Weird Facts and Trivia

[Raffine]

Sales of the Ford Pinto were a disaster in Brazil. Pinto was Brazilian slang for "small male genitals". They had to completely rebadge all the cars with a new name 'Corcel', which means horse.

The damned things still exploded when smacked from the rear, though.

[ghouck]

Funny thing about the Pinto though, it SHOULD have been one of the SAFEST rides on the road. It was designed with the very first airbags in mind, a bag-lined puncture-resistant fuel tank, and crumple-zone technology which would have eliminated the 'doors being jammed after collision' scenario, all of which were not on the end product, mostly due to cost restraints.

[ER]

Tests have shown most people mistake thirst for hunger.

[ER]

It's said "Polish" is the only word in the English language that you can change from a verb to a noun by capitalizing the first letter.

[Wag]

You are 12 times more likely to die if you live in a soap opera village/town.

In 1995 the Institute of Food Research in Norwich spent £200,000 on examining why cornflakes and other cereals became soggy in milk.

[ER]

Weird Fact One: In the combined eleven months of filming HBO's Rome and Rome Season Two at Italy's famed Cinecitta Film Studios, and in the reported nine months of filming Gangs of New York on the same massive lot, no one was ever hit by lightning, but in the relatively brief three months it took to film Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, shot on the same grounds, both the actor who played Jesus, Jim Caviezel, and the film's assistant director, Jan Michelini, were in separate incidents during production struck by lightning.

Weird Fact Two: About six years ago, Jewish scientists in Italy learned to control the weather...