Reasons

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Roman statues were made with detachable heads, so that one head could be removed and replaced by another.

 

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Salt helped build the Erie Canal. A tax of 12 1/2 percent on New York State salt, plus tolls charged for salt shipments, paid for nearly half of the $7 million construction cost.

 

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Superman dates back to June 1938, when he appeared in Action Comics No. 1. Batman arrived on the scene one year later in Detective Comics No. 27, appearing May 1939.

 

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There is a house in Rockport, Massachusetts, built entirely of newspaper. The Paper House at Pigeon Cove, as it is called, is made of 215 thicknesses of newspaper. According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.

 

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The first drive-in service station in the United States was opened by Gulf Oil Company - on December 1, 1913, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

 

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The Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia, has nearly 68,000 miles of telephone lines.

 

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The Cairo Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1970. The Cairo fire station was located inside the same building.

 

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The Pentagon is twice the size of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, and has three times the floor space of the Empire State Building in New York. It is one of the world's largest office buildings.

 

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The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California???s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.

 

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At age ninety, Peter Mustafic of Botovo, Yugoslavia, suddenly began speaking again after a silence of 40 years. The Yugoslavian news agency quoted him as saying, "I just didn't want to do military service, so I stopped speaking in 1920; then I got used to it."

 

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A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48 of an inch.

 

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Ever wonder where the term "Work Smarter...Not Harder" originated? Allan F. Mogensen, the creator of Work Simplification, coined the phrase in the 1930s. The 1990s equivalent term is probably Business Process Reengineering.

 

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On dry, windy days, pollen can travel up to 500 miles.

 

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Built in only 16 months between 1941 and 1942, the Pentagon is only 71ft tall, yet it has 5 floors, 17.5 miles of corridors, 150 stairways, 280 restrooms, 685 drinking fountains, 7,748 windows and workers replace more than 250 lightbulbs each day.

 

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Because of its size, the Pentagon operates much like a small city; it has it's own shopping mall, bank, power plant, water and sewage facilities, fire station, police force, fast food restaurants and a "mayor".

 

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At its peak in 1943, the Pentagon had a working population of about 33,000. Today about 23,000 employees work in the building.

 

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The Procrastinators Club of America sends news to its members under the masthead "Last Month's Newsletter."

 

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The National Lighter Museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma has nearly 20,000 pieces, representing over 85,000 years of lighters and fire starters. The only museum of its kind in the world, it is dedicated to collecting and preserving the history of the evolution of lighters.

 

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Shakespeare's volume, Sonnets, contains 154 sonnets. Sonnets 1-126 are addressed to a male friend and sonnets 127-152 are addressed to a mysterious woman. Sonnets 153 and 154 fit in neither category.

 

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The U.S standard railroad gauge (distance between rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

 

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The U.S. Library of Congress has compiled a 232-source bibliography on the subject of when, properly speaking, centuries roll over. Almost all of the sources agree that the twentieth century does not end until December 31, 2000.

 

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There are 6,272,640 square inches in an acre.

 

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There are 63,360 inches in a mile.

 

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There are more than 200 different types of Barbie Dolls.

 

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I have them all

 

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True story

 

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A man irate about his income tax paid Uncle Sam with a plaster of Paris check that weighed several pounds. He wasn't all that bright, because once the government cashed the check, it was returned to him and he had to keep it for five years for his records.

 

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Two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and again in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. Not one human being was hurt either time.

 

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Hallmark makes cards for 105 different relationships.

 

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If the Earth was smooth, the ocean would cover the entire surface to a depth of 12,000 feet.