Useless Facts...

[The Dude]

1. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That's where the phrase, "goodnight, sleep tight" came from.

2. The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." Uses every letter in the alphabet.
(developed by Western Union to test telex/twx communications.)

3. 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.

4. The term "the whole 9 yards" came from W.W.II fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the..50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

5. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

6. The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle, GP.

7. The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver."

8. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know today as the "honeymoon."

9. In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."

10. Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle," is the phrase inspired by this practice.

[christina>you]

These are pretty interesting.

[quintoncoert]

I especially like the one about the sinking library. We computer programmers make that kind of oversight everyday(hence debugging) but the thought had simply never occured to me that civil engineers can make it too. Of course our mistakes are much cheaper to correct.

[joshSCH]

haha.. that 'rule of thumb' one is funny.. ;)

[sk8ndestroy14]

I've never heard anyone say, "Mind your P's and Q's." What do they mean when they say that?

[WaltP]

I've never heard anyone say, "Mind your P's and Q's." What do they mean when they say that?

9. In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England,when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's."

[jbennet]

Did you know that Humpty Dumpty was NOT an egg - he was a cannon!

[Nichito]

then why in the world everyone interpreted humpty dumpty was an egg? actually, ebing a cannon makes perfect sense... :P

[jbennet]

he was the royal cannon in the civil war. he fell off a wall and so as the rhyme goes "all the kings horses and all the kings men" couldnt get him back on the wall

[Dave Sinkula]

I've never heard anyone say, "Mind your P's and Q's." What do they mean when they say that?

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/248000.html

I've always for this variant:
It derived as reminder to children to be polite. This is supposed to be as a form of 'mind your pleases and thank-yous' - 'mind you pleases and kyous'.

[edit]Hours of entertainment: http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/1500.htm
http://www.rootsweb.com/~genepool/sayings.htm
http://www.snopes.com/

[sk8ndestroy14]

Ah, that make sense.

[joshSCH]

he was the royal cannon in the civil war. he fell off a wall and so as the rhyme goes "all the kings horses and all the kings men" couldnt get him back on the wall

ah, yea, I've heard that before actually :)

[sk8ndestroy14]

Which country's civil war?

[Dave Sinkula]

English .

[sk8ndestroy14]

I didn't even know they had one.

[jbennet]

unlike the american one. it was a proper civil war. it was faught between royalists and those who wanted a parliment

[sk8ndestroy14]

Why was the American Civil War unproper? It was fought between those wanting a centralized government and those wanting a government with more states' rights.

[jbennet]

because it was faught between two seperate entities (the union and the confederation), not between the people of one. Therefore, it is techinically a real war and not a civil war.

[Ancient Dragon]

the study of psychology is chucked full of useless facts. just read a phych 101 book!

[joshSCH]

haha.. thats true..