Did You Know?

GENERAL

• The common 52 card pack symbolizes the calendar, was developed by a Frenchman in 1392:

     52 cards - number of weeks per year

     4 suites - the four seasons

     13 cards in a suit - number of weeks in a season

     Red and black - day and night

• A giraffe has the same number of bones in its neck as a human being.

• Seven and half tons of water evaporate from the Dead Sea every day.

• It is impossible to fold a piece of paper more than 7 times - no mater how big it is

• Most Eskimos use fridges - to keep their food from freezing

• There is no word in the English language that rhymes with 'orange' or 'purple'

• The word 'school' comes from the Greek word 'Schole' - which, literally translated, means 'Leisure'.

• The word 'News' is derived from the four point of the compass: i.e. N--E--W--S.

FOOD

• Due to sugar rationing, popcorn consumption in the U.S. nearly tripled during World War II.

• Cilantro does not originate from Mexico or Thailand, as commonly believed, but from Egypt.

• Bromelain, an enzyme found in pineapple, is a natural anti-inflammatory. The same enzyme explains why you can't use fresh pineapple in gelatin; it breaks down the protein and prevents it from setting.

• California produces 95 percent of all apricots grown in the U.S.

• About 220 million pounds of tuna get canned by BumbleBee every year.

• The most popular use for oatmeal? As a breakfast cereal. The second? That's easy, too: oatmeal cookies. But did you know the third most common use is as an ingredient in meatloaf?

π (The mathematical symbol for Pi)

• Pi is the number of times a circle's diameter will fit around its circumference.

• Pi is thought to be random - it has passed all known tests for randomness to date.

• Pi is approximately 837393900/266550757

• The scientific calculator bundled with windows 2000 has Pi = 3.1415926535897932384626433832795

• 1897 - A bill was passed by the State House of Representatives of Indiana, setting pi to equal 9.2376!!

• 1975 - Simon Plouffe entered the Guiness Book of Records for reciting 4096 digits of pi from memory.

• 1995 - Hiroyoki Gotu became the new pi memory champion by reciting 42 000 digits of pi