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Baked beans, Catherine II of Russia, IRS

Every hour 38.5 tons of baked beans are eaten in Great Britain. The average Briton eats four times as many baked beans as the average American. It is the Irish, however, and not the Britons who eat the most baked beans per capita; an impressive 12 lb. 5 oz. every year.

According to research carried out in 1936, if you attach a false mustache on to the face of a wild female woodpecker, a male woodpecker will attack her just as if she were a rival male.

Bean, Canada, Brent and Barnacle are all types of geese.

Of all the insects the dragonfly has the best eyesight.

The hippopotamus belongs to the pig family.

By law, in Kansas, you can't drive a buffalo down the public street.

Catherine II of Russia kept her wig maker in an iron cage in her bedroom for more than three years. She didn't want anyone to know her hair wasn't her own.

Colonial American Benjamin Franklin devised the first wet suit for divers as well as a primitive version of today's flippers.

Artichokes, a large perennial plant, are actually flowers. The long leaves of the artichoke plant were used in the medieval era, for medicinal purposes. The Italians started using the artichoke head and heart in dishes as early as 1400. To grab the part of the artichoke you'd want to eat, pick the bulb before it blooms. Then take it home and either bake, boil or steam it.

Clinophobia is the fear of beds.

The search engine Google got its name from the word 'googol' which refers to the number one with one hundred zeros after it.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

The IRS employees tax manual has instructions for collecting taxes after a nuclear war.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Useless Information by William Hartston; www.triviacountry.com; www.triviafool.com; www.huffingtonpost.com; www.funfunnyfacts.com