Nabisco considered trying to promote Oreos as a patriotic food with a "Mem-oreo Day" celebration featuring cookies with red, white and blue fillings.

John Carpenter desperately wanted to cast Richard Nixon as the President in his film Escape from New York. Carpenter offered Nixon $5,000,000 for the role, but Nixon turned it down because he wouldn't have creative control of his character.

There are more people in the world who have used a cell phone than have used a pay phone.

Roy Rogers didn't like horses very much and spent a great deal of time and money trying to breed a goat that was large enough to ride.

In its 2003 Annual Report to Shareholders, the Fruit of the Loom Company predicted strong earnings potential in the next 50 years due to worldwide expansion. The company bases this prediction on its estimate that 70% of the world's population has never worn underwear.

The most commonly eaten insect in the United States is the sugar ant. In the rest of the world the most commonly eaten insect is the sexton beetle.

Every day over 700 people are struck by lightning worldwide. Less than 25% of those people survive. Of the survivors, a very small but measurable fraction report significant improvements in their health and well being, including spontaneous remission of incurable diseases and regeneration of lost nerve tissue.

Academy Awards from 1947 have a lead-based paint on their bases that qualifies as a Level 2 Environmental Health Risk under current California law.

Mormons have better eyesight than any other religious group, but test lower in I.Q. than any group except Zoroastrians.

No one has ever observed iguanas mating. Even when in captivity and being filmed, the iguanas somehow know where and when they can successfully mate out of range of the camera.

On the Brady Bunch, the actor playing Bobby Brady, the youngest son, was older than the actor playing Peter Brady, the middle son. This was the source of a great deal of difficulty during the third year of taping as Bobby was considerably taller than Peter. This height difference required Peter to wear five-inch platform shoes and never to have his feet be shown on camera.

Everyone is Iceland over the age of 12 is required by law to learn CPR. The only people exempt from this law are people who, due to accident or congenital defect, have no arms.

Cantonese has no actual word for hello. The most common Cantonese greeting translates literally as "What do you want?".

More money is spent annually on lawncare in the United States than is spent annually on national defense in all of Europe.

12 members of the U.S. Congress have killed a person in one way or another.

Every U.S. President except William Henry Harrison has suffered from gout.

Anthropologists have noticed that vampire legends correspond very closely with cultures who developed distilled alcohol early in their cultural evolution. Some people speculate that the effects of a severe hangover, i.e. red eyes, sleeping during the day, savage temper, were seen to be the result of evil and the idea of a vampire was born to explain them.

Business is up 300% at the Hand to God Tattoo and Piercing Parlour in Chicago, Illinois since the movie The Passion of the Christ came out. Hand to God only does tattoos that "serve to Honor and Uplift the word of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ". All piercings are performed by carefully sterilized and trimmed thorns.

The most popular satellite channel in Kazakhstan is the Mexican channel Telemundo. The Mexican soaps known as telenovelas are especially popular.

Britney Spears has decided that she will only date people who share her birthday in order to maximize astrological compatibility.

New York City police have started recommending a new personal safety accessory for women in the city: a football helmet. It has several advantages: 1) it is good protection against head injuries from assailants, 2) it can be used as an offensive weapon (especially if the person is attacked from behind), and 3) it tends to discourage muggers because they think that women wearing football helmets are strange.