Some of my Favorite (Pointless) Facts

I love the random article feature on Wiki. Here are some of my favorite pieces of trivia:

• Almonds are in the same family as the peach (in the same subgenus, actually)
• The word "candidate" comes from the Latin "candida", meaning "white." This is because men running for office in ancient Rome would bleach and chalk their togas to make them whiter.
• Some planets are tidally locked, meaning that one side of the planet always faces the sun, and one side always faces away.
• The flavor of tea can be changed by pouring it from different heights. This technique is typically used in Northern Africa.
• Cockney Rhyming Slang produces slang using a process called hemiteleia. It takes the original word, finds a phrase of 2 or 3 words that rhymes with it that word, eliminates the part of the phrase that rhymes with the original word, and the remaining word(s) are the new slang. For example, "bread" means money in Cockney Rhyming Slang. It was arrived at by taking the word "money", rhyming it with "bread and honey", dropping the "honey", and leaving us with "bread."
• The human eye responds with maximum sensitivity to the color green
• In the wild, the Axolotl is only found in Lake Texcoco, Mexico. It is technically an amphibian, but because it does not naturally undergo metamorphosis, it remains in an aquatic state.
• Speaking of trivia, trivia is the name of a genus of tiny sea shells, known in Britain as cowries, although they are not closely related to them at all.