Know It All

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Dumbo the elephant does not talk in the Disney movie "Dumbo” (1941).

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Armadillos can contract leprosy.

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Japanese legend says that a person who folds 1000 origami cranes will have a wish granted.

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Convicted murderer Willie Francis (1930-1947) was sentenced to death in 1946 in Louisiana. However, the electric chair failed to kill Francis because the chair was improperly set up by an intoxicated executioner. Francis was successfully executed the next year in the electric chair.

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British poet Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) had a reputation for his rebellious lifestyle. While attending Trinity College, Cambridge Byron resented the rule that students were not allowed to have pet dogs, so he kept a bear as a pet.

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Parents that earn $70,000 per year or more will spend an average of $269,520 to raise a child from birth through age 17.

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While attending high school in Cleveland, Ohio Bob Hope (1903-2003) had a variety of jobs including shoe salesman, soda fountain clerk and delivery boy. After high school Hope worked as a newspaper reporter and did some amateur boxing under the name Packy East.

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Do you know which continent is the world’s largest? See answer at end.

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The device used at a shoe store to measure the size of a person’s foot and determine their shoe size is called a Brannock Device. It was invented in 1926 by Charlie Brannock (1903-1992) while he worked at his father's shoe store in New York. Brannock used an Erector Set to build the prototype.

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Cher’s full name is Cherilyn Sarkisian Bono (born 1946).

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Rosemary Wells, a former professor at Northwestern University Dental School in Illinois, spent years studying the origin of the Tooth Fairy. She became an expert on the subject and opened the Tooth Fairy Museum in 1993 in Deerfield, Illinois.

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The furthest object in space that is visible to the naked eye is the Andromeda Galaxy. The galaxy is 2.2 million light years away from Earth.

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Charles Bronson (1921-2003) came from a family of 15 children. Richard Burton (1925-1984) was one of 13 children. Perry Como (1912-2001) had 12 siblings.

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The odds of being struck by lightning are one in 10 million. The odds of being hit by a meteorite are one in 200 million.

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RuPaul (born 1960) has gained fame as a male entertainer that dresses, very convincingly, like a woman. In 1995, RuPaul became the first transvestite supermodel when he earned a modeling contract with MAC cosmetics.

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Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum in San Francisco has a unique cable car on display. It is an eight-foot long scale model San Francisco cable car made from 270,836 matchsticks.

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Answer: At 17 million square miles, Asia is the largest continent in the world. It makes up almost one-third of the earth’s landmass.

Know It All is by Kerry McArdle. It runs in the weekend and Wednesday editions of the Daily Journal. Questions? Comments? Email knowitall@smdailyjournal.com or call 344-5200 ext. 114.