1. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826. This was 50 years to the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
2. The story of Moby Dick was based on a real ship called the Essex that actually did get attacked and sunk by a whale!
3. The 33rd president was Harry S. Truman. What is his middle name? His parents were going to give him the name Shippe or Solomon, the names of his grandfathers. They could not agree, so they gave him just an initial, "S."
4. All banks in the U.S. were closed during the week of March 5th - 12th, 1933. This was to keep scared people from taking all their money out.
5. Japan sent bombs aboard balloons to the United States during World War II. Dozens of them actually landed, doing some damage. A family in Oregon was actually killed by one in 1944. There might be more just laying around undiscovered!
6. The first motel was built in San Luis Obispo, California during the 1920's when the Motor Inn merged the two words, motor and hotel. It is still there today!
7. John F. Kennedy is the only president to have died before his parents.
8. The universe is about 13.7 billion (13,700,000,000) years old!
9. Olympus Mons, located on the planet Mars, is by far the tallest volcano in the solar system, rising higher than three Mount Everest's and spanning the width of the entire Hawaiian island chain. Olympus Mons is 15.5 miles tall!
10. In 1924, 14 buffalo were taken to Catalina Island off the coast of California. They were used in a movie, "The Vanishing American." The buffalo were left behind, the herd grew larger, and today about 250 still roam free on the island.
11. At Andrew Jackson's funeral in 1845, his pet parrot had to be removed because it was swearing.
13. Before he became president, Lyndon Johnson was a teacher at a small school in South Texas.
14. Pharaoh Ramses II had over 160 children!
15. In 1980, the city of Detroit presented Saddam Hussein with a key to the city.
16. Any plane the President flies on is called Air Force One, and any helicopter is called Marine One.
17. Horses were first brought to America by the Spanish. It was the first time the Native Americans had ever seen them! Some of them thought that the man and horse were one being, like a centaur.
18. Orcas (killer whales), when traveling in groups, breathe in unison.
19. There are six million parts in the Boeing 747.
20. The typical lead pencil can draw a line that is thirty five miles long!
21. The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the english language.
22. China has more English speakers than the United States.
23. The spray WD-40 got its name because there were 40 attempts needed before the creation of the "water displacing" substance.
24. There are over one hundred billion galaxies with each galaxy having billions of stars. Let's just take a guess and say that the chance of life evolving on a random planet is one in a billion. That would mean that there are a billion planets with life!
25. U.S. President Andrew Jackson believed that the world is flat.
26. There was once a ghastly trial of two Popes, one alive, one dead in the year 896. The trial began when the corpse of Pope Formosus was carried into the courtroom. On Stephen VII's orders the corpse, which had been lying in its tomb for seven months, had been dressed in full pontifical vestments. The dead body was then propped up in a chair behind which stood a teenage deacon, shaking with fear, whose responsibility was to defend Pope Formosus by speaking in his behalf. ... Pope Stephen VII screamed and raved, hurling insults at and mocking the rotting corpse. Occasionally, when the furious torrent would die down momentarily, the deacon would stammer out a few words weakly denying the charges ... The sentence imposed by Pope Stephen VII was that all Formosus's acts and ordinations as pope be invalidated, that the three fingers of Formosus's right hand used to give papal blessings be hacked off, and that the body be stripped of its papal vestments, clad in the cheap garments of a lay person, and buried in a common grave.
27. Do you know what the original California state flag looks like?
28. Did you know that Blue Jeans were invented by a man named Levi Strauss? He wanted to sell sturdy pants to gold miners that could hold heavy tools.
29. Did you know that the average person blinks 15,000 times per day?
30. Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to sail around the world. Or was he? Actually he never made it. He was hacked to pieces on a beach in the Philippines before completing his voyage.
31. California averages over 100 earthquakes a day! Most are so small that we don't feel them.
