I'm hoping that people will post unusual or little known facts here. It would be proper to include a link to a source for confirmation. Here's a start.

Speedy Gonzales was banned by the Cartoon Network for being an offensive stereotype, only to be returned after mass protest by the Hispanic-American community. link

Dani commented: Wow, this thread really took off :) +0
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<M/> commented: oh yeah it did +0
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The world's longest living married couple are Karam and Kartari Chand, living in Bradford, UK. They have been married over 88 years! (link)

The only nation in the world to have a nonrectangular flag is Nepal (link), located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China. The first time I recall seeing it was at the Olympics in Russia a few weeks ago.

The highest point in Belgium is 694 m. Link

Lest you think I've got nothing better to do than rag on the gun nuts...

Over the past 50 years, gun owners have been responsible for over $2 billion in wildlife conservation in the United States due to 10% tax on guns and ammo. link

Over the past 50 years, gun owners have been responsible for over $2 billion in wildlife conservation in the United States due to 10% tax on guns and ammo.

That's great! But the target is wrong. Statistically, one of the primary uses for firearms is to commit suicide. So, the tax on firearms should go towards funding suicide prevention programs and mental health treatments.

Fun fact:
The largest living organism in the world is a mushroom in Oregon. link

The gun tax was applied in 1937, long before today's gun problems.

Statistically, one of the primary uses for firearms is to commit suicide

Where did you get that bit of misinformation? According to National Center for Health Statistics (link), there were 2,169,518 deaths in the USA, of those 1,441 were from firearms and 30,810 were suiside (about 60% involved firearms). According the that same article there are approximately 200 million firearms in the US. I don't see any statistical significance in that, even considering the data is now pretty old.

A more recent article (2005) shows that American's own guns for one or more of three reasons: protect themselves against crime, for hunting, and for target shooting.

I don't want to make this into yet another gun debate.... I'm tired of this BS. Your quoted stats are irrelevant here. And a survey about what people buy guns for does not correlate to what people use them for. What I was referring to is this study which establishes that nearly 50% of the time a gun is used for something other than hunting or target-shooting, it is use to commit suicide, more so than homicides (voluntary or accidental), and far more so than self-defense. It doesn't matter what stupid reason they once bought it for, it only matters what they ended up using it for (which, statistically, is either on themselves or on their family, or both). Here are few other random stats on that:

The largest category of firearms fatality is suicide, not homicide. In 1997, 54 percent of all gun deaths were suicides, and 42 percent were other homicides (justifiable, accidental, or criminal). (CDC / NCHS, 1997 deaths reports)

About six out of 10 suicides are committed with firearms. (CDC / NCHS, 2010)

People living in a household with a gun are almost five times more likely to die by suicide than people living in a gun-free home. (Kellerman et al. 1992, link)

But this is completely off-topic, because the OP requested "little known facts", and I don't consider the things I listed here as "little known", on the contrary, you have to be living in fantasy-land to be unaware of these facts.

Fun fact:

The oldest living tree is 5063 years old. link

Harney Peak in the Black Hills of South Dakota is the highest point in the US east of the Rockies.

3435 is equal to 3^3 + 4^4 + 3^3 + 5^5 link

all of which means nothing at all, Mike. You claimed the main reason people buy guns for is to commit suicide.
That's such a blatant lie you can't even come close to finding a statistic you can massage into shape to show some sort of correlation.
So you come up with numbers that claim that 60% of suicices involve a firearm, then combine those with some utterly meaningless numbers that are over a decade older that a percentage of gun deaths to be suicides (go figure), and then combine that with an even older unreferenced claim that homes with a gun are more likely to see a suicide than homes without one.
Not only are all those claims irrelevant to the actual claim you make, they're also unrelated to each other as they apply to different time periods.
With 200 million guns in the US (the actual figure is closer to 300 million), and some 3 million deaths a year TOTAL in the country, which is lower than the number of guns sold per year in the US, every single death according to your logic would have to be a suicide by gun, and a suicide by a newly purchased gun at that, for your argument to make any sense at all.

So much for unusual facts. Usual lies more likely.

Unusual fact: It's been statistically shown that 96% of statistics are incorrect.

Jwenting: You mixed up who said what.

@mike said

one of the primary uses for firearms is to commit suicide

@jwenting said

You claimed the main reason people buy guns for is to commit suicide

Regardless of whether mike's statement is true or not, deliberately misstating what he said, then refuting your interpretation of that is not a valid argument.

nope. Maybe there's multiple Mikes here though and you misunderstood which I'm addressing :)

But you quoted the wrong person. I'm the one who made comments that Mike quoted in his post.

he's the one who cherry picked unrelated factoids to come up with a lie though...

Mike's original point about the target of the tax on guns/ammo is incorrect because guns are used much more for hunting (killing wildlife) than for killing humans (either as suicide, homicide, or self-defence). All the statistics Mike cited exclude the use of guns for hunting & target shooting because they would greatly overshadow their other uses. Typically fees for hunting licences are also used to support the protection/management of wildlife for the same reason - hunters typically don't want to exterminate the game they hunt.

One can argue that the stated purpose of buying anything is irrelevant if that is not the actual use the item is put to -> lots of people buy high literature or non-fiction books to read them and become 'well-read' but in reality just use them for decoration.

The reality is most guns bought for self-defence will never be used for self-defence but many will be used for suicide or killing a loved one, because there is actually very little violent crime, and hardly any of it is between strangers (only 10% of homicides are by a stranger). In contrast suicide is relatively common - you are twice as likely to die of suicide than of homicide.

If you took all the people who slept in church and laid them end to end they'd be a lot more comfortable.

Can we get off the guns now?

commented: heh - took me a while +0
commented: snort +0

Except when nesting, swifts spend their lives in the air, living on the insects caught in flight; they drink, feed, and often mate and sleep on the wing. No other bird spends as much of its life in flight. link

This one's for Mike...

In Quebec, Canada, there is a fastfood poutine restaurant where the price of the poutine decreases in winter as the temperature gets colder. link

commented: lol, I ate there many times! Best poutine in Qc! +0

Oh wah ta na Siam.

Mozart's canon, Difficile Lectu" contained the phrase "lectu mihi mars" which was intended to be heard as "Leck du mich im Arsch", which in English would be "kiss my a$$". link

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!

In Belgium over a 1000 beer are brewed link

Dorothy Hodgkin is still the only British woman to win a Nobel Prize in Science and won it 50 years ago link but 39 British men have won a Science Nobel Prize in that time link

"Comme d'habitude" (As usual) was composed and sung by Claude François, a famous singer in France.
Paul Anka translated it into English and he and many others sing it as "My way" link

While declared atheists make upward of 15 percent of the U.S. population, they only make up 0.2 percent of the prison population.

On the average, cats sleep 16-18 hours a day.

commented: Mostly while laying on my laptop keyboard +0
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Dorothy Hodgkin is still the only British woman to win a Nobel Prize in Science and won it 50 years ago link but 39 British men have won a Science Nobel Prize in that time

Women have won quite a few prizes for Lit. and Peace.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lists/women.html

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