• Only 30 percent of coffee beans grown end up as coffee. The other 70 percent are lost to rot, shipment errors, spillage, or are consumed in another fashion.
• In 2005, more square yards of pleather were manufactured than real leather.
• More spam email comes from the Bahamas than Nigeria.
• The average combined energy of radio, televisition, cellphone, and satellite signals passing through the human body at any given moment is estimated to be equivalent to 10 food calories.
• More people die from infections originating in the toenail than from skin cancer annually.
• Masking tape was originally developed during WWII as a non-reflective alternative to duct tape for British troops fighting in the desert.
• Rutgers college at one point had an underwaster basket-weaving class as an elective during the 1910s.
• Buzz Aldrin is rumored to have dropped a tube of toothpaste on the moon.
• Legal pads are so-called because Oliver Wendell Holmes was known to complain about the short length of ordinary paper.
  

• Bill Clinton claimed to never have gotten drunk in college.
• Nine-tenths of bandwidth are consumed by computers running the Linux operating system.
• Thirteen tsunamis have hit the tiny island nation of Micronesia in the past century.
• A recent survey found that 66 percent of women are aware that fish scales are an ingredient of lipstick.
• In one year, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin consumes enough beer to fill Lake Michigan one and a half times over.
  

• People call a coin flip as "heads" approximately 75 percent of the time.

• Two out of five Americans surveyed dislike Canadian cuisine.

• There is twice as much money granted to universities for disproving global warming than for neither proving nor disproving it.

• A koala appears to have zebra-like stripes when viewed with only ultra-violet light.

• The word "duct tape" is the most recently invented 8-letter phrase according to The Oxford English Dictionary.

• According to the National Bureau of Police Statistics, the average police officer will 'misplace' and be reimbursed for 17 sets of handcuffs over the course of an 28 year career.

• An average person in New York City showers 1.8 times every day.

• A hand-written note attached to the flag left on the moon declares Neil Armstrong to be President for Life of the "Republic of Lunatious".

• Elephants have the world's largest ankles.

• Despite two extreme outliers -- Oregon on one side, New York City on the other -- an average American bathes more often than an average person of any other nationality except France.

• Authors whose names start with an A have their books checked out 62 percent more often at public libraries.

• In his youth, U.S. President George Washington was an accomplished Irish dancer.

• In his high school years Albert Einstein scored an 73 on an IQ test, In his adult years he was asked why his score was so low, he replied that he "never took tests too seriously."

• One in every 5,000 emperor penguins carries a rare gene that makes its beak bright blue.

• In 1896, the Georgia State Legislature declared the color name 'puce' to be in violation of anti-obscenity laws. The color itself was declared acceptable on a probationary level, but the probation has never been lifted to this day.

• It is estimated that only 3 percent of insurance fraud attempts go unnoticed.

• The ratio of left-handed people to right handed people is decreasing. If the present trend continues, "righties" will outnumber "lefties" by 800 to 1 in the year 2456.

• Nearly six times as many ketchup packs are discarded in the U.S. every year as are consumed in the same period.

• The second most common word in the King James version of the Old Testament is "goat." After "begat."

• 45 percent Chia Pets die prematurely due to neglect by the owner because of its common label as "the care-free plant."

• Law students spend less time in ethics training than any other professional students.

• The average age of first-time cell phone owners has decreased from 17 to 9 since the year 2000.

• Memorizing and quoting trivial information can increase a person's score on standardized IQ test by 21 to 39 points.

• When cornered, a lemur can jump over twenty feet straight up.

• According to MSN Search, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, searches for "porn" more than any other city, worldwide.

• The first atomic clock, built in 1949, required six feet of lead shielding to protect nearby scientists.

• The Disneyland monorail has been safety rated up to 58 MPH, but normally travels at 61 MPH.

• One of the first Venus landers was rendered nearly useless because the protective lens cap had been removed from the imaging camera prior to launch, leading to its destruction during the launch.

• ISO-standard telephone handset cords spiral once per centimeter.

• Five out of ten election poll workers are registered Democrats.

• Four out of five Frenchmen believe the sun revolves around the earth.

• John Kerry's favorite food is pretzels.

• For every student that graduates from Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College, one drops out before completing their training and four are failed by their instructors.

• Tinted sunglasses counteract the effects of one-way mirrors.

• Microsoft Word crashes cause 60 million hours of lost productivity every year.

• There are approximately 8000 people killed per year in pedestrian-on-pedestrian accidents in the US.

• Since the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building is struck by lightning nearly thrice as often.

• The first draft of the Declaration of Independence read "life, liberty, and happiness" until Benjamin Franklin successfully argued that happiness is not a right and cannot be guaranteed, so they compromised with the "pursuit of happiness".

• Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center, was afraid of heights.

• Comparing injuries per mile, travel by horseback is over 80 times more dangerous than by car.

• 19 percent of rocket mission failures occur within five minutes of takeoff or landing.

• A recent study by Proctor & Gamble found that 26 percent of people use more shampoo than necessary to clean their hair. 24 percent use twice what they actually need.

• Three out of nine Americans have made at least one purchase at a Wal*Mart retail store.

• For nearly a decade, acclaimed director Steven Spielberg greeted people with the question "how you doodle doing?" Friends would often respond "yankee doodle dandy."

• On average, tomatoes picked in the dark will stay ripe for six days longer than those picked during daylight hours.

• Oxford Sleep Lab studies show that the more weight pressing down on a person, the slower they will fall asleep.

• During the 19th century, men in wealthy European social circles would wear a tuxedo, on average, 36 hours out of any given week.

• If all the nicotine from the discarded cigarette butts on the ground in New York City was collected, there would be enough to administer around 15,000 lethal doses.

• 43 percent of all credit card purchases are made within one mile of the cardholder's home.

• The U.S. Capitol building has a total 12 square feet of public space not under video surveillance. The largest single area is an 8 by one square foot in the building's main rotunda.

• Cows are among the few herbivores that will not become cannibalistic if starving.

• When occupations are rated by their own household's cleanliness, sanitation workers are surpassed only by chefs as the least clean.

• The baseball bat which Al Capone used to beat disloyal mobsters Scalise and Anselmi to death was recently auctioned off for $4,750,000.

• The animated cowboy Woody in Toy Story was so named as a nod to Woody Allen.

• A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has created a computer system that uses positioning lasers, micro-current air measurements, radar speed sensors, and other instruments to measure 27 different variables when a coin is flipped in the air. It can correctly call heads-or-tails nearly 99 percent of the time.

• The riff from Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" is based on a common Afghani chant.

• While New Jersey is nearly always referred to as the "garden state", officially it is the "lovely garden state".

• Worldwide, democratically-elected national leaders are six times more likely to be left-handed than those that rose to power via other means.

• Kevin Cross of Los Angeles has been an extra in over 500 films, and can be seen, albeit briefly and uncredited, in 9 of the 10 top-grossing movies of 2005.

• Mark Lemon, former pitcher for the Houston Astros, ironically dislikes lemons.

• The world's largest fish stick, weighing just over 4 tons, was battered and fried in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1999 to commemorate Gorton's 150th anniversary.

• Horror author Stephen King has an intense fear of bunk beds due to a traumatic childhood incident.

• Nearly 50 percent of lottery tickets are sold to people living below the poverty line.

• On average, meals paid for with stolen credit cards tip only 1 percent, compared to 16 percent for legitimate payments.

• In a recent online poll by the popular UK newspaper The Guardian, the most popular name for the current decade is "the oh-ohs", playing on the common British word for zero. "The naughties" came in a distant second.

• 97 percent of websites have not been updated during the past week.

• A recent survey by the House and Family Foundation found that children's "cuteness" peaks at eight years old.

• On the whole, students on the West coast of the United States are 25 percent smarter than their East coast counterparts.

• Ecoterrorism results in over 70,500,000 m³ of pollution each year.

• Orthodontia is Europe's 12th most lucrative industry.

• If the energy used to wind wristwatches worldwide could be harnessed, it could power a city the size of New York, New York.

• Despite their deadly reputation, more people are infected with rabies annually by birds than either bats or rats.

• The average recoil force from urination is 2 Newtons.

• If all of the mercury from tainted fish were collected worldwide, it would amount to about a cup of the highly toxic material.

• Among the 50 most commonly-carried cable TV stations, ESPN2 is the least watched in every demographic except males 25-34, where it narrowly edges out both Lifetime and Oxygen.

• Nicotine can stunt the development and growth of pubic hair in young women.

• The city of London, England produces around 15 pounds of toast crumbs on an average Sunday morning.

• 12 percent of middle/junior high school students admit to communicating with friends via SMS text messaging during class hours.

• England has the most per capita cases of scurvy of any developed nation.

• Combination shower-bathtubs are 5 times more deadly than regular showers.

• If every crime committed were prosecuted to the full extent of the law, 93 percent of North Americans would be incarcerated.

• The currency of Paraguay has the distinction of having the oldest design in current use.

• 31 percent of Scandinavians have never seen a computer.

• A recent economic study conducted by OPEC concluded that if everyone in America walked instead of drove one day each week, the decrease in demand would cause world oil prices to fall between $20 and $32.45 per barrel.

• 96 percent of the content on the Internet is written in English.

• Until 1921 the American Medical Association had a separate medical reference for how to treat Jews and African-Americans.

• 18 percent of postage stamps sold by the Royal Mail in Great Britain government will never be used.

• When the first commercial, electronic toaster appeared in 1917, the New York Times called it "this year's greatest invention," and said it was "the hallmark of a fantastical new era."

• One in seven people suffer from chronic bad breath.

• Human brains compress visual input before processing it. The raw information coming from the optic nerve is roughly one thousand times more detailed than what is ultimately perceived.

• In the week following Halloween, one in three children will ingest what the FDA considers a toxic dose of red dye #40.

• Prior to the expanding of 9/11-related airline security restrictions, chain saws were not on the list of restricted items. According to FAA estimates, it is likely that more than two dozen had been allowed on-board a plane.

• More people die by asphyxiation while eating Nutella spread than from peanut allergies.

• British King George III (1760-1820) declared sailing to be "the noblest profession."

• While the moon is gravitationally locked to the Earth, due to a slight tidal "wobble", if one were to carefully time visits to the equator and both poles, one could eventually view nearly 51 percent of the moon's surface.

• The world meat supply would increase by 6.5 times if ranches switched from cattle to emu using the same acreage.

• Ingens Dionaea Muscipula, an ancestor of the Venus Flytrap that dates back 13 million years was the largest known carnivorous plant on earth. It was big enough to digest a six foot tall man.

• Overall, roosters only represent 3 percent of animals portrayed artistically. They are however, the most likely animal to be artistically depicted in an American kitchen, beating out pigs by a narrow margin.

• Due to a loophole in federal law, Minnesota is required to provide "ret. vet." license plates to retired veterinarians.

• Scientists at Texas A & M University who accidentally genetically engineered a flying chicken in 2005, were required by the department of agriculture to destroy the experiment notes but were allowed to keep the chick, who is named "Flighty".

• An average person is 14 percent more talkative in an environment where people can be seen dancing.

• Despite its "Big Apple" nickname, New York City has the second-lowest per capita apple consumption of the ten largest cities in world.

• Aardvarks blink only once every twenty minutes.

• 26 percent of Microsoft Word users do not know how to change the font in Word.

• Eight percent of Chinese believe The Terminator is an American documentary film.

• A housefly forced to stay in flight for an extended period of time will die of dehydration before exhaustion.

• Hummingbirds have a genetic tendency to mock members of other species.

• The smell of dry-erase markers was recently voted as the most seductive scent by readers of Women's Weekly.

• If sufficiently desperate for a mate, a male Leopard gecko will "drop" its tail and eat it in an attempt to impress females.

• Three hundred murders in what are currently the USA and Canada have been officially attributed to supernatural entities since 1750.

• Some of the more colorful collective nouns are an ostentation of crows, a murder of peacocks, and a crash of octopuses.

• According to a professor at the University of Oxford, documents from the time show that Robin Hood gave away more than 99 percent of his gains to the poor.

• Neptune is the only planet with four magnetic poles.

• Nearly 75 percent of Americans misspell "hamster" as "hampster", but only 50 percent mispronounce it that way.

• Cigarette butts account for fourths-fifths of roadside litter by weight.

• A teaspoon of concentrated household dust mite allergen was once thought to be more lethal than a teaspoon of cobra venom.

• Of all the salt mined and otherwise produced in the world, the percentage used for culinary and dining purposes is less than ten percent.

• The least popular color in a 64 count box of Crayola crayons is violet.

• If the world's oceans were evaporated and all the salt in them evenly distributed across the planet, it would coat the entire surface to a depth of 24 feet.

• The British Shorthair is the only type of cat that can be taught how to play the piano.

• Accounting is the third-most popular work-at-home business.

• While 12 percent of first-time fathers will experience sympathetic morning sickness, only ten percent of men who already have at least one child will experience it.

• The most snow to ever fall in a 24 hour period was recorded on Mount Whitney in 1985. Nearly 26 feet of snow fell on the mountain.

• According to the Princeton Review, the college with the most attractive female students is Texas State University.

• Even with all the correct information on the outside of the envelope, the U.S. Post Office will misdirect one in 3 pieces of mail.

• Effervescence was the longest English word using repeats of only one vowel for almost 100 years.

• The world's smallest speaker was recently created at The Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology Laboratory in DeWitt Michigan. The speaker measures a scant 0.002 micrometers across. It is capable of producing noise of 0.0004 decibels.

• The strongest man-made material by weight is an alloy of aluminum, carbon, and neptunium. Unfortunately it is too radioactive to be used safely near organic matter.

• One percent of Americans have a day planner solely to keep track of when their television shows air.

• There are currently thirteen potato-battery-powered vehicles registered in the state of California.

• Due to "junk genes", identical twins share only about 98.5 percent of their DNA.

• Residents of Hawaii are the most likely to be struck by lightning, Alaska the least.

• 2005 was the third year running that there were more spam e-mails sent than cans of SPAM sold.

• Both Ozzie and Harriet Nelson had at least three extra-marital affairs each during their marriage.

• 58 percent of the 2006 Congressional candidates rated "morbidly obese" on the Body Mass Index Scale.

• In an average election, incumbents have a 76 percent chance of winning an election, even if they spend no money campaigning.

• Of all of the 2006 election candidates, only 32 percent reported having a "very active lifestyle" that included running and other aerobic exercise.

• In major election years, personal appearances by political figures (even those not running) increase by 227 percent over non-election years.

• Americans aged 18 to 39 are one and half times more likely to be registered Democrats as Americans aged 40 to 65.

• Thus far in 2006, the media (most notably The New York Times) has "forcibly declassified" only slightly fewer documents than the U.S. federal government and military have done on their own.

• According to MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) records, 16 stunt people have died in the creation of the 50 highest-grossing films of the last 20 years.

• The original draft of the United States Constitution contains one spelling error.

• The heirs of the H.G. Wells estate brought a copyright infringement suit against Ralph Ellison in 1954 following the publication of The Invisible Man, but it was settled out of court for an amount undisclosed, but believed to be $1.12.

• According to researchers at the University of Vermont, out of 61 common American foods tested, cheeseburgers would allow a person to survive longest if it were the only food eaten.

• During the 2004 election, stories about John Kerry received an average 137 more 'diggs' than those about Bush. However, stories casting Bush in a negative light, received an average of 192 more 'diggs' than negative stories about Kerry.

• Digg is often cited as a joke by Swedish youth, as the site's moniker roughly translates to "boring" or "not worthwhile."

• Nearly 34 percent of the stories on digg were posted by people paid by an organization connected to the story in one way or another.

• There have only been two instances when a news article mentioning digg in a major publication have not made the front page of the social news site.

• According to the CEO of the New York Times, websites like digg.com were directly responsible for profits shrinking eight percent each quarter last fiscal year.

• A recent survey found 12.5 percent of French people consider it a faux pas to go to a social function with a shoes laced in a pattern that doesn't match the wearer's outfit.

• Overseas song writing shops located in developing nations have written seven songs appearing on the Billboard Top 100.

• By weight, soy beans are the fattiest legume.

• 73 percent of men over the age of 60 have sported a full beard at least twice in their life.

• It is illegal to intravenously inject duck dander in twelve American states due to its intense hallucinogenic properties.

• Kindergarten was first created in 13th century Germany as a reform school for rebellious toddlers.

• The average book in the New York Public Library is 276 pages long.

• Trenton, New Jersey has the second-most toxic soil of any city in North America, however, the contaminants are largely naturally occurring according to a recent EPA report.

• Waffles were originally invented in Mongolia.

• The physical size of the CD was chosen to fit into a typical European men's coat pocket.

• While "Black Friday" is not the busiest shopping day of the year in terms of the value of goods sold, it is for the number of items sold.

• On November 22, the New York City Council unanimously passed a resolution to close the hunting loophole and keep hunting illegal year-round within city limits. The council promised a full investigation into how the error was made and escaped notice for the past 2 years until discovered by the researchers at Gullible.Info.

• Plans to build a blizzard safety hut for climbers near the peak of Alaska's Mt. Denali had to be abandoned because it could not be made wheelchair-accessible, as required by law.

• A nearly unanimous 33 out of 35 incarcerated child molesters surveyed believe that there can be no rehabilitation and that life in prison is an appropriate punishment for a first offense.

• In a survey of elementary school children by Weekly Reader, seven in ten said their mom was the prettiest woman in the world, and most of the remainder chose their teacher.