TBB

The three most popular Western names in China are Jesus Christ, Richard Nixon, and Elvis Presley. What an interesting choice of personalities.

Maps sometimes have fake places to prevent plagiarism. Plagiarism can be hard to avoid for mapmakers. After all, what should they do? Invent new places? You’d be surprised to know some mapmakers do just that. Cartographers can add wrong streets, fake towns, or other landmarks to prove whether a competitor mapmaker is copying their work.

Standard CD’s are always 74 minutes long. Sony and Philips set the standard CD length in 1980 as 74 minutes based on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The executives decided that the standard CD should be able to fit the Ninth Symphony, giving it a 74-minute length.

The remote control was invented earlier than the television. 30 years before the first digital television, Nikola Tesla invented a “teleautomaton” that could control certain devices at a distance through radio waves. His first remote-controlled device was a remote-contolled boat in 1898. Since then, people adapted the wired remote for television. However, due to injuries, they developed it further to be a wireless remote.

Pencils are yellow because of Chinese royalty. In the 1800s, the best graphite in the world came from China. The Americans wanted to give a tribute to the Chinese for the graphite used in their pencils. Yellow means royalty and respect in China, which is why the Americans manufactured their pencils in yellow. To this day, the default color for pencils is still yellow.

Before the computer mouse was known as a mouse, it was known as the turtle. Manufacturers of the early versions of the computer mouse called it a turtle, because of its hard shell and moving part underneath.

Non-dairy creamer is highly flammable. Non-dairy creamer powder contains highly flammable ingredients such as sodium aluminosilicate.

The first webcam was invented to monitor a coffee pot. In 1993, researchers at Cambridge’s computer science department got tired of walking up to an empty coffee machine. So, they wired up a system that would stream images to the Trojan Room that housed the coffee pot.

'Grace' is the most popular boat name. Other choices? Feelin Nauti, Aquaholic, Therapy, and Seas The Day.

Have a GREAT birthday!!!!

The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head. Praying mantises are the only known insects able to rotate their heads from side to side.

Pennsylvania is misspelled on the Liberty Bell. On the Liberty Bell, Pennsylvania is misspelled as “Pensylvania.” However, it was an accepted spelling at that time.

"Underground" is the only English word that begins and ends with the letters "-und." There’s another one of the useless facts you can actually use to sound smart.

Germans eat twice as much chocolate as Americans. At 11.3 kg of chocolate consumed each year, Germans eat twice the amount of chocolate that Americans do.

Soda fountain workers were called soda jerks The workers were called soda jerks because of the jerking motion used to pump soda water.

The cream in a Twinkie isn’t really cream. The sweet, buttery filling in Twinkies is actually Crisco – otherwise known as vegetable shortening.

Have a GREAT birthday!!!!

Hershey's makes one million miles of Twizzlers every year. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there is certainly enough demand for Twizzlers for Hershey’s to create over 1.6 million kilometers of it. Think about that the next time you slander Twizzlers.

Oreo has made enough cookies to go to the moon and back 5 times. Since Oreo was introduced to the market in 1912, over 450 billion Oreo cookies have been sold worldwide.

3.6 cans of Spam are consumed each second. In the U.S., Spam is the number one brand for canned meat with 3.6 cans eaten every second.

Pepsi is named after indigestion. When Caleb Bradham created Pepsi in 1965, he named it after the word “dyspepsia,” or indigestion. Bradham believed that his fizzy drink would help cure indigestion, hence the name, Pepsi.

Fritos means “little fried things.” The name for Fritos Potato Chips comes from the Spanish word fritas, which means “little fried things.” We love a name that’s straight to the point.

The oldest piece of chewing gum is more than 9,000 years old. The oldest chewing gum ever found was a lump of birch bark tar that dates back to the Stone Age.

Ice cream warms the body. It might make perfect sense to eat ice cream when you’re feeling hot, but it actually does the opposite to our bodies. The high fat content in ice cream warms us up rather than cooling down the body as it metabolizes.

You can’t see the Great Wall of China from space. You may have seen fact sites claiming that the Great Wall is the only man-made structure visible from space, but this is actually not the case. According to the Apollo astronauts, the Great Wall cannot be seen from space. However, city lights at night, roads, and the Pyramids of Giza are said to be visible.