Frank Baum named "Oz" after a file cabinet in his office. One cabinet was labeled "A to N," and the second was labeled "O to Z."

Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a policeman's tie.

Franklin Pierce is the only President to have said "I promise" instead of "I swear at his Inauguration. He did it for religious reasons.

Franz Ferdinand was killed.. remember that the guys death partly caused the WWI. Anyway, his death was almost unavoidable. After an attempted assasination using a bomb failed, (because the bomb hit the rear mud flap of the car Ferdinand was in and bounced away) authorities decided to change the route of Ferdinands tour... but failed to inform the driver of the car. And so, unfortunately, at one stage, the driver took a wrong turn and drove into an alley. While reversing out, Princip (killer) came and shot Ferdinand and his wife at a distance of 4-5 feet killing them. Ferdinand brought his wife to Serejavo to celebrate their anniversary.

Frederic Remington's sculpture The Bronco Buster has mistake in it: the cowboy is wearing his spurs upside down.

Frederic-August Bartholdi sculpted The Statue of Liberty.

Frederick the great had his coffee made with champagne and a bit of mustard.

French composer Erik Satie holds the record for shortest and longest composition in the world. His piano piece Vexations lasts for just under a minute. However, Satie states in the score that it should be played 840 times in succession a nonstop playing time of 14 hours.

French was the official language of England for over 600 years.

Fried chicken is the most popular meal ordered in sit-down restaurants in the US. The next in popularity are: roast beef, spaghetti, turkey, baked ham, and fried shrimp.

Fried cockroach with garlic is used as medicine for the common cold

From 13th June'1948 to 1st June'1958 a citizen of Los Angeles hiccoughed 160,000,000 times. People sent him 60,000 suggestions for cures.

From 1836 to 1896, the Red Flag Act in England required that any self-propelled vehicle be preceded by a man carrying a red flag by day and a red lantern by night. In effect, this limited the speed to four miles per hour and retarded the development of all self-propelled vehicles, including the automobile.

From 70 to 80 percent of all ripe olives are grown in California's approximately 35,000 acres. In the 1700s, Franciscan monks brought olives to Mexico and then into California by way of the missions. The first cuttings were planted in 1769 at the San Diego Mission. Commercial cultivation of California olives began in the late 1800s. Today, anywhere from 80,000 to 160,000 tons of olives are produced in California each year.

From the 1500's to the 1700's, tobacco was prescribed by doctors to treat a variety of ailments including headaches, toothaches, arthritis and bad breath.

From the Middle Ages up until the end of the 19th century, barbers performed a number of medical duties including bloodletting, wound treatment, dentistry, minor operations and bone-setting. The barber's striped red pole originated in the Middle Ages, when it was a staff the patient would grip while the barber bled the patient.

Fuzzy Zoeller defeated Tom Watson and Ed Sneed in the first sudden-death playoff at The Masters in 1979.

G.I. Joe was introduced at the annual American International Toy Fair in New York on Feb. 9, 1964.

Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer are the only angels named in the Bible.

Gabriel, Michael, and Lucifer are the three angels mentioned by name in the Bible.

Gaetano Albert "Guy" Lombardo did the first New Year's Eve broadcast of "Auld Lang Syne," from the Roosevelt Grill in New York City in 1929/1930.

Galileo became totally blind shortly before his death.

Gargling in public is against the law in Louisiana.

Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators where it was first developed.

General Robert E. Lee was not a slaveholder and never believed in slavery. He never believed in secession from the United States and strongly condemned it. He decided to lead the armies of the South because he wanted nothing to happen to his beloved Virginia.

General Stonewall Jackson has two separate burial sites one for his amputated left arm (Fredericksburg, VA) and one for the rest of his body (Lexington, VA). Jackson’s left arm was shattered during the Battle of Chancellorsville by friendly fire and was amputated the next day. He died a week later. (8-1-02)

George Crum invented potato chips in 1853 at the Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs, New York. Crum was part Indian, part black, a former guide in the Adirondacks.

George Hancock invented a new game on November 30, 1887. It was played like baseball, except a broomstick was used for a bat and a boxing glove was the ball. Since the game was played indoors, it was originally called "indoor." Walter Hakanson later renamed it "softball."

George Harrison, with "My Sweet Lord," was the first Beatle to have a Number 1 hit single following the group's breakup.

George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984, wrote under a pen name. His real name was Eric Blair.

George Washington had to borrow money to go to his own inauguration.

George Washington named Washington D.C. "Federal City." It was changed to "Washington D.C." after his death.

George Washington who commanded the Continental Army as a four-star general was promoted posthumously to the position of six-star "General of the Armies of Congress" by an order of Jimmy Carter, who felt America's first President should also be America's highest military official.

George Washington's favorite horse was named Lexington. Napoleon's favorite was Marengo. U.S. Grant had three favorite horses: Egypt, Cincinnati, and Jeff Davis.

George Washington's teeth were actually: carved from animal tusks, some of them were also somebody else's teeth, and some of them were from animals like deer and cales.

Gerald Ford was the only President to have two women attempt to assassinate him. Both attempts were in California in September of 1975. The first attempt was September 6, 1975, by Lynette Fromme who thought she could impress Charles Manson by killing the President. The next attempt was by Sara Jane Moore on September 22, 1975. Her motive was simply that she was bored. John Tyler, joined the Confederacy twenty years later and became the only President named a sworn enemy of the United States.

Gerald Ford, George Bush, Tommy Lasorda, Ted Koppel, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Bill Clinton are all left handed.

German chemist Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus while he was examining urine for a way to turn baser metals into gold.

German chocolate cake did not originate in Germany. In 1852, Sam German developed a sweet baking bar for Baker's Chocolate Co. The product was named in honor of him -Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate.

German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.

Ghandi had the most extras of any movie ever made with about 300,000 people. The German movie Kolberg is second with 187,000.

Ghengis Kahn's first conquered land was an act of retaliation. Kahn sent a group of traders on a peaceful mission to Transoxiana. The governor there beheaded their leader and sent the others back to Kahn with their beards cut off. So Kahn attacked them and continued to onward until most of Asia and Europe were his.

Ghosts appear in 4 Shakespearian plays; Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth.

Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy.

Ginger has been clinically demonstrated to work twice as well as Dramamine for fighting motion sickness, with no side effects.

Giraffes and humans have the same amount of vertebrae in their necks.

Giraffes can last longer without water than a camel

Giraffes have no vocal chords.

Giraffes have the same number of vertebrae in their necks as humans. Their lips are prehensile, their tongues are 21 inches long, and they cannot cough.

Giraffe's tongues are 22 inches long and black with pink dots.

Girls tend to sleep more soundly than boys.

Glenn Miller was the first performer to earn a gold record. He got it for the Chattanooga Choo Choo on February 10, 1942.

Goats do not eat tin cans, as lampooned in cartoons. They nibble at the cans because they're after the glue on the labels.

Goats' eyes have rectangular pupils.

God is not mentioned once in the book of Esther.

Goethe couldn't stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.

Goldfish have a memory span of 3 seconds!

Goldfish have the memory span of about 3-5 seconds, thats why you can leave them in a small jar and they wont get bored and you can also over feed them till they kaput.

Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream.

Golfers use an estimated $800 million worth of golf balls annually.

Gottfried Daimler of Stuttgart, Germany, is generally regarded as the father of the automobile because he was the first to come up with a workable gasoline engine.

Goulash, a beef soup, originated in Hungary in the 9th century AD.

Grand Rapids, Michigan was the first city in the US to put fluoride in their water.

Grapes explode when cooked in the microwave.

Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.

Grasping your ears is a sign of repentance or sincerity in India.

Grasshoppers have white blood.

Great Britain was the first country to issue stamps in 1840.

Greece and Australia are the only countries to participate in all of the modern Olympics.

Greece's anthem has 158 verses.

Greek has over 4 words for love. English has only one. Get my drift?

Greenland has more ice on it than Iceland does. In fact, Iceland has more grass and trees than Greenland does.

Greyhounds are not hyper and do not need constant exercise; they are quite happy occupying space on a couch.

Greyhounds can reach their top speed of forty-five miles per hour in only three strides.

Greyhounds have the best eyesight of any breed of dog.

Grey's Anatomy (the medical book most every doctor, nurse, biologist, etc. is trained on in most every university) was compiled using detailed pictures of dead Jews that Hitler and the 3rd Reich experimented on, most of which where dissected while still alive. Although the medical community knows this fact, they continue using the book due to its detail and real-life pictures.

Grover Cleveland's real first name is Stephen, Grover is his middle name.

Guinness Stout served in England is brewed in Ireland, and Guinness Stout served in Ireland is brewed in England.

Gunsmoke debuted on CBS-TV in 1955, and went on to become the longest-running (20 years) series on television.

Gustave Eiffel, the builder of the Eiffel Tower, also built a dam in Russia, a church in the Philippines, locks for the first attempt at the Panama Canal, and designed the right arm and full steel structure supporting the Statue of Liberty.

Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of the four Presidents on Mount Rushmore, died a few months before the project was completed. It took him 14 years.

Gweneth Paltrow's nickname for Steven Speilberg is "Uncle Morty."

Hacky Sack was invented by a football player in the mid 1970's who used it to stregthen tendons he had torn in his knee.

Haggis, the national dish of Scotland: take the heart, liver, lungs, and small intestine of a calf or sheep, boil them in the stomach of the animal, season with salt, pepper and onions, add suet and oatmeal. Enjoy!

Hal in 2001: Space Oddessy got his name from the Producers of the film. HAL are letters before IBM (H comes before I, A comes before B, and L comes before M)

Half of all Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace.

Half of all bank robberies take place on a Friday.

Half of all crimes are committed by people under the age of 18. 80% of burglaries are committed by people aged 13-21.

Half of the entire species of Chameleons occur only in Madagascar, the rest mostly in Southern Africa.

Halfway, Oregon temporarily changed its name to half.com as a publicity stunt for the web site of the same name.

Hamburgers are named after the city of Hamburg, Germany where the serving of hamburgers first became popular.

Hamlet is the most demanding of Shakespeare’s roles with 1,422 lines or roughly 36% of the total number of spoken lines in the play. Hamlet’s role is made up of 11,610 words. The character Falstaff has the most lines of any character in all of Shakespeare’s plays combined with 1,614 spoken lines in three different plays: Henry IV, Part I; Henry IV, Part II; and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Hamsters blink one eye at a time.

Hamsters love to eat crickets.

Hans Christian Andersen, Cher, Tom Cruise, Albert Einstein, Whoopie Goldberg, Greg Louganis, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Gen. George S. Patton, are (were) all dyslexics.

Hans Christian Anderson, creater of fairy tales, was word-blind. He never learned to spell correctly, and his publishers always had errors

Hard Bean means the coffee was grown at an altitude above 5000 feet.

Harley Proctor found the name "Ivory" for his soap in the Bible. He was in church reading the line, "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad." The original name of the soap was P&G White Soap.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published March 20, 1852. It was the first American novel to sell one million copies.

Harrison Ford is the only actor whose ten highest grossing movies have each earned at least $200 million.

Hartford, Connecticut, has made it illegal to educate dogs.

Harthahorne City Ordinance, Section 363, states that it shall be unlawful to put any hypnotized person in a display window.

Harvard University's original name was Cambridge. It only changed when John Harvard donated 400 books to the school.

have to be at least 58.5 inches to be an astronaut. (Click here)

Have you ever questioned your sanity? You have good reason to. Did you know that one out of every four people has some sort of pychological 'problem'?

Hawaii is the only state of the United States in which coffee is commercially grown. Hawaii features an annual Kona Festival, coffee picking contest. Each year the winner becomes a state celebrity. In Hawaii coffee is harvested between November and April.

Hawaii is the only US state that grows cacao beans to produce chocolate.

Hawaii is the only US state that grows coffee.

Hawaii officially became apart of the US on June 14, 1900.

Head lice actually prefer to live on clean heads, not dirty ones.

Heart-attacks are more common among men because they cry less frequently than women.

Heat is better retained in moist air than in dry air,which is why tropical nights are warm and desert nights are cold.

Heavyweight tire manufacturer Goodyear is in no way affiliated with Charles Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber. They merely admired his inventiveness and his process that was so easy to duplicate that competitors simply stole it.

Hedenophobic means fear of pleasure.

Hedgehogs have the most similar fingerprints to humans

Henri Matisse's Le Bateau hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art for 47 days in 1961 before someone noticed it was upside down.

Hens can distinguish between all the colors of the rainbow.

Here are the odds of rolling various combinations with two dice in a game of Craps:

Heroin is processed from morphine, a naturally occurring substance extracted from the seedpod of the Asian poppy plant. Heroin usually appears as a white or brown powder. Street names for heroin include "smack," "H," "skag," and "junk." Other names may refer to types of heroin produced in a specific geographical area, such as "Mexican black tar."

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

Hershey's Kisses®™ are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

Hills Brothers Ground Vacuum Packed Coffee was first introduced in 1900.

Hippopotamus means river horse.

Hippopotamuses actually sweat blood. Their skin contains a great amount of an oily substance that exudes from the pores, and when the beast perspires a little blood gets mixed in.

Hippopotamuses break wind through their mouths.

Hippopotamuses do 80% of their vocalizations underwater.

Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words

Hippos have killed more than 400 people in Africa more than any other wild animal.

Hippos kill more people in Africa when compared to crocodiles.

Hitler and Napoleon both had only one testicle.

Holland has the densest population per square mile of any nation in the world.

Holyoke, Massachusetts, makes it unlawful to water your lawn when it is raining.

Homosexuality remained on the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental illnesses until 1973.

Hondas and Toyotas are the most frequently stolen passenger cars because they have parts that can be readily exchanged between model years without a problem.

Honey is the only food that doesn't spoil.

Honeybees have a type of hair on their eyes

Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

Hong Kong has the world's largest double-decker tram fleet in the world.

Honorificabilitudinitatibus is the longest word consisting entirely of alternating vowels and consonants.

Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman and Nixon's Secretaries of State have won Noble Peace Prizes.

Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Horses can sleep while standing upright.

Hostess Twinkies were invented in 1931 by James Dewar, manager of Continental Bakeries' Chicago factory. He envisioned the product as a way of using the company's thousands of shortcake pans which were otherwise employed only during the strawberry season. Originally called Little Shortcake Fingers, they were renamed Twinkie Fingers, and finally "Twinkies."

Hot water weighs less than cold water for a given volume.

Houseflies hum in the key of F.

Housefly's regurgitate food and eat it again every time they eat

Houston's Bob Watson scored Major League Baseball's 1,000,000th run on May 4, 1975.

How many American presidents are not buried in the United States? Six. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Howard Taft was the first president to throw out the first pitch at a MLB game.

Howdy Doody had 48 freckles.

Howler monkeys are the noisiest land animals. Their calls can be heard over 2 miles away.

Hugh "Ward Cleaver" Beaumont was an ordained minister.

Hugh Jackman went through approximately 700 claws as the part of Wolverine in X-Men.

Human babies are born 2 months prematurely for our size and lifespan, to accomodate for the fact that we have large brains during birth. (Got this off my lecture).

Human beings can't smell or taste a substance that is not soluble. On a dry tongue, sugar has no taste. In a dry nose, the smell of a flower would not be noticed. Anything to be smelled must float in the air.

Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.

Human teeth are almost as hard as rocks.

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete. Wow... utterly amazing huh

Human thighbones are as strong as concrete.

Humans are the only animals that can blush.

Humans are the only animals that copulate face to face.

Humans are the only animals that use a smile as an emotional response.

Humans are the only primates that don't have pigment in the palms of their hands.

Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14 and crayfish have 200.

Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin.

Humans shed and re-grow outer skin cells about every 27 days almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime.

Humans use a total of 72 different muscles in speech.

Humming birds are the only birds that can fly backwards

Hummingbirds are the smallest birds so tiny that one of their enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.

Hummingbirds can't walk.

Humpback whales are the only ones that use bubbles to help capture their prey. The bubbles trap fish in a spot for feeding whales.

Humphrey O'Sullivan invented the rubber heel because he was tired of pounding the pavements of Boston looking for a job.

Hungarian brothers George and L"szlo Biro invented the ball point pen in 1938.

Hydroponics is the technique by which plants are grown in water without soil.

Hydroxyzine (a prescription drug) is the longest containing "x-y-z" in exact order. Next in line line is xyzzors, a scientific name for a nematode worm in biology.

Hyenas can comsume prey carrying anthrax without contracting the disease itself

Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.

IBM introduced their first personal computer in 1981.

IBM's motto is "Think". Apple later made their motto "Think different".

Iced coffee in a can has been popular in Japan since 1945.

Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.

If a child burps during a church service in Omaha, Nebraska his or her parents may be arrested.

If a crocodile loses his teeth it will always grow new ones to replace them.

If a person has two thirds of their liver removed through trauma or surgery, it will grow back to the original size in four weeks time

If a person were to ask what is the most northern point in the United States, the most Southern point in the United States, and so on, 3 of the 4 compass directions are located in alaska. North East and West

If a shark's mouth is open to long it will suffocate.

If a small amount of liquor were placed on a scorpion, it would instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

If a statue in the park 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.

If a substance is burned and all of the results of its burning (smoke, ash, soot and gas) are captured and weighed, they will be a little heavier than the original substance because they have been combined with oxygen.

If all numbers are arranged in alphabetical order, "eight" would be the first number. "Zero" would be the last number.

If all the gold in the ocean were mined, every person on Earth would get about 20 kgs of gold each.

If any of the heads on Mt. Rushmore had a body, it would be nearly 500 feet tall.

If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be 39-23-33.She would stand seven feet two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal humans neck.

If hot water is suddenly poured into a glass that glass is more apt to break if it is thick than if it is thin. This is why test tubes are made of thin glass.

If it were removed from the body, the small intestine would stretch to a length of 22 feet.

If Monaco's ruling house of Grimaldi should ever be without an heir (male or female), the country will cease to be a sovereign state.

If one pound of spaghetti was layed out in one noodle it would be 300 feet long.

If someone were to capture and bottle a comet's 10,000-mile vapor trail, the amount of vapor actually present in the bottle would take up less than one cubic inch of space.

If Texas were a country it's GNP would be fifth largest of any country on earth.