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Today, the moon is blue! This month is a blue moon month!

Commonly speaking, we call a moon ‘blue’ when there are two full moons in the same calendar month. This happens every 2.8 years.

An alternative definition declares a moon to be blue when it is the fourth full moon of a season, marked by equinoxes. This definition was quoted in the “Maine Farmers Almanac” in the 1930′s.

Contributed By: Samiksha Singh

Actually , the real figure is fiendishly difficult to gauge, as explained in the Yahoo answer: http://ask.yahoo.com/20061003.html . It is just too difficult to establish an average for a particular country, never mind all the different types of human cultures across the world. So this is as good a guess as any!

A more fun way of putting it is the recent cod-science assertion from the UK:

• A human walks around 900 miles per year!
• The average person consumes 22 gallons of alcohol in a year!
• Therefore, we are doing an average of 41 miles to the gallon!

Good health!

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Coca-Cola was 

originally green.  

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It is impossible to lick 

your elbow. 

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The State with the 

highest percentage of people who walk to work:  

Alaska  

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The percentage of 

Africa that is wilderness: 28% 

(now get this…)  

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The percentage of 

North America that is wilderness: 38% 

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The cost of raising 

a medium-size dog to the age of eleven: 

$ 16,400 

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The average number 

of people airborne over the U.S. in any given 

hour:  

61,000  

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Intelligent people 

have more zinc and copper in their hair..  

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The first novel ever 

written on a typewriter, Tom Sawyer.  

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The San Francisco   

Cable cars are the only mobile National 

Monuments.  

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Each king in a deck 

of playing cards represents a great king from history: 

Spades – King David 

Hearts – Charlemagne 

Clubs -Alexander, 

the Great 

Diamonds – Julius 

Caesar  

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111,111,111 x 

111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987, 654,321  

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If a statue in the park of a person on a horse 

has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. 

If the horse has one front leg in the air, 

the person died because of wounds received in battle. 

If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died 

of natural causes 

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Only two people 

signed the Declaration of Independence    on July 4,   

John Hancock 

and Charles Thomson.   

Most of the rest signed on August 2,  

 but 

the last signature wasn’t added until 5 years later. 

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Q. Half of all 

Americans live within 50 miles of what?  

A.. Their birthplace 

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Q. Most boat owners 

name their boats. What is the most popular boat name 

requested? 

A. 

Obsession  

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Q.. If you were to 

spell out numbers, how far would you have to go until you 

would find the letter ‘A’? 

A. One thousand  

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Q. What do 

bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and laser 

printers have in common? 

A. All were invented 

by women.  

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Q. What is the only 

food that doesn’t spoil? 

A. Honey  

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Q. Which day are 

there more collect calls than any other day of the 

year?  

A. Father’s Day  

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In Shakespeare’s 

time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. 

When you pulled on the ropes, the mattress tightened, 

making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the 

phrase…’Goodnight , sleep tight’ 

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It was the accepted 

practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that   

for a month   

after the 

wedding,  

 the bride’s father would supply his son-in-law with 

all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because 

their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the 

honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon. 

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In English pubs, ale 

is ordered by pints and quarts… So in old England , when 

customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them ‘Mind 

your pints and quarts, and settle down.’ 

It’s where we get 

the phrase ‘mind your P’s and Q’s'  

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Many years ago in 

England ,  

 pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim, or handle  

 of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill , 

they used the whistle to get some service. ‘Wet your whistle’ 

is the phrase inspired by this practice. 

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At least 75% of 

people who read this will try to lick their 

elbow!  

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Whistles were not introduced until the late 1870′s when they became widely available after  Joseph Hudson of the ACME Whistle Company first began to mass produce them for the Metropolitan Police Service.

Some sources state that the first use of a referee’s whistle was in a game between Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Norfolk in 1878; however there was no such fixture that year between these clubs.

Red and yellow cards were introduced by the world football governing body, FIFA, after the infamous Antonio Rattin incident when the Argentinian captain failed to understand that he had been sent off in a match against England at Wembley. The language barrier was clearly a problem in international matches. The referee in that match, Ken Aston came up with the idea while he drove home: ”As I drove down Kensington High Street, the traffic light turned red. I thought, ‘Yellow, take it easy; red, stop, you’re off’.”
The cards were first used in the 1970 world cup finals in Mexico, although their adoption was not universally accepted. Twice in the English football league (in 1980/81 and 1987/88) their use was suspended for a short time.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/The_first_time_red_and_yellow_cards_where_used_in_the_football_league#ixzz1HoYYjOsQ

The clover was used by Patrick  to illustrate the Holy Trinity. He is famous as having allegedly banished snakes from the island of Ireland after they assailed him during a 40 day fast at the top of a hill.

Wikipedia

We tend to think of the Ice Age as being in the distant past, millions of years ago when glaciers covered the planet, scouring out the great glens of the Scottish Highlands, as woolly mammoths roamed the tundra of northern Europe and the Americas. While the last glacial period is in the past, amazingly we are still officially in an Ice Age! We are just in a warm, interglacial phase.

The Earth’s temperature has varied widely and there have been times when there was hardly a trace of any ice even at the poles, while in the glacial periods the whole planet has practically been impacted in a thick icy sheath.  The current intergalcial period begain about 10,000 years ago and allowed the growth of human civilizations as people settled down and agricultural societies developed.

Our planet has probably seen at least 5 major Ice Ages in the past 3 billion years, the first being more than 2 billion years ago and lasted around 220 million years. Each subsequent Ice Age lasted tens of millions of years although temperatures rise and fall during the Ice Age and the current one reached it’s coldest phase about 3 million years ago.

There is still scientific debate surrounding the effect that Ice Ages have had on the flora and fauna of the planet, including human development. There is also much to understand about what causes Ice Ages, with speculation about fluctuations in energy output from the Sun, changes in Earth’s distance from the Sun and geothermal activity inside the planet.