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***   Cliff's Useless Fact  ***

These are Useless facts you probably have never realized.

Butterflies taste with their feet.

A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.

In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than
all the world's nuclear weapons combined.

On average, 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens every year.

On average people fear spiders more than they do death.

You are more likely to be killed by a Champagne cork than by a
poisonous spider.

Ninety percent of New York City cabbies are recently arrived immigrants.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal
ads for dating are already married.

Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.

It's possible to lead a cow upstairs...but not downstairs.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch
every year because when it was built, engineers failed to
take into account the weight of all the
books that would occupy the building.

A snail can sleep for three years.

No word in the English language rhymes with
"MONTH".

Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.

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

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

All polar bears are left handed.

In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies,
including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the
letters only on one row of the keyboard.

"Stewardesses" is the longest word typed with only the left
hand.

"Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English
language.

The word "racecar", "kayak", and "radar" are the same
whether they are read left to right or right to left.

"a man a plan a canal panama" spelled backwards is still "a man a plan a canal panama"

If Barbie were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33.
She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.

A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are
registered blood donors.

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the
line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you will have produced
enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, but
dogs only have about ten.

The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each
gallon of diesel that it burns.

The name Wendy was made up for the book 'Peter Pan'.

If you send a letter to another country, who pays that country to deliver it?

Sometimes the mail service is so bad, one is tempted to cry uncle. If you live in the U. S., that's who pays this bill: Uncle Sam Just as there is a balance of payments in foreign trade between your country and every other -- the amount your imports exceed or fall short of exports - so there is a similar balance for mail. If your country has been sending more mail to another nation than it has been receiving from it, your country pays for the excess service. They don't count each letter; it's calculated by weight: so many dollars per kilogram. Just because the payments are balanced doesn't mean that the people who send this mail can be described in the same way. If the junk mail I get goes abroad - ads for tooth implants that play mp3 music files - they must think we've gone off the scale.

How come your heart muscle doesn't get charley-horsed from all that exertion

If you're pumping iron, your heart is pumping blood, big time. Even walking fast stresses the old ticker. Likewise a little romantic activity. So why don't you wake up the next morning with aches and pains where it would really scare you? For one thing, your heart muscle is not like your other muscles. The part that turns food into energy is a greater percentage of cardiac muscle than of the rest of your muscles. Your heart also contracts more slowly than other muscles, with a smoother, less taxing motion. Each of these factors decreases the amount of stress on heart muscle, lessening fatigue.

Nevertheless, our hearts ache, break, burn, get stolen, are given away, end up in our mouths and often skip a beat. But just try to get your HMO to approve a referral to a specialist for any of these conditions.

TOILET PAPER FACTS According to a 1999 survey by the Scott Paper Company:

* You can gauge a person's education by whether they read in the bathroom. * More than 2/3 of the people with a master's degree and doctorates read in the stall. * Only one in two high school grads read while in the bathroom, and 56 percent of those with college degrees do. * Fifty four percent of Americans fold their toilet tissue neatly while 35 percent wad it into a ball before using it. * Seven percent steal rolls of toilet paper (hotels/motels) * More than sixty percent prefer that their toilet paper roll over the top, twenty nine percent from the bottom. The rest don't care.

Why do we say that something temporarily repaired is "jury-rigged?

" Don't confuse this with what Al Capone and John Gotti attempted when confronted by 12 people deciding their innocence or guilt

For its source, we need to go to sea. In the days of sailing ships it was often necessary to make repairs to a damaged mast in order to complete a voyage, since without that piece of nautical hardware you could be left dead in the water in more ways than one. The result was called a "jury-mast," a term first used in the 16th century for a temporary fix that got your ship into port. "Jury" may have been a corruption of "journey," but more likely stems from the Latin word, "adjutare," which meant to help - think "adjutant." Today we might apply this expression to the temporary repair the country mechanic makes on your car to get you back to the city, leaving you jury-rigged and cash- impaired.

Who invented the microwave oven?

Someone who didn't have the patience to wait three minutes while water boiled on the stovetop? Someone who loved gray hamburgers? Actually, none of the above. In 1946 Dr. Percy Spencer, an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, was working with a magnetron tube, the emitter of microwave energy invented six years earlier in Britain by Sir John Randall and Dr. A. H. Boot. Spencer got too close to the tube and a chocolate bar in his pocket melted. This chocolate-loving -- and therefore, right-thinking -- engineer drew the proper conclusion: microwaves could cook food. Raytheon used his discovery to produce a "Radar Range" for restaurants, which by 1952 became available as a home microwave oven. Consumers were finally able to melt chocolate in their own pockets.

1. Never call in emergency work order in the morning.
Always wait until 4:00 and then give it to us.
The challenge of a 4:30 deadline is refreshing.

2. If it's really a rush job, call and
interrupt us every 10 minutes to inquire how
it's going. That helps. Even better, hover behind
us, and advise us how fast it should be done.

3. Always tell everyone when you're leave &
where you're going. It gives me a chance to be creative
when someone asks where you are.

4. If Our arms are full of tools, parts,
or supplies, don't open the door for us. We need to
learn how to function as a paraplegic and opening
doors with no arms is good training in case we should
ever be injured and lose all use of our limbs.

5. If you give us more than one job to do,
don't tell us which is priority.

We're psychic.

6. Do your best to keep us late. I adore this
place and really have nowhere to go or anything
to do. I have no life beyond work.

7. If a job we do pleases you, keep it a secret.
If that gets out, it could mean a raise.

8. If you don't like our work, tell everyone.
We like our name to be popular in conversations.
We were born to be WHIPPED.

9. If you have special instructions for a job,
don't write them down. In fact, save them until
the job is almost done. No use confusing us
with useful information.

10. Wait until Our yearly review and THEN tell
us what us goals SHOULD have been. Give us a
mediocre performance rating with a cost of living
increase. I'm not here for the money anyway.

"What My Mother Taught Just Me"

My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.

"If you're going to kill each other,

do it outside. I just finished cleaning!"

My mother taught me about INDIVIDUALISM.

"I bet if all your friends jumped off a bridge, you would too!

My mother taught me RELIGION.

"You better pray that stain will come out of the carpet."

My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.

"Stop acting like your father!"

My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.

"If you don't straighten up, I'm
going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

My mother taught me LOGIC.

"Because I said so, that's why."

My mother taught me FORESIGHT.

"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in
case you're in an accident."

My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.

"If I've told you once, I've told
you a million times - Don't exaggerate!!!"

My mother taught me IRONY.

"Keep crying and I'll *give* you something
to cry about!"

My mother taught me THE CIRCLE OF LIFE.

"I brought you into this world,
and I can take you out."

My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.

"Shut your mouth and eat your supper!"

My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.

"Will you *look* at the dirt on the back of your neck!"

My mother taught me about ENVY.

"There are millions of less fortunate
children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do!"

My mother taught me about STAMINA.

"You'll sit there until all that spinach is finished."

My mother taught me how to solve PHYSICS PROBLEMS.

"If I yelled because I saw a meteor coming toward you;

would you listen then?"

My mother taught me about WEATHER.

"It looks as if a tornado swept
through your room!"

It's Only My Opinion I Could Be Wrong ... I Probably Am

NOT