100% of all smokers die.

Coffee and Inebriation.Often forced upon the intoxicated on the premise that it aids in sobering up, coffee is of help only in that it takes some time to drink it. And time is the only remedy for too much alcohol in the bloodstream.

What is sometimes called, particularly by those who must deal with drunken drivers, "the great coffee myth" is actually a dangerous bit of folklore; many a driver with half-dozen cups of coffee forced upon him has gone out to die on the highway.

Why is the ocean salty?

The ocean is eventual depository for most of Earth's water. Over the eons of land and ocean formation, dissolved minerals from Earth's crust were washed into the ocean. As time went on, water was continuously evaporating from the ocean, leaving behind mineral salts until they reached their present-day concentrations.

Salt water is roughly 3.5 percent dissolved mineral salts, much ofwhich is sodium chloride, ordinary table salt. Fresh water contains dissolved mineral salts too, but at concentrations too low for us to taste.

Are condemned men freed as a result of mechanical failure?

It is widely believed that if an electric chair or gas chamber should fail to operate, or the rope break during a hanging, the prisoner must go free because he cannot twice be put in jeopardy for the same offense. But this is a confusion between the "trial" and the
"sentence".

Hens, Roosters, and Eggs:

- "double negative":

Parents and teachers sometimes tell their charges, "If you say 'I
haven't got none,' then you are really saying 'I *do* have some.'
You should be more logical." Double negatives once held, in fact
an honorable place in our language; as witness Chaucer's immortal
lines describing the Knight in the Prologue to the 'Canterbury
Tales': "He never yet no vilenynye ne sayde/In al his lyf unto no
maner wight." Or, in modern English, paraphrased freely but quite
accurately: "He never said nothing bad in all his life to nobody."

Destroying United States coins.

- Is it necessary to give dogs and cats annual shots?

Oh! You meant vaccination injections, like for distemper and rabies? Ok. On those, we’re not so sure anymore. Vets may still remind you to bring in your furry friends once a year as a matter of course. But some research now points to the possibility that these shots offer immunity for many years, not just one. More disturbing are the possibility of dangerous, even fatal side effects of annual shots. Under investigation now as possible consequences in some animals of too many vaccinations are tumors, autoimmune diseases and hyperthyroidism.

Are there any snakes that can fly?

Some of the CEO's whose creative accounting has watered the value of their stock spend a good deal of time in corporate jets. That alone would justify an affirmative answer.But if we confine ourselves to reptiles proper, the answer is a surprising, although qualified, "yes" – and aren't you happy that you haven’t encountered them!

In truth, even if you were in the forests of the Malay Peninsula and were near one of its Paradise tree snakes, you might never know it. They glide like flying squirrels between the treetops. The snake gets up there by using protrusions on its scales to grip the irregular tree surfaces. Once there it launches itself by gripping a branch with its tale and then quickly straightening out. It uses its ribs to flatten its body on the side facing the ground to provide lift.

Dynamite:

There is a common belief that if you put a dynamite in the fire, it will explode. Actually dynamite requires detonation by spark or percussion.

Warming up dynamite will make it more responsive to the detonator, but will not explode it.

Years ago in lumber camps of Maine dynamite was heated up in a frying pan on cold mornings. (The practice is not recommended.)

- Is education a major factor in assuring higher income?

For many years it has been an article of American faith that the
better one's education, the better the chance of increasing one's
income. Various charts and tables purport to illustrate the "value" of a high school or college education in purely monetary terms.

However, the implication that the best way, thus, to equalize economic opportunity is to improve the education of the poor turns out to have little basis, at least according to a three-year study by a Harvard research team, which concluded that cognitive skills are only weakly related to earning power.Indeed, even such factors as heredity, home background,intelligence quotient, and quality of schools attended turned outto account for only about one fourth of the variation in American incomes.

"Oct 5th is the United States' most popular birth date. According a study conducted by Anybirthday.com, there is a not-so-suprising significance to Oct 5th, as conception would have fallen right on New Years Eve.

What kind of a guy was the pirate, Captain Kidd?

Yo, ho, ho, yourself. I’m serious! You can’t just judge a man by the flag he flies. Maybe that skull and cross bones simply meant that he liked to read mysteries.

In fact, according to “The Pirate Hunter,” by Richard Zacks, Captain William Kidd was initially no more than a typical sea captain
businessman. Pirates were a persistent problem at the end of the 17th century, and a group of merchants, with royal approval, hired Kidd to hunt the blackguards and confiscate their booty. Naturally, all of these investors would share in the spoils. That made Kidd a privateer - a respectable enough calling.

But the Royal Navy and other merchants resented Kidd’s success. When he gave too much booty to his crew, they had their excuse, branding Kidd a pirate himself. Only then did Kidd begin to live up to his future reputation. No Kidding.

If you were in an elevator and the cables snapped, could you save yourself by jumping upward at the last second?

Wouldn't hurt to try, I guess, and Lord knows I'm not going to tell you how to spend the last 10 seconds of your life. But the chances of it working are pretty slim. Let's suppose your elevator is falling downwards at 40 miles per hour, or nearly 60 feet per second. Now suppose you jump up at the last moment. How fast do you think you're going to go? Forty miles per hour? Fat chance.

Let's be generous and say you could jump up at 10 miles per hour. Forty miles an hour down minus 10 miles per hour up leaves you going 30 miles per hour down. In short, no matter what you do, you're going to come out of this looking like a pizza. But don't get too alarmed. There isn't just one elevator cable holding you up, there are several - often five or six. Any one cable could support the weight of the entire elevator. If by some evil miracle all the cables did snap, the elevator is also equipped with brakes that would grab the sides of the shaft. If the brakes failed, too, some elevators have giant springs at the bottom. So maybe you'd just bounce.

If that doesn't work - well, they'll be scraping you off the floor with a putty knife. But look on the bright side: at least you won't have to make a lot of stops on the way down.