Attractive Facts of Life Make Life More Meaningful

Some very interesting facts of life

1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
2. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “MT”
3. Almonds are members of the peach family.

4. The symbol on the “pound” key (#) is called an octothorpe.
5. The dot over the letter ‘I is called a tittle.
6. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
7. The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
8. “Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.”
9. There are only four words in the English language which end in “-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.
10. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
11. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural: pneumonoultramicros copicsilicovolca noconiosesl.
12. The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangiha ngakoauauotamate aturipukakapikim aungahoronukup okaiwe-nuakit natahu, a New Zealand hill.
13. Los Angeles’s full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade Los Angeles de Porciuncula” and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size,L.A.
14. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
15. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
16. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.
17. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
18. Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy.
19. The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint – no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.
21. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
23. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, “therein”: the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

24. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.
27. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
28. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.
30. The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
31. ‘Stewardesses’ is the longest English word that is typed with only the left hand.
33. The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways; the following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”
34. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
35. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning “containing arsenic.”
36. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian seal for that reason.
37. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
38. The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat,” which means “the king is dead.”

Click here for Part 2 of Interesting Facts of Life

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13 Responses

  1. Did you research any of these? If somebody sees just one error it contradicts the rest of your list or article. In this case, its the goldfish. Goldfish have a memory span of 2-3 months. Your “fact” is just a myth. More than 2 seconds looking that up and you would have had your correct answer.

  2. Reposting a list from somewhere else still does not make them true.

    Other -dous words: vanadous, ultrahazardous, iodous, apodous, several more. Perhaps it should be “words in the common vernacular.”

    While they are all based on dreamt, other words ending with -mt: daydreamt, redreamt, outdreamt, etc.

    The actual name of LA is El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, according to official documents of Governor Felipe de Neve, Commandant General de la Croix and Viceroy Bucareli.

    Hitchcock is not the only person who lost their navel from surgery, just perhaps a more famous one.

    It is not true that dueling is legal in Paraguay for blood donors.

    While a ripe cranberry may bounce, they are not all sorted that way.

    It is not true that kangaroo and emu cannot walk backwards and that’s why they’re on the seal. They can both walk backwards; and were chosen for being native and large.

    Shah mat means “the king is left helpless, the king is stumped,” not “the king is dead.”
    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=checkmate

  3. Slough and rough (although some pronounce slough like “through”) are pronounced the same, as are dough and Scarborough.

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