Moscow has the most heavily used metro system in the world, carrying 8-9 million passengers on a normal weekday. It has 170 stations and 12 lines, including an unusual “ring line” that circles the city.
According to legend, this came about when Stalin’s coffee cup left a ring on one of the blueprints. Historians dispute this account — but on maps, the ring line is always printed in brown.
Famous tall women:
aegrotat
n. a note excusing a student’s sickness
Until 1999, Abe Lincoln was the only person to appear on both the front and back of the same United States coin (he’s just barely visible on the back of the penny, sitting in his memorial):
Now George Washington can claim the same honor with the release of New Jersey state quarter, whose reverse shows him crossing the Delaware River:
More than 70 percent of Seinfeld episodes contain a reference to Superman.
“I remember Tallulah [Bankhead] telling of going into a public ladies’ room and discovering there was no toilet tissue. She looked underneath the booth and said to the lady in the next stall, ‘I beg your pardon, do you happen to have any toilet tissue in there?’ The lady said no. So Tallulah said, ‘Well, then, dahling, do you have two fives for a ten?'” — Ethel Merman
The United States sees 1 parachuting fatality per 80,000 jumps. “There are old jumpers and there are bold jumpers,” says a maxim, “but there are no old, bold jumpers.”
The five most expensive items sold on eBay (as of 2002):
An anonymous seller from Brazil once offered a decommissioned aircraft carrier. There were no takers.
The average Fortune 500 CEO is 6 feet tall — 3 inches taller than the average American man.
Of the 43 U.S. presidents, only five have been more than an inch below average height.
The 2004 tsunami arrives in Thailand. Its total energy equaled about 5 megatons of TNT, more than twice the total explosive energy used in all of World War II, including the two atomic bombs.
