What makes a Number 2 pencil so special

1
What makes a Number 2 pencil so special?

• Number 2 pencils use medium weight graphite
  which makes them ideal to write with. Back in the
  1700s, French pencil maker Nicolas-Jacques Conte
  created the number system based on a pencils
  hardness. The higher the number, the harder the
  graphite. For example, Number 1 pencils, made
  with soft graphite, tend to smudge and are
  often used to record bowling scores. Number 3
  pencils and above are harder, and are often used
  for drafting - when you need a sharp, strong
  point. And Number 2 pencils, being in the middle,
  are perfect for writing.

2
Why do battery letters skip from A to C?

• The letters are based on the size of the battery.
  For common sizes, A is the smallest and D is the
  largest. As far as the B batteries go, the size
  just never caught on. They werent popular for
  products made for consumers, so stores didnt
  carry them. Theyre still sold, but only in
  Europe, where theyre used primarily to power
  bicycle lamps.

3
Why cant pineapple and Jello be friends?

• It sounds delicious, but unfortunately the
  tropical treat is like Jello kryptonite. Thats
  because it contains an enzyme called bromelain,
  which keeps gelatin from turning solid. But fret
  not! CANNED pineapple doesnt contain bromelain.
  The canning process heats the pineapple to a
  temperature hot enough to break the enzyme down,
  making it oh-so Jello friendly.

4
What would happen if you married your cousin?

• The real question is, what if you had kids. Well,
  first cousins share one-eighth of their genes.
  So, theyre twice as likely as unrelated couples
  to have miscarriages, infant death, or assorted
  birth defects. But anyone whos second cousins,
  or further removed, has the same risk as any
  other couple.

5
What if you accidentally got shocked by heart
paddles, or what hospitals call defibrillators?

• Theres a small chance your heart would stop, and
  youd have to get paddled again. And what would
  it feel like? Like getting hit in the chest with
  a baseball bat.

6
Why Does Hawaii Have Interstate Highways?

• Not all Interstates physically go from one state
  to another the name merely implies that the
  roads receive federal funding. The three Hawaii
  Interstates (H1, H2, and H3) became Interstates
  as part of The Dwight D. Eisenhower System of
  Interstate and National Defense Highways to
  protect the U.S. from a Soviet invasion by making
  it easier to get supplies from one military base
  to another.

7
Why Do Most Snooze Buttons Only Give You Nine
More Minutes of Sleep?

• By the time the snooze feature was added in the
  1950s, the innards of alarm clocks had long been
  standardized. This meant that the teeth on the
  snooze gear had to mesh with the existing gear
  configuration, leaving engineers with a single
  choice They could set the snooze for either a
  little more than nine minutes, or a little more
  than 10 minutes. Reports indicated that 10
  minutes was too long, since it allowed people to
  fall back into a "deep" sleep, so clock makers
  chose the nine-minute gear, believing people
  would wake up easier and happier after a shorter
  snooze. Wed tend to disagree with that logic,
  but, then we must be in the lazy minority.
  Although todays digital clocks can be programmed
  to have a snooze of any length, most stick with
  nine minutes because thats what consumers expect.

8
Why cant you tickle yourself?

• Because the brain controls movement, it knows
  what your hand is going to do before you do it.
  Thus it anticipates the exact force, location,
  and speed of the tickle and uses that information
  to desensitize you to your own roving hands. So
  why do we have a tickle response anyway? Turns
  out, its a defense reaction meant to alert our
  cave-dwelling ancestors to creepy crawlies that
  didnt know their place, and the uncontrollable
  laughing fit that goes along with it is actually
  a panic response. Even if you know someone else
  is about to go for your rib cage, its hard to
  turn the response off because a) your brain cant
  anticipate exactly how and where theyll tickle
  you and b) knowing someone is about to tickle you
  is usually enough to create the response.

9
Why are Grape-Nuts Neither Grapes Nor Nuts?

• Post Company founder Charles W. Post might have
  been good at creating popular cereals, buthe
  wasnt the best at naming them. One of his
  first breakfast treats, Post Toasties, was
  originally known by the more, er, zealous name,
  Elijahs Manna. And then theres the misleading
  Grape-Nuts, which Charles named after a key
  ingredient in the cereal called maltose, which
  tasted like nuts and, at the time, was known as
  "grape sugar." Hence, Grape-Nuts. It may sound
  like false advertising, but its not. Post would
  likely be protected from such allegations by that
  precious little hyphen. The Federal Trade
  Commission might consider a cereal called Grape
  Nuts "deceitful," but that hyphen makes the name
  "fanciful," which excludes it from prosecution
  according to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.