There is a new shirt being marketed in Japan that contains a network of sensors and a Wi-Fi transmitter that allows realtime monitoring of the wearer's health on a website. Although the product was originally intended for monitoring elderly hospital patients, it has been snapped up by Japanese mothers who want to be able to monitor their childrens' health at all times. School administrators have become increasingly frustrated with calls from mothers saying that their kids need to go to the doctor immediately based on their Internet health readings. One woman called a school's office screaming that her child had died when in fact he had only removed his shirt for a gym class.

Hollywood mogul, Jeffrey Katzenberg, has two days of the year that he refuses to acknowledge for personal reasons. One is August 24th, the day that he resigned from Disney. The other is October 7th, but no one knows what happened then. His refusal to acknowledge these days has odd consequences for those working with him. His year is normal until August 24th, but after that day he insists that the date is always one day before the actual day. This gap grows to two days after October 7th. So anyone planning any type of meeting with him must make sure they know if they are talking about the actual date or not. Katzenberg's calendar resets with the New Year so he is back in sync with everyone else on January 1st. Katzenberg is so powerful in Hollywood that no one has yet challenged him on his annoying calendrical tendencies.

Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen has been working for years to try and get people interested in a revival of the World Octopus Wrestling Championships. He watched it on TV as a child and vowed to grow up and win the championship. He feels that he has always been denied his most fervently held dream and, despite his massive wealth, has always felt like a failure. While no one has committed to his idea of a revived championship, he practices his skills every weekend without fail. The largest octopus that he has wrestled so far was 55 lbs. He maintains a 50,000 gallon sea water tank to keep octopuses for training purposes.

Actor/activist Ed Begley Jr. makes all of his clothing out of recycled cloth diapers. He is working on developing this as a business model under the name Poo Pants. He intends to market more than just pants.

17% of office workers admit that they have stolen over $500 in equipment and supplies from a job. The most common rationale was "They owed me." The second-most common rationale was "I just like stealing things."

A recent study showed that people who are blind and have completely lost their eyeballs are much more proficient in successfully navigating an unknown area than blind people who have retained their eyeballs. The study suggested that those without eyeballs are able to use the empty eye sockets for simple echolocation.

When asked during a 2004 interview whether he had any regrets, former Senator John Glenn replied "Yes, I have always been sad that I never had a time in my life when I was able to really rock a mullet."

Although author Mark Twain made a great deal of money with his books, he died in debt due to a series of bad investments. One of these investments was a device that was intended to attract comets and bring them crashing down to the earth. There are two possible reasons he would fund such an unusual device. One suggestion is that he was trying to make Halley's Comet show up early. He had long said that he was linked to the comet and would die when it returned. He might have been trying to superstiously end his own life by having the comet show up sooner than expected. The other suggestion is that his well-known misanthropy was at work and he was trying to destroy the world by having a giant comet crash into it.

Former First Lady Jackie Kennedy was afraid of becoming a mental or physcial invalid late in life and not being able to live as she wished. In a bold and unusual move she hired a hitman to kill her if she ever became incapacitated and a burden on her family. Knowing that no one would approve of this, she arranged with the hitman that he would only kill her if he heard a specific word used in one of her interviews. It was an unusual word and would signal to the killer that she was ready to end her life. The only problem was that she forgot the word. This caused her to live in fear and greatly restrict the number of interviews she gave later in life. She also made it a point to only use simple words of no more than two syllables, in an effort to limit her chances of accidentally saying the kill word. Her diary chronicles the dread she always felt when she was unable to avoid giving an interview, and the relief she felt after several days had passed with nothing happening.

Senator John McCain always wears a piece of clothing with the phrase "No Fat Chicks" on it. He usually wears it as an undershirt, but he also has the phrase on boxers, a pair of socks and on the backside of seven of his ties. He says that he wears the phrase to help remind him of the important things in life.

During the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, actress Bea Arthur was in serious negotiations to play Spock's elderly aunt. Her character was going to be suffering from a Vulcan disease that loosened her emotional control and made her continually sarcastic and obnoxious.

Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, is a notorious insomniac. But he has recently been able to sleep well due to a new white noise CD that he plays at night. The CD is made up entirely of the sounds of the Madgascar Hissing Cockroach. His wife hates it and has to sleep with her head encased in a sensory deprivation enclosure.

U.S. Representative Denny Hastert sometimes has difficulty staying awake during House debates. He combats this by sitting on a thumbtack and relying on the pain to keep him awake. Although this was initially helpful, he has built up scar tissue on his buttocks that renders it less effective. He has had to move the thumbtack around quite a bit in order to have it pierce unscarred tissue. Occasionally when he stands up the thumbtack still stuck in his ass. This not only is an affront to his dignity, but it also ruins the cut of his suits. One of his aides is assigned to watch him every time he stands up to make sure that the thumbtack is out. He is currently contemplating have surgery to remove some of the scar tissue. He absolutely refuses to drink coffee to stay awake because he doesn't want to be an addict.

Actor/Director Woody Allen's little-known hobby is dog breeding. He never displays the results at shows, but he is working towards breeding the world's largrest dog. He is not working with large established breeds, such as the St. Bernard or the Mastiff, but instead wants the largest dog to be a mutt, because he thinks that it will be genetically healthier. He started working on this project for three reasons. 1) He wanted a large dog as proctection for him and his family, 2) he had long thought about filming a version of the Sherlock Holmes' story The Hound of the Baskervilles and he was unsatsified with the look of exisiting dogs, and 3) he has always wanted to play God.

Actress Reese Witherspoon has instructed her personal chef to come up with a diet that makes her farts smell sweet. The endeavour has not yet been completely successful, but Reese's farts now generally smell amazingly like a freshly toasted English muffin. Oddly, she hates English muffins and refuses to eat them.

Former NFL quarterback Joe Theismann has offered various people up to $100,000 for the chance to break their legs. He claims that it was at the suggestion of a psychaiatrist who thought that it might help him with some of the issues that he has realting to the injury that ended his playing career. To date, no one has taken him up on his offer, but he carries the $100,000 with him at all times, just in case he finds a willing subject.

In 1980, the FBI investigated charges of anti-American activities amongst the cast and crew of the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati. The investigation lasted 6 months and produced 1500 linear feet of records. Although there were never any charges filed, the records have been classified Top Secret and will not be subject to review for 100 years.

Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill had very unusual tastebuds. He tasted sour things as sweet. He estimated that over the course of his lifetime he won over $40,000 in bar bets having to do with eating lemons.

Swedish engineers have built a functional car whose body is made entirely of snow and ice. The engine is made of ceramics and plastics to reduce heat. Although it is slow having a top speed of only 15 miles an hour, it does run, and recently completed a 200 mile test drive.

Political commentator George Will has one superstition that he adheres to rigorously. The first visitor that he receives in his house in the new year has to be of Latvian descent, and have red hair. He keeps a list of people who meet this criteria and he makes a point of inviting them to come over early on New Year's Day. He is very serious about this. He once physically tackled a man who attempted to come in before the yearly Latvian arrived. Will was eventually forced to settle out of court for an undisclosed (but reportedly six figure) sum in order to keep the man from pressing assault charges.

In the United States, the animal most likely to cause a traffic accident is the opossum. There are two reasons for this (in addition to its relative abundance compared to other animals). 1) Some people find it so cute when it waddles across the road that they frantically swerve to avoid it, and 2) some people, having never seen an opossum before, think it's a giant rat and swerve frantically to try and hit it.

As part of his rather substantial fortune, Vice President Dick Cheney owns a string of junkyards in the Midwest. His junkyards are legendary for their poor customer service. Cheney defended their performance in a 1995 interview saying "Have you seen the people who frequent junkyards? They are creepy, car-obsessed losers. Most of them forget to bathe half the time, and they can't form a coherent sentence that doesn't involve timing belts. If my staff were friendly, they would have to listen to these losers yammer on about the various junkheaps that they are vainly trying to restore. So, yeah, I am okay with my staff being unfriendly because I don't think that they need the grief of having prolonged conversations with the car troglodytes."

Actor/comedian Jerry Lewis folds pornographic origami as a means of relaxation. His work has been featured prominently in several Japanese museums, including one solo show.