Trivia
- A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
- The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.
- The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
- The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
- The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
- Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."
- Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian coat of arms for that reason.
- Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
- The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead".
- Pinocchio is Italian for "pine head."
- Camel's milk does not curdle.
- Murphy's Oil Soap is the chemical most commonly used to clean elephants.
- The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.
- The only nation whose name begins with an "A", but doesn't end in an "A" is Afghanistan.
- When opossums are playing 'possum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.
- The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.