Reasons

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The famous painting of "Whistler's Mother" was once bought from a pawn shop.

 

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Revolvers cannot be silenced because of all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.

 

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In 1961, Henry Matisse's painting Le Bateau hung upside down in New York's Museum of Modern Art. It remained upside down for forty-one days until someone noticed. It's estimated nearly 116,000 people passed in front of the painting before the error was noted.

 

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The number 4 is the only number that has the same number of letters in its name as its meaning.

 

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A standard 747 Jumbo Jet has 420 seats.

 

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According to Dennis Changon, spokesman for the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, Canada - if all of the commercial planes in the world were grounded at the same time there wouldn't be space to park them all at gates.

 

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If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.

 

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In 1931, an industrialist named Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago and lived in it for several years. The tower is still there.

 

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The first manager of the Seattle Space Needle, Hoge Sullivan, was acrophobic - fearful of heights. The 605 foot tall Space Needle is fastened to its foundation with 72 bolts, each 30 feet long.

 

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The Space Needle sways approximately 1 inch for every 10 mph of wind.

 

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It was built to withstand a wind velocity of 200 miles-per-hour.

 

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The first revolving restaurant, The Top of the Needle, was located at the 500-foot level of the 605-foot-high steel-and-glass tower at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle, Washington. It contained 260 seats and revolved 360 degrees in an hour. The state-of-the-art restaurant was dedicated on May 22, 1961.

 

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The foundations of the great European cathedrals go down as far as forty or fifty feet.

 

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In some instances, they form a mass of stone as great as that of the visible building above the ground.

 

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Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently Hungarian.

 

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The roads on the island of Guam are made with coral.

 

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Guam has no sand.

 

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The sand on the beaches is actually ground coral.

 

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When concrete is mixed, the coral sand is used instead of importing regular sand from thousands of miles away.

 

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The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat.

 

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The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds

 

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The official soft drink of the state of Nebraska - Kool-Aid.

 

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hicks

 

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Ivory Soap was originally named P&G White Soap.

 

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. In 1879, Harley Proctor found the new name during a reading in church of the 45th Psalm of the Bible: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad."

 

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Studebaker still exists, but is now called Worthington.

 

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7.5 million toothpicks can be created from a cord of wood.

 

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A McDonald's straw will hold 7.7ml, or just over one-and-a-half teaspoons of whatever you are drinking. This means that it would take 17,000 strawfuls of water to fill up a 34 gallon bathtub.

 

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The original IBM punch-card is the same size as a Civil War era dollar bill.

 

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BAND-AID Brand Adhesive Bandages first appeared on the market in 1921, however, the little red string that is used to open the package did not get added until 1940.