Random Fact of the Day

&nbsp Random Fact of the Day was a topic created on February 6, 2010. An idea masterminded and brought to life by Psionic_Wookie, the topic featured some of the most interesting, yet random, tidbits of information, as the topic title suggested. On a typical day, Wookie would post 1-2 facts; however, there were times when he would post more than that, usually on special days having to do with the day he was on, or an event that happened around that time. Furthermore, random facts contributed by other users were also welcomed; therefore, the topic also featured random facts submitted by other users; these facts did not affect Wookie's daily count.

Wookie's Daily Facts
Day 1: the 'arms' on an octopus are actually extensions of it's lips.

Day 2: The commercial ballpoint pen was invented in 1938 by Hungarian László Bíró, a newspaper editor, after his frustration with the standard ballpoint pens of the day kept tearing his pages or leaving big smears of ink.

Day 3: Diamonds can't cut wood

Day 4: Cats can't taste sweet. They just don't need to.

Day 5: Horseshoe crabs are the only animals that chew with their legs. They also have blue blood that's used in many antibiotics.

Day 6: Up until the 1940s in Western Culture, pink was considered a male-only color, because it being related to red and being a masculine and decided color, while blue was considered a feminine color because it was the more delicate and dainty color. Since the '40s, however, the societal norm has been inverted for no obvious reasons.

Day 7: Another octopus fact, the because the octopus has so many 'arms', its brain can't handle all eight, so each 'arm' has its own nervous system. Each 'arm' literally has a mind of its own. With the brain, they all kinda act like a collective intelligence, though, so it all works out.

Day 8: A rat's nails grow at 2 different speeds. The top part of the nail grows faster than the underside, resulting in the sharp point.

Day 9: British king, King Henry VIII(21 April 1509 – 28 January 1547)was fascinated by firearms, even trying to make multi-chambered pistols(all of which failed miserably). As a result, his knights had a lesser-known talent: they used guns, with good precision(for the guns of the 16th century)too. Unfortunately, guns were hard to use in the gauntlets that they wore, resulting in them being impractical. Some knights did go in missing that piece of armour so they could use their pistols, however.

Day 10: The Roman Colosseum was originally called the Flavian Amphitheater, named after the family from which the father and son the built it(the father, Emperor Vespasian, started construction, his son, Emperor Titus, was ruler for the completion), the Flavian Family(go figure). It was called the Colosseum because of the large statue(colossus)of Nero that was put in front of it. Another interesting thing, the floor/battlefield of the Colosseum had a thin layer of sand on it, which is where we get our word arena, Latin for 'sand.'

Day 11: Cordyceps unilateralis, a fungus, has a particularly strong taste for ants. It invades small holes in the ant's exoskeleton with spores and it feasts on the ant's succulent innards. After having its fill, it migrates to the brain, where it takes control of the ant by altering its perception of pheromones. Stripped of free will, the ant is now essentially a zombie. It then climbs to the top of a small plant(typically a blade of grass)and clamps down hard with its mandibles. Day after day it spends there, as the spores start sprouting from its head, until one day the ant's head explodes. Well, the sprouts explode and blow up the head and release more spores into the air for this seemingly pointless process to begin again.

Day 12: Spinochordodes tellinii is a parasite that grows to an average of a metre long and prefers damp areas. A grasshopper or cricket will ingest the microscopic larva, probably unintentionally. Once this happens, the larva develop into worms while still inside the insect. When it's fully grown(at that point, only a few inches long), it takes control of said insect and uses its newfound mobility to have the insect drown itself in a pool of water, thereby returning it to its favorite habitat(it is not known if the Tellinii makes the insect actively seek water or just jump around or what happens). In the event that the insect is eaten, the Tellinii will found its way out of the predator, often via urine or feces.

Day 13: The only parasite known to actually replace a working organ, the Cymothoa exigua. The Spotted Rose Snapper, a fish native to California, is its prey of choice. The small, parasitic crustacean enters the fish's mouth, attaches to the tongue and leeches the blood out of the tongue until the tongue dies. It then attaches itself to the leftover tongue-stump and acts as the tongue for the rest of both its and the fish's life. It causes no more harm to the fish(though it does still drink blood and some drink mucus), and the fish can actually use the hard shell of the C. exigua to crush its food, making it, technically, a symbiotic relationship, even though C. exigua is classified as a parasite.

Fun Fact: In 2005, a fish parasited with what is suspected to be a C. exigua was found in the UK, even though the parasite is native to California. It was thought that the parasite could be increasing its range, but no other findings have been reported since, so it is likely that it is just an isolated incident. It is(as of when I read about it)on display in the Horniman Museum in South London, England.

Day 14: There is actually a kernel of truth to the folk wisdom that toast always lands butter-side down(besides the irrefutable Murphy's Law). The reason for this disagreeable behavior is simple Newtonian physics. Toast is typically oriented in a butter-side up position in the pre-dropped stage, and at a height of approximately four feet. Once the toast's center of gravity goes over the edge of the surface it is sitting upon, it descends to the floor in a predictable tumbling pattern. Unless it strikes an object during descent, thereby imparting an irregular tumbling pattern, the buttery bread only has enough distance to tumble halfway around before arriving at the floor. Consequently the the sticky side is frequently facing the floor.

To remedy this, one can transport one's toast in a butter-side down configuration, or alter the toast-toting height to be something less than two feet from the floor or greater than ten feet.

Day 15: Most bowling balls you can buy are scented, usually with something strong and sweet. They are scented because most people who buy them also have shoes and keep their shoes and ball in the same bag, which can lead to the ball smelling weird(if you've ever bowled, you'll know how close the ball usually gets to your face).

Day 16: If you leave a parrot in a room, alone, for long enough, it will eventually go clinically insane.

Day 17: an unexpected side-effect of the hormone oxytocin, used to induce labor/help with difficult deliveries, and sometimes prescribed to assist a mother to feed her new infant(you know what I mean), is that the medication makes the user's tendency to trust other people greatly increase, and it usually makes the user significantly more generous. Now you know what to get your mother for Mother's Day :P Assuming she can cook, anyways.

Day 18: Another drug thing; The medication Ropinirole provides some relief for sufferers of Parkinson's disease and Restless Leg Syndrome(RLS), but it has also been implicated in causing compulsive behavior such as excessive gambling, frequent compulsive shopping sprees, and addiction to...bedroom activities. Mirapex, another drug used to treat the same things, has been known to trigger amnesia in some users, causing them to forget what they've done during certain hours of the day.

Day 19: "Rods from God"; the nickname of a satellite weapon that may or may be officially in development. It consists of a pair of satellites working in unison: one doing the targeting the other firing a 20-foot-long by 1-foot-wide tungsten rod. These rods would travel at 36,000 feet per second, striking the earth with the force of a meteor. Even hardened bunkers and underground fortifications would be unable to withstand such monumental punishment.

Day 20: As German U-boats pounded the ships of the British Navy during World War II, the Brits became desperate to build a ship that could take more torpedo punishment. The Habbakuk was destined to be a two-million-ton aircraft carrier with a hull 40 feet thick - made almost entirely out of ice. More specifically, Pykrete, a super-strong variety of ice reinforced cellulose in the form of sawdust, wood chips, and paper shreds designed for the project.A small-scale prototype of the armed-iceberg proved the concept was quite solid, however construction was halted once the British found that the reallocation of all the wood chips, steel framing and insulating cork would hugely impact other wartime efforts.

Day 21: While most people think Valentine's Day was in honor of the late St. Valentine, such a person never existed. Well, he did exist, but oral tradition has twisted and warped the story so badly, no one actually knows what really happened(though there are strong theories). Anyways, Valentine's Day is actually the Christian version of the pagan feast of Lupercalia that honored Juno Februata, the goddess of high-spirited sex. It was one of several Roman holidays that were pretty much just orgies. Annually on February 15, all single young men in Rome drew a lady's name from a jar and pinned it to their sleeves for the duration of the celebration. Men and women were thus partnered for feasting and love-making for several days. At the end of the holiday, all of the women expected at least one piece of jewelry, and any women who were impregnated expected to marry their partner.

Day 22: Jack Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, aka Mad Jack Churchill, was the only man to kill someone with a bow and arrow in WWII.

Day 23: Another parasite fond of mind control is the Sacculina genus of barnacles. When the female Sacculina finds a suitable crab to infest, she will crawl along its body until an opening is found(usually a joint). Once inside, the barnacle begins her grim work. By forcing long tendrils into the crab's body, she gradually gains control over her victim. She also cracks open a hole in the crab's back that allows male Sacculina to take up residence with her. Once the male arrives, the crab is filled with millions of eggs. As if that wasn't bad enough, there are other physiological effects that are devastating to the host. The infected crab loses the ability to regenerate lost claws, as well as the ability to reproduce. If the crab is male, the parasites actually change the hormone levels and behavior of the crab, effectively turning it female. The crab becomes a slave, its only job to care for the larva being produced in its shattered body.

Day 24:The Plesiometa Argyra spider of Costa Rica lives its life blissfully unaware of the horrifying death that could be hovering just overhead at any moment. While the spider is usually the hunter rather than the prey, there is one species of wasp known as Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga that targets these orb spiders regularly. A successful attack leaves the spider paralyzed as the wasp lays eggs in its abdomen. After the wasp has flown off, the spider wakes up and spends about 2 weeks going about its regular business. All the while, the wasp larvae grow in the spider's belly, feeding off its succulent juices. A day before its impending death, the spider suddenly stops creating its usually elaborate five-step web and begins a new two-step process that results in a very different structure. Small and strong, the new web is ideal protection for the maturing larvae. Once it's finished, the wasps kill their host and take up residence in their new web-house. While scientists aren't sure how exactly the larvae influence the construction of the web, research shows a fast acting chemical is most likely the culprit.

Day 25: Termites can channel the power of flatulence as a defensive mechanism. When confronted with an intruder, a termite can break wind with such violent force that its abdomen explodes, sending feces and noxious chemicals onto the intruder.

Day 26: Charles Bonnet Syndrome is a very unusual thing; it usually(but not only)just occurs in elderly/hard-of-sight people(~15% of them)and has a strange effect: it makes people see things that aren't there, or in some cases, not see things that are there, sometimes as tiny as a bottle of water and sometimes it's whole buildings! Named after Charles Bonnet in 1760, who found himself concerned about his grandfather, Charles Lullin(89 years of age), who was seeing "amusing and magical visions". Lullin said he was being visited by people, birds, other animals, and the like, all of which were only visible to him. He did not appear to exhibit any other indications of marble-loss, in fact he was quite sane aside from seeing things. Moreover, the elderly man was quite aware that all the things he was seeing were in his head. That bit aside, CBS is a fairly rare syndrome(as stated, it typically, but not only, occurs in people who are losing their sight)that can be recognized by the differences between it and hallucinations(when you hallucinate, you feel pain, hear things, see them, etc. with CBS, you only see, not hear or feel). And most people with CBS are fully aware that they are just seeing things, except for the first time where they may just see a rude stranger who won't talk or an odd bird that doesn't sing, even when it looks like it should be.

Sometimes they are just bizarre sights, like a woman who reported seeing monkeys in elevator-operator outfits playing in her yard, or another woman who said she saw children with flowers for heads dancing in her house. Some people actually try and strike up conversations with people they see who aren't there, but because it only uses sight, they only stare on(I wonder what happens if you know sign-language?). It is figured that, because this usually only happens in blinding people, it is just cells in your eyes that start making things up because they have no information coming in(a similar thing happens if you lock yourself in a pitch black room for long enough; you start seeing and hearing things).

Day 27: In 1963, physiologist Dr. Jose Delgado made one of the most striking demonstrations of the power of brain electrodes. In the Spanish city of Cordoba, before throngs of spectators(whole throngs, I tell you), the scientist strolled into a bull fighting ring adorned in full matador attire. He flapped his red cape at the bull opposite him, and it carried out it's signature charge.When it was a few yards from Delgado, he pressed a button on his belt to energize a radio-controlled electrode that had been implanted in the bull's brain. The bull's rage evaporated in an instant. It dug it's heels in the dirt, skidded to a stop and trotted off. In later years, Delgado was known to use a similar method to "play" with monkeys and cats like they were electronic toys.

Day 28: The citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; "7" was selected because the original containers were 7 ounces. "UP" indicated the direction of the bubbles.

Day 28 1/2: If you have 3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

Day 29: In the average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator.

Day 29 1/2: It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.

Day 30: When a bat or dolphin uses echolocation, they can actually 'see' inside the things that they hit with it(like a bat can actually 'see' inside of a mosquito).

Day 30 1/2: Each of the suits on a deck of cards represents the four major pillars of the economy in the middle ages: heart represented the Church, spades represented the military, clubs represented agriculture, and diamonds represented the merchant class.

Day 31: American car horns beep in the tone of F.

Day 31 1/2: When snakes are born with two heads, they fight each other for food.

Day 32: The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet (9 m).

Day 32 1/2: Statistically, women kill themselves with pills more while men tend to shoot themselves more. Women take pills because it doesn't leave a mess, and for vanity reason, while men tend to use guns because guns are more masculine than pills.

Day 33: Women are 37% more likely to go to a psychiatrist than men are.

Day 33 1/2: Desserts is Stressed spelled backwards.

Day 34: The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.

Day 34 1/2: Every year about 98% of the atoms in your body are replaced.

Day 35: According to suicide statistics, Monday is the favored day for self-destruction.

Day 35 1/2: All polar bears are left-handed.

Day 36: North Dakota is the only state in the US that has never had an earthquake.

Day 36 1/2: If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Day 37: China has about $1 trillion in personal savings and a savings rate of close to 50%. The US has about $158 billion in personal savings and an average savings rate of only about 2% (a little lesson here).

Day 37 1/2: Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.

Day 38: Abraham Lincoln was the only U.S. president to hold a patent. It was for an invention to buoy boats over shallow rivers.

Day 38 1/2: Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

Day 39: Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

Day 39 1/2: Hummingbirds can't walk.

Day 40: Arnold Schwarzenegger's famous line in The Terminator "I'll be back" was originally scripted as "I'll come back".

Day 40 1/2: Average lifespan of a major league baseball is 7 pitches.

Day 41: The ears of a cricket are located on the front legs, just below the knee.

Day 41 1/2: The smallest bone in the human body is the stapes or stirrup bone located in the middle ear. It is approximately .11 inches (.28 cm) long.

Day 42: "Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

Day 42 1/2: No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.

Day 43: The town of Kennesaw, Georgia has required its citizens to own a firearm and ammunition since 1982. Kennesaw's law was amended in 1983 to exempt those who conscientiously object to owning a firearm, convicted felons, those who cannot afford a firearm, and those with a mental or physical disability that would prevent them from owning a firearm. It mentions no penalty for its violation. No one has ever been charged under the ordinance. In the first year, home burglaries dropped from 65, to 26 in 1983, to 11 in 1984

Day 43 1/2: Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny) was allergic to carrots.

Day 44: The U.S. ranks 29th in overall life expectancy, which is 78 years.

Day 44 1/2: About 1/3 of American adults are at least 20% above their recommended weight.

Day 45: A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time. It is 1/100th of a second.

Day 45 1/2: Humans are the only living thing that willingly sleeps on their backs.

Day 46: An inch (2.5 centimeters) of rain water is equivalent to 15 inches (38.1 centimeters) of dry, powdery snow.

Day 46 1/2: Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks otherwise it will digest itself.

Day 47: The blue whale can produce sounds up to 188 decibels. This is the loudest sound produced by a living animal and has been detected as far away as 530 miles.

Day 47 1/2: If you eat a polar bear liver, you will die of vitamin A poisoning. As a carnivore which feeds largely upon fish-eating carnivores, the polar bear ingests large amounts of vitamin A, which is stored in its liver; in the past, humans have been poisoned by eating the livers of polar bears.

Warning: Very slight Star Wars spoilers

Day 48: In the first two Star Wars movies (Episodes IV and V), there were only two lightsaber colors. The Jedi used blue lightsabers, while Darth Vader used a red lightsaber. The last movie in the original trilogy, "Return of the Jedi", introduced the green lightsaber. The green lightsaber was used in this movie because a blue lightsaber didn't contrast enough against the blue sky in the fighting scenes on Tattoine.

Day 48 1/2: In the prequel trilogy, both blue and green lightsabers were used by the Jedi equally. The exception is the purple lightsaber used by Mace Windu. This uniquely colored lightsaber was a request from Samuel L. Jackson, in order for him to accept the part as Mace Windu.

Day 49: The antibacterial components of antibacterial soaps (usually triclosan or, less commonly, triclocarbon) needs to be left on a surface for about two minutes in order to work. Most people are not this patient, and end up washing off the soap before the antibacterial ingredients can do their job.

Day 49 1/2: The woodpeckers tongue is so long (in many cases as long as the woodpecker itself), that it is not attached to the woodpecker's head as in most birds, but instead it curls back up around its skull, allowing it to be so long. Once the woodpecker locates an insects tunnel in a tree, it worms its tongue into the tunnel to try to locate the grub. The tongue of the woodpecker is long and ends in a barb. With its tongue the woodpecker skewers the grub and draws it out of the trunk.

Day 50: The common guinea pig was first domesticated in about 2000 BC by the people living in the Andes mountains, as a food source. To this day, they continue to be a major part of the diet in Peru and Bolivia, where they are an important source of protein and a mainstay of Andean folk medicine. Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million Guinea pigs each year, and the animal is so entrenched in the culture that one famous painting of the Last Supper in the main cathedral in Cusco, Peru shows Christ and the twelve disciples dining on guinea pig.

Day 50 1/2: C-4 is a very stable product, well known for its durability and reliability. It will not explode even if hit by a bullet, punched, cut, or thrown into a fire (in Vietnam, soldiers actually burned C-4 as an improvised cooking fire). The only reliable method for detonation is via a detonator or blasting cap.

Day 51: Early naval mines had mechanical mechanisms to detonate them, but these were superseded in the 1870s by the Hertz Horn (or chemical horn), which was found to work reliably even after the mine had been in the sea for several years. The mine's upper half is studded with hollow lead protuberances, each containing a glass vial filled with sulfuric acid. When a ship's hull crushes the metal horn, it cracks the vial inside it, allowing the acid to run down a tube and into a lead-acid battery which until then contains no acid electrolyte. This energizes the battery, which detonates the explosive.

Day 51 1/2: The English language commonly uses "blue" to refer to any color from cyan to navy blue. However, many languages, including many east Asian and African languages, do not have separate terms for blue and green, instead using a single word for both. At the same time, some languages, like Russian, Italian, and Hebrew, have different words for what English calls light blue and dark blue. This is the same as the English distinction between red and light red (pink).

Day 52: The modern bikini was invented by a French designer in 1946. It was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of US nuclear weapon tests a few days earlier in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the nuclear device. Between 1946 and 1958, twenty three nuclear devices were detonated at Bikini Atoll. One detonation on March 1, 1954, codenamed Castle Bravo, was the first test of a practical hydrogen bomb. The largest nuclear explosion ever set off by the United States, it was much more powerful than predicted and created widespread radioactive contamination.

Day 53: The Purple Heart is a medal that is issued to members of the US Military that are wounded in battle. Almost half a million Purple Heart Medals were made near the end of WWII, in the anticipation of the invasion of Japan, which never came. Although there have been a few small production runs of new medals, most medals still in circulation were made during WWII in the anticipation of the invasion of Japan. There were enough Purple Hearts made during WWII that many units today in Afghanistan and Iraq have Purple Hearts on hand to give to wounded soldiers immediately.

Day 54: The praying mantis has no ears on its head. It has one single ear in the middle of the thorax on the underside. This single ear, which is a deep slit inside the thorax, allows it to hear ultrasonic sounds. Since praying mantises feed during the day, they do a considerable amount of flying by night. The night, however, is when bats feed, using ultrasonic sound waves to pinpoint their prey. The frequency of these sound waves indicates the location and distance of the bat’s prey. Praying mantises are able to hear these ultrasonic sounds and when the frequency begins to increase rapidly, indicating an approaching bat, mantises will stop flying horizontally and begin a direct, high speed nose dive towards the safety of the ground.

Day 55: Alcohol is absorbed directly through the stomach, and in the process irritates the cells that line the organ. Alcohol also promotes secretion of additional hydrochloric acid in the stomach, eventually causing the nerves to send a message to the brain that the stomach's contents are hurting the body. The brain responds by telling the stomach to expel its contents by vomiting.

Day 56: Typically, muscular "strength" refers to the ability to exert a force on an external object. By this definition, the jaw muscle is the strongest. The 1992 Guinness Book of Records records the highest bite strength of 4337 N (975 lbf) for 2 seconds. What distinguishes the jaw muscle is not anything special about the muscle itself, but its advantage in working against a much shorter lever arm than other muscles. If "strength" refers to the force exerted by the muscle itself, the strongest muscle of the body is usually said to be the quadriceps femoris or the gluteus maximus. The unexplained statement that "the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body" appears frequently in lists of surprising facts, but it is difficult to find any definition of "strength" that would make this statement true. Note that the tongue consists of sixteen muscles, not one.

Day 57: Human fingers do not contain any muscles other than the small muscles attached to each hair follicle, which contract to make the hairs stand on end, causing goose bumps. The muscles that move the finger joints are in the palm and forearm. The long tendons that deliver motion from the forearm muscles may be observed to move underneath the skin at the wrist and on the back of the hand.

Day 58: Many people are confused about why it's called "3 Musketeers" (called the Milky Way outside of US and Canada; Milky Way is called the Mars Bar, after the company that makes it), but most people don't know that, when first introduced in 1932, it was 3 bars with 3 different flavors in them; vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Rising costs and wartime restrictions on sugar forced Mars to ditch strawberry and vanilla in favor of the most popular flavor, chocolate. At five cents when first introduced, it was marketed as one of the largest chocolate bars available, one that could be shared by friends.

Originally introduced in 1930 by Frank and Ethel Mars, the Snickers bar was named after their family horse. The original Snickers bars were sold for a nickel and consisted primarily of chocolate, peanuts and caramel. It is currently the best selling candy bar of all time.In the UK and Ireland, it was originally sold under the name Marathon. Mars standardized many of its global brand names and the name was changed to Snickers in 1990. For 18 months before the name changed, the words "Internationally known as Snickers" were printed on the side of the Marathon wrapper. Following the name change, the bar moved from being Britain's ninth most popular bar to the third most popular. Mars has since re-registered the original name as a UK trademark.

The Kit Kat bar was first created by Rowntree's of York, England and now produced worldwide by Nestlé, which acquired Rowntree in 1988, except in the United States where it is made under license by The Hershey Company. The original "four-finger" version of the bar was developed after a worker at the Rowntree's factory in York put a suggestion in the suggestion box for a snack that a "man could have in his lunch box for work". It was launched in September 1935 in the UK as Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp (price: 2d).The two-finger version was launched on May 15, 1936. Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp was renamed Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp in 1937, and after World War II just Kit Kat. The name is believed to have come from the Kit-Cat Club, an eighteenth-century political club for artists. In 1937, the Norwegian firm Freia launched a near-identical chocolate bar called Kvikk Lunsj for the Norwegian market.

Butterfinger was invented by the Curtiss Candy Company of Chicago, Illinois, in 1923. The company held a public contest to choose the name of the candy dress. As an early publicity stunt and marketing ploy, the company dropped Butterfinger and Baby Ruth candy bars from airplanes in cities across the United States which helped increase its popularity. The Curtiss Candy Company was sold to Nabisco in 1981, and, in 1990, Nestlé bought Baby Ruth and Butterfinger from RJR Nabisco.Two of the slogans currently used to advertise the candy bar are "Follow the Finger" and "Break out of the ordinary!" Prior to these, Bart Simpson and other characters from Fox's The Simpsons appeared in numerous advertisements for the product from 1990 to 2001, with the slogans "Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger!", "Bite my Butterfinger!", and "Nothin' like a Butterfinger!" However, when Butterfinger dropped the Simpsons as a spokesperson, a Simpsons episode called "Sweets and Sour Marge" included a scene involving Butterfinger bars being unable to be burned, a character saying "even the fire doesn't want them."

Day 59: Aokigahara Jukai (The Sea of Trees) located at the base of Mount Fuji is the top suicide area in Japan; the spirits of those who kill themselves there are said to be cursed to forever haunt the area. Over 78 bodies have been discovered, prompting officials to put up signs prohibiting suicide in the forest.

Day 60: Sixty is a composite number with divisors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60 making it also a highly composite number.

Sixty is the smallest number divisible by the numbers 1 to 6. (There is no smaller number divisible by the numbers 1 to 5). 60 is the smallest number with exactly 12 divisors.

Sixty is the sum of a pair of twin primes (29 + 31), as well as the sum of four consecutive primes (11 + 13 + 17 + 19). It is adjacent to two prime numbers (59,61). It is also the smallest number which is the sum of two odd primes in 6 ways.

The icosidodecahedron has 60 sides.

In the Bible, the number 60 occurs several times, for example as the age of Isaac when Jacob and Esau were born,[4] and the number of warriors escorting King Solomon.

60 is the code for international direct dial calls to Malaysia.

Year 60 A.D was a leap year.

Day 61: The word "easel" (an upright support used for displaying and/or working on something resting upon it, usually a canvas being painted on) comes from the German word "esel" and the Dutch word "ezel", both of which refer to an easel, and to an ass (donkey). The use of the word for "donkey" referring to an "easel" is similar to the way "horse" is used in "sawhorse" (a wooden frame which supports work in progress).

Day 62: The name of the State of Idaho is a made up word. It is not derived from a Native American root. The common belief is that "Idaho" is based off of a word or phrase from the local Native American tribe. According to the myths "Idaho" comes from "E Dah Hoe" supposedly meaning "gem of the mountains." Idaho was originally suggested as a name for the state of Colorado.

User-Submitted Facts
“Dogs can't look up” – Sweanus

“Hardly anyone in the usa spends 2 dollar bills or half dollars anymore. In Canada they use 1 and 2 dollar coins and they even have a 5 dollar bullion coin made of pure silver called the Silver maple leaf.” – HitomiKagewaki

“Another octopus fact, the because the octopus has so many 'arms', its brain can't handle all eight, so each 'arm' has its own nervous system. Each 'arm' literally has a mind of its own. With the brain, they all kinda act like a collective intelligence, though, so it all works out.” – Fyreboi

“Hippos can run faster than humans” – Elefantjunior

“Kangaroos can't jump backwards.” – frankftw

“If you hold a bullet in one hand and a gun in the other at the same height and drop the bullet at the same time as firing the gun, both bullets will hit the ground at the same time.” – FAHtastic

“Silver is rarer than gold and eventually will become extinct by 2020? or something(meaning no new silver mined unless they find a new silver mine or something). So we would have to recycle silver from electronics in landfills or remelt old silver coins by then.

3-5 people out of a 100 own Silver.

Prices per troy ounce as of today: $1097-$1098 for Gold $15.97-$15.99 Silver $1508-$1513 Platinum $2340-$2730 Rhodium” – HitomiKagewaki

“cigarette filters are the number one piece of litter in the usa” – ToadYoshi

“You can buy uncut sheets of either $1, $2, $5, $10, $20 or $50 dollar uncut sheets from the BEP itself. They do cost more than face value. For example a 32 sheet of two's costs 90 bucks but the way I look at the cost as 90 dollars minus the 64 dollars= 26.” – HitomiKagewaki

“Hitler was blinded (temporarily) and nearly killed by a mustard gas attack in WWI.” – Eddie___Dean

“Most dandruff is not simply dead scalp cells. When you wash your hair, it gets wet, and the hair closer to your head takes longer to dry because it has less access to the air. In the mean time, the water next to your scalp allows a wonderful breeding ground for a mold, which is really what (some) kinds of dandruff is.” – Grand_Maester

“Salt is the only rock that we eat.” – VF1MS Metal Siren

“More money is printed daily for Monopoly games than for the U.S. Treasury

If everyone in the world owned their own mid sized house, they could all fit within the state of Texas (or so I heard)” – VideoboysaysCube

“Money is actually based upon debt and not value. In other words if there was no debt there be no money and we go back to the old money system of value.

Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution explicitly forbids the states from issuing "bills of credit" (paper or "fiat" money) or making anything but gold and silver coin "legal tender", whereas there are no corresponding explicit prohibitions against the federal government, nor any explicit authorization.

In 1798, Vice President Thomas Jefferson wrote that the federal government has no power “of making paper money or anything else a legal tender,” and he advocated a constitutional amendment to enforce this principle by denying the federal government the power to borrow.” – HitomiKagewaki

“There is a bird named Antpitta avis canis Ridgley. This bird doesn't sing, instead it barks like a dog.” – baltoboulbobbi

“it takes more energy to [digest] a piece of celery than the amount of calories present in the celery. so you are losing calories for every piece of celery you eat” – kirbydude385

“"In fact, every U.S. banknote issued since 1861 is still redeemable today at full face value and will continue to be legal currency. In addition, there will be no recall or devaluation of any U.S. bills as the United States has never devalued its currency and will not do so now." – HitomiKagewaki

“Forest fires burn faster uphill than downhill.” – BlackDra90n

“Bananas are not fruit; they're actually herbs.

Also, I remember hearing somewhere that human DNA is ridiculously similar to that of a banana, but I think that's only because both us and bananas have layers of keratin to prevent us from becoming waterlogged.” – Ultim87

“Koalas sleep more than sloths do.” – kirbydude385

“Glow sticks and hockey pucks will blend inside a blender.” – Ankleslam101

“1. Surely the strangest Easter custom takes places in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, where there is a tradition of spanking or whipping women on Easter Monday. Males throw water at females and spank them with handmade whips made of willow and decorated with ribbons at the end. The spanking is supposed to be symbolic and according to legend, females should be spanked in order to keep their health and beauty during the next year. It doesn’t sound too fun for the women!

2. In Finland, children dress up and go begging in the streets with sooty faces, carrying broomsticks. Sounds a bit like Halloween? In some parts of Western Finland they even burn bonfires on Easter Sunday. But there is no sign of Guy Fawkes. This tradition takes place to ward off witches flying around between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

3. On Maundy Thursday in Verges, in Spain, a traditional “death dance” is performed which involves a parade down the streets of the medieval town. Everyone involved is dressed in costumes and the procession ends with frightening skeletons carrying boxes of ashes. The scary dance begins at midnight and continues for three hours into the early morning.” – Aecioo