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To combat the deadly killer bee, the Harris County Fire Department (i.e., Houston, Texas) has 11 trucks equipped with soapy water sprayers that do nothing but respond to killer bee calls. Currently, the Austin Fire Department will only deal with emergency situations involving killer bee attacks in progress.
Fresca, the soft drink, had problems when it was sold in Mexico. Fresca is slang for lesbian.
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Why is hamburger steak sometimes referred to as "Salisbury" steak?
A campaign was started after World War I to remove all German expressions from the English language. Hamburger steak had been named after the city of Hamburg, Germany - which meant finding a new name for this dish. An English physician named James H. Salisbury had once been a strong promoter of hamburger meat as a cure for a number of common diseases, and it was decided by the powers that be to rename the meat for him.
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Why does the phone cord keep getting tangled?
Don't blame the cord for this one. It's your fault. You're the one responsible for getting it all tangled up. Here's how it happens. The phone rings, and (if you're a right-handed) you pick up the receiver with your right hand and turn it 90 degrees clockwise before putting it to your right ear. After a while, your ear starts to hurt, so you turn the receiver 180 degrees clockwise and put it to your left ear. Finally, you're ready to end the call, so you twist the receiver another 90 degrees clockwise and hang it up. See what you did? You've turned the receiver 360 degrees and added another twist to the cord. Multiply that by a couple of dozen phone calls and your cord quickly becomes an out of control mess.
(Source: WHY THINGS ARE by Joel Achenbach)
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Why do rap stars say "gat" when they mean gun?
During the U.S. Civil War, a man named Richard Jordan Gatling invented the first machine gun. Though called the Gatling gun, it was often referred to by the slang abbreviation "gat." How rap stars picked up on this is a mystery to me, but it may simply be because it sounds so dope.
(Patrick Atoon, editor of the Rap Dictionary)
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How come Superman can fly?
In fact, when he first appeared, Superman couldn't fly. The most he could do was "leap tall buildings in a single bound." Being from the planet Krypton, where the gravity is stronger than on Earth, Superman had to develop super-strength just to walk around. So when he came to Earth, leaping tall buildings, running fast and bending steal was a cinch. Since, a leaping superhero is probably not the most
exciting thing to read about, by the late 1950s Superman's writers allowed him to defy the laws of physics by flying.
(Source: WHY THINGS ARE, VOLUME II by Joel Achenbach)
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The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.
A rhinoceros horn is made of compacted hair.
The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896.
Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.
A polar bear's skin is black. Its fur is not white, but actually clear.
Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.
Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
More people are killed by donkeys annually than are killed in plane crashes.
Shakespeare invented the word "assassination" and "bump."
Marilyn Monroe had six toes.
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