If Barbie (who is 45 this year) were life-size, her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall.

The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

A single chocolate chip provides enough energy to a human being to walk 150 feet.

The English language has close to 540,000 words, about five times as many as existed in Shakespeare's time. But some of the words we use frequently today were invented by Shakespeare. 

Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

A Greek poet named Archilochus defined two types of thinkers: foxes and hedgehogs.
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Foxes look at the world as individual pieces, while hedgehogs tend to see the whole. Foxes break every problem down into separate components, while hedgehogs look for universal ideas.

Procter & Gamble is the largest advertiser in North America.

Before he was fired, Don Imus generated $22 million for CBS Radio and $8 million for MSNBC.

When an orange is shown in any of the "Godfather" movies, this means that someone is about to die or a close call is to occur.

On average, a 4-year-old child asks 437 questions a day.

Les Paul invented the 8-track, the modified electric guitar, and over-dubbing. As a kid, he punched extra holes in his mother's piano rolls and covered existing holes, just to see how it would sound. Like many geniuses, he dropped out of high school. Always open to new ideas, was playing in a country band on the radio in Chicago while spending evenings at jazz clubs. He was the first to play the guitar beyond the third fret. Other guitar players thought he was crazy until they heard the sound he was able to produce. His use of a tape recorder was the result of an auto accident which damaged his right arm. Invention often comes out of adversity.

The first email was sent out by Ray Tomlinson in 1971.

In 1913, Thomas L. Williams mixed Vaseline and coal dust for his sister, Mabel. It became the first cake mascara for his new company, Maybelline.

Coca-Cola used "Good to the last drop" as its slogan in 1908. This famous line was later adopted by Maxwell House Coffee. 

Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were both epileptic. 

Coupons were introduced in 1894 when Asa Candler bought the Coca-Cola formula for $2,300 and gave people coupons that he had written out to receive a free glass of Coke.

David McConnell started the California Perfume Company (CPC) in 1886. Today the company is known as Avon, which he named after his favorite playwright, William Shakespeare, who was from Stratford on Avon. 

"Beat" poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti commented that the slogan from 1960s, "Be Here Now" has evolved to "Be Somewhere Else Now."

The first product Sony created was the rice cooker.

YouTube generated about $15 million in revenue in 2006.

The 3 most valuable brand names on earth: Marlboro, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser, in that order.

In 1876, Milton Hershey started a candy company in Philadelphia, but it failed six years later. At the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, he got hooked on chocolate and bought some German candy-making machinery and had it shipped back to Pennsylvania. After much experimentation, Hershey figured out the formula for making milk chocolate-a secret process known only to the Swiss at the time. He started the Hershey Chocolate Company and the rest is history.

The first credit card was issued in 1951.

Scrabble was invented in 1931 and was originally called Criss Cross. For 17 years toy makers snubbed this game, saying it was too intellectual, so the inventor Alfred Botts decided to manufacture and sell it himself. It is the world's second best selling game.

The can opener wasn't invented until 48 years after cans were introduced. 

Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers were all invented by women.

Toilet paper was introduced in the United States in perforated form in 1884. Before then, a number of outhouses in America were stocked with dried leaves.

Amedeo Giannini, son of Italian immigrants to the US, started the Bank of America in a converted saloon in San Francisco 1904. Giannini changed the name to Bank of America in 1928 and remained chairman until 1963.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

The first novel ever written on a typewriter was Tom Sawyer.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king: 
Spades - King David
Hearts - Charlemagne
Clubs -Alexander the Great
Diamonds - Julius Caesar

The average child sees 30,000 televisions commercials every year.

Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison were all 27 years old when they died.

1,400 actresses were interviewed for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind.

When it was time to build the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., a contest was held to select the architect. The winner was William Thorton, a doctor and amateur architect, who received $500 and a city lot as his prize.

The Haida natives believe you are not judged by what you have, but by what you give away.

The word "sneaker" was coined by Henry McKinney, an advertising agent for N.W. Ayer & Son.

In 1894, Lord Kelvin predicted that radio had no future; he also predicted that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible.

In 1982, sales of Reese's Pieces increased 85% after appearing in the movie E.T.

Charles Macintosh invented the waterproof coat, the Mackintosh, in 1823.

Ronald B. Tobias claims there are only 20 master plots in fiction. These include: Quest, Riddle, Temptation, Rivalry, Revenge, Maturation, Love, Forbidden Love, Escape, etc. His book is available at Amazon, and you can read a talk he gave to Denver writers at: www.hodrw.com/ronaldtobias.htm.

An intoxicated ant will always fall over on its right side.

Charlie Chaplin once came in third in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

If the population of China walked past you, 8 abreast, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.

The cruise liner, QE 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

Lollipop is the longest word typed with your right hand. 

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple.

There are only four words in the English language which end in 'dous': tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: 'abstemious' and 'facetious.'

TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard. 

Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, says "Three components make an entrepreneur: the person, the idea, and the resources to make it happen."

Sailors began to wear a gold earring because of a superstition that it would improve their eyesight.

New Haven, Connecticut, was the first planned city in the U.S., and Yale University was the first planned campus. Yale was also the first college to have a mascot, published the first college daily newspaper, and appointed America's first professor of paleontology.

Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be identified quickly.

Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated for some time.

The average age of the world's greatest civilization has been two hundred years. 
These nations have progressed through this sequence: 

More than 200 million copies of Monopoly have been sold since it was first introduced in 1935.

How much is a billion?  Well:
        Two billion hours ago, human life appeared on the planet.
        A billion minutes ago, Christianity emerged.
        A billion seconds ago, the Beatles changed music.

What happened to those nine black students who walked bravely through an angry mob in Little Rock to enter Central High School? 
        Eight went on to college, seven graduated, three got masters' degrees, one a Ph.D.  
        Today they are:  an editor of a computer magazine, a social worker, a farmer, an assistant dean at UCLA, a talk show host, an accountant, an economics teacher, a real estate broker, and a V.P. at Shearson, Lehman. 
I wonder if the whites in that mob did half as well.  (Charles Peters)

In our world was a village of 1000 people, there would be:
        329 Christians, 174 Muslims, 131 Hindus, 61 Buddhists, 52 animists, 3 Jews
                34 members of other religions, 216 without any religion at all
In this village:
       60 persons would have half the income
       500 would be hungry
       600 would live in shantytowns (or be homeless)
       700 would be illiterate    (from The Prairie Rambler)

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