Friday, May 11, 2012

TRIVIA BITS 11 MAY

 

  • The world's smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye of a housefly.
  • The world's tallest grass, which has sometimes grown 130 feet or more, is bamboo.
  • The world's tallest mountains, the Himalayas, are also the fastest growing. Their growth - about half an inch a year - is caused by the pressure exerted by two of Earth's continental plates (the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate) pushing against one another.
  • The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier.
  • The writer, Rudyard Kipling, only ever used black ink.
  • The 'y' in signs reading "ye olde.." is properly pronounced with a 'th' sound, not 'y'. The "th" sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England use the rune "thorn" to represent "th" sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case "y".
  • The youngest letters in the English language are "j," "v" and "w."
  • The yo-yo originated in the Philippines, where it was used as a weapon in hunting.
  • The zeppelin 'The Hindenburg' which exploded in a huge fireball, was filled with hydrogen.
  • The ZIP in Zip-code stands for "Zoning Improvement Plan."

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