I really like both of those so am awarding Burton and pumphol 10 dyk points each.

The smell of cut grass is actually a plant distress call


IF you could fold a a piece of paper 50 times its thickness would be 3/4 the distance of the earth to the Sun ( 71 million miles ! )


You can order a Air, Land & Sea burger of MacDonald's  secret menu ( cheese, fish, chicken & meat in a burger   )


Spending a day in Linfen china the most polluted city in the world is equivalent to smoking three packets of cigarettes


Since 1945 all British tanks are equipped with tea making facilities


There is a pirate "stock Exchange " in Somalia  where locals can invest in pirate gangs planning hijacking missions

You can order a Air, Land & Sea burger of MacDonald's  secret menu ( cheese, fish, chicken & meat in a burger   )

On the menu in my local greene king pub is a combination of prawns, steak & a fried egg in a bun... known as a surf, turf & cluck burger 

On the 'Be Here Now' album by Oasis, the lead slide guitarist was too drunk to record 'Fade In - Fade  Out' so the studio guest, a guitarist in his own right, did it, and nailed it first time. That guitarist was Johnny Depp.

After a flood several years ago,a handful of bull sharks found themselves stranded in
a lake on a golf course.Bull sharks are able to survive in fresh water and rather than
this lake posing posing an issue for survival,the six sharks have thrived and even started breeding.

http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/bull-sharks-invade-australian-golf-course-lake.html

Prescription drugs kill more people than heroin and cocaine combined.

http://www.facethefactsusa.org/facts/Use-of-Painkiller-Drugs-Triples-in-20-Years/

If a lobster loses an eye,it is usually able to grow another.

http://gilmoreslobster.com/lobster-facts

Barn Owls can see an object at 2 metres with an illumination of .00000073 foot
candles.This is equivalent to a person seeing an object by the light of a match a
mile away.

http://www.ornithology.com/Lectures/Senses.html

Honey badger eats porcupines and poisonous snakes,raids beehives for honey,kidnaps
baby cheetahs,and steals food from hungry lions.

http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/reading-comp/4th-honey-badger_BADGER.pdf

Ook,the owl that played Hedwig,was the first actor cast in Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone.

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Hedwig

Valentine Tapley promised never to shave again if Abraham Lincoln was elected president.
He died in 1910 with a 12-foot-long beard.

http://stlouiscore.com/blog/2011/01/19/who-was-valentine-tapley-and-why-did-he-have-a-12-foot-beard/

The Sun has completed 18-20 orbits of the Milky Way galaxy since it's birth but has
only completed 1/125th of it's orbit since the dawn of humans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_way

In 1979, 4,000 people in Australia rioted because a pub closed.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/09/16/1095320899843.html

Scientists have found that medication can reduce anxiety by as much as 39 per cent.

*meditation

Every year, 34,000 americans insure themselves against alien abduction.




There is an ancient "second brain" in our stomachs that is neurologically active and
responsible for feelings like "butterflies in the stomach."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18779997

When spinning a standard U.S. penny the chances of landing on tails is
80%,contrary to the popular belief that there is a 50/50 chance either way.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Gamblers-Take-Note-The-Odds-in-a-Coin-Flip-Arent-Quite-50-50-181022961.html

If the United States cut it's military budget by 85% it would still have the
largest military budget in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

The Great London Beer Flood
of London was known as a rookery. A rookery was simply a city slum, inhabited by the poorest of the poor, with living quarters in deplorable condition. Low-quality housing was flung up wherever there was a little free space, and a single room might house an entire family, or even more than one family.

St. Giles had some commercial interests as well, and one of the most prominent was the Meux and Company Brewery. They specialized in the production of porter, a dark beer that had come into favor in the late 18th century. Porter was a fairly strong beer, and was generally aged. The usual procedure was to age some porter for a period of 18 months or so, and then mix it with younger, unaged porter before it was sold for consumption.

Naturally, the beer business was competitive, and brewers were not ones to miss any opportunity for publicity. The current craze, in the early 19th century, was for huge beer barrels. Henry Thrale, a competitor of the Meux Brewery, had introduced his new vat by holding a dinner party for 100 people inside it. The Meux company went them one better -- a dinner inside their vat was held for 200 people.

The Meux porter vat was 23 feet high and 60 feet in diameter, so it must have been a little cramped during the dinner hour. Still, it held an awful lot of beer -- more than 323,000 imperial gallons in fact. With that much beer, you really want to be sure your barrel is secure.

The first indication that anything was wrong came at about 4:30 in the afternoon on October 17, 1814. George Crick, a brewery clerk, was making his rounds and noticed that on of the hoops had fallen off the vat. It was the bottom hoop of 29, made of iron and weighing over 700 pounds. He wasn't too concerned; that sort of thing happened two or three times a year. He did make a note for Florance Young, one of the brewery partners, however, so that he could have someone come and repair it.

At about 5:30 Crick heard a tremendous noise. It was said later that the sound was heard five miles away. He ran to the storeroom and saw that the huge vat had burst asunder, and the resulting flood had swept away the end wall of the storage room, made of stone and 22 inches thick. What's worse, the flying debris had smashed several other barrels of porter, and knocked the stopper out of another huge vat, nearly as large as the first one.

All of Crick's attention was absorbed in trying to save his fellow workers, and as much of the beer as possible. He wasn't aware of what was going on outside, and if he had been, there wouldn't have been much he could have done about it anyway. A tsunami of beer, at least 15 feet high, was sweeping down the street. It smashed at least two buildings to smithereens, and flooded all the basements.

At a nearby tavern, a 14-year-old girl was trapped underneath a collapsing wall and killed. A four year old girl was swept out of an upstairs window and drowned. In the cellars, people climbed onto the highest furniture they owned, attempting to avoid drowning. In all, eight people died, all women or children. Five of the victims had been gathered in a cellar, mourning the death of a two year old boy who had died the previous day. The death toll would have been much higher if the vat had burst an hour or two later. At 5:30 pm, most of the men were still at work.

According to some accounts, people flocked to the area in the aftermath, filling up every pot and kettle they could find. This story appears in only one newspaper account, however, and may not be true. (Remember that 19th century London streets were filled with sewage and dead animals in the best neighborhoods, and would have been much worse in the rookery.) There this also a story, possibly apocryphal, that there was a ninth victim, a man who died the following day of alcohol poisoning.

The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, where their presence nearly caused a riot. Other patients, who could smell the newcomers, were convinced that the hospital was serving them beer, and demanded their own share. They were restrained only with difficulty.

Once the initial terror had subsided, many were curious to see what "death by beer" would look like. They crowded to the homes of the victims, and some families even began charging a penny or two admission. In one case, so many people crowded into a home to see the deceased that the floor gave way, and the spectators crashed into the cellar below, which was still half-filled with beer.

Meux and Company was taken to court over the incident, but the judge ruled that the accident had been an Act of God, and they were not held accountable. In fact, since they had already paid duty on the beer that had been lost, they petitioned Parliament -- successfully -- to have the excise applied to the following year's production.

Matthew Lewis wore a fat suit,fake teeth etc... through most of the Harry Potter films
to make Neville Longbottom appear more unattractive.

http://entertainment.stv.tv/film/261732-matthew-lewis-reveals-the-secrets-behind-his-harry-potter-makeover/

In 1786 when Louis XVI had bodies removed from France's Saints Innocents Cemetery
into the Catacombs,many of the bodies had decomposed into fat.The fat was then collected
and turned into candles and soap.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimeti%C3%A8re_des_Innocents

As a young actor Denzel Washington played "Grapes" in Fruit of the Loom commercials.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denzel_washington

Dolphins stay awake for 15 days by
sleeping with one half of brain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/9616671/Dolphins-stay-awake-for-15-days-by-sleeping-with-one-half-of-brain.html

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

http://www.news.dm/did-you-know-our-eyes-are-always-the-same-size-from-birth/

The only nation that Germany declared war on was the USA.

http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/cou/ger/w2g-usdw.html

Barry.


The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Bentham

A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 68 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Osborne_(hiccups)

Americans on average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

http://factspy.net/americans-on-average-eat-18-acres-of-pizza-each-day/

Whoopi Goldberg once worked as a phone sex operator.


An American soldier ran across the border to North Korea in 1962 and has been living
there ever since.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2405878n

Scientists at Cornell University made a functioning "nano guitar" that is about
the size of a human blood cell.

http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/07/worlds-smallest-silicon-mechanical-devices-are-made-cornell

You posted the Whoopi one last week......please lift your game.


During WWII there was a company in Germany that sold radioactive toothpaste.

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/toothpaste.htm

A 9-year-old girl sued the makers of Cracker Jacks because her box contained no
prize.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2206&dat=19820810&id=AtEmAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tQIGAAAAIBAJ&pg=5772,2152828

People of the Melanesian ethnic group are the only dark-skinned race with the
ability to grow blonde hair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesians

William Huskisson, statesman and financier, was run over by a locomotive (Stephenson's Rocket), at the public opening of the world's first mechanically powered passenger railway, becoming the first person ever to die in a railway accident in 1830

The "lb" that is representative of the weight is after the Star Sign , "Libra" the Scales.

Courtesy of "The Chase"

Brazil tried to sell an aircraft carrier on eBay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_aircraft_carrier_Minas_Gerais

Fred (a baboon gang leader) was executed by lethal injection for crimes of assaulting
tourists and breaking into their cars to steal food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_%28baboon%29

Michael Moore wrote a cheque for 12,000$ to the owner of the biggest anti-Michael Moore
website to pay for his wife's medical bills.

http://www.slashfilm.com/michael-moore-help-his-biggest-nemesis/