.1 percent of the people who have stood on the exact geographical North Pole or South Pole have reported feeling dizzy while there.

• The average size bra (34b) weighs an average of 3.7 oz.

• Office buildings being constructed today will have approximately 1.2 km of wires (telephone, electrical, fiber optic, etc) for each person who works in the building. For the first time in the past 87 years that number has actually decreased due to the more-widespread use of wireless networks.

• According to the FCAA (Folically Challenged Association of America) 47 percent of toupees are attached using double-sided tape, 38 percent are attached using glue and most of the rest are attached by using "whatever is most available".

• When he was a boy, Fred Rogers used to tell people he wanted to grow up to be a cannibal.

• Most breeds of dogs prefer rock 'n' roll to every other type of music. Two notable exceptions are chihuahuas, which prefer opera and mastiffs, which prefer polkas. All breeds of cats are indifferent to music.

• The Cyrillic alphabet was invented by a Mongolian monk while on holiday in Turkey.

• According to a Canadian superstition, dropping a found penny in a pint of beer will bring the drinker good luck.

• Four percent of American adults have not ridden on a railroad train, 17 percent have not ridden on a subway and 29 percent have not flown on an airplane.

• Geneticists have determined that the musk melon, cassava melon and honeydew melon are all descended from the Crenshaw melon.

• Michael Dell, founder of the Dell computer company, was born Michael Dellaquavita. He shortened it when he started making computers because, when he contracted with a company to make medallions of his logo, he could save a few cents per 100 count by dropping 8 letters. He estimates that that decision alone has put somewhere between $450,000 and $750,000 into his pocket.

• The northern Illinois chapter of AAA says that the average car in the their area has antifreeze that is 29 percent below optimal strength.

• The original Pong video game is the only legal electronic game in the Seychelles.

• For Native Americans who lived in the Great Plains, their word for "tornado" translates, roughly, to "wigwam wreckers".

• Worldwide, 99.15 percent of all mechanical pencils are thrown out when the graphite runs out, most of the remainder clutter up pencil holders indefinitely. Only .06 percent have their graphite replenished.

• The first piece of what is now referred to as "junk mail" was sent to J.P. Morgan by Gimbles Department Store. It was sent in the spring of 1875 and was an announcement of their annual White Sale.

• A paper was presented at the 2002 National Conference of High School Guidance Counselors in which it was estimated that 82.1% of boys in 11th and 12th grade carried condoms in their wallets although most of them were just for show.

• All of Gaul, the ancient name for Western Europe, was actually divided into four parts.

• Merv Griffin derives about $350,000 of income per week from Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. About four percent of that is directly due to his being the composer and copyright holder of the “Final Jeopardy Jingle”.

• Over the past 8 years, pink Hi-liters have outsold yellow Hi-liters 3-to-2.

• Historians have determined that the date on which the lowest percentage of post-pubescent American men sported facial hair was on August 11th, 1953.

• The average 12' x 12' shag carpet will contain approximately 1.7 lbs of food after 4 years, even if vacuumed regularly.

• Abraham Lincoln wore a stove-pipe hat in order to emulate one of his favorite writers: Charles Dickens

• Married women are four percent more likely to become cannabilistic than non-married women.

• New shoes are 28 percent more likely to be noticed by co-workers if they are red, rather than blue, black or white.

• 16-year-old Johanna Jensen of St. Ignace, MI was not given her drivers license due to a glitch in the computer system of Michigan's Secretary of State office. Because her birthday was 2/29, the computerized record keeping system calculated her age as four years old.

• Liza Minelli's first stage performance was as a mime at The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts.

• In a class-action suit, 348 women sued the producers of Family Feud claiming they did not want Richard Dawson to kiss them but felt coerced to allow it. The case was settled out of court.

• One in 311,000 mountain goats is acrophobic.

• Denver, CO, has the highest per capita consumption of both hand moisturizer and talcum powder within the United States.

• The average cardboard box in North America measures 10" X 12" X 14"

• The Incas believed cocoa was brain food.

• I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby had won the coveted Washington Press Corp "Most accessible Chief of Staff" award in both 2002 and 2005.

• The song Cop Killer, popularized by mid-90s rock group Body Count, was originally composed by street musician Steve Lodowski.

• 82 percent of the people in Europe, Australia and the Americas are immune to the bubonic plague. Only 3% of the people in Asia and Africa are.

• Between 1995 and 2005, 67 people were killed by penguins.

• A "street" officially become a "road" after it has surpassed 52 meters in length.

• The average American student will spend an amount of time equivalent to 1.6 school days asleep in class per year from 6th grade to 12th grade.

• In the United States, 82 percent of mortgages are paid off early.

• The last time a fox was sighted in Foxboro, MA was April 20, 1962.

• There are 27 Jesuit colleges in the United States.

• The original team colors of the Green Bay Packers were purple and yellow.

• Forty nine percent of American adults over the age of 40 have never used any Instant Messaging client.

• Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow used to converse only in French when speaking to each other.

• The average pine tree harvested for lumber produces 12.4 percent more usable material than trees from 20 years ago. Some of the increase is attributed to better farming techniques. Some is attributed to the higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere increasing the growth rate.

• The average golfer plays 23.2 rounds before recording his or her first par.

• EB White, author of Charlotte's Web, never ate pork, ham or bacon after the book was published.

• The netting in hockey goals are woven to withstand shots reaching 263 mile per hour without ripping.

• If you are in New York City below 96th street and not in a private residence, you have a 9 percent chance of being on a surveillance camera at any given time. In central London, you have a 22.4 percent chance. The figure for Washington DC is classified.

• On most islands in the South Pacific, it is the custom to celebrate one's birthday on the first day of the month in which one is born. The Hallmark Company has introduced a marketing campaign to change that custom so as to keep demand for birthday cards more even throughout each month. The campaign is called, "You have a day -- keep it!"

• In Alaska there are 4.12 miles of usable railroad track for every mile of usable road. That ratio has been narrowing over the past 30 years due to tracks being abandoned rather than more roads being built.

• The municipality that had the highest ratio of bars per capita historically was Hoboken, NJ in 1943 when there was one bar for every 8.2 residents. Prior to that it had been Munich, Bavaria in 1691, which had an estimated one beerhall for every 7.7 residents.

• North Carolina has the highest percentage of people who say they find Creationism more believable than Evolution.

• The American Board of Dermatologists report that people with more than 4 piercings of the ear are more likely than not to have piercings of the navel or 'more intimate' areas.

• Ancient Romans considered locusts to be brain food.

• Each year, an average of 189 people visit an emergency room because they choked on the mouth piece of their telephone's wireless headset.

• LLoyds of London has issued 137 policies insuring individuals against being sucked into a black hole.

• Worldwide, more people have a deficiency in vitamin D than any other vitamin.

• Daily fax transmissions are down 83.4 percent since their peak on October 1st, 1994.

• The average worker in the US with a windows-based PC on his or her desk will have 4.7 applications running at any given time

• The part of the stapler that holds staples is called the "channel" and an average stapler has 52 staples remaining in its channel.

• 73.8 percent of high-tech firms have had or currently have a project whose code name includes the term "NextGen".

• 82 percent of the people who have the title "Diversity Manager" are white males between the ages of 40 and 60. Another 12 percent are white women between the ages of 35 and 50.

• April is National Natural Produce Production Month.

• Pineapple juice is the most viscous of all tropical fruit juices.

• Until the 1840s Idaho was more famous for its onions than its potatoes.

• Four out of five Americans have never seen a kumquat.

• In 1970, 95 percent of all lettuce sold was of the Iceberg variety. As of 2005 (latest statistics available) Romaine and Iceberg were in a statistical dead heat at 36 percent and 35 percent, respectively.

• In the United States alone, around 70 people per year drown while taking a shower.

• The Battle Creek Enquirer published the prior week's lottery numbers on February 15 2007, causing Michigander Bret Nelson to throw away what is believed to be the winning $17 million ticket.

• The dolphin is the only mammal that regularly engages in incest.

• If trends continue, by 2017, a single computer hard drive will be able to hold all the data contained on all of the hard drives currently in existence today.

• Chinese chicken salad is the most popular lunchtime meal for professional office workers.