Things you don't really need to know

I read somewhere that every time you learn something, your brain gets a new wrinkle in it, suggesting that the more wrinkles your brain has, the smarter you are.

Sometimes I just don't want to waste any wrinkles on things I don't really need to know, but then other times I get a kick out of learning useless facts. Somewhere along the way I have accumulated a long list of things none of us probably really needs to know, and as you read through them, you can decide for yourself if you want to use any wrinkles to retain them:

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear. A crocodile cannot stick out its tongue. A dragonfly has a life span of 24 hours. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. The Bible does not say there were three wise men; it only says there were three gifts. The cruise liner QE2 moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes. A snail can sleep for three years. Butterflies taste with their feet. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket. There's no Betty Rubble in the Flintstones Chewables Vitamins.

All 50 states are listed across the top of the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the $5 bill. Maine is the only state whose name is just one syllable. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar. A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

Almonds are a member of the peach family. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt". No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, or purple. There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon. In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction. But then, also know that there are more chickens than people in the world.

If you are an average American, in your whole life you will spend an average of six months waiting at red lights.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance. Babies are born without kneecaps; they don't appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament Building is an American flag. The winter of 1932 was so cold that Niagara Falls froze completely solid.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. Women blink nearly twice as much as men. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.

The average person's left hand does 56% of the typing. The sentence: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.

The words racecar, kayak and level are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes). There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."

Now you know a lot of things you don't really need to know.

© Copyright 2018 Marilda Mel White. Mel, a local photographer/writer, is also co-owner of the Tehachapi Treasure Trove. She’s been looking on the bright side for various publications since 1996; she welcomes your comments at [email protected].