Here's your (not so) totally useless fact(s) of the day:

[phkrause]

Gerald Ford was all-state at South High School in Grand Rapids, MI, and won a
scholarship to the University of Michigan, which he attended from 1931 to 1935.
The university’s football team, the Wolverines, won national championships in
1932 and 1933, and in 1934. Ford was named the team’s most valuable player.
After turning down pro football offers with the the Detroit Lions and Green Bay
Packers, Ford opted to take his economics degree to Yale University, where he
attended law school and also worked as a football and boxing coach.

[phkrause]

The federal government levied an income tax for the first time on August 5, 1861.

[phkrause]

The smell of fresh cut grass comes from the chemicals plants release when in distress.

[JoeMo]

Termite "gas" is responsible for about 12% of natural methane emissions in the world.

 

[B/W Photodude]

On 8/14/2019 at 12:06 PM, phkrause said:

The federal government levied an income tax for the first time on August 5, 1861.

But this income tax was rescinded in 1872. It was again levied in 1913 and we have been stuck with it ever since. The link shows examples of every 1040 since 1913. They have also been called 1040s since 1913!

http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/1040TaxForms?OpenDocument

[phkrause]

Nostrils take turns receiving the majority of the air you breathe, which explains why one is usually stuffier than the other.

[phkrause]

The plural of cul-de-sac is culs-de-sac.

Yes, totally useless!

[phkrause]

A double rainbow occurs when sunlight is reflected twice inside a raindrop.
If you look closely, you can see that the colors of the secondary rainbow
appear in reverse order.

[phkrause]

While an Oscar is of unnamed value to someone who wins (or loses) one, the actual trophy has a raw value of about $600.

[phkrause]

For every pound you lose, it takes 4 pounds of pressure off your knees and 6 pounds off your hips.

[phkrause]

Female cicadas have been known to confuse the roar of power tools for mating calls, sometimes swarming people using lawn mowers.
 

[phkrause]

Freddie Mercury and Paul McCartney used the same piano to record "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Hey Jude."

[phkrause]

There are 365 steps on the front of the U.S. Capitol Building - one for every day of the year.

[phkrause]

Forbes has released the 2019 edition of its world’s highest-paid athletes list, with
the top 10 competitors coming from the sports of football, boxing, tennis,
American football and basketball. Despite being in a league with no salary cap,
no major league baseball player is on this list. Topping this year’s list is soccer
star Lionel Messi with a total of $127 million in annual earnings. Lionel Messi is
one of the most well-known athletes in the entire world. He is the all-time leading
scorer in the history of La Liga, Spain's storied professional football league.

[phkrause]

Boy dolphins often try to impress girl dolphins by giving them a sponge as a gift.
Male Australian humpback dolphins present large marine sponges to their
favorite females - sometimes getting so excited that they aggressively throw the
sponges at their desired mate. They also work in pairs with other males, making
them one of the only species besides humans that use "wingmen".

[phkrause]

A palindrome is a word or sentence that reads the same forward as it does
backward. Some examples of palindromic words are kayak, civic, radar, level,
rotor, racecar, redder, madam, and refer. Some names are palindromes, such as
the given names Hannah, Ada, Anna, Bob, and Otto. Palindromes can also
consist of a sentence or phrase, e.g., "Mr. Owl ate my metal worm", "Do geese
see God?", and "Was it a car or a cat I saw?" According to The Oxford English
Dictionary the word is based on Greek root words meaning “back” and “running.”

[JoeMo]

The first palindrome ever recorded was spoken in the Garden of Eden - "Madam I'm Adam". 

[phkrause]

On August 21, 1959, President Eisenhower signed an executive order
proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Before the Second World War,
the United States was a 48 state nation with some territories including Alaska
and Hawaii. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867 while
Hawaii was a republic which ceded itself to the United States. Both of these
territories attained statehood in 1959 (with Hawaii being the last to gain
statehood) thus making Dwight Eisenhower the first American President to
preside over the fifty states.

[phkrause]

A team of chemists described old book smell as “a combination of grassy notes
with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.” The odor
actually comes from chemicals like benzaldehyde, furfural, and acetic acid—all
byproducts of decomposition.

[phkrause]

The modern popped collar originated as a way to keep tennis players’ necks from getting sunburnt.

[phkrause]

A website called Myfridgefood.com lets you enter whatever ingredients you have in your fridge and tells you what you can make with them.

[phkrause]

Animals that lay eggs don’t have belly buttons.

[phkrause]

Disneyland invented Doritos to get rid of their extra tortillas.
 
Frito-Lay, the company that makes Doritos, had a Disneyland restaurant named
Casa de Fritos. In 1964, workers at Casa de Fritos decided to experiment with
leftover tortillas, so they fried and seasoned them. Little did they know, but their
revised recipe would become the famous orange chips in 1966, when Frito-Lay's
VP of Marketing, Arch West, realized their potential.

[phkrause]

If you play radio static, cut a ping-pong ball in half, tape the halves over your eyes and lie down, you'll start hallucinating.
 
Uhhhh, let me know how that works out.

[phkrause]

"Wrap rage" is the common name for heightened levels of frustration resulting from the inability to open a package.