Awesome story. Pretty nice work that you won it every time. How big a favorite is 30?

Ulysses S. Grant's first name was Hiram, and Gerry Ford's name was Leslie King Jr.

It's not too hard to work out. The equation for the probability that at least 2 out of N people have the same birthday is just:

1 - (364!/(365^N * (364-N)! ) )

Where the exclamation point denotes a factorial. Essentially, this figures out the probability that no one in a group of N people share the same birthday, and then you subtract it from one. It's only valid for groups smaller than 365 people, but for a group that big, you know the odds that two people share a birthday a priori .

pretty cool!

The guy who provides the voice of Mickey Mouse for Disney is married to the woman who provides the voice for Minnie Mouse.

More gleaned from NPR:

The official state sport of Maryland is jousting. Jousting?

Surely you joust.

Alcohol Measures (From Schott’s Original Miscellany)

Beer

Nip…………1/4 pint
Small……….1/2 pint
Large……….1 pint
Flagon………1 quart
Anker………10 gallons
Tun…………216 gallons

Spirits

Tot [whisky]……....1/6,1/5,1/4, or 1/3 gill
Noggin………………….1 gill
Bottle………………….. 1 & 1/3 pints

[1 gill is ¼ pint]


Also just for fun from the OED - Kakistocracy: The government of a State by the worst citizens.

[also known as a Democracy]


-Zeno

The first time Wendy was used as a girls name was in the story Peter Pan by Barrie. It was previously used as a guys name but not a girls.

The bible is just a glorified story about astrological events.

hardly pointless in the world we live in...

unless you mean its pointless because most people don't accept your statement

Not pointless at all i guess just perhaps meaningless as it falls on deaf ears

What the hell are "astrological events"?

(cue the music from The Age of Aquarius)_

The Virgin Mary is thought to be the culmination of Old Pagan beliefs of the three graces the promiscuous and adventurous Maid, the wise Hag, and the birht given Mother, who doesn't need a baby-daddy. Guess which one was tossed out?

++++

In a fatal car accident, workers use Coca Cola (R) to clean blood off the asphalt.

Smaller ones.

About -400 (or so I'm told).

What do they use if its not fatal?

diet coke?

But how many gallons of spit does one produce?

Clouds cannot travel south southwest.

If you take the first letter of each word in the Monopoly board game instruction manual, they spell out an X-rated sentence.

The Q in Q-tips stands for “quantum,” as the small bit of cotton on the tip contains more atoms than the entire human body.

Whispering instead of talking on cell phones saves significant battery power.

The original title for Catcher in the Rye was Hey, Look, a Carousel!

Reading backwards for twenty minutes burns the same amount of calories as walking a half-mile.

Revolving doors were first invented as a way to keep horses out of department stores.

Peru and the moon weigh the same amount.

When placed in warm milk, raisins re-plump into grapes.

I'm not sure I believe any of these.

I'm trying that raisin one tomorrow...I'm gonna get all scientific-like.

Even if they do swell back up they probably taste like ****.

Did you make ALL of these up? I feel like its only funny if one of them is true. Maybe the reading backwards one. People always underestimate how many calories you actually do burn when expending a LOT of mental effort like learning new material or something challenging like reading backwards. Its probably not quite as much as walking a half-mile but I bet its >100 calories.