Fact 1

Did you know that "ough" can be pronounced TEN DIFFERENT WAYS?

There's "cough" (which rhymes with "off"), "enough" (which rhymes with "stuff"), "dough" (which rhymes with "no"), "through" (which rhymes with "do"), "thought" (which sounds like "awe"), "plough" (an alternative spelling of "plow"), "hiccough" (an alternative spelling of "hiccup"), "hough" (an alternative spelling of "hock"), "lough" (an alternative spelling of "loch"), and "thorough" (which has a different pronunciation in the UK than it does in American English).

Try this sentence: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

Fact 2

The word “Mafia” is not uttered once in The Godfather.

The first rule of the Mafia: don’t talk about the Mafia. Despite the fact that the entire movie is about the exploits of an Italian family crime syndicate, this familiar label is never applied to their dealings. If you find the lack of this five-letter M word in the film to be bizarre, you are right. The reason the word is never spoken is because the Italian-American Civil Rights League requested that “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” be removed from the film’s script! In retrospect, I think this makes The Godfather even cooler - it’s like the one word that could best sum up the entire film is considered to be taboo among its characters.

You can still find a healthy dose of racial slurs, however - the 1972 Best Picture does not shy away from the usage of potentially offensive words such as “greaser,” “wop,” “dago,” and “guinea.”
(source)

Fact 3

The creator of the Barbie and Ken dolls named the dolls after her children.

When the dolls were introduced in 1959, it was controversial at the time whether it would be appropriate to market a doll to children that had breasts! Ruth Handler, Barbie's creator, got the idea for Barbie by watching her daughter, Barbara, playing with dolls. She recognized that children wanted to play with a doll that was "grown up".

Fact 4

Oysters can change genders back and forth.

You might also like:

Did You Know#12