Which of the following statements are true? Part II

I clicked off about 10 of them. I'm really hoping the one about the candy bar isn't true.

No President of the USA was an only child and gee who knows but me

> I clicked off about 10 of them. I'm really hoping the one about the
> candy bar isn't true.

Ew yuck have to give up eating chocolate if that is true

Check, more chickens than people (ditto for rats, I think)
Check, no word in the English language rhymes with orange (that I know of)
Check, no word in the English language rhymes with purple (that I know of)
Check, it is "impossible" to sneeze with your eyes open (save for force holding someone's eyes open like they did in Clockwork Orange (still can't find a rhyming word for orange))
Check, a cockroach can live 9 days without its head before starving to death. (define "death") (likewise, some cells in your body can live sometime after you die, and as a matter of fact different states in the US even have different laws as to when you are legally considered dead).


The ones that are just blatant bullcrap:

No check for a duck's quack makes no echo. That has been debunked on myth-busters, and anyone who tells you its true IS a quack (yes, pun intended).

No check, Shakespeare invented over 1700 words used in the English language. If that one is true, then every other big tyme rapper invented over 5,000 words used in everyday language. Sorry, foshizzle is NOT a word. Inventing alternative spelling of words doesn't count either.

I am also VERY skeptical of peanut being the #1 ingredient in dynamite (the answer would be something with lots of nitrogen). Although if you are planning on using them for military purposes, you can give one of your enemies really bad peanut allergies (or salmonella).

Previous survey...the turkey one about drowning...? My cousin out in colorado raised turkeys. He said they had to bring them in every time it rained because they would drown. So first hand knoweledge of that statement being true. I guess.

I'm guessing the donkey killings is true. I know people.
Average chocolate bars all have insects, sorrry folks.
cockroach thing rue, I saw it on tv. The rest of them I don't know. They most sound made up.

probably all of the above. But then, it has been said that half of what we know isn't true.

Purple rhymes with hirple and curple
Month rhymes with uneath (a very obscure and now archaic word meaning "difficult")
Silver rhymes with several words, including: cilver, filver, and hilver
Orange rhymes with several words,including: sporange, and door hinge.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_rhymes_with_silver_...

Wow. don't know.

1. Peanuts are the main ingredient of dynamite.

Not strictly true - A stick of dynamite is nitroglycerine soaked in sawdust (or some other absorbent material) and wrapped in a protective coating. Nitroglycerine is dervied from nitrating glycerol (a process that involves the use of nitric acid and sulfuric acid). Glycerol is derived from the transesterifaction of vegetable oils or animal fats (e.g. peanut oil).

So, could you use peanuts to make dynamite? Yes. Are they the main ingredient? Uhmm... debatable

2. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched".

Not strictly true - Joint-longest would be more accurate. Scratched, scrounged, scrunched and stretched all have the same number of letters.

3. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

Not strictly true - There are 293 different ways, but only if you count dollar coins (which, practically speaking, would be stupid)

4. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

True - "Just as temperature increases speed up reactions, temperature decreases reduce them. Therefore, to make explosives stable for longer periods, or to keep rubber bands springy, or to force bacteria to slow down their growth, they can be cooled." (Shelf life)

5. There are more chickens in the world than people

True - Obviously. How many chickens have you eaten this year already?

6. An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain

True - From what I can gather, an ostrich eye is approximately 28cc whereas its brain is approximately 22cc (however, I could be completely wrong)

7. No word in the English language rhymes with month

Not strictly true - No common words do. However, 'Grunth' is an acceptable variant of 'Granth' as in the 'Guru Granth Sahib' (which is the holy scripture of the Sikh religion).

8. No word in the English language rhymes with orange

Not strictly true - Only if you don't include proper nouns. Blorenge is the name of a mountain near the Welsh town of Abergavenny.

9. No word in the English language rhymes with silver

False - A chilver is a ewe lamb.

10. No word in the English language rhymes with purple

False - Again, no common words do. But purple rhymes with hirple (to walk with a limp) and curple (The hind-quarters of a horse)

11. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur

True - "The stripe pattern is found on a tiger's skin and if shaved, its distinctive camouflage pattern would be preserved." ((Tiger)

12. In 99.9% of advertisements, the time displayed on a clock is 10:10am

False - Obviously most adverts for watches and clocks show 10:10 (or 14:50 or 08:20 or any other aesthetically pleasing symmetrical time). But there are enough adverts for things like breakfast cereal where the clock on the kitchen wall shows a different time or snack food where the clock on the office wall creeps toward lunch time to make this statistic excessively optimistic

13. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open

Not strictly true - In so far as it's true for the vast majority of people but (like the elbow licking thing) there's a tiny fraction of freaks out there who can be counted upon to be the exception.

14. A polar bear actually has black skin and clear fur

True - but not that interesting

15. More people are killed by donkeys than by plane crashes each year.

???? - According to Snopes this is impossible to verify and it most likely false. According to Vic Reeves, 88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.

16. Shakespeare invented over 1700 words used in the English language.

Not strictly true - Whilst Shakespeare had an unprecedented knack for coining new words either by turning a noun into a verb, like 'champion', or by adjoining two words, like 'worthless' or 'bedroom', it's impossible to know which words are his inventions and which words are simply the earliest written example known.

17. No president of the USA was an only child.

Not strictly true - Only if you don't count half-siblings. Bill Clinton's natural father, William Jefferson Blythe Jr., was killed in a car accident before Bill was born and he was raised by his stepfather, Roger Clinton. He has a half brother, also called Roger.

18. The average chocolate bar has 2 insect legs in it.

???? - The terminology used by the FDA regarding food contamination is insect "fragments" not legs. This is because the manufacturing process grounds up any insect parts so fine that they're hard to see. If that puts you off eating chocolate ever again you ought to know that there are probably insect fragments in everything else too.

19. Eskimos use fridges to keep food from freezing.

True - Although, it's also about making sure the food is kept at a constant temperature. In fact, you can buy heaters for your fridge if they're normally kept outside.

20. A duck's quack does not make a echo.

False - Utter, utter bullcrap

21. A cockroach can live 9 days without its head before starving to death.

Not strictly true- They can actually survive for weeks! Cockroaches, like many insects, breathe through spiracles located in each body segment rather than through their mouth. They also have a de-centralised nervous system, meaning they can stand, move and react to touch without their brain. And because they're cold-blooded, they require much less food and could survive for weeks on a single meal

There's a man by the name of 'Borange' referred to in Proust's In Search of Lost Time... but that's a name... a French name. Very nice survey

Thanks . There's also Gorringe Ridge, named after the captain of the USS Gettysburg, Henry Honychurch Gorringe.

You're welcome

Actually peanuts or peanut husks MAY well be the main ingredient in dynamite. The actual explosive in dynamite is nitroglycerine which is incredibly unstable and can almost be detonated with a harsh look. It was that Nobel guy who figured out how stabilize nitroglycerine with sawdust and thus created dynamite. It wouldn't surprise me now if they started using crushed peanut husks for the same purpose.

Hmm, I'm guessing on most of these, but I'll go for:
I don't think that peanuts are the main ingredient of dynamite - but I could believe that the same chemical compound is present in both.
The longest one-syllable English word is "screeched" - I can't think of anything longer, nor think of any reasonable way to construct such a word. However, "word" claims are often wrong in my experience!
I don't know enough about the different denominations of US money to work out the change for a dollar one.
I could believe the rubber band one - certainly warm rubber bands often seem to deteriorate into a sticky mass. But are they just lasting longer because they are in the fridge and not being used?
More chickens in the world than people seems reasonable, but I'd be concerned that data on that has been extrapolated from the numbers of chickens per person in Western countries.
I imagine an ostrich's eye and brain could be similar in size, but I would think the brain would have a greater mass, especially if you discount the fluid within the eye.
I'm not sure about month and silver, but purple definitely has a rhyme ("hirple" - I watch QI sometimes...!) and I'd happily rhyme orange with "fringe".
I would think that if you shaved a tiger, it would look as though it still had stripes, but that's likely to be because of the colour of the hair that's still within the skin rather than pigment in the skin cells themselves.
I just don't believe the clocks in adverts one.
I don't see why it should be impossible to sneeze with your eyes open, especially if you are anticipating the sneeze.
I know that polar bears have clear fur (hence the green polar bears) - not so sure about the black skin, but I'll say that one's true.
I believe the one about donkeys, as so few people die in plane crashes.
I believe the one about Shakespeare - although I'm not sure how we can be certain - maybe he was just the first to write certain words down.
No idea about the US Presidents, but I think it could well be true - most people aren't only children.
I think the average chocolate bar has a lot more insect remains in it than two legs!
No idea about using fridges to stop food from freezing, but it seems reasonable - how else do you keep certain foods at the ideal temperature.
A duck's quack definitely *does* echo.
I can accept the cockroach one based on the entomology I've studied in the past.

See, I typed them all out so that everyone can see which things I've been overly-gullible on!

Couldda, Wouldda, Shouldda