1. Casinos pump extra oxygen onto the gaming floors during the early-morning hours to keep tired patrons from heading off to bed.
False: Pumping oxygen or anything else into a casino to make people gamble would be a felony
2. Gamblers should avoid playing machines that have recently paid out a jackpot.
False: The machines operate on a random basis. The chances of hitting a jackpot are the same on the play after the machine hits as they were before the machine hit.
3. A policeman promised a waitress half the winnings from his lottery ticket. All the numbers came up, and he kept his word by sharing the jackpot with her.
True: Not just the fanciful plot of the Nicolas Cage movie It Could Happen To You, this did happen to one lucky Yonkers plate-slinger back in 1984.
Phyllis Penzo was a waitress at Sal’s Pizzeria in Yonkers, New York, for twenty-four years. During that long tenure, she saw nice customers, difficult customers, generous tippers, and skinflints. But Robert Cunningham, a police detective from nearby Dobbs Ferry, was in a class by himself. Cunningham gave Penzo a tip of $142,857.50 a year for twenty years.
4. Tourists who have taken rocks from Hawaiian beaches have returned them in hopes of ending streaks of bad luck.
True: Hawaiian legend - anyone that removes a piece of rock from the Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park will incur the wrath of the Godess Pele. Supposedly terrible curses follow those that do prompting them to soon abandon the rock(s) in interest of self-preservation. Legend has it that Pele, goddess of fire and volcanoes, is so angered when the rocks (which she sees as her children) are taken from her that she exacts a terrible revenge on the thief. She is especially protective of volcanic rock and sand, two items tourists almost unthinkingly pocket as mementos of their vacations. After all, who would miss a rock?
Pele, apparently. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and far too many hotels to name receive a never-ending stream of packages containing sand, shells, and rocks from guilty-minded vacationers who are intent upon reversing their sudden downpours of bad luck. Many of these returns are accompanied by notes begging forgiveness of the goddess or detailing litanies of calamities that have befallen these casual purloiners:
"Please take this sand and put it back somewhere on your island. I have had very bad luck since it came into my life and I am very sorry I took it. Please forgive me and I pray that once I send it back where it comes from, my bad luck will go away. "
5. Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine.
True: Coca-Cola was named back in 1885 for its two "medicinal" ingredients: extract of coca leaves and kola nuts. Just how much cocaine was originally in the formulation is hard to determine, but the drink undeniably contained some cocaine in its early days. Coca-Cola didn’t become completely cocaine-free until 1929.
6. Chewing gum takes seven years to pass through the human digestive system.
False: This oft-repeated claim may stem from genuine confusion over a term commonly applied to chewing gum: indigestible. Although gum resists the body’s efforts to break it down (hence the ‘indigestible’ designation), it does not linger in the stomach. Gum is eliminated as human waste in the same way and at the same rate as any other swallowed matter. Granted, it comes out the far end relatively unchanged by the trip, but it does come out on schedule.
7. Saltpeter is secreted in the food or drink of enlisted men.
False: There’s no proof potassium nitrate (also known as saltpeter) has any effect on libido, plus or minus, so there would be nothing to be gained from such a doctoring of edibles. Yes, saltpeter has long rumored to be an anaphrodisiac, a substance that reduces sexual drive. But it’s all rumor and no fact.
8. On average, men think about sex every seven seconds.
False: Depending on which version you’ve encountered, the amount of time between naughty male thoughts will be stated differently, with "every three minutes," "every eight seconds," and "every fifteen seconds" giving "every seven seconds" a run for its money as the top finisher in this category. The number itself doesn’t matter; it’s the aura of authority with which the claim is invariably stated, as if this were an undisputed fact backed by scientific research.
Though steamy-minded men might be a nice concept to be enthralled by, the theory doesn’t hold up. According to the Kinsey Institute’s FAQ, "54% of men think about sex every day or several times a day, 43% a few times per month or a few times per week, and 4% less than once a month." Though no one can swear to how often a particular thought flashes through any one guy’s head, it’s pretty clear from the Kinsey statement that the majority of the gender is not being overcome with naughty imaginings every seven seconds, as slightly less than half of them don’t think about sex even as much as once a day.
Why is this baseless belief as prevalent as it is? Its popularity stems in part from what is widely believed about men: that their behaviors are more sexually motivated than those of women, with this heightened impetus being attributable to how males of our species are physically wired rather than to matters of conscious choice or societal conditioning. A statistic of this nature works to confirm that assumption by overlaying a patina of faux science onto the "Men think of nothing but sex, sex, sex!" caricature we’ve become deeply enamored of.
9. Graham crackers were named for a man who believed unhealthy diet led to sexual excess.
True: The Reverend Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister who became a social reformer and a ferocious advocate of healthful living, is the man who put the ‘graham’ into the treat we now know and love as graham crackers. Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) believed physical lust was harmful to the body and caused such dire maladies in the sexually overheated as pulmonary consumption, spinal diseases, epilepsy, and insanity, as well as such lesser ailments as headaches and indigestion. He also thought too much lust could result in the early death of offspring, who would have been conceived from weakened stock.
How did you do?
By the Way… check out http://www.snopes.com for more trivia fun.
To say that I was puzzled would have been an understatement.