Fascinating False Facts?

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Viewfromtheside offered fascinating as the weekend theme.  I thought you might like some fascinating facts.  Can you guess which, if any, are true?

• You can’t fold paper more than seven times.  You can, actually, if you are young and determined and rope in your family and a shopping mall.  From Wikipedia:
  

  In January 2002, while a junior in high school, [Britney] Gallivan demonstrated that a single piece of toilet paper, 4000 ft (1200 m) in length, can be folded in half twelve times…Gallivan succeeded in folding a very long sheet of toilet paper in half 12 times. She calculated that instead of folding in half every other direction, the least volume of paper to get 12 folds would be to fold in the same direction, using a very long sheet of paper. A special kind of $85-per-roll toilet paper met her length requirement. Not only did she provide the empirical proof, but she also derived an equation that yielded the width of paper or length of paper necessary to fold a piece of paper of thickness t any n number of times.

• So, proof, if it were needed, that you have to be rich to debunk myths – $85 for a roll of toilet paper!  I know where I wouldn’t be using it.
• Brad Pitt once had a summer job posting warning signs at coal mine entrances
• Milk causes mucus.  But you should still drink it, especially if you’re old and female: lack of calcium causes osteoporosis.
• Elephants are the only mammals who can’t jump.  Not true: rhinos and hippos can’t jump either.  Also sloths, but that’s more a case of disinclination than inability, I’m guessing.
• Anyone convicted of animal cruelty in Sedalia, Missouri, is sentenced to a month’s confinement in the county animal shelter. 
• Haggis was invented in Scotland.  No it wasn’t: we can blame the Scandinavians for that one. 
• Which puts paid to the myth that Vikings were mean – you can’t be mean on disgusting slop.
• No doubt now I’ll get a testy comment from Viv, putting me right on haggis.  You might as well save your fingers, Viv, because I’ll never be convinced.
• Penguins can smell toothpaste from several miles away.
• With the exception of a small 200-square-mile section of Antarctica, every single square kilometer of dry land on the planet has been walked on by at least one human being.  Probably looking for an open public toilet.
• This one is for that notorious plant killer, Sarsm: if you place a fresh Viagra tablet in a houseplant’s soil every six months, the plant will not wilt.
• If a cricket were the size of Mount Rushmore, it could jump to the moon.  But it won’t have to bother: if crickets ever get that big, I suspect we’ll all be living on the moon.
• Frank Sinatra didn’t want to record the song “My Way” but was forced to by his record label.  Don’t you just love the irony?

So tell me: which initial statement is false, and which true?

Who Loves Who? I Do

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Doctor Who started again last week.  Yay! 

The opening two-parter was pretty good, though I thought the bit where Amy said the bit when she was in the bit and Rory and the Doctor thought something other than what it was (don’t want to give too much away in case you haven’t seen it), was a little weak.

Rory is one of my favourite characters.  When he first arrived he seemed rather pathetic, but ever since he became a Roman Centurion and guarded Amy for two thousand years, I’ve liked him.  I’ve got a bloke just like that at home: if I was ever locked up in a place where I couldn’t get out for two thousand years, I know the Hub would be just outside, keeping me safe.  You can’t buy that kind of security.  Or peace from a complaining wife.

The advantage of being locked up for two thousand years is that we wouldn’t keep each other awake with our snoring.  And I’d be bound to lose a little weight. 

I’ll admit, I’m tempted.

Joke 38

An Illinois man left the snow-filled streets of Chicago for a vacation in Florida. His wife was on a business trip and was planning to meet him there the next day.

When he reached his hotel, he decided to send his wife a quick email. Unable to find the scrap of paper on which he had written her email address, he did his best to type it in from memory.

Unfortunately, he missed one letter and his note was directed instead to an elderly preacher’s wife, whose husband had passed away only the day before. When the grieving widow checked her email, she took one look at the monitor, let out a piercing scream and fell to the floor in a dead faint. At the sound, her family rushed into the room and saw this note on the screen:

DEAREST WIFE: JUST GOT CHECKED IN. EVERYTHING PREPARED FOR YOUR ARRIVAL TOMORROW.

P.S. SURE IS HOT DOWN HERE.