the Random Useless Fact Thread

[elvenArya]

When an octopus's arm gets cut off, it grows back.

[Kairie]

If you have three quarters, four dimes and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

[eisylefae]

From Freekibblekat.com:

In Canada, Max is the most popular name for a male cat, and Misty is most popular for a female cat.

[Lily Cat]

[eisylefae]

This is a random useless fact:

I am wondering why only one won't grow back?

[Kairie]

It was discovered on a space mission that a frog can throw up. The frog throws up its stomach first, so the stomach is dangling out of its mouth. The frog then uses its forearms to dig out all of the stomach's contents and then swallows the stomach back down again.

[Lily Cat]

[Kairie]

At last check, the governor of Arkansas makes $60,000 a year. His salary is the lowest of all 50 states. A dozen or so states pay their governors more than $100,000 year, generally the more populous states. California pays its governor $131,000. Illinois comes in second at $130,000 and change, with New York, a close third at $130,000 even.

[eisylefae]

In ancient Egypt the penalty for killing a cat was death.

[Kairie]

The cashew is part of a fruit that grows in tropical regions called 'a cashew apple'. After harvesting, the cashew apple keeps for only 24 hours before the soft fruit deteriorates. The cashew apple is not commercially important since it spoils quickly, but local people love the fruit. To harvest the nut, the ripe apple is allowed to fall to the ground where natives easily gather it. The apple and nut are separated.

[eisylefae]

A spider bite healed a man of 20-year paralysis!

Online Quote:
"-- David Blancarte, 47, is on his feet for the first time since suffering major injuries in a motorcycle accident some 20 years ago.
“I can’t wait to start dancing,” he said as he looks forward to a full recovery after experiencing what some call a “true miracle.”
It was 1988 and Blancarte was working as a tattoo artist – as well as being a plasterer with his dad – in Tracy when he bought his first motorcycle. He said he was riding on Third Street when a woman motorist made a left turn in front of him. He crashed into her vehicle and was thrown over her car and onto the pavement.
His children recently saw him walk for the first time in their lives. They all attend Golden West School: 14-year-old twins Erica and Elizabeth and David Jr. 12.
The turn-around in his condition was ironically caused by the bite of a Recluse spider that put him in a Manteca hospital for five days. Then he was transferred to the Kindred (rehabilitation) Hospital in Modesto where he stayed for five months.
Blancarte said when he was evaluated at the Modesto hospital his lifeless legs were tested – actually electrically zapped by a doctor – to measure nerve function. Not having been able to use his lower limbs for two decades, he was in awe to hear that his nerves were actually alive and could move them again.--"

[Kairie]

Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is an herb with nepetalactone in it. Many think that when cats inhale nepetalactone, it affects hormones that arouse sexual feelings, or at least alter their brain functioning to make them feel "high." Catnip was originally made, using nepetalactone as a natural bug repellant, but roaming cats would rip up the plants before they could be put to their intended task.

[eisylefae]

Turkish Van cats like the water

[Kairie]

Television horse Mr. Ed was foaled in 1949 in El Monte, California. Mr. Ed's original name was Bamboo Harvester. Raised as a parade and show horse he was once owned by the president of the California Palomino Society. He died in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, on February 28, 1979, at 30 years old. Tahlequah was also the "home office" for "Late Night with David Letterman's Top Ten List" for several years.

[Taruto]

It is possible that many people eat bugs and spiders during sleep.