Are these "amazing" facts true?

Question

I found this page that claim to have amazing but true facts, and I l searched google about some of these to see if they were true, but not so much luck. does anyone here know if these are true?

http://www.topfive.com/arcs/t5050302.shtml

if you know anything, please don't just say they are true or fake, give an explanation and/or website URL or something to back up your knowledge

(mainly the ones about manatees having vocal chords and the recipe in egypt identical to coke)

(*vocal chords to speak like humans)

Thanks people, but I would like an explanation about the egyptian cola drink please

Answer 1

No, these are not all true. I'll point out the false/not-so-true ones and the correct information. As well as where I found the information, if applicable.

*Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.
- Manatees have ears and are capable of hearing sound. Their ears just aren't external like most animals are. It isn't necessary for a manatee to have external ears, as sound travels much faster in water than air, so ear lobes or external hearing appartus are useless. (An interest in marine biology. Until I moved to Indiana, that is! LOL)

* Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.
- Polar bears do not prey on penguins, as they live in entirely different hemispheres. Polar bears are native to the Arctic (North Pole, Nothern Hemisphere), whereas most breeds of penguins live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere (Antarctica, etc.)

* The first McDonald's restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.
- The first McDonald's restaurant didn't open for business until 1955, and that was in Des Plaines, Illinois by Ray Kroc. Their first trademarked sandwich was the Filet-o-Fish and that was introduced in 1964.

http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/mcd_faq/student_research.html
http://www.mcspotlight.org/company/company_history.html

* The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver.
- As far as I am aware, there is no such thing as an "elbow transplant". An elbow replacement, yes, but not an elbow transplant. As far as skin grafting is concerned, it is possible. Cadavers are often used for organ or tissue transplants (called an allograft or allogeneic transplant), when no living relative is able to be a donor.

* The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard.
- You can check here for the inventors and the origins for the "QWERTY" keyboard:

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bltypewriter.htm

*Calvin, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.
-Calvin from the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip was named after John Calvin, the founder of Calvinism. Calvin Coolidge did not have a pet tiger when he was a boy that I know of (did a report on Coolidge in junior high), though he did have a kitten when he was in officed named "Tiger".

http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/characters.phtml

*Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.
-Absolutely false. Just like the old wives tale that if you sneeze with your eyes open the force of the sneeze will cause your eyeballs to pop from their sockets. I've held my nose and covered my mouth with sneezing many times, though it is not recommended. Not because your eyeballs will be blown out, but because the increased pressure could damage your eardrums. Anyone that has ever tried this (unwittingly, like when in a group of people?) will tell you that their ears "pop" and it can be a bit painful.

*When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine.
- Krugerrands were first minted in 1967. Mahatma Gandhi died in 1948. I only know this because I remember a friend debunking some of these "true facts".

* In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.
- WWII took place in 1939, ending in 1945. The first issue of Playboy didn't hit newsstands until 1953. Hef would have just been a teenager when WWII was taking place.

http://www.playboy.com/worldofplayboy/faq/firstissue.html

* Due to the natural "momentum" of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards.
-It has very little to do with the momentum of the ocean, but rather the anatomy of the fish: the shapes of their bodies, the placement of their fins, etc. Puffers, angelfish, butterflyfish, some species of triggerfish, most in the eel family, as well as some others can swim backwards. Generally, most do not or can not (like sharks).

Answer 2

Like Humans Do Chords

Answer 3

The plane trip COULD possibly be longer in one direction than the other due to take off and landing angles required. Two that are blatantly B.S. Playboy magazine was not published until the 1950's...use as propaganda in WWII would not have been possible without a time machine. Polar bears and penguins live at opposite ends of the globe...Polar bears do not prey on penguins.

Answer 4

Tonga has a nine hole golf course and no monkeys.

Manatees and Dugongs have ears. The phrase is "vocal cords" not "vocal chords"

Polar bears don't eat penguins for the simple reason they never meet. Polar bears are in the Arctic while penguins are southern hemisphere birds. In any case penguins range in size from the 40cm little penguin to the 1.2m emperor. Which one is the polar bear supposed to be eating 86 of?

Aeroplanes do not fly like bumblebees.

The typrwriter was not invented by qwert yuiop

I can't be bothered looking at any more, I suggest they are all probably incorrect.

Answer 5

I typed in several of them onto Snopes.com. Nothing came up. I can't believe the one about 1/6th of you life is on Wednesdays. It would be 1/7th of your life.

And it doesn't even sound reasonable that the same flight to/from Amarillo to Louisville would be 3 miles longer going than coming. That doesn't even make sense.

How could ANYBODY know what Labrador Retrievers dream about?

Keyboard being invented by Qwert Yuiop...nope. The type-bar system and the universal keyboard were the machine's novelty, but the keys jammed easily. To solve the jamming problem, another business associate, James Densmore, suggested splitting up keys for letters commonly used together to slow down typing. This became today's standard "QWERTY" keyboard.

Answer 6

I don’t believe any of this. Had any of these ‘facts’ had the least bit of truth to them, they would be much more widely known. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, believe half of what you read and less of what you hear.

You can vote and see some of these ‘claims’ at the source site. Just copy and paste the claim in the search field at the site to vote and see what others have said.

Answer 7

Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.

this is true.
when a person is born deaf they will never learn to talk because, they way a person learns to talk is by mimicking. and if they cant hear they cant learn.

as for the, Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say "gesundheit" to a sneeze was never repealed.
i can not recount hearing that they repealed it. i know it was passed.

Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.
this could be true but you could never find out because the reflex when we sneeze is to close our eyes thats why people said that you could blow out your eyeballs. but what can happen when you sneeze is for you to break one of your ribs

Answer 8

'Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling.'

Impossible to prove because the opinion of someone who tries this should be discarded

Answer 9

Well, all I've read until now are crap so I expect that the rest are crap too....

Answer 10

The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.

the magnetic poles move all the time. It is just coincidence that in most parts of the world, the actual and magnetic poles are more or less in the same direction now.

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The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren't for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.

True, but the lift would be downwards, so it won't be able to do that for long.

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Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.

What does it mean if the vocal cords can produce the sound? The ability to speak language is a function of our brains.

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Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.

There are many variables here that are not stated, but generally it is not true. Many typical email response systems receive many more than a 100 emails in a short timeframe.

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The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.

No. Consult wikipedia for the Basque origin.

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The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard.

Rubbish. The truth is more amazing. The keyboard is designed to slow down typists who type English. The old typewriters got clogged up if to keys in close proximity were striked in close succession.

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Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.

Rubbish. Buildings do not need their content to help them withstand winds.

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actually, I'm getting tired of this. It's all rubbish, and I'm not going to look it all up. You do not have to believe me. You go ahead and act as if there's no bacteria on a dog's butt.