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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. That's where the phrase
"good night, sleep tight" came from.
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- The term "the whole 9 yards"
came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes
on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly
27 feet before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all
their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards".
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- The phrase "rule of thumb"
is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat
your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
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- The name Jeep probably came from the
abbreviation used in the army for the "General Purpose" vehicle,
GP.
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- The first toilet ever seen on television
was on "Leave it To Beaver".
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- It takes 3,000 cows to supply the NFL
with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.
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- Thirty-five percent of the people who
use personal ads for dating are already married.
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- The world's termites outweigh the world's
humans 10 to 1.
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- On average, 100 people choke to death
on ball-point pens every year....so BE CAREFUL!!
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- It was the accepted practice in Babylon
4,000 years ago that for a month after a couple's wedding, the bride's
father would supply his son-in-law with all of the mead he could drink.
Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this
period was called the "honey month" or what 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 to mind their own 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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