THIS MONTH'S INKY BITS
•Antarctica holds about 70 percent of the world’s freshwater in its ice.
• Americans consume approximately six gallons (23 liters) of ice cream per person per year.
• The lifespan of a tastebud is 10 days.
• The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 10 meters (30 feet).
• Each worker bee, in its entire lifetime, produces only one twelfth (1/12) of one teaspoon (4.167 ml) of honey.
• An oyster takes 10 years to produce a pearl that is about the size of a pea.
• Frogs sometimes eat enough fireflies that they themselves glow.
• When you have a black eye, you have a bilateral periorbital hematoma.
• Irving Berlin never learned to read music or to write it. He hummed or sang his songs to a secretary, who wrote them down in musical notation.
• The coffee filter was invented by Melitta Bentz, in Germany in 1908. She pierced holes in a tin container, put a circular piece of absorbent paper in the bottom of it and put her creation over a coffee pot.
• Canadians eat more Kraft macaroni and cheese packaged dinners than any nationality in the world.
• Because of the speed at which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last more than seven minutes and 58 seconds.
• The names of Popeye’s four nephews are Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye and Poopeye.
•Shakespeare spelled his own name several different ways.
• The seed of redwood trees are so small that 123,000 of them weigh scarcely a pound.
• Pandas spend about 12 hours a day eating bamboo.
• Your brain is more active sleeping than it is watching TV.
• Macaws are the largest and most colorful species of the parrot family.
• Christmas trees are edible. Many parts of pines, spruces and firs can be eaten. The needles are a good source of vitamin C. Pine nuts, or pine cones, are also a good source of nutrition.
• When commercial telephone service was introduced between New York and London in 1927, the first three minutes of a call cost $75.
• All porcupines float in water.
• Someone who speaks through clenched teeth is called a dentiloquist.
• Most champion fencers are left-handed.
• Anne Rice has stated that she is afraid of the dark.
• Country star Lyle Lovett is reportedly afraid of cows.
• A ‘jiffy’ is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.