Names and other interesting facts...

Yesterday Mason lined up all of his dinosaurs, along with some creatures that really couldn't, even loosely, be classified that way. He shared with me the names of some of his favorites - names he made up all by himself:

Army
Spikeypoke
Rainby
Thousand Dragon
Sandy
Horny
Scales

Heather is not very keen about one of the names and has tried to get him to change it, but I think he should stick to his guns. Sometimes things grow into a name and just wouldn't be the same without it, you know?

It's like Tyson. We still didn't have a name picked out when Tyson was born. I thought that we could take a few days to think it over but the nurses at the hospital were adamant that we would not be able to leave without first filling out the form with his name. There was a steely glint in their eyes that suggested it wasn't a request, it was an order. We spent a half hour or so back in Heather's room waiting for inspiration to come to us (well, I spent the time wondering about whether or not the nurses were committing the Criminal Code offence of Forcible Confinement by keeping us there). Finally, I was so grumpy and tired of the place, and just wanted to get everyone home, I turned to Ella and asked her to pick which of our choices she liked the best. She choose 'Tyson' and I said 'fine' and wrote it on the silly form, then dropped it off on our way out the doors. For the first little while Heather and I wondered if we had the right name; however, today it is obvious that Tyson is a 'Tyson' and could never be anyhing else.
Wouldn't you say?

The following list has come from the Internet, emails, and stories that I have heard - so they are likely the most accurate information possible. Having said that, I have not corroborated any of these facts. Feel free to share your own interesting points in the comments section!

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for - blood plasma

No piece of paper can be folded in half more than seven times

Donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes

Oak trees do not start producing acorns until they are 50 years of age or older

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise

Walt Disney was afraid of - mice

If you hold a chickens beak to the ground and draw a line out from it in the dirt, the chicken will not move until you break its focus on the line

If you put a dried banana leaf in the path of a boa constrictor, it will never cross it

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet

A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove

Thomas Edison, light bulb inventor, was afraid of the dark

There are more plastic flamingos in the U.S, than real ones

More Monopoly money is printed in a year, than real money printed throughout the world

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave

Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women

Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, "Gadsby", which contains over 50,000 words -- none of them with the letter "E"

The letter "E" is the most commonly used letter in English. "Q" is the least commonly used.

A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court

A duck's quack doesn't echo - and no one knows why

I like the duck one the best because it's kind of mysterious. The only one on the list that I am doubtful of happens to be the one that is easiest to verify - the paper folding one. I think that the paper-folding person should hook up with the gold-flattening person... together they'd prolly be able to work something out.

- C