Baloo

I recently got one of those "surprising facts" emails. I hate these for several reasons: they never, EVER validate the claims, people tend to repeat the claims like they are gospel, and the claims are so inconsequential that it hardly seems worth the effort to track them down. Well, for my amusement (and yours as well), I've decided to test some of the claims:
2) Coca-Cola was originally green.
<a href="http://www.snopes2.com/cokelore/green.htm" target="_blank">Wrong</a>

3) Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

Wrong.

Snopes was of no use in verifying this "fact", and Google does nothing but prove that A LOT of people have heard and repeated this claim.

Investigating for myself, I found the following (actual) facts:
1) The US treasury printed 8.0 Billion bills in 2001, worth $70.2 Billion.
2) Since it's original release in 1935, 250 million Monopoly Games have been sold.
3) Each game contains $15,140. Since each player begins with $1,500, spread over 27 bills, we will assume that the $15,000 is spread over about 270 bills (this is likely an overestimate).

I was unable to find actual annual Monopoly game sales. However, the average number of game sales per year since 1935 is 3.7 million games per year. For an upper bound, I assume that 80% of the sales occured in the last 20 years, and get a result of 10 million games per year. This gives a resulting range of $56 - $150 billion/year of Monopoly money. In this context, it seems quite possible that the dollar value of the daily production of monopoly dollars COULD exceed that of the US Treasury.

But, by these standards, if I write "100 BILLION DOLLARS" on a scrap of paper, lable it "Infidel Money", I've beaten BOTH Monopoly and the US Treasury (for this year's production, that is). The more pertinent statistic, obviously, is the number of bills produced. And here is where the US Treasury wins, hands down. Even at the high-end estimate of 10 million games per year, and a likely overestimate of 270 bills per game, Parker Bros only produces 2.7 billion bills per year; about a third of the current production of the US Treasury (and probably significantly less).

11. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

This one is actually a subtle blonde joke, the assumption being that zinc and copper are associated with darker hair colors...

11. The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

Wrong.

From <a href="http://www.sexualrecords.com/WSRprev.html" target="_blank">this site</a>:
12. The youngest pope was 11 years old.

Wrong.

From <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02429a.htm" target="_blank">The Catholic Encylopedia</a>:
(emphasis mine)

17. If a statue of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle. If the horse has one front leg in the air the person died as a result of wounds received in battle. If the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes

Wrong. I won't waste time finding references on the web, as I recently watched a documentary on Civil War artifacts, in which this myth was specifically brought up, and refuted through demonstration (there is not even a slight correlation between horse stance and cause of death in these statues).

Okay, that's about all the time I have...

Sojourner553

Thanks.

I recently got this pack of lies through the internet from a relative. They had BELIEVED it was true of course!!!


***************PACK OF LIES*******************

Subject: Enron and the White House



Certainly there is a political dimension here.
Enron's chairman did meet with the president and the vice president in the Oval Office.
Enron gave $420,000 to the president's party over three years. It donated $100,000 to the president's inauguration festivities. The Enron chairman stayed at the White House 11 times.
The corporation had access to the administration
at its highest levels and even enlisted the Commerce and State Departments to grease deals for it.
The taxpayer-supported Export-Import Bank subsidized Enron for more than $600 million in just one transaction.
BUT...the president under whom all this happened wasn't George W. Bush.


It was Bill Clinton.

If you go to this website, you will see that Enron gave $175,699 to the Dems and more than ten times this amount --- $1,836,865 to the Republicans.


<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/enron_indiv.asp" target="_blank">http://www.opensecrets.org/alerts/v6/enron_indiv.asp</a>

As for the myth that Lay spent the night at the White House under George Bush:

Spinsanity debunked the story (it turns out Lay stayed overnight during the White House term of George H.W. Bush) and the Daily Howler traced it to the Drudge Report (and along the way pointing out there is only one documented instance of Lay playing golf with Bill Clinton, portrayed by conservatives as an example of the alleged coziness between Enron and Clinton, and the foursome also included former Republican President Gerald Ford.)


Sojourner

Babylon Sister

Lay was under George Bush at the White House? Does anyone eles's mind reel at the implication?

Gooch's dad

A girl less than 6 years old delivered a baby? 5 yrs 7 months...she conceived when she was FOUR? Now THAT I find seriously difficult to believe.

case

Umm...wouldn't the youngest father be the father of the baby to the youngest mother? <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

case

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Nevermind...

Marduk

"Umm...wouldn't the youngest father be the father of the baby to the youngest mother?"

No. The father could have been a 60 year old preist!

case

Now that's funny. Actually, not really.

Amen-Moses

She suffered from an accelerated growth disorder, i.e she ages faster than normal. A rare condition but a nasty one.

The youngest "normal" mother that I know of was a 9 year old back in Victorian Britain, she conceived at 8 (she was working as a prostitute btw) and gave birth normally, IIRC she went on to have a very large family.

Amen-Moses