Actor Dennis Quaid is habitually late. He has started carrying multiple pockets watches set to different times, so that when he arrives late he can pull out a watch set to show that he is on time. He then apologizes and makes a show of resetting the watch to the correct time.

A Candadian company is testing a jacket filled with specially-treated porcupine quills. The quills are treated to become somewhat softer. The quills offer incredible thermal insulation allowing the wearer to work comfortably in temperatures up to -60 degrees Fahrenheit. The quills are also sturdy enough that they provide protection against a .22 caliber bullet. The jackets are specifically intended for member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but there has been a great deal of interest from Russian law enforcement.

Oprah Winfrey keeps 10% of her personal net worth in Sacagawea gold dollars, as a way of honoring strong women that came before her. The coinage is stored in several secure locations and weighs over 1300 tons.

McDonald's is working on making a more heart-healthy Big Mac by using ground earthworms to substitute for up to 25% of the burger.

The South American guanaco, a relative of the llama, can spit hard enough to draw blood.

85% of department store Santas are high school football players that never played in college.

In 2005, the Alabama State Senate voted on a resolution declaring that sushi was "contrary to the values and ideals of the finest Alabama cuisine" and that "it (sushi) would henceforth be classified as Yankee trash".

The first day of each new session of the Australian Parliament always ends with a beer-chugging contest. The winner of the contest has his or her choice of legislative committee assignments. Every Australian Prime Minister since 1904 has won at least one of the these competitions.

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The average American inhales over 20 tons of fecal particles, from various sources, over the course of his lifetime.

Until 1973, the Vatican maintained a committee of three elderly priests to watch and comment on controversial movies and formulate official Church opinions. The priests were chosen for their extensive knowledge of Catholic theology, history and doctrine. This policy was changed due to the release of The Exorcist. The images and words of the movie were so frightening and upsetting to the 70+ year priests that two of them had to be hospitalized and the remaining one retired to a monastery. The committee still exists today, but the maximum age of the priests who serve on it is capped at 50.

Although there were animal-based precursors, the ancient Aztecs were the first society in the world to develop the rubber condom. They were very effective but were almost never used as the rubber had to be applied directly, and at a temperature just short of boiling.

Fashion designer Ralph Lauren is a committed environmentalist and is hard at work finding clothes that are made from ecologically-beneficial and renewable resources. He believes that the best hope in this direction is cloth made from insect parts. He claims that his researchers are, at most, 18 months away from a breathable, soft cloth made entirely from pulverized ants.

Chile leads the world in reported paranormal encounters by a wide margin. Every year, over 80,000 paranormal incidents are reported in Chile. Of these incidents, chupacabra sightings are the largest subset, with over 12,000 encounters a year.

When basketball star Shaquille O'Neal was 16, he grew 2 inches in one 48 hour period. He was extremely hungry from the caloric necessities of the growth, but he was also in excruciating pain. After 15 hours in the hospital, during which time he ate over 10 pounds of food, he was in such pain that doctors induced a coma and let him sleep until he stopped growing. While he was unconscious he was fed through a tube. His body consumed over 50,000 calories.

Although they were originally invented in California, fortune cookies have become very popular in modern China. Many restaurants have hired professional fortune tellers to produce the fortunes. The problem with having individuals overseeing the fortune writing process is that they are susceptible to bribes. Chinese gangsters have been paying fortune writers to write fortunes predicting death. The gangsters then slip there fake fortunes to their rivals and kill them under questionable circumstances, always taking care to leave the fortune with the dead man. Many of the police are superstitious and will not investigate further once they find the fortunes with the body.

Many mainstream movies and television shows inspire porn remakes. 75% of the new television shows in 2006 inspired porn spinoffs. But the record for porn-inspired spinoffs is the television show Miami Vice, which (at last count) has directly influenced over 700 porn movies.

Theodor Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss, got his inspiration for his book The Cat in the Hat from a schizophrenic friend who only spoke in rhyme and insisted on dressing up all of his pets. Ironically, the friend never owned a cat because he thought that they were agents of the Government bent on stealing his canned goods. Geisel left this part out of the book, although he did acknowledge that he based the goldfish's paranoia about things going wrong on his mentally-ill acquaitance.

Actor Keanu Reeves lists the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Commando as being the most personally influential work of art that he has ever experienced. In a 2003 interview, Reeves said "I've seen the movie at least 75 times. It never gets old. It's the first movie that I ever saw that really made me appreciate the magic of the cinematic process, how it can be used to change lives and make them better. And the main character, John Matrix, is great. Since I first saw the movie I have always tried to live my lifes by the ideals that Matrix holds. I have a WWJD bracelet and in my mind I always use John instead of Jesus. Also, I know for a fact that if it wasn't for this movie, I would never have even thought about playing the role of Neo. I read the script for the The Matrix and thought that it was needlessly violent and philosophically confused. But I could never get over the name, and eventually that is what caused me to take the role."

Although politician Mitt Romney is a teetotaler in keeping with his Mormon beliefs, he likes to gargle with vodka because he thinks that it gives him a "devil-may-care" attitude.

Early 20th century sweatshop owners partially paid their workers in cocaine as a way to keep up production.

Members of the Russian Special Forces are required to grow and shave their pubic hair until they have enough to weave their own personal garotte. The task is designed to show determination and conviction and also plays on an old Russian tradition that such a shameful death as choking on pubic hair will doom a soul to a desolate and bereft afterlife.

Martha Stewart is writing a cook book specifically intended for use with the EZ Bake Oven. She said "Just because you are poor, or young, doesn't mean that you have to eat the crappy cake mixes that the oven comes with. I mean, have a little dignity people." The book is expected to sell for $60, roughly twice the cost of the oven itself.

Born-Again Christian/actor Stephen Baldwin is in talks to market a new ercetile dysfunction drug aimed at Christians. A portion of the proceeds will go towards combating abortions. The drug is tentatively called Petrus.

Based on emergency room visits, the most dangerous children's toy is Play-Doh. 9% of all children who own Play-Doh stick enough of the putty in various bodily orifices to require a doctor's care at some point in their lives.

Although there was turkey eaten by the Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621, the main dish of that dinner was woodpeckers.

Every member of Britain's MI-6 agency has a special credit card with a sharpened ceramic edge capable of cutting through bone and Kevlar. They have to train using this credit card for 6 weeks before they are allowed to carry it. More than one agent has cut off the tip of his or her finger on accident.

47% of people who have won large cash prizes in lotteries believe that there is a significant skill factor involved in picking winning numbers

People who have lawns with integrated sprinkler systems are 4x more likely to be in therapy than people with movable sprinklers.

Presidential brother Neil Bush had an invisible playmate until he was 14 years old. It was a frog named Falafel that lived in one of his mother's shoes. In addition to worrying about her son's mental state, Barbara Bush was mad because she never got to wear that pair of shoes.

37% of fruitcakes sent during the Christmas season in the United States are intended by the senders as punishments rather than gifts.

Matthew McConaughey has settled his longstanding court battle over the length of grass in his yard. His opponents agreed to drop their hate speech lawsuit and he agreed to pay the $75,000 in home owner association fines. Although the lawsuit has been settled there are indications that McConaughey is still bitter. He recently purchased 10,000 moles and scattered them on every lawn in a 5-block radius from his house.

Men are most comfortable in dark blue underwear, while women report feeling more confident in red.

The first paper cut was described in Chinese writings in 110 AD, just 5 years after the invention of paper by Cai Lun.

Former Senator Strom Thurmond was a great believer in the power of farts to maintain a healthy gastrointestinal system. He made sure that he audibly farted at least 30 times a day and required all his staff to eat beans regularly.

In college, conservative columnist Ann Coluter made money by building custom water-pipes for campus stoners. Her speciality was building pipes of extreme size, culminating in a 14-foot model that she built for a frat house.

The pine marten, a North American member of the weasel family, occasionally works together in packs of hundreds to bring down large prey. Documented accounts of martens bringing down deer are common, and there are reports of moose succumbing to the chihuahua-sized animal. One unverified claim has the creatures killing a grizzly bear. Attacks generally result in numerous deaths of martens, but they breed quickly and the losses are made up with ease. These attacks are not the norm, as martens usually eat mice and other small animals. No one knows exactly what causes the communal behavior, but it is universally agreed that it is good that it is so rare.

Former Senator Jesse Helms had a great fondness for lampreys, both as a pet and as a dish. He could swallow a ten-inch lamprey whole, in one breath.

14% of all rulers sold in the United States are over 1/2 inch longer than 12 inches.

Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy buy more comic books than students at any other university in the United States.

Newscaster Dan Rather suffers from poor proprioception, meaning that he has poor spacial awareness of where parts of his body are in relation to other parts. The upshot is that he tends to walk into a lot of door frames when trying to go through doors. As might be expected, this hurts, so he takes a good deal of aspirin. The combination of the blood thinning properites of aspirin and walking into doors has caused him to develop very large bruises on his arms. The bruises were so bad that at one point his co-workers suspected him of getting beaten by his wife.

38 out of the total 46 U.S. Vice Presidents shot someone at some point during their lives. The most frequent shooter was Schuyler Colfax, Vice President to Ulysses S. Grant. He is supposed to have shot at least 17 people at one time or another.

Scientists and engineers estimate that the human body only needs 163 of the 206 bones making up the skeleton to survive. Some people have started identifying these bones and having them removed in an effort to "become more perfect". The current lowest count is a man in India whose skeleton currently only has 184 bones, and functions perfectly well.

The bridal veil was originally developed to allow parents to pass off their less-attractive daughters.

It's possible to lose over 15 pounds in two days solely from crying.

Singer Toby Keith has a spittoon in every room of his house. He consumes over 3 packages of chewing tobacco a day. He has practiced enough so that he can regularly hit the spittoon from over 10 feets away. Unfortunately, the practice required for his accuracy has caused him to spend over $17,000 to replace rugs ruined by tobacco juice.

There is a long-standing rumor that it is illegal in Tucson, Arizona for women to wear pants. This is untrue. Although such a law was proposed by in the 1920s, it was not enacted as popularly supposed. Due to a typographical error it is illegal for anyone to wear pants in Tucson, female or male.

Actor/assassin John Wilkes Booth had a small, but profitable, business breeding and selling slugs to European theater companies. The slugs were used in plays to add a realistic touch. Booth's Spectacular Slugs were justly famous within the theater community for their size and wide variety of colorings.

Liquid dishwashing detergent is the third most commonly used sexual lubricant.

Russian scientists have discovered a way to keep organs living after death for up to three years, but the organs are rendered useless due to the fact that they all develop vestigial eyes.

Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, has never learned how to tie her shoes. She either wears slip-on shoes, or has someone else put her shoes on for her.

Rush Limbaugh keeps a baggy full of cooked bacon in his pocket at all times in case he eats a meal that, in his words, "needs a little pickup".

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee used to keep an opossum, nicknamed Bitey, as a pet in the Arkansas State House. He would bring it out to show visitors as a way to break the ice at meetings. But one night, a cleaning woman accidentally surprised the animal and it played dead. She, thinking it actually dead, threw it in the trash outside in an effort to hide the evidence of her "crime". Governor Huckabee missed the possum the next day, and ordered an immediate search and investigation. He quickly got to the bottom of the story. In his grief, he ordered all the flags flown at half mast at all state government buildings. He is now thinking of purchasing a ferret.

Every member of the National Diet of Japan practices scarification. By contrast, only 32 members of the U.S. House of Representatives are known to practice scarification.

Once a year, Clint Eastwood eats an entire deep-fried turkey by himself. He doesn't do it in one sitting, but takes about a week and a half to consume every scrap of meat on the carcass. He has never fully explained why he does this. A friend worked up the courage to ask him about it once, but Eastwood just stared at him for thirty seconds and then turned away mumbling "..saved my life...sacred duty..." He has never talked to that friend again.

The average human being has mucus in their sinuses that is over five years old.

Talkshow host Jerry Springer suffers from intense migraine headaches. In addition to extreme pain and a sensitivity to light, these headaches also cause some unusual visual effects. When suffering from a headache, Springer can't see himself in the mirror. The first of these headaches manifested itself after a night out drinking, and Springer was convinced that he had been turned into a vampire by woman he met in a bar. He used his experiences as show ideas. He did one show on migraine sufferers and one on vampires.

The desk of the president of the Hershey Company is made from a heavily varnished slab of pure dark chocolate.

A U.S. dollar bill can absorb over 50x its weight in liquid. They are often used to clean up after drug-related murders.

The state of Washington has recognized that "homicidal fury triggered by extreme coulrophobia" is a legitimate murder defense. Coulrophobia is a fear of clowns.

Orson Wells was able to do the splits even when he weighed over 350 pounds. However once he was in the position he couldn't get out without the help of at least three men. This led to some embarassing encounters when he performed the splits during sex and got stuck.

After John Gotti was diagnosed with throat cancer, he wanted to smoke so badly that he punctured his ear drum and learned how to draw the smoke in through his ear.

Microsoft has been exploring the possibility of tattoos with magnetic ink to allow access to buildings on its campus without the need for an ID badge. At least three Christians have quit because of these reports, regarding the tattoos as the literal "Mark of the Beast" from the Book of Revelations.

Until 1916, all executions in Switzerland took place using a knife made of a specially-hardened (and very sharp) cheese known as Sbrinz. The cheese knife was abandoned when one broke during the killing thrust. Other cheese-based methods of killing were explored, but the only one that was considered feasible (crushing the criminal under a one-ton block of Pecorino cheese) was rejected on two grounds, 1) it was more expensive, and 2) it was foreign cheese.

in 1903, the U.S. Secret Service agents broke down the First Family's bedroom door after hearing what they thought was a fight. They found Edith Roosevelt apparently beating her husband, Theodore, and tackled her to the ground breaking two of her ribs. They then discovered that Mrs. Roosevelt was just trying to get her husband to stop snoring. The President slept through the entire encounter.

Bacon grease mixed with Coffee-Mate non-dairy creamer makes a very servicable and low cost alternative to napalm.

Mel Gibson is very concerned tht one of his children might be a target of kidnappers. He has trained them in a variety of skills that he feels are useful to prevent this from happening. All of them are expert drivers (even the ones that are underaged), all are proficient in both armed and unarmed combat, all of them can say "Help, police!" in the 30 most common world languages, and each one of them is an expert at tying and untying knots with their hands and their feet. Finally, each one of them has a GPS transmitter implanted subcutaneously for remote tracking. Gibson has also started to look into having their friends implanted (without their knowledge) so that he can keep an eye on those close to his children.

A recent poll of touring professional musicians revealed, rather unexpectedly, that Toledo was by far the favorite stop in a tour. Almost unanimously the muscians agreed that Toledo was the easiest city to get laid in. One anonymous musician said "The city has an extreme self-confidence problem. That makes it real easy." Interestingly, the survey result held true for both male and female musicians. The Toledo City Council has been having meetings about this issue since the poll came to light. They are torn between promoting the poll in an effort to get more money from touring musicians, and burying the poll because it makes Toledo look like, in the the words of one City Councilman, "a bunch of losers".

Football player Terrell Owens said in an interview that we would never pick himself in a fantasy football league. He said "I am just too volatile. Some asshole on my team is always going to get in my face and I'll have to smack them down. That's just the way it is."

There are more pirates now than every before in the history of the world. Every major shipping company expects to lose at least 5% of their profits due to piracy each year.

Actress Florence Henderson is a very serious composter. Fully half of her 1 acre backyard is taken up by a giant compost pile. She takes in organic materials from all the houses in a 3 block radius. She spends at least 4 hours a day turning the pile with a pitchfork. She sells the compost to local nurseries under the name "Mrs. Brady's Grow Stuff". She sometimes takes her passion too far. Two of her children refused to talk to her for over a year when they found out that she composted the family dog.

Candy canes got their distinctive red and white color due to the fact that when they were first invented the only dye available to use in making the candy was pig's blood.

Actress Andie Macdowell makes a cast of a different part of her body every month. She is intent on documenting the changes that her body goes through over time. She has been doing this for over 17 years and has over 200 different casts, each labelled when and where it was done. Her ultimate goal is to create a series of realistic 3D models of her body changing over time and then sell that series to a medical school as an educational tool.

Shotputting is the national sport of Albania. The fact that no Albanian has ever won an Olympic shotputting medal is considered to be a national disgrace. After each medal-less Olympics the newspapers have publically called for the murder or suicide of the Albanian Olympic shotputting team. The most famous Albanian shotputter escaped death only by cutting off all the fingers on his right hand.

Outdoor clothier Eddie Bauer hated camping with a passion. He used to say that "Only cavemen and the mentally deranged would submit to the elements in this day and age. I'm just glad that those two segments of the population seem to have a good deal of disposable income."

The silkworm (Bombyx mori) does not metabolize heroin but incorporates it, as is, into its silk production. Enterprising drug smugglers have used this as a way to smuggle heroin in and out of countries. The mulberry leaves of the silkworm diet are sprayed with heroin, the silkworm eats those leaves and produces silk that contains heroin. This silk can be used for any purpose that normal silk can. Once the silk is imported to the target country the heroin can be extracted from the silk with a chemical process. Some of the heroin-impregnated silk has actually been used to make high-quality shirts. These shirts are much in demand because over time the heroin leeches out of the fabric and into the wearer's body through the skin. It doesn't duplicate the effect of actually injecting heroin, but it does (according to one wearer) "make everything seem groovier". The downside is that the wearers are extremely unwilling to take off the shirts and wash them because that can blunt the effect of the heroin. It has been reported that some people have worn the shirts until they fell off their bodies from excessive wear.

When asked how they would most prefer to die, men and women had extremely different answers. The most popular choice for men was dying in brutal hand-to-hand combat against a thief trying to steal his electronics. The most popular choice for women was to bleed to death, from a wound received rushing a child to the hospital, while on the doorstep of a lover that had spurned her and remarried.

Before 1975, Ohio State University accepted applicants based on a strict alphabetical quota. Every letter of the alphabet starting a last name had to be represented equally. Although this was not well known to the general public, it was well known to applicants whose last names started with Q, X, and Z. The policy was finally overturned when a white supremacist sued the school on the grounds that letting in an equal number of Z students would give an unfair advantage to Polish Americans.

A number of movie stars now take all nutrition in a liquid form. This enables them to easily control their weight, and it allows them to maintain pearly white teeth at all times.

In 1956, Pope Pius XII was shocked and appalled by the response of America's youth to the singing and gyrations of Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show. He felt that Elvis represented such a grave threat to the Catholic Church that he formed a special taskforce to attempt to combat Elvis' influence. This task force took a variety of tacks against the singer, including supporting more traditional and conservative singers (they gave Pat Boone over $100,000), and buying up Elvis' paraphenalia so that fans couldn't have blasphemous "relics" of the singer. The taskfore eventually amassed the world's largest collection of Elvis memorabilia, including his famous gold lamé suit, for which it paid over $45,000. The collection is stored under tight security under the Vatican. No non-Catholic priest (or non-Swiss Guard) has ever seen the collection, but there is a persistent rumor that one of the items is a series of pictures of Pope John Paul II trying on various outfits.

The number of people who handle poisonous snakes during religious ceremonies to show faith, i.e. "snake handlers", grew by over 550% in 1992, after the bartender on The Simpsons, Moe Syzslak, admitted that he was a snake handler.

The personal assistants of Los Angeles are constantly called upon to make last minute reservations at extremely exclusive restaurants. One cunning assistant of a Paramount exec recently called a restaurant and when informed that there were no spaces available, called the health department with an anonymous complaint that the restaraunt in question served cat meat. The entire place was closed down for two days. The executive gave the assistant a $5000 bonus for exemplary lateral thinking.

Actor Matt Dillon (and to a lesser extent his brother Kevin) suffers from acute, extraneous dental growth, AKA rodent mouth. Unlike most people, his teeth are continuing to grow throughout his life. He has to have regular appointment to get his teeth filed down. He tried to deal with it as rodents do, i.e. gnawing on hard substances, but found that both boring and problematic due to splinters.

94% of all fruit sold in the United States contains insects in some stage of development, from eggs to essentially fully-developed adults.

Since 2002, the Transportation Security Administration has confiscated over 85,000 sexual aids as "potential security hazards".

Rockstar Geddy Lee of the band Rush owns a majority interest in Dutch pot farm that provides Amsterdam with 45% of its annual marijuana supply.

Casey Kasem said that he always tried to play the voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo as a beatnik who had just recently come down off of a acid trip. He drew on his own personal experiences as one of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. He was scheduled to go on the cross country trip that was chronicled in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test but was arrested for public drunkeness and lewd behavior two days before the trip left.

The world longest running and most unknown revolution is in Greenland. The Greenlanders have been attempting to overthrow Danish rule since 1814. It is a surprisingly peaceful revolt with only 3 people having died during that time span.

When President William Howard Taft died in 1930 his wife was so overcome with grief that she secretly had him partially skinned and used the skin to make a belt so that she could always keep him near. Afterwards she was often heard to say that he one regret in life is that she didn't get more skin and have a pair of matching shoes made as well.

According to statistical analyses of public speeches, local politicians in the United States have an average vocabulary that is roughly 25% greater than the average U.S. citizen. The same analyses found that the average national politician has a vocabulary that is 25% smaller than the average citizen.

Twice as much porn is produced in Luxembourg as in any other country in the world.

During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration of the U.S. Government commissioned a sociological study of the sexual habits of the American public. The study was completed after three years, but was immediately declared Top Secret due to the surprising information. Although the study has never officially been released it is rumored that it was suppressed when government officials realized the true variety of sexual acts performed by the public. Officials were afraid that if the study was released, and people realized the various positions and practices detailed within, there would be a wave of hedonistic behaviour that would destroy society.

On March 19, 2003, the start date of Operation Iraqi Freedom, then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton drank so many Red Bulls in the excitement that he had to be sedated.

Railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt had a number of eccentricities to go along with his wealth. The only kind of meat that he would eat was gopher. One time his cook didn't have any gopher and substituted mole meat in a dish. After the meal was over Vanderbilt called the cook into the dining room and congratulated him on an excellent meal. The cook, thinking himself in the clear, bowed and thanked Vanderbilt for the praise. But when the cook retired to his room later he found that all of his belongings had been stacked on the front lawn and set on fire. He was handed a an envelope with $20 and a letter in Vanderbilt's own handwriting saying "Did you think that I don't know what a goddamn mole tastes like?"

Due to their extraordinarily high metabolism, the hummingbird farts more than any other creature known to man, more than 10 times a minute. Scientists theorize that the birds have learned how to use the farts as manuevering jets, but no one has been able to confirm this.

The U.S. Government keep statistics on all Federal employess who die on the job. In 2004, two employees were listed in the annual statistical compilation with a cause of death of "Crushed by Reptiles." All efforts to find out more details have been denied in the interests of national security.

In Detroit, it is legal to get high by sniffing permanent markers, but it is illegal to get a dog high using permanent markers.

The practice of throwing rotten fruit at bad performances began in ancient Rome. The Romans believed that fruit had souls and hitting the performers would curse them with the ghost of the rotten fruit. Aristophanes supposedly wrote an entire play about this called The Cucumbers, but it was lost in antiquity.

The annual expenditure on alcohol for the U.S. Capitol is classified. This has not always been the case. In 1999, the amount was disclosed to be $25 million a year. The person who made the disclosure was fired and the entire food and drink budget for the building was classified top secret.

When faced with two candidates of otherwise equal accomplishments and grades, Stanford University ALWAYS choses the one who is left handed.

Actor Ben Kingsley was born without a kneecap in his right leg. He needs to wear a brace at all times in order for his leg to bend the correct way. Sometimes he takes the brace off so that he can show off at parties, but that is very rare since once when he was drunk he accidentally kicked himself in the crotch.

The U.S. Secret Service keeps an investigative file on every President who dies while in office. The file for the investigation into John F. Kennedy's death comprises over 1500 linear feet of records and is sealed until 2050. The file for the investigation into Warren G. Harding's death in 1923 is over 4000 linear feet and is sealed until 2105.

When Elisha Otis developed the safety brake that enabled the development of modern elevators, he was bitterly denounced by religious conservatives as having created "an affront to God". God, the conservatives held, was "the only agency whereby a man might mount the Heavens without offense". Every building that had Otis elevators was picketed. This lasted for three weeks, until one of the protesters tried the elevator and realized that by taking the elevator he still had the breath to praise God when he got to the top of the building. This realization completely overturned the anti-elevator movement and for the next two years all elevators were full of the religious, singing hymns.

In addition to non-monetary perks, sewage workers around the world reap significant monetary rewards above and beyond their pay. In England, the average sewer worker generally makes over 10,000 pounds a year through salvage of lost money and artifacts in the sewer. And in Russia the sewage workers often use the tunnels as smuggling routes. In Moscow over 70 sewage workers own Ferraris.

In 1890 in New York City, one out of every six people was addicted to cocaine in one form or another.

In his last three movies actor Vince Vaughn has had himself digitally enhanced to appear fatter. That way, when people see him in real life they invariably comment how he looks much better in person than on film.

Poker Pro Phil Hellmuth can make his forehead sweat just by thinking about it. He uses it to make opponents think that he is nervous.

The U.S. Navy is the world's largest purchaser of Silly Putty. It buys over 20 tons annually.

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.

57% of digital video recorder (DVR) users report a feeling of moral superiority with using the device. The general feeling is that watching TV shows time-shifted shows that they are not glued to the TV and have a more fulfilling life.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison always makes sure that he owns the largest and heaviest cell phone on the market. He finds that it is much more satisfying to throw at people when he is angry.

Actress Winona Ryder has a liver that is almost 2 times larger than normal. This is normal for her and has been the case since she was a child. There are plusses and minuses to this. On the plus side, having such a large liver makes it virtually impossible for her to get drunk. On the negative side, the liver is so large that it has crowded some of her other interal organs, specifically her kidneys. Her kidneys are roughly the same size as that of a ten-month-old child. This causes her to pee a lot. In fact, if she is in a hot climate and has been drinking a great deal, sometimes her kidneys are overwhelmed and start sending liquids to her bladder almost unchanged. One time on a hot movie set she started peeing orange juice.

Although he was well aware of the existence of mirrors, Henry the VII of England had been dressed by others since childhood and had never looked in one. The first time he saw himself in the mirror he was so shocked that he pushed the person who gave it to him down the stairs.

Angelina Jolie has started to use artificial tanning products on her new baby Shiloh. She says that there are two reasons for this: 1) she wants to try and minimize frictions between Shiloh and her adopted children by minimizing differences in skin color, and 2) it's never too early to have a good tan.

45% of IT professionals in the United States believe that computers are very likely to be subject to malign supernatural forces.

Human placenta is the seventh-most popular cooking meat in the world.

Actress Eva Longoria has spent the last two years in an attempt to buy every copy of her high school year book so that she can more easily lie about her age. She has succeeded in buying all but five. Three of the remaining books belong to members of the class reunion committee, one belongs to a former classmate in prison, and one belongs to the first person she ever had sex with.

There is more human breast milk produced each day on the Earth than there is cow milk.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a yoga enthusiast, practicing at least 1 hour of bikram yoga each day. He started it because he read that it would give him a "great butt". He is now working towards being able to crack walnuts with his butt muscles, but he has only been able to work up to pecans so far.

Actor Donald Sutherland is terrified of spontaneous human combustion. He always wears flame retardant clothing and has a fire extinguisher in every room of his house, and requires that all his children have a fire extinguisher in every room of their houses as well. His son, Keifer Sutherland, remembers being taught how to stop, drop, and roll before his second birthday, and that his father still requires him to perform this drill whenever he hears two sharps whistles.

King Edward VII of England had erotic photographic calling cards of himself made up so that he could given them to young women that he hoped to take as mistresses. These cards are unbelievably rare as almost all were destroyed by court officials after he became king in 1901. There is known to be at least one in the British Museum's sealed stacks, and there are rumors of one held by the descendents of Alice Keppel, one of the king's last mistresses. Rumor has it that the Keppel copy has both tear stains and lipstick on it. It is claimed that Edward had the Prince Albert modification of his genitalia, but that is a matter of dispute as some claim that it is just a scratch on the photo plate.

There are more incidents of cannibalism in Antarctica than any other continent. The incidents are rarely reported due to the international profile of many of the researchers posted there. A distrubingly large segment of these incidents are self-cannibalization, in which someone eats one of their own fingers in isolation-induced delirium.

Putting superballs in the tires of a car will increase its gas mileage by up to 5 miles per gallon. Unfortunately, due to sympathetic vibrations set up by the balls, there is a 5% chance that one of the tires will explode.

Senator Arlen Spector loves to play poker, but doesn't play for money believing it to be immoral. He plays for animals. Each of his chips represents a different small animal and he scrupulously honors all of his bets. People at one of his games must buy in for at least 10 kittens. Smaller chips equal frogs and crickets respectively. At the end of the night players must deal with the animals that they have won. One of his staffers once had to somehow deal with a box of 890 crickets.

During training sessions, golfer Tiger Woods puts live ants in his left ear and seals them in with earplugs. This is done as an aide to concentration. Woods feels that he needs to be able to filter out all distractions and concentrate solely on the ball. His hearing on the left side is significantly worse than on the right.

Actor/writer/blogger Wil Wheaton has played so much of the video game Guitar Hero that he has damaged his fingertips to the point that he can't be fingerprinted.

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal spends a total of two hours a day hanging upside down in an effort to increase his hat size.

According to the notes of James Madison, at the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin lobbied hard for an Amendment that would allow bigamy.

Mel Gibson never flushes a public toilet after he uses it. Publically, he claims that it is to save water, but privately, he admits that he just doesn't care about what the next bathroom user might see.

As a result of many years in character, puppeteer Frank Oz can only speak using Miss Piggy's voice.

Due to an unfortunate incident in 1923, ever potential date for a male member of the British Royal family must be inspected by a female staff person.

Despite their small size, chihuahuas account for 20% of deadly dog attacks in Mexico. In the United States there has never been a documented case of fatal chihuahua attack.

A random sampling of water from the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States indicates that, on average, the water contains traces of sperm from over 340 different animals, including (but no limited to) fish, cats, dogs, raccoons and squirrels.

The state border between Oregon and Washington has been a mattter of legal dispute for over 75 years. All official maps still have the legend "Border in Dispute".

John McLaughlin has claimed for many years that he can pick up a full-grown cow. No one has ever seen him do it.

Under extreme duress, the Malaysian firefly can produce a flare that it 2X brighter than the sun. The flash lasts only .1 seconds and the firely dies within 12 hours of producing it. After the flash, the firefly's entire metabolism is shifted to mating. Under these conditions, it will attempt to mate with any insect it finds, regardless of species.

According to New York state law, it is legal to hit someone in the face with produce up to 3 pounds if you are in a concert hall that holds more than 100 people. Outside of these areas, it is a Class C felony punishable by 4 years in prison.

Roger Clemens has four kids whose names all begin with the letter "K". But instead of their given names, he calls them Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde after the ghosts in Pac-Man.

More divorces are initiated on February 15th in the United States than on any other day.

Sony Electronics spends 15% of its annual R&D budget on ways to introduce audiovisual content directly into the neural pathways of humans, thus bypassing the need for speakers and screens. They are very tight-lipped about their success.

The fate of Luxembourg has been decided by a single hand of poker on more than one occasion.

Whoopee cushions are "strictly forbidden" on the floor of the U.S. Senate, while they are only "strongly discouraged" on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Giraffes have to get a running start to have sex.

Fidel Castro eats over 10 lbs. of fudge every week. He has instructed his cook to include Ex-Lax in the fudge one week a year, as a way to remind him to be humble.

Princeton University automatically rejects applicants with tattoos if the tattoos are visible during the applicant's interview and the tattoos are not part of a coming-of-age ceremony.

Traditionally, the play Macbeth has always been considered an unlucky play to be in, but statistically, Hamlet has had a far higher rate of murder, suicide and accidental death associated with its performances.

In China it is illegal to name your child "Yoda". Not because of its meaning (it translates to "Vainglorious Turtle") but because the Jedi philosophy has been declared "antithetical to the teachings of the Communist Party".

The earliest condoms were made in China from the necks of swans. Only the Emperor was allowed to use them.

During WWII, French Resistance fighters sometimes used frozen grapes as ammunition.

In 1897, the California Legislature passed a law requiring all residents of California to own at least one frog. This was to provide a last-line of defense in case of locust swarm. The frogs were intended to eat the locusts. The law was never enforced, but there was a short-term upswing in frog sales.

Actor Burt Reynolds really dislikes touching other people. He makes a point of only touching people with whom is planning on having sex with within then next 24 hours.

Avocadoes make mosquitos so drunk that they can't fly.

The flightless kiwi bird of New Zealand kills an average of one person a year with its beak.

Before 1940, Rolls Royce wouldn't sell a car to anyone who wasn't of "noble blood".

The longest one-word anagram in the English language is 78 letters long.

The model used for the Quaker Oats container was not actually a Quaker. He was, in fact, the first openly-practicing Wiccan in the state of Pennsylvania. He just had the right look for a "Quaker".

Former Senator Fred Thompson is extraordinarily sensitive to being regarded as a "country bumpkin". He once sued a 73-year-old woman for defamation when she quoted him as using the word "hootenanny". He won a $450,000 law suit and kicked her out of her home.

Delaware spends 15% of its state's budget annually on ways to help increase its citizens' self-esteem. Delaware's self-esteem has consistently rated at the bottom of all 50 states.

Actor George Takei of Star Trek fame has correctly predicted the final score of the Super Bowl for the last twenty years. He nevers bets saying that to do so would be "an insult to God".

Despite Texas' protestations of being like another country, the only state since the Civil War to put a secession measure on a state-wide ballot is Iowa.

Scientist estimate that a genetic therapy will exist in 10 years that will turn skin completely transparent on a temporary basis. They suggest that the two major uses for this are diagnosis and porn.

Every day there are more words written on Post-It notes than there were written on any medium during the entire 18th Century.

People whose names are also verbs (Chase, Pierce, etc.) live 7 years less than the average person.

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert watches the movie "Steel Magnolias" at least once a month. He says that it's "to stay in touch with my feminine side so that I can be a better legislator." He has never made it through the movie without crying, and he has fired three aides on the spot when they interrupted his watching.

Young actors have started the new fad of pork surfing in Los Angeles. It involves riding a butchered hog down the steep hills about Hollywood using the fat from the pig as a lubricant. So far no one has been injured too badly, but trichinosis has climbed alarmingly.

An international poll taken in 1998 revealed that 16% of the world's population thought that Michael Jordan was the President of the United States.

The number of high school students who believe that vampires are real spiked 4 years ago, when the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was at the height of its popularity. Since the show's end, 69% of high school students think that Sarah Michelle Gellar has somehow died.

1 person in 20 claims that they would kill a random victim if there were no chance they would ever get caught or blamed. That number climbs to 1 in 6 if the random victim is instead the person's boss.

The average American owns over 100,000 tons of goods during their lifetime.

There are 17 sex acts described in the Bible that would be illegal in all 50 states.