This year Mensa accepted a new youngest member. Three-year-old Mikhail Ali of Bramley, Leeds, England, has an IQ of 137; he’s one of only 30 members under 10.
But he’s not the all-time youngest member — that’s Ben Woods, who was 2 years and 10 months old when he joined in the mid-1990s.
If Wal-Mart were a country, it would have the 33rd largest economy in the world, with a GDP between Ukraine’s and Colombia’s.
The world record for high-speed bicycling keeps going up, of course, but the record for low-speed bicycling has remained unchallenged for 40 years. In 1965, Tsugunobu Mitsuishi of Tokyo, Japan, remained perfectly stationary for 5 hours and 25 minutes.
Kim Peek, the basis for Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film Rain Man, has memorized 9,600 books.
Moscow has the most heavily used metro system in the world, carrying 8-9 million passengers on a normal weekday. It has 170 stations and 12 lines, including an unusual “ring line” that circles the city.
According to legend, this came about when Stalin’s coffee cup left a ring on one of the blueprints. Historians dispute this account — but on maps, the ring line is always printed in brown.
Famous tall women:
Until 1999, Abe Lincoln was the only person to appear on both the front and back of the same United States coin (he’s just barely visible on the back of the penny, sitting in his memorial):
Now George Washington can claim the same honor with the release of New Jersey state quarter, whose reverse shows him crossing the Delaware River:
More than 70 percent of Seinfeld episodes contain a reference to Superman.
The United States sees 1 parachuting fatality per 80,000 jumps. “There are old jumpers and there are bold jumpers,” says a maxim, “but there are no old, bold jumpers.”
The five most expensive items sold on eBay (as of 2002):
An anonymous seller from Brazil once offered a decommissioned aircraft carrier. There were no takers.
