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10 Random Facts About Tailgating

1. People actually tailgated at Civil War battles

2. Louisiana may consider jambalaya a tailgating must, while those in the Midwest simply can’t go without brats. And the West Coast? Don’t be surprised to see grilled fish or pasta. While dishes may differ from region to region, one thing is the same across the board: beer.

3. The average tailgater spends more than $500 per year on food for tailgating.

4. Wisconsin winters are notoriously brutal, but that doesn’t keep these superfans from setting up shop in the parking lots. In 1967, fan braved a wind chill of 48 degrees below zero to see the Packers defeat the Cowboys in what would become known as the “Ice Bowl.”

5. Tailgating may have began at football games, but the trend is now expanding to include other stadium events. One of the biggest non-sports-related events people tailgate for is concerts. Some, like fans of musician Jimmy Buffet, have extremely elaborate and large tailgating parties before the concert begins (and sometimes afterwards, too).

6. At the Battle of Bull Run in 1861, Union Army supporters showed up with some food and drinks and loudly cheered on the soldiers while hanging out in their carriages. They sang fight songs, took bets on how long the battle would take, and even caused a traffic jam when the battle was over — all classic tailgating practices.

7. Each year between 20 and 50 million Americans tailgate in a stadium parking lot.

8. When it comes to college tailgating, ESPN felt that Louisiana State University boasts the best experience. Other top schools the sports channel lauds for tailgating fun are Ole Miss, Tennessee, Washington, and Penn State.

9. A growing number of tailgaters are taking advantage of technologies that let them watch pre-game coverage, other match-ups, or the game itself from their cars.

10.The Georgia-Florida game in Jacksonville, Florida, is known informally as the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party

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10 Random Facts About Roller Coasters

1. The Fastest
The fastest roller coaster in the world title goes to the newly opened Formula Rossa ride, at Abu Dhabi’s Formula One theme park. The ride launches thrill seekers to a top speed of 149 miles per hour.

2. The Tallest
The Six Flags Great Adventure Park is home to the Kingda Ka roller coaster, which is currently the tallest in the world, reaching a whopping height of 465 feet.

3. The Longest
The longest roller coaster in the world can be found at Japan’s Nagashima Spa Land. The steel dragon 2000 has a track that covers 8133 feet.

4. Highest Number of Inversions
The Colossus roller coaster in Thorpe Park, England, has an incredible 10 inversions.

5. The Oldest
The oldest recorded roller coaster was built in 1904, and now stands in Lakemont Park, Pennsylvania.

6. The Largest Amount
Cedar Point theme park has the highest number of roller coasters, with 17 different rides to choose from.

7. Fun Fact
In 2010, 102 roller coaster enthusiasts set a new world record at Adventure Island in Essex, for the most amount of people riding a roller coaster nude.

8. Longest Time on a Roller Coaster
Richard Rodriguez holds the world record for the longest time spent on a roller coaster, a total of 401 hours.

9. Roller Coaster Science
Most conventional roller coasters do not have engines, instead they work by converting potential energy into kinetic energy.

10. The First Steel Roller Coaster
In 1959, the first ever tubular steel roller coaster was created. The Matterhorn bobsled roller coaster was built for Disneyland, in Anaheim, California.

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10 Random Facts About Quartets

1. In music, a quartet is an ensemble of four singers or instrumental performers; or a musical composition for four voices or instruments.

2. The particular choice and number of instruments derives from the registers of the human voice: soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

3. In the string quartet, two violins play the soprano and alto vocal registers, the viola plays the tenor register and the cello plays the bass register.

4. Another common standard classical quartet is the piano quartet, consisting of violin, viola, cello, and piano.

5. Wind quartets are scored either the same as a string quartet with the wind instrument replacing the first violin (i.e. scored for wind, violin, viola and cello) or are groups of four wind instruments of which the flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon is relatively common.

6. Vocal quartets also feature larger classical compositions, such as opera, choral works, and symphonic compositions.

7. Jazz quartet ensembles are often composed of a “horn” (e.g., saxophone, trumpet, etc.), a chordal instrument (e.g., electric guitar, piano, Hammond organ, etc.), a bass instrument (e.g., double bass or bass guitar) and a drum kit.

8. Some mixed-gender vocal quartets include The Pied Pipers; The Mamas & the Papas; The Merry Macs; and The Weavers.

9. The Kinsey Sicks is a Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet from San Francisco

10. Composers of notable string quartets include Joseph Haydn (68 compositions), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (23), Ludwig van Beethoven (17), Felix Mendelssohn (6), Franz Schubert (15), Johannes Brahms (3), Antonín Dvořák (14), Alexander Borodin (13), Béla Bartók (6), and Dmitri Shostakovich (15). The Italian composer Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805), wrote more than 100 string quartets.

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10 Random Facts About Oxygen

1. Atomic Number: 8

2. Atomic Symbol: O

3. Atomic Weight: 15.9994

4. Melting Point: -361.82 F (-218.79 C)

5. Boiling Point: -297.31 F (-182.95 C)

6. Word origin: Oxygen is a combination of two Greek words: oxys, meaning acid, and genes, meaning forming.

7. Although Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele both discovered oxygen about the same time, Priestly generally gets the credit.

8. Was the atomic weight standard for the other elements until 1961 when it was replaced by carbon 12.

9. It is a odorless, colorless gas has eight protons in the nucleus, and is pale blue in its liquid and solid states.

10. Approximately 2/3 of the mass of the human body is oxygen.

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10 Random Facts About Math

1. Notches (cuts or indentation) on animal bones prove that humans have been doing mathematics since around 30,000 BC.

2. The number 5 is pronounced as ‘Ha’ in Thai language.555 is also used by some as slang for ‘HaHaHa’.

3. Zero ( 0 ) is the only number which can not be represented by Roman numerals.

4. The = sign (“equals sign”) was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing “is equal to” in his equations.

5. 12,345,678,987,654,321 is the product of 111,111,111 x 111,111,111.  Notice the sequence of the numbers 1 to 9 and back to 1.

5. An icosagon is a shape with twenty sides.

7. 2 and 5 are the only primes that end in 2 or 5.

8. From 0 to 1,000, the letter “A” only appears in 1,000 (“one thousand”).

9. Want to remember the value of Pi (3.1415926) in easy way ? You can do it by counting each word’s letters in ‘May I have a large container of coffee?’

10. A palindrome number is a number that reads the same backwards and forward, e.g. 12421.

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10 Random Facts About Lakes

1. The lowest lake in the world is the Dead Sea that borders Israel and Jordan. The surface level of which is 418 metres (1,371 ft) below sea level. It is also one of the saltiest lakes in the world.

2. The highest lake in the world is the crater lake of Ojos del Salado at 6,390 m (20,965 ft) above sea level. The mountain lake sits on the border of Chile and Argentina.

3. The deepest lake in the world is Lake Baikal in Siberia, Russia. It is 1,637 m (5,371 ft) at its deepest point. Excluding the Caspian Sea it is the also the largest lake by volume in the world.

4. The longest lake in the world is Lake Tanganyika in Africa at 660 km (410 mi) it is also the 2nd largest by volume of water and the 2nd deepest.

5. Most freshwater lakes on Earth are found in Northern areas of the Northern Hemisphere, Canada for example is estimated to have around 2 million lakes.

6. Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lake and also has the largest surface area of any freshwater lake in the world at 82,000 km² (31,700 mi²).

7. Finland has the nickname “Land of the Thousand Lakes” as there are over 187,000 lakes in the country.

8. A subglacial lake is a lake that is permanently covered by ice. The largest of these is Lake Vostak in Antarctica.

9. Lakes can form in interesting different ways such as in the craters of volcanoes, by sinkholes in the ground, or even artificially by dams made by man.

10. One of the lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan called Kraken Mare is a massive 388,500 km² (150,000 mi²) making it larger than the Caspian Sea. The liquid is not water though (Titan’s average temperature is -181 °C (-293.8 °F) so water would be frozen), instead it is a lake of liquid gas (methane and ethane).

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10 Random Facts About Kites

1. More adults in the world fly kites than children.

2. There is at least one Kite Festival every weekend of the year in some part of the world.

3. Kite flying was banned in China during the Cultural Revolution, anyone found flying a kite was sent to jail for up to three years and their kites destroyed.

4. Approximately 12 people are killed each year in kiting accidents throughout the world.

5. Each year on the second Sunday of October kite flyers in nearly every country of the World unite and fly a kite to celebrate “One Sky One World”.

6. There are over 50 million kites sold in the USA every year.

7. Some Japanese kites weigh over 2 tons.

8. The world record for the longest ‘kite fly’ is 180 hours, 17 minutes.

9. It is now thought that the first kites flown over 3000 years ago, were made from leaves.

10. In the Orient, kites are given to someone to bring them happiness, good luck, prosperity and cure illness.

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10 Random Facts About Igloos

1. The term “igloo” comes from the Inuit word “iglu” which means “house”.

2. Igloos were usually temporary winter shelters built by Inuit hunters for their families while on a hunting trip.

3. Skilled Inuit hunters could be build an igloo in about an hour.

4. Some igloos would even have windows built from a block of ice or seal gut.

5. An igloo could be any size, but normally, they built them just big enough for the family.

6. Although other countries such as Alaska and Greenland had igloos, the structure was predominantly seen in central and western Canada.

7. Snow and ice work as insulators to trap body heat inside the igloo. Thus, the occupants of an igloo double as a furnace of sorts.

8. The only tools required to build an igloo are a snow spade and a saw. In traditional times these implements would have been fashioned from bone.

9. A full-grown man can stand on an igloo without collapsing it.
10. A properly-built igloo can withstand hurricane force winds on the open snow.

To see a real igloo being built, watch the 1922 silent film documentary “Nanook of the North”.