Author John Grisham makes at least one new Spam-based dish for his family every week. His goal is to create a dish that will win the cooking contest at the annual Spamarama in Austin, Texas. He has entered the competition 5 times, placing 56th, 23rd, 4th, 77th (dead last) and 9th. He says that the day he placed last was the "3rd worst day" of his life. His family hates Spam.

The first pressing of the 1971 Pink Floyd album Meddle was rumored to contain an extremely high content of THC, the active chemical in marijuana. As a result, most of the albums were destroyed by fans trying to get an exceptional high. The albums remaining are some of the most valuable rock albums of all time.

The French martial art of foot fighting known as savate was originally invented so that the nobility could kill the peasants without getting their hands dirty.

24% of Americans have a name whose original meaning involved some sort of criminal activity.

Due to a couple of unfortunate incidents and complaints in the past two Congresses, every Senator is required to bathe at least once every 24 hours. Of course, filibusters are exempt from this rule.

Jerry Falwell's children have been brought up in such a strict manner that sufficient shame will render them unconscious.

The government of Burkina Faso has surreptiously sponsored counterfeiting of their own currency in an effort to get in the news and raise the country's international profile.

Every day in the United States over 4000 people attempt to deposit from the game Monopoly into their bank accounts under the mistaken impression that it is real currency. Astonishingly, over 100 of them succeed due to teller error.

The Yahoo corporate headquarters was deliberately built with airducts large enough to crawl through. Jerry Yang, Yahoo's co-founder, demanded that the airducts to be that large in case there was some sort of corporate attack. He had just seen Die Hard when they were talking about the building design.

At least three A-list movie stars are no longer scheduling work past 2009 because they believe that we live in the End Times foretold by the Bible.

Legislators have proposed a new law in Mongolia that only descendants of Genghis Khan can vote in national elections. This is not as exclusionary as it sounds at 96% of present-day Mongolians can trace their descent from the Great Khan.

According to the Russian Government, the date of July 12, 1964 doesn't exist. A clerical error caused that date to be skipped in the printing of official forms. Although it was a simple error, it wasn't caught until it was too late to change. As a result, no one in Russia has that birthday.

Psychologists studying the intelligence of pro athletes have determined that, overall, the stupidest pro athletes are golfers and (surprisingly) the most intelligent are pro surfers.

There is a new floral shop in New York called Schadenfreude's that specializes in deliviering bouquets to people you hate. They have a range of products starting with simple dead flowers, moving to beautiful bouquets with poison ivy accents, boquets with vases full of leeches and lastly boquets with marijuana accents that are accompanied by anonymous calls to the police. The store is staggeringly successful and they are planning on opening a Los Angeles branch in time for Christmas.

Although the newest genetic evidence undercuts his claim, Danny DeVito is adamant in believing that he has Homo Neanderthalensis DNA. He cites his extreme shagginess and thick torso. His wife just says that he is a furry fat guy.

Due to inadvertant, early-childhood conditioning, actor Paul Giamatti can only urinate when he hears the sounds of pigs grunting. He is forced to keep a recording of this sound with him at all times.

The new "must-have" item for Hollywood publicists is a quick-acting, mini tranquilizer gun. Publicists will often use them on misbehaving celebrities before they do something especially stupid. The quick collapse can then be blamed on "exhaustion" and the sleeping celebrity can be whisked off to some controlled environment. Unfortunately, some clients have proven very resistant to normal tranquilizers, and some have gone on rampages after the initial prick of the dart.

Most marine shrimp produce a chemical in their bodies that acts as a hallucinogen. Fortunately, this hallucinogen only affects shrimp. So shrimp have only the vaguest notion of what objective reality is like, that is why they swim around with such a jerky motion.

Although the flamingos of Lake Titicaca are rather slow and ungainly, they have developed an extremely effective defense mechanism. Using their long necks and curved beaks, they are able to hurl stones at predators with a great deal of force and surprising accuracy. Researchers have clocked stones hurled by the birds at over 60 miles per hour. Some people believe that the birds' abilities and beak shape led to the development of the cestus which is used to hurl the ball in the sport jai alai.

The artichoke is the vegetable most commonly used to murder someone. Second is corn. There are roughly 100 vegetable-related murders in the United States every year.

From the period 1860-1910, over 10% of U.S. Presidential siblings were forcibly committed to asylums, a rate far in excess of the general population.