Edit: Contest closed. Winners are:

Stevedog13 and Mrstarker

Seasonal salutations, all! I'm giving away two games. In order to win one (or maybe even both), all you have to do is teach me something I don't already know. The first game goes to the first person that teaches me something. The second will go to whichever new knowledge imparted that I find to be the most ineteresting. So, one objective prize and one arbitrary prize. Fair enough? But there are some rules:

1. Keep it simple and brief. I have to be able to assimilate what you are telling me without having to ask a bunch of follow up questions. No Sheldon-esque diatribes about string theory. In fact, your lesson can be a simple sentence for al I care. I just want to learn something I did not know.

2. It must be fact, not opinion. For example, telling me that "such and such political party is made up of deranged lunatics" may be somewhat entertaining, but it's not fact.

2A. Also, your lesson must be verifiable. In other words, I should be able to confirm the veracity of your statement, lesson, whatever with a simple wikipedia or google search. Teliing me that your middle name is Percival may also be somewhat entertaining and, indeed, true. But I have no way of proving it.

3. Keep it clean. While the amplitude of the curves of your favorite...*ahem*...starlet could be factual, and something which I don't know but would be happy to verify, we have to remember that young 'uns could stumble onto this (no matter how remote that possibility may seem).

4. The winner(s) get the game(s) of his/her/their choice from the catalogue.

5. Multiple entries are allowed.

6. The contest will remain open for a minimum of 24 hours (could be longer depending on when I check back in).

7. Yes, the first thing I'm taught could indeed be the most interesting. So, theoretically, one entry could capture both prizes. The total number of entries and their nature will go a long way to determining that.

That's it. Start teaching.

Banana is a radiation measurement unit.

And another interesting fact, I'm not entering the competition, but I always love to mention this ;)

Where i live translates roughly as "field of boars"

Standard movies are recorded at 24 frames per second while a standard television show is recorded at 30FPS. This means that TV offers a better picture quality but is less cinematic in feel. This is also why critics are hating on The Hobbit, because it was filmed in 48FPS and it looks more like a news show than an actual movie. The more a film looks like real life, which would be about 60FPS, the more "fake" it looks.

Abraham Lincoln is the only U.S. President with a U.S. patent.

Abraham Lincoln is the only U.S. President to be featured on U.S. currency while still alive.

The country that consumes the most beer annually is China.

The only animal besides human beings with knees is the elephant.

The Baltimore Ravens are the only professional sports team in North America named after a poem.

The largest human organ is the skin.

Bengals are the only domesticated cat immune to feline lukemia.

Martin van Buren is the 1st U.S. President to actually be born IN The United States.

The youngest President of the U.S. was Teddy Roosevelt. The youngest President to be elected President was J.F.K..

The shortest term ever served by a U.S. President was six months, William Henry Harrison.

Isle Royale possesses the largest inland freshwater lake of any other island on the planet.

While I would like to win some games, it's actually more important for me to get some of this useless crap off my mind!

Al Capone's business card said he was a used furniture dealer

The house fly hums in the middle octave key of F

The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards."

The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television were Fred and Wilma Flintstone

If you fart constantly for 6 years, 9 months and 23 days you would produce enough gas to explode an atomic bomb

A video card and other random electronics can be fixed by putting them in an oven


Disclaimer - It works but it's not recommended

Not entering myself due to chrismas sale backlog reasons just something i found to be interesting.

The fountain pen was invented by a romanian:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrache_Poenaru



Hitler was a jew:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7961211/Hitler-had-Jewish-and-African-roots-DNA-tests-show.html

Did you know... (from a colleague of mine that dropped it into conversation, though a googling seems to verify it) The name Victoria began with our queen. She was apparently the Peaches Geldof of her day, it was not a name until then...

Now this one may well turn out to be an urban myth, in which case - go for your guns boys.

Adolf Hitler wanted to be a painter.
Joseph Stalin, whose real name was Dzhugashvili, wanted to become a priest.
They both failed at school - Hitler during his exams and Stalin couldn't pay for his seminar.

Doh! Thanks Homer!

Some short, but true facts:

There are 18 different animal shapes in the Animal Crackers cookie zoo!
Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second!
The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing card!
There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos!
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off!
The most popular first name in the world is Muhammad!
Forest fires move faster uphill than downhill!
The first product to have a bar code was Wrigleys gum!
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second!
Cat urine glows under a black-light!
Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it's known as Tennessee!
In space, astronauts cannot cry properly, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow down their faces!
There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and month!

Actually "first" Victoria was a Roman goddess of victory, Roman version of Nike.
There is a catholic saint, Victoria from Sabina \ Victoria von Rom, who supposedly lived around 300 AD.
Busted! : )

Another entry:
There was a rooster that lived 18 months despite being decapitated. The rooster would live longer but it choked to death.
Verify: Mike the Headless Chicken

Proteins are nothing more than long chains of amino acids. They are built in the cells by what amounts to tiny robots called ribosomes, which painstakingly assemble the protein one amino acid at a time, like threading beads onto a string.

Something simple I just recently found out:

You only use one nostril, when you breathe normally through your nose. And you switch it every few hours.

Edit: typo

It is physically impossible to sneeze and fart at the same time, you'll blow your asshole out!

Okay I can't prove that one, sorry.