I know that I have fallen down on my Useless Facts posts. I ran out of printed material in this house. I am trying to compile some more, but I spend so much time fact-checking that it is losing its appeal (yes, I have to fact-check the facts. most things listed as "interesting facts" are actually false).

In the meantime, here is a list of the highest selling albums worldwide. There are definitely some surprises on here, though #1 should be no surprise. It's funny to me that The Bodyguard soundtrack is the best-selling album of the 90's.

While we're talking about nothing in particular, check out my band's last.fm page. It lists tags, similar artists, even our own streaming radio station (featuring us and similar artists).

http://www.last.fm/music/earsauce

Thanks again.

Names of popular fast-food chains and their origins.

McDONALD's. Named after two brothers who were scenery movers in Hollywood during the 1920's--Richard and Maurice ("Mac") McDonald. They started the first modern fast food joint in San Bernardino, California after World War II and sold out to Ray Kroc for $2.7 million in 1961.

ARBY's. Forest and Leroy Raffel wanted to open a fast food restaurant called Big Tex, in Akron, Ohio... but someone else already owned the name. So they settled for Arby's--R.B.'s--after the first initials of Raffel Brothers.

TACO BELL. No, it has nothing to do with mission bells. The chain was founded in 1962 by Glen W. Bell.

JACK IN THE BOX. There was a huge, square metal ventilation unit on the roof of Robert Peterson's restaurant. It was really ugly, but he couldn't remove it... So he covered it up instead, disguising it as a jack-in-the-box. Then he changed the name of his restaurant, making it seem as though the whole thing had been planned.

HARDEE's. Founded by Wilbur Hardee, who opened the first Hardee's in Greenville, North Carolina in 1960.

PIZZA HUT. Frank Carney, a 19-year-old engineering student at the University of Wichita, opened a pizza parlor in 1958 with his older brother Dan. It was in a rented, hut-shaped building with a sign that only had room for eight letters and a single space. Pizza Hut was the perfect name because it described the restaurant and fit on the sign.

DAIRY QUEEN. In 1938, Sherb Noble put together a 10¢ All-You-Can-Eat promotion for his Kankakee, Illinois store. He offered a brand new kind of "semi-frozen" ice cream called "Dairy Queen" and was dumbfounded by the public's response--they bought 16,000 servings of it in two hours. Two years later, Noble opened a food stand that sold nothing but Dairy Queen.

WHITE CASTLE. In 1921, Walter Anderson needed money to open his fourth hamburger stand. He borrowed the money--$700--from a local real-estate and insurance salesman named Billy Ingram, who suggested that the restaurant be called the "White Castle," symbolizing cleanliness and strength. Since it was Ingram's money, Anderson Humored him.

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN. "Colonel" Harlan Sanders had a restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. His specialty was fried chicken.

WENDY's. Dave Thomas, an executive at Kentucky Fried Chicken, decided to open his own chain of fast food restaurants in 1969. The first one was located in Columbus, Ohio. It was named for Thomas's third daughter, Wendy.

• President Theodore Roosevelt was a notoriously loud snorer.
• Four years after his historic midnight ride, Paul Revere was brought up on charges of "unsoldierly behavior tending towards cowardice." The grandson of the accuser was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, author of Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.
• An elephant's heart weighs about 45 pounds.
• Daily indoor per capita water use in the typical single family home is 69.3 gallons. Flushing toilets account for more than 25% of that total.
• Andrew Johnson is the only president to later become a senator.
• There are 2,598,960 possible hands in a five-card poker game.
• Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. Lesser known is the fact that he also invented plywood.
• A wink takes one tenth of a second.
• Before the Leaning Tower of Pisa underwent restoration work in the 1990's, it was predicted to topple over between 2010 and 2020. Prior to the restoration, the tower was leaning at 5.5 degrees, but now it is leaning at 3.99 degrees.
• The average person will catch 140 colds in a lifetime.
• The planet Saturn (among others) is made up primarily of liquids or gasses that are less dense than water. If you placed it in a bathtub--a very big bathtub--it would float.
• You need a minimum of 5/8 of a torn dollar bill in order to redeem it at full value.
• When a living thing is in a state of suspended animation during the winter, it is called hibernation, but in the summer it is called estivation.
• Until the 1850's, soap was made in loaves which the grocer sliced and then weighed much the same as cheese.
• 15 percent of Americans claim they've never had a headache.
• Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
• The average person gets sick 2.19 times a year and is bedridden for 6 days.
• 50 percent of the visits to the school nurse are made by 15 percent of the students.
• On the date of Orville Wright's death, there were three plane crashes which killed 50 people.
• On September 10, 1977, the last execution by guillotine took place in Marseilles, France, when the murderer Hamida Djandoubi was beheaded.
• William Cullen Bryant's last words were "Whose house is this? What street are we on? Why did you bring me here?"
• How poetic: Emily Dickinson's last words were "I must go in, for the fog is rising."

• Ancient Arabians who bathed regularly were tax exempt.
• A newborn panda is smaller than a mouse.
• Every year, Heinz sells over 600million bottles of ketchup worldwide.
• Most hummingbirds weigh less than a penny.
• Kevin McCarthy set a world record on April 12, 1985 by completing a 341-hour shower at Buffalo State College.
• Barbie Doll's last name is Roberts.
• The Academy Awards Oscar trophy weighs 8 lbs., 13 oz. The Heisman Trophy weighs 25 pounds.
• Cows can be identified by noseprints.
• London's Buckingham Palace has 602 rooms.
• William Phelps Eno originated stop signs, one-way streets and other roadway regulations to earn himself recognition as the "Father of Traffic Safety." Eno never learned to drive a car.
• Thomas Edison copyrighted the first motion picture in the U.S. on January 9, 1894. It was titled Record of a Sneeze.
• In 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright's first airplane flight travelled 852 feet in 59 seconds. An Olympic-caliber hurdler can travel much faster (1400 feet in just 45 seconds).
• Your hearing is not as sharp on a full stomach.
• Opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti kept a bent nail in his pocket for good luck when he performed.
• They may have been called "water catchers," but the cuffs on men's pants were originally made to hold cigar ashes.
• Actress Sally Struthers was once the voice of "Pebbles" on The Flintstones cartoons.
• The most frequently sung tune in the U.S. is Happy Birthday to You.
• The main ingredient for both bricks and plate-glass windows is sand.

• The name pound cake derives from the fact that the original pound cakes used a pound of each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour.
• A snail mates only once in its lifetime. And when it does, it mates in a typical snail fashion, taking half a day to do it.
• The singular of the word scampi, as in shrimp, is scampo.
• Silent Cal Coolidge was just that as far as the telephone was concerned; the former president refused to use it.
• Glass gets stronger the longer it stays under water, the only known substance to do so.
• Until Thomas Edison suggested using "Hello," most people answered their phones by saying "Ahoy."
• A ping pong ball weighs 2.2399 to 2.6761 grams.
• Dog sleds delivered mail in Alaska as late as 1963.
• The ampersand is the world's oldest known symbol and is common among hundreds of languages.
• Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers.
• The average person sheds 40 pounds of skin in a lifetime.
• There are 570 miles of shoreline in New York City.
• A male lion can eat 75 pounds of meat at one meal.
• There are between 2500 and 3000 divorces every day in the United States. More people are part of second marriages today than first marriages in the U.S.
• Telephone poles in Kenya and Uganda are higher than in other parts of the world because they have to allow for the height of giraffes.
• Troy Donahue played Merle Johnson in the movie The Godfather II. Donahue's real name is Merle Johnson.
• Your fingernails grow about two inches a year.
• An adult moth never eats.
• Alexandre Dumas used blue paper to write his novels, yellow paper for his poetry, and white paper to write his magazine articles.

• A cow spends an average of 18 hours a day chewing.
• How fast is "in a jiffy?" Faster than you can say it. A jiffy is equal to one one hundred thousand billion billionths of a second according to lexicographers.
• Only one-fifth of the Sahara Desert is sand. The rest of the world's largest desert is barren rock and rubble.
• It takes about four pounds of potatoes to make a pound of potato chips.
• Vincent van Gogh didn't begin to draw until he was 27.
• A pigeon's feathers weigh more than its bones.
• Your lungs use about 12,500 quarts of air each day.
• Wildlife lover John J. Audubon shot as many as one hundred birds a day, using the victims as models for his paintings.
• The inside of a cucumber is 20 degrees (F) cooler than the air temperature on a warm summer day.
• 0 degrees longitude, 0 degrees latitude is in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Africa.
• Aluminum is spelled aluminium in most of the world, and was spelled that way in the United States until 1925.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt always kept a gun under his pillow while he was president.
• Balneology is the science of the therapeutic use of bathing.
• Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is the name of a hill in New Zealand. At 57 letters, it is the longest place name of any English-speaking country. It means "the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knee who slid, climbed, and swallowed mountains, known as land-eater, played on his flute to his loved one."
• According to regulations, a race horse's name can be no longer than 18 letters.
• Thomas Edison preferred Braille to visual reading.
• Comedian Alan King made a record 83 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
• Winston Churchill believed that petting black cats brought him luck.
• Birds have no sweat glands.
• The lens in your eye grows throughout your life, which is why an overwhelming percentage of people suffer from farsightedness as they age.

• There are almost 5000 known species of frogs. They range in size from less than half an inch to nearly a foot long.
• Frogs don't "drink" water--they absorb it through their skin.
• Every species of frog has its own special mating call, made only by the males. the call has two parts--"a whine," which the whole species uses, and a "chuck" which is the individual frog's calling card.
• The Khorat frog has fang-like protrusions and eats insects and birds with its oversized mouth.
• The female Gastric-brooding Frog from Australia, now probably extinct, swallows its tadpoles, which then develop in the stomach before she spits them out. To do this, the Gastric-brooding Frog must stop secreting stomach acid and suppress peristalsis.
• The skin of some poisonous frogs is so toxic that it will kill almost any creature that bites it or absorbs the chemicals secreted by its skin. Only specialized predators can withstand the toxins.
• The Golden Poison Frog (Columbia) is currently considered the most poisonous vertebrate in the world. The local indigenous people soak their arrows and darts in the poison secreted by this frog and say the poison's killing effect lasts for over two years.
• The Cane Toad in Australia secretes a human brain chemical (DMT) that local residents use to get high.
• The Wood Frog can be found above the arctic circle. It can literally survive being frozen for two weeks at a time.
• Frogs, a 1972 horror flick starring Ray Milland. "Thousands of frogs overrun a remote, inhabited island off the southern US coast, devouring any human who gets in their way."
• I also rather enjoy this oddball documentary: Cane Toads: An Unnatural History

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again.
Background: According to Katherine Thomas in The Real Personages of Mother Goose, this rhyme is 500 years old and refers to King Richard III of England. In 1483 his reign ended when he fell from his mount during battle; he was slain as he stood shouting "My kingdom for a horse!" Richard's fall made him Humpty Dumpty. Originally the last line was "Could not set Humpty up again"--which can be interpreted as either putting him back on his horse, or back on the throne.

Old King Cole was a very old soul, a merry old soul was he. He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl, and he called for his fiddlers three.
Background: There was actually a King Cole in Britain during the third century. No one knows much about him, but historians agree that he's the subject of the poem. Of interest: There's a Roman amphitheater in Colchester, England which has been known as "King Cole's Kitchen" for centuries.

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb and he pulled out a plum, and said "What a good boy am I."
Background: In the mid-1500s, when King Henry VIII was confiscating lands belonging to the Catholic church, the Abbot of Glastonbury--the richest abbey in the British kingdom--tried to bribe the monarch by sending him a special Christmas pie. Inside the pie, the abbot had enclosed the deeds to 12 manor houses. The courier who delivered the pie to the king was the abbot's aide, Thomas Horner. (The name "Jack" was contemporary slang for any male, particularly a knave). On his way, Horner stopped, stuck in his hand, and pulled out one of the deeds from the pie--a plum called Mells Manor. Shortly after, Horner moved into Mells, and his family still lives there today (although they deny the story).

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick.
Background: For centuries, jumping over a candlestick was a method of fortune-telling in England. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes: "A candlestick with a lighted candle was placed on the floor and if, when jumping over it, the light was not extinguished, good luck was supposed to follow during the coming year."

Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down
Background: According to James Leasor in The Plague and the Fire, this "had its origin in the [London Plague of 1664]. Rosy refers to the rosy rash of plague... The posies were herbs and spices carried to ward off the disease; sneezing was a common symptom of those close to death. In the Annotated Mother Goose, the authors note that the third line is often given as a sneezing noise ("At-choo, at-choo"), and that " 'We all fall down' was, in a way, exactly what happened."

But Who Was Mother Goose?

No one's quite sure. There are at least two possibilities, according to The Annotated Mother Goose:

• Charles Perrault, a French writer, "published a collection of fairy tales called Tales of My Mother Goose in 1697. The book contains eight stories: 'Little Red Riding Hood,' 'Bluebeard,' 'Puss In Boots,' " etc.
• But many scholars maintain that Mother Goose was actually one Elizabeth Foster Goose, of Boston, Mass. In 1692, when she was 27, Elizabeth married a widower named Isaac Goose and immediately inherited a family of 10 children. One of her step-daughters married a printer several years later and the printer enjoyed listening to "Mother Goose" recite old rhymes to the younger children. In 1719, he published a collection called Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose's Melodies.

• Albert Einstein's last words were spoken in German. Since the attending nurse did not know the language, we'll never know what he said.
• A termite can live thirty years.
• A snail takes 115 days to travel a mile.
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the result of a Robert Louis Stevenson dream. Stevenson claimed that he was able to dream plots for his stories whenever he felt like it.
• Teddy Roosevelt had four sons. Three of them were killed serving their country during wartime.
• A giraffe can kill a lion with one kick.
• Pablo Picasso's real name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad.
• An electric eel will short-circuit itself if it is put into salt water.
• The face of comic book hero Captain Marvel was modeled after Fred MacMurray.
• English writer Ben Johnson was buried standing up in Westminster Abbey because he couldn't afford normal grave space.
• Octavio Guillen and Adriana Martinez were married in Mexico city in 1969 after a world record engagement of 67 years.
• Oh! Susanna earned composer Stephen Collins Foster the grand sum of fifty dollars.
• C.W. Post introduced coupons in 1895 when he offered one cent off to kick off sales for his new cereal, Grape Nuts.
• There were no significant historical accomplishments during the Millard Fillmore administration. He did, however, negotiate a deal with Peru over the use of guano--bird droppings.
• A duck frequently swims while sleeping.
• The Statue of Liberty's pedestal was more expensive than Lady Liberty herself.
• Tooth decay is the most widespread noncontagious disease in the world.
• According to an old English time unit, one moment is 90 seconds.
• The average office chair on wheels travels about eight miles per year.

• An ant has five noses.
• The T.I.D. often found on a doctor's prescription stands for "ter in die," a Latin term meaning "three times a day."
• The home team must provide a referee with 24 footballs for each National Football League game.
• In colonial Boston, schoolteachers earned about seven cents a day.
• Giraffes can not swim.
• The real name of television's Mr. Ed was Bamboo Harvester.
• Jim Hogg, the governor of Texas from 1891 to 1895, named his only daughter Ima Hogg.
• Actor Stewart Granger was born James Stewart.
• Cats can't taste sweet things.
• The Bank of America was originally called The Bank of Italy.
• Lloyd Copeland is credited with the initial development of the microwave oven. His granddaughter is Linda Ronstadt.
• An adult's skin weighs approximately six pounds.
• Only right-handed players can play polo according to the U.S. Polo Association. To date, only 3 players on the world circuit are left-handed.
• France's King Louis XIV bathed only once a year.
• Jimi Hendrix was working on the song The Story of Life the night he died.
• Most surveys say that the least-liked vegetable is the turnip.
• Most snakes can go without eating for a whole year.
• Tombstones were first placed on plots over the dead so that the deceased could not come out and harm the living.
• Hockey is called shinny in Scotland.
• There are 88 keys on a piano--52 white and 36 black.