All organic compounds contain carbon.
The first atomic bomb exploded at Trinity Site, New Mexico.
The planet Venus has the longest day.
Because of the salt content of the Dead Sea, it is difficult to dive below its surface.
Carolyn Shoemaker has discovered 32 comets and approximately 800 asteroids.
The first portable calculator placed on sale by Texas Instruments weighed only 2-1/2 pounds and cost a mere $150. (1971)
The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. If there was a bathtub large enough to hold it, Saturn would float.
The shockwave from a nitroglycerine explosion travels at 17,000 miles per hour.
The fastest moon in our solar system circles Jupiter once every seven hours - traveling at 70,400 miles per hour.
Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west.
Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.
Bacteria, the tiniest free-living cells, are so small that a single drop of liquid contains as many as 50 million of them.
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top. This is because the carbonation in the drink gets pockets of air stuck in the wrinkles of the raisin, which is light enough to be raised by this air. When it reaches the surface of the champagne, the bubbles pop, and the raisin sinks back to the bottom, starting the cycle over.
On December 2, 1942, a nuclear chain reaction was achieved for the first time under the stands of the University of Chicago’s football stadium. The first reactor measured 30 feet wide, 32 feet long, and 21.5 feet high. It weighed 1,400 tons and contained 52 tons of uranium in the form of uranium metal and uranium oxide. Although the same process led to the massive energy release of the atomic bomb, the first artificially sustained nuclear reaction produced just enough energy to light a small flashlight.
Experiments conducted in Germany and at the University of Southampton in England show that even mild and incidental noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by noise. The sounds cause their pupils to change focus and blur their vision.
STASI, the East German secret police organization, devised a devilishly clever way to prevent someone from giving them the slip during the Cold War: they managed to synthesize the scent of a female dog in heat, which they applied to the shoes of the person under surveillance. Then they simply had a male dog follow the scent.
If you stand in the bottom of a well, you would be able to see the stars even in the daytime.
A "fulgerite" is fossilized lightning. It forms when a powerful lightning bolt melts the soil into a glass-like state.
Some early TV screens did emit excessive X-rays, as did computer monitors, but that was fixed long ago. Doctors suggest that at worst, sitting too close might cause some temporary eye fatigue—the same for reading with insufficient light—but no permanent damage, no matter what your mother claimed.
Dirty snow melts faster than clean.
Clouds fly higher during the day than the night.
Clothes that are dried outside DO smell better because of a process called photolysis. What happens is this: sunlight breaks down compounds in the laundry that cause odor, such as perspiration and body oils.
In 1980, Namco released PAC-MAN, the most popular video game (or arcade game) of all time. The original name was going to be PUCK MAN, but executives saw the potential for vandals to scratch out part of the P in the games marquee and labeling.
The opposite of a "vacuum" is a "plenum."
If the world were tilted one degree more either way, the planet would not be habitable because the area around the equator would be too hot and the poles would be too cold.
A bowl of lime Jell-O, when hooked up to an EEG machine, exhibited movement which is virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult man or woman.
A full moon always rises at sunset.
The hardness of ice is similar to that of concrete.
The first man-made item to exceed the speed of sound is the bull whip our leather whip. When the whip is snapped, the knotted end makes a "crack" or popping noise. It is actually causing a mini sonic boom as it exceeds the speed of sound.
From the smallest microprocessor to the biggest mainframe, the average American depends on over 264 computers per day.
From bridges to rebar, rust is everywhere. According to a recent study, the annual cost of metallic corrosion in the U.S. is approximately $300 billion. The report, by Battelle, Columbus, Ohio, and the Specialty Steel Industry of North America, Washington, D.C., estimated that about one-third of that cost could be avoided through broader application of corrosion-resistant material and "best anti-corrosive practice" from design through maintenance.
ENIAC, the first electronic computer, appeared 50 years ago. The original ENIAC was about 80 feet long, weighed 30 tons, had 17,000 tubes. By comparison, a desktop computer today can store a million times more information than an ENIAC, and 50,000 times faster.
Rain contains vitamin B12.
The first U.S. census to be tallied by computer was in 1950. UNIVAC did the tallying.
A scientist at Michigan State University has calculated that the production of a single hen egg requires about 120 gallons of water, a loaf of bread requires 300 gallons, and a pound of beef, 3,500.
You know the three physical dimensions, and the fourth dimension, time. For years, people have speculated about other dimensions. Experts in theoretical physics now say the major theories about the universe make sense together - and all the math seems to work - if there are 10 dimensions.
A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The unlucky canine is the only creature known to have been killed by a meteor.
A day on the planet Mercury is twice as long as its year. Mercury rotates very slowly but revolves around the sun in slightly less than 88 days.
A cosmic year is the amount of time it takes the sun to revolve around the center of the Milky Way, about 225 million years.
A car traveling at a constant speed of 60 miles per hour would take over 48 million years to reach the nearest star (other than our sun), Proxima Centauri. This is about 685,000 average human lifetimes.
A bucket filled with earth would weigh about 5 time more than the same bucket filled with the substance of the sun. However, the force of gravity is so much greater on the sun that the man weighing 150 pounds on our planet would weigh 2 tons on the sun.
Traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, light take 6 hours to travel from Pluto to the earth.
To an observer standing on Pluto, the sun would appear no brighter than Venus appears in our evening sky.
Tiny dust particles surround a comet. They are swept into a long tail by the solar wind, which consists of subatomic particles speeding from the sum at speed of hundred of miles per second.
Time slows down near a black hole; inside it stops completely.
The wick of a trick candle has small amounts of magnesium in them. When you light the candle, you are also lighting the magnesium. When someone tries to blow out the flame, the magnesium inside the wick continues to burn and, in just a split second (or two or three), relights the wick.
On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.
Western Electric successfully brought sound to motion pictures and introduced systems of mobile communications which culminated in the cellular telephone.
At a glance, the Celsius scale makes more sense than the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measuring. But its creator, Anders Celsius, was an oddball scientist. When he first developed his scale, he made freezing 100 degrees and boiling 0 degrees, or upside down. No one dared point this out to him, so fellow scientists waited until Celsius died to change the scale.
An ordinary TNT bomb involves atomic reaction, and could be called an atomic bomb. What we call an A-bomb involves nuclear reactions and should be called a nuclear bomb.
A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber. A ball of solid steel will bounce higher than one made entirely of glass.
Sterling silver is not pure silver. Because pure silver is too soft to be used in most tableware it is mixed with copper in the proportion of 92.5 percent silver to 7.5 percent copper.
Starch is used as a binder in the production of paper. It is the use of a starch coating that controls ink penetration when printing. Cheaper papers do not use as much starch, and this is why your elbows get black when you are leaning over your morning paper.
On average, half of all false teeth have some form of radioactivity.
Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.
The original IBM-PCs, that had hard drives, referred to the hard drives as Winchester drives. This is due to the fact that the original Winchester drive had a model number of 3030. This is, of course, a Winchester firearm.
The radioactive substance, Americanium - 241 is used in many smoke detectors.
Plutonium - first weighed on August 20th, 1942, by University of Chicago scientists Glenn Seaborg and his colleagues - was the first man-made element.
Hot water is heavier than cold.
Every year about 98% of atoms in your body are replaced.
Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
Outside the USA, Ireland is the largest software producing country in the world.
The final resting-place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker - the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer, trained the Apollo astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Mr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon in an attempt to learn if there is water on the moon.
Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.
The Siberian larch accounts for more than 20% of all the worlds trees.
A plant in central Australia, the candlesticks of the sun, grows a candle-shaped flower once every 7 years.
The bark of a redwood tree is fireproof. Fires that occur in a redwood forest take place inside the trees.
While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonard da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk revealed its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicated the annual moisture.
The fragrance of flowers is due to the essences of oil which they produce.
The primary purpose of growing rice in flooded paddies is to drown the weeds surrounding the young seedlings. Rice can, in fact, be grown in drained areas.
The slippers plant (bulbo stylis) of Haiti looks like a pair of fuzzy slippers.
The giant puffball, lycoperdon giganteum, produces 7,000,000,000,000 spores, each of which could grow into a puffball a foot in diameter and collectively cover an area of 280,000 square mile, greater than the size of Texas. Fortunately, only one of the spores actually becomes a puffball, and all the others die.
The telegraph plant of Asia has leaves that flutter constantly, even when there is no breeze.
Of the 15,000-odd known species of orchids in the world, 3,000 of them can be found in Brazil.
The tree dictated on the Lebanese flag is a Cedar.
An ear of corn averages 800 kernels in 16 rows. A pound of corn consists of approximately 1,300 kernels. 100 bushels of corn produces approximately 7,280,000 kernels. Corn is produced on every continent of the world with the exception of Antarctica.
Heroin is derived from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, which means the poppy that brings sleep.
Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbecuing. These woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food. Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan, hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple, or mesquite, depending on the type of meat being cooked.
Lightning keeps plants alive. The intense heat of lightning forces nitrogen in the air to mix with oxygen, forming nitrogen oxides that are soluble in water and fall to the ground in rain. Plants need nitrates to survive, so without lightning, plants could not live.
The squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), when brushed by a passerby, ejects its seeds and a stream of poisonous juice that stings the skin.
Leaves of the Sumatra breadfruit tree are notched when they first form, yet have no indentations when the leaves mature.
There are an estimated 285,000 species of flowering plants on Earth compared to 148,000 for all other plants. Flowering plants are very important because they provide food for herbivores - plant-eating animals - and for humans.
The giant sequoia, which produces millions of seeds, can take 175 to 200 years to flower. No other organism takes this long to mature sexually.
The partridge berry is a botanical Siamese twin. Each berry develops from 2 flowers.
A person standing under an oak tree is 16 more times liable to be hit by lightning than if he had taken refuge beneath a beech tree. The oak tree has vertical roots which provide a more direct route to ground water.
Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.
American colonists discovered that superior candles could be made from the fruit of a squat bush growing in the sand dunes along the New England seashore. The small, grayish bayberry was picked, crushed, and boiled. It had to be skimmed several times before the pale, nearly transparent, green fat was sufficiently refined. Bayberry candles were highly prized, because so much labor and so many berries were needed to make just one candle.
The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.
Kudzu is not indigenous to the South, but in that climate it can grow up to six inches a day.
Bamboo can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.
A single coffee tree yields only one pound of roasted, ground coffee annually.
In ancient religions, the Norsemen considered the mistletoe a baleful plant that caused the death of Baldur, the shining god of youth.
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
The Mexican Jumping Bean is not a bean. It is actually a thin-shelled section of a seed capsule containing the larva of a small gray moth called the jumping bean moth (Laspeyresia saltitans).
The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.
Orchids are grown from seed so small that it would take thirty thousand to weigh as much as one grain of wheat.
The leaves of the Victorian water lily are sometimes over six feet in diameter.
In 1764 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played for the Royal Family at Versailles in France. He was even given the honor of standing behind the Queen at dinner - Mozart was only eight years old.
At age 22, Jerry Lee Lewis married for the third time. His bride? His thirteen year old cousin.
At age 4, Mozart composed a concerto for the clavier.
At age 15, Jerry Garcia swapped his birthday accordion for an electric guitar.
John Philip Sousa enlisted in the Marines at age 13. He worked as an apprentice in the band.
The Japanese national anthem is expressed in only four lines. The Greek anthem runs 158 verses.
Vaudevillian Jack Norworth wrote "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in 1908 after seeing a sign on a bus advertising BASEBALL TODAY - POLO GROUNDS. Norworth and his friend Albert von Tilzer (who write the music) had never been to a baseball game before his song became a hit sing-along.
Mass murderer Charles Manson recorded an album called "Lie."
Elvis Presley received his U.S. army discharge on March 5, 1960.
The leading female singer in an opera is called the prima donna.
Brian Epstein managed The Beatles to superstardom.
The Beatles performed their first U.S. concert in Carnegie Hall.
The Beach Boys formed in 1961.
George Anthiel composed film scores, but earlier in his life he had been an avant garde composer. In 1924 his "Ballet mecanique" was performed at Carnegie Hall. The work was scored for a fire siren, automobile horns, and an airplane propeller. After only a few minutes of this racket, an aging gentleman in the orchestra seats tied his handkerchief to his cane and began waving a white flag.
Brian Epstein, a record store owner in London, was asked by a customer for a copy of the record, "My Bonnie", by a group known as The Silver Beatles. He didn’t have it in stock so he went to the Cavern Club to check out the group. He signed to manage them in a matter of days and renamed them The Beatles.
Montgomery is the birthplace of music great Nat King Cole, pop singers Clarence Carter and Toni Tenille, Metropolitan Opera singer Nell Rankin, and blues legend Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton.
An eighteenth-century German named Matthew Birchinger, known as the little man of Nuremberg, played four musical instruments including the bagpipes, was an expert calligrapher, and was the most famous stage magician of his day. He performed tricks with the cup and balls that have never been explained. Yet Birchinger had no hands, legs, or thighs, and was less than 29 inches tall.
In every show that Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks) did there was at least one song about rain.
Peter Batten was a deserter from the British Army at the time of the creation of the film. In the final weeks of production, he was arrested for desertion, and Paul Angelis had to finish voicing the part of George.
The Beatles appear at the end of "The Yellow Submarine" in a short live action epilogue. Their voices for the cartoon movie were done by Paul Angelis (Ringo), Peter Batten (George), John Clive (John), and Geoffrey Hughes (Paul).
Jazz began in the 20th century, when bands in New Orleans began to apply the syncopated rhythms of ragtime to a variety of other tunes. In the first days of jazz, ensemble playing was emphasized. Only gradually did jazz come to be based on improvised solos.
The Beatles played the Las Vegas Convention Center in 1964. Some 8,500 fans paid just $4 each for tickets.
Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song "Happy Birthday".
Verdi wrote the opera Aida at the request of the khedive of Egypt to commemorate the opening of the Suez canal.
No one knows where Mozart is buried.
"Mr. Mojo Risin" is an anagram for Jim Morrison.
Brian Setzer, of the Brian Setzer Orchestra, started out in a garage band called Merengue.
Dark Side of The Moon (a Pink Floyd album) stayed on the top 200 Billboard charts for 741 weeks! That is 14 years.
In 1992, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, better known to country music fans as singer/comedienne Minnie Pearl, was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President George Bush. In 1994, Minnie became the first woman to be inducted into the Comedy Hall of Fame. She was too frail and sick to attend the ceremony, and so good friend and comedian George Lindsey ("Goober") accepted the award for her. She died in 1996 at age 83.
The famous Russian composer Aleksandr Borodin was also a respected chemistry professor in St. Petersburg.
The song "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" was written by George Graff, who was German, and was never in Ireland in his life.
In the band KISS, Gene Simmons was "The Demon", Paul Stanley was "Star Child", Ace Frehley was "Space Man", and Peter Criss was "The Cat.
At the tender age of 7, the multi-award-winning composer and pianist Marvin Hamlisch ("The Way We Were," "The Sting") was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York City.
The rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd took their name from a high school teacher named Leonard Skinner who had suspended several students for having long hair.
Most toilets flush in E flat.
The brass family of instruments include the trumpet, trombone, tuba, cornet, flügelhorn, French horn, saxhorn, and sousaphone. While they are usually made of brass today, in the past they were made of wood, horn, and glass.
According to Margaret Jones, author of a Patsy Cline biography, there are a dozen places in Virginia that could claim to be the hometown of the nomadic Cline. Her family moved 19 times before she was 15.
A person breathes 7 quarts of air every minute.
The kidneys filter about 500 gallons of blood each day.
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.
Human lungs are 100 times easier to blow up than a standard toy balloon. But they tend to make lousy party favors.
Electrical stimulation in certain areas of the brain can revive long lost memories.
Urine was once used as a detergent for washing.
The human kidney consists of over 1 million little tubes with a total length of about 40 miles in both kidneys.
Your hearing is less sharp if you eat too much.
Sometimes when you belch, a little bit of your stomach acids comes along. This makes for a very disgusting and burning burp.
The hardest substance in the human body is enamel.
Pain travels through the body at 350 feet per second.
When honey is swallowed, it enters the blood stream within a period of 20 minutes.
Several well documented instances have been reported of extremely obese people flushing aircraft toilets whilst still sitting on them. The vacuum action of these toilets sucked the rectum inside out.
If you squeezed out all of the bacteria from your intestines, you could almost fill up a coffee mug.
The average square inch of skin holds 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, 60,000 melanocytes, and during the summer months, six or seven mosquito bites.
Each red blood cell lives an average of 4 months and travels between the lungs and other tissues 75,000 times before returning to the bone marrow to die.
You blink every 2-10 seconds. As you focus on each word in this sentence, your eyes swing back and forth 100 times a second, and every second; the retina performs 10 billion computer-like calculations.
The sense of touch: electrical impulses travel from the skin toward the spinal cord at a rate of up to 425 feet per second.
Between the ages of 30 and 70, you nose may lengthen and widen by as much as half an inch.
Skin is the largest organ of the human body.
The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.
Mouth ulcers are the most common human affliction.
The most common non-contagious disease in the world is tooth decay.
The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.
The iris membrane controls the amount of light that enters your eye.
Lacrimal fluid lubricates the eyes.
Lead poisoning is known as plumbism.
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter had an operation for hemorrhoids while he was in office.
Human blood travels 60,000 miles per day on its journey through the arteries, arterioles and capillaries and back through the venules and veins.
Hay fever is the sixth most prevalent chronic condition in the United States.
Your jaw muscle is the most powerful muscle in your body.
Despite accounting for just one-fiftieth of body weight, the brain burns as much as one-fifth of our daily caloric intake.
From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size.
Devoid of its cells and proteins, human blood has the same general makeup as sea water.
Scientists have identified more than 300 viruses capable of bringing fatal diseases to insects. The organisms are believed to be entirely different than those that cause disease in humans, and are thus harmless to man.
During a lifetime, one person generates more than 1,000 pounds of red blood cells.
If you lock your knees while standing long enough, you will pass out.
In 1918 and 1919, a world epidemic of simple influenza killed 20 million people in the United States and Europe.
One group, the Hunza in Northwest Kashmir, reportedly have not experienced cancer. The group is also said to have unusual longevity.
By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds.
Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.
Americans spend an estimated $500 million each year on allergy treatments.
In 1990, a 64-year old Hartsville, Tennessee, woman entered a hospital for surgery for what doctors diagnosed as a tumor on her buttocks. What surgeons found, however, was a four-inch pork chop bone, which they removed. They estimated that it had been in place for five to ten years. The woman could not remember sitting on it, or eating it for that matter.
Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
Did you know that you can actually die from a broken heart? Studies have shown that people who had experienced great loss or sadness can develop cracks in their heart which could lead to death.
A follicle that is more oval in shape will produce curlier hair, which, when viewed under a microscope, is more "flat" in appearance than a straight hair, which is "round".
Smoking makes it almost impossible for a male to have a natural erection and it shrinks the penis. It also reduces the mobility of sperm.
A new born baby breathes five times faster than an adult man.
Brain surgery is done with the patient still awake. The brain has no nerves therefore it has no sensation. The person is put to sleep to open the skull but after that the person wakes up to see the operation be completed.
It only takes 7 lbs of pressure to rip off your ears.
There are more than one form of the Ebola virus. Different strains are named after the area they were discovered in.
Over 25% of Zaire is infected with a form of the Ebola virus that does not kill.
There have been cases of people dying from paper cuts. The paper cut gets infected, and without proper treatment you can die from the infection.
The first drug that was offered as a water-soluble tablet, was aspirin in 1900.
The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next to your temple, is called a tragus.
Hailed as a wonder drug in the late nineteenth century, cocaine was outlawed in the United States in 1914.
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.
A passionate kiss uses up 6.4 calories per minute.
During a kiss as many as 278 bacteria colonies are exchanged.
Captain Cook lost 41 of his 98 crew to scurvy (a lack of vitamin C) on his first voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. By 1795 the importance of eating citrus was realized, and lemon juice was issued on all British Navy ships.
Undertakers report that human bodies do not deteriorate as quickly as they used to. The reason, they believe, is that the modern diet contains so many preservatives that these chemicals tend to prevent the body from decomposition too rapidly after death.
Gold salts are sometimes injected into the muscles to relieve arthritis.
You can see a candle flame from 50 Kilometers on a clear, dark night. You can hear the tick of a watch from 6 meters in very quiet conditions. You can taste one gram of salt in 500 liters of water (.0001M). You can detect one drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-room apartment. You can detect the wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a height of one centimeter.
According to the Journal of American Medical Association, as of 1998, more than 100,000 Americans die annually from adverse reactions to prescription drugs.
If you combined all the muscles in an average human in to one muscle, the force it would be capable of producing is about 2,000 tonnes.
Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman is considered to be the godfather of the modern vaccine era. Having created nearly three dozen vaccines - more than any other scientist, Hilleman is also credited with saving more lives than any other scientist. Probably best known for his preventive vaccine for mumps, Hilleman has also developed vaccines for measles, rubella, chicken pox, bacterial meningitis, flu and hepatitis B.
A study by researcher Frank Hu and the Harvard School of Public Health found that women who snore are at an increased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.
"Soldiers disease" is a term for morphine addiction. The Civil War produced over 400,000 morphine addicts.
Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremities develop faster than the rest of us.
People who have never been married are seven and a half times more likely than married people to be admitted to a psychiatric facility.
Studies shown by the Psychology Department of DePaul University show that the principal reason to lie is to avoid punishment.
The short-term memory capacity for most people is between five and nine items or digits. This is one reason that phone numbers were kept to seven digits for so long.
Females have 500 more genes than males, and because of this are protected from things like color blindness and hemophilia.
There are 10 trillion living cells in the human body.
The brain requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body.
The right lung takes in more air than the left lung.
The substance that human blood resembles most closely in terms of chemical composition is sea water.
The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terrabytes.
Your thumb is the same length as your nose.
You lose enough dead skin cells in your lifetime to fill eight five-pound flour bags.
The average Human bladder can hold 13 ounces of liquid.
During his or her lifetime, the average human will grow 590 miles of hair.
The first known heart medicine was discovered in an English garden. In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action. Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of blood pumped per heartbeat.
It takes an interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 18 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed for the common cold in the United States per year. Research shows that colds are caused by viruses. 50 million unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed for viral respiratory infections.
In 1977, a 13 year old child found a tooth growing out of his left foot.
The human brain stops growing at the age of 18.
The first Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages were three inches wide and eighteen inches long. You made your own bandage by cutting off as much as you needed.
Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons for men versus 0.875 gallons for women.
Sumerians (from 5000 BC) thought that the liver made blood and the heart was the center of thought.
Approximately 16 Canadians have their appendices removed, when not required, every day.
In 1815 French chemist Michael Eugene Chevreul realized the first link between diabetes and sugar metabolism when he discovered that the urine of a diabetic was identical to grape sugar.
Between 25% to 33% of the population sneeze when they are exposed to light.
People who have a tough time handling the stress of money woes are twice as likely to develop severe gum disease, a new study finds.
The adult human heart weighs about ten ounces.
The number one cause of blindness in the United States is diabetes.
In 1972, a group of scientists reported that you could cure the common cold by freezing the big toe.
No one seems to know why people blush.
The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.
Medical researchers contend that no disease ever identified has been completely eradicated.
The toilet was invented by an Englishman named Thomas Crapper.
Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks.
Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called his counterpart in Alameda, California.
Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), the mother of 12 children, had good reason to improve the efficiency and convenience of household items. A pioneer in ergonomics, Gilbreth patented many devices, including an electric food mixer, and the trash can with step-on lid-opener that can be found in most households today.
You could milk about six cows per hour by hand, but with modern machinery, you can milk up to 100 cows per hour.
George Seldon received a patent in 1895 - for the automobile. Four years later, George sold the rights for $200,000.
In 1769 the British designer Edward Beran enclosed wooden slats in a frame to adjust the amount of light let into a room. These became known as venetian blinds from their early use over Italianate windows.
Rubber bands were first made by Perry and Co. of London in 1845.
The game that would become Scrabble was created by an unemployed architect, Alfred Mosher Butts in the early 1930s. He called it Lexiko, then Criss Cross Words and then sold the rights to James Brunot. In 1948 it was renamed Scrabble and was manufactured in a converted school house in Connecticut. Bruno sold the game to Selchow and Righter, who were bought out by Coleco in 1987, and in 1989 Milton Bradley bought it. More than 100 million Scrabble games have been sold worldwide.
During one four-year period, Thomas Edison obtained 300 patents, or one every five days.
The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was founded in 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Two French toolmakers were the first engineers to put the engine in the front of the car. This gave the car better balance, made it easier to steer, and made it much easier to get all your luggage in.
Russian submarine designers are building military submarines out of concrete. Because concrete becomes stronger under high pressure, (C-subs) could settle down to the bottom in very deep water and wait for enemy ships to pass overhead. Concrete would not show up on sonar displays (it looks just like sand or rocks), so the passing ships would not see the sub lurking below.
The windmill originated in Iran in AD 644. It was used to grind grain.
Out of the 11 original patents made by Nikola Tessla, for the generation of hydroelectric energy, 9 are still in use, (unchanged) today.
On the first neon sign, the word neon was spelled out in red by Dr. Perley G. Nutting, 15 years before neon signs became widely used commercially.
On November 23, 1835, Henry Burden of Troy, New York, developed the first machine for manufacturing horseshoes. Burden later oversaw the production of most of the horseshoes used by the Union cavalry during the Civil War.
Dutch engineers have developed a computerized machine that allows a cow to milk itself. Each cow in the herd has a computer chip in its collar. If the computer senses that the cow has not been milked in a given period of time, the milk-laden animal is allowed to enter the stall. The robot sensors locate the teats, apply the vacuum devices, and the cow is milked. The machine costs a mere $250,000 and is said to boost milk production by 15%.
Benjamin Franklin had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals.
Thomas Edison had a collection of over 5,000 birds.
King Gilette spent 8 years trying to invent and introduce his safety razor.
Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of the rocking chair.
The Roman civilization invented the arch.
George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.
The patent number of the telephone is 174465.
Disc Jockey Alan Freed popularized the term "Rock and Roll."
It is recorded that the Babylonians were making soap around 2800 B.C. and that it was known to the Phoenicians around 600 B.C. These early references to soap and soap making were for the use of soap in the cleaning of textile fibers such as wool and cotton in preparation for weaving into cloth.
The safety pin was patented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. He sold the patent rights for $400.
According to company lore, Ole Evinrude, a Norwegian immigrant, got the idea for an outboard motor while on a picnic with his sweetheart Bessie. They were on a small island in Lake Michigan, when Bessie decided she wanted some ice cream. Ole obligingly rowed to shore to get some, but by the time he made it back the ice cream had melted. So Ole built a motor that could be attached to his rowboat, and founded the Evinrude company in 1909.
Maximum tunnel depth below ground level is 221ft (67.4m)
Maximum tunnel depth below mean sea level is 70ft (21.3m)
Average scheduled train speed (including station stops) 20.5 mph (33 kmh).
Today, the London Underground Limited (LUL) is a major business with 2.5 million passenger journeys a day, nearly 500 trains, serving over 260 stations, around 16,000 staff and vast engineering assets.
Ornithologists often use Scotch tape to cover cracks in the soft shells of fertilized pigeon eggs, allowing the eggs to hatch. Scotch tape has also been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp.
The first coin operated machine ever designed was a holy-water dispenser that required a five-drachma piece to operate. It was the brainchild of the Greek scientist Hero in the first century AD.
Sylvan N. Goldman of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets developed the shopping cart so that people could buy more in a single visit to the grocery store. He unveiled his creation in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937.
Donald F. Duncan, the man who made the yo-yo an American tradition, is also credited with popularizing the parking meter and introducing Good Humor "ice cream on a stick.
The first lightweight luggage designed for air travel was conceived by aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.
Self-made millionaire Cyrus Field championed the idea of a telegraph from England to Newfoundland. Britain quickly agreed to subsidize. Congress went along by a one-vote margin. That was in 1856. Laying cable was tough. It kept breaking. The first line - two years later - died almost immediately. But 10 years later, there were two working lines. Communications changed forever.
While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonardo da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk reveal its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicates the annual moisture.
When using the first pay telephone, a caller did not deposit his coins in the machine. He gave them to an attendant who stood next to the telephone. Coin telephones did not appear to 1899.
The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
As of 1940, total of ninety patents had been taken out on shaving mugs.
Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.
Two days before Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard in 1877, he gave her 99 percent of his company shares as a wedding gift. He kept a mere ten for himself.
The commercial wireless phone was first introduced in Chicago in 1982 by Ameritech.
American sculptor, Alexander Calder, rigged the front door of his Paris apartment so that he could open it from his bathtub.
The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier.
Fifty years ago the B. F. Goodrich Company, the American corporation known for its automobile tires, thought it was really on to something. Its engineers came up with the prototype of an atomic golf ball. The ball, with a radioactive core, would be easy to locate with a Geiger counter if hit into the rough. But the company abandoned the invention as unworkable.
Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.
The Direct Action Committee, a group pushing for nuclear disarmament, invented the peace symbol in 1958. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals "N" and "D," to stand for nuclear disarmament.
The horse race starting gate is a Canadian invention, designed in the early 1900s by Philip McGinnis, a racetrack reporter from Huntingdon, Quebec. The device proved popular because it prevented arguments caused when horses started prematurely.
Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.
Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.
Because Napoleon believed that armies marched on their stomachs, he offered a prize in 1795 for a practical way of preserving food. The prize was won by a French inventor, Nicholas Appert. What he devised was canning. It was the beginning of the canned food industry of today.
Root Beer was invented in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr.
George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, hated having his picture taken.
Germany holds the title for most independent inventors to apply for patents.
The shoe string was invented in England in 1790. Until then shoes were fastened with buckles.
The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite.
After his death in 1937, Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph was honored by broadcasters worldwide as they let the airwaves fall silent for two minutes in his memory.
Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex telegraph. Unlike other telegraphs at the time, it could send four messages at the same time over one wire.
The hypodermic needle was invented in 1853. It was initially used for giving injections of morphine as a painkiller. Physicians mistakenly believed that morphine would not be addictive if it by-passed the digestive tract.
California police in the 1920s thought they had gotten the drop on a moonshiner. They raided what they thought was a still and found, instead, inventor Philo T. Farnsworth, working on something that was later to become television.
Because he felt such an important tool should be public property, English chemist John Walker never patented his invention — matches.
The state of Maine was once known as the "Earmuff Capital of The World". Earmuffs were invented there by Chester Greenwood in 1873.
The man who invented shorthand, John Gregg, was deaf.
Roulette was invented by the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It was a by product of his experiments with perpetual motion.
The single blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.
The shoestring was invented in England in 1790, Prior to this time all shoes were fastened with buckles.
The rickshaw was invented by the Reverend Jonathan Scobie, an American Baptist minister living in Yokohama, Japan, built the first model in 1869 in order to transport his invalid wife. Today it remains a common mode of transportation in the Orient.
The power lawn mower was invented by Ransom E. Olds (of Oldsmobile fame) in 1915.
The pop top can was invented in Kettering, Ohio by Ermal Fraze.
The paper clip was patented by Norwegian inventor Johan Vaaler in 1899. Because Norway had no patent law at the time, he had to travel to Germany where he received his patent in 1900. His U.S. Patent was granted in 1901.
The monkey wrench is named after its inventor, a London blacksmith named Charles Moncke.
James Ramsey invented a steam-driven motorboat in 1784. He ran it on the Potomac River, and the event was witnessed by George Washington.
James J. Ritty, owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, invented the cash register in 1879 to stop his patrons from pilfering house profits.
It was Swiss chemist Jacques Edwin Brandenberger who invented cellophane, back in 1908.
It has been determined that less than one patented invention in a hundred makes any money for the inventor.
The first VCR, made in 1956, was the size of a piano.
The first commercial vacuum cleaner was so large it was mounted on a wagon. People threw parties in their homes so guests could watch the new device do its job.
In 1889, the first coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank. Soon, "pay phones" were installed in stores, hotels, saloons, and restaurants, and their use soared. Local calls using a coin-operated phone in the U.S. cost only 5 cents everywhere until 1951.
Ferdinand Porsche, who later went on to build sports cars bearing his own name, designed the original 1936 Volkswagen.
The coffee filter was invented by Melissa Bentz, in Germany in 1908. She pierced holes in a tin container, put a circular piece of absorbent paper in the bottom of it and put her creation over a coffee pot.
The classic toy wagon was designed by Antonio Pasin, who founded his company in 1918. Pasin wanted to give his wagons a modern flair, and chose the word "radio" for what was then a new form of communication, and "flyer" for the wonder of flight — hence, "Radio Flyer."
The Chinese invented eyeglasses. Marco Polo reported seeing many pairs worn by the Chinese as early as 1275, 500 years before lens grinding became an art in the West.
The British import Spirograph was introduced in the United States in 1967 by Kenner and has racked up millions of dollars in sales. It was invented by a British electronics engineer, Denys Fisher, who was inspired to create the toy while doing research on a new design for bomb detonators for NATO.
Eli Whitney made no money from the cotton gin because he did not have a valid patent on it.
Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson.
Dr. John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida, invented mechanical refrigeration in 1851. He patented his device on May 6, 1851. There is a statue which honors this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.
In 1966, Elliot Handler, one of the co-founders of Mattel, Inc. and part of the Barbie doll empire, was the inventor of Hot Wheels®. Handler experimented with axles and rotating wheels being attached to tiny model cars. The innovative gravity-powered car he developed had special low-friction styrene wheels. Hot Wheels® have been clocked at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour.
Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.
According to U.S. law, a patent may not be granted on a useless invention, on a method of doing business, on mere printed matter, or on a device or machine that will not operate. Even if an invention is novel or new, a patent may not be obtained if the invention would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same area at the time of the invention.
Fifteen years after its invention in 1876, there were five million phones in America. Fifteen years after its invention, more than 33 million wireless phones were in the U.S.
Phone service was established at the White House one year after its invention. President Rutherford B. Hayes was the first to have phone service (1877-81).
Western Electric invented the loudspeaker which was initially called "loud-speaking telephone."
Carbonated beverages became popular in 1832 after John Mathews invented an apparatus for charging water with carbon dioxide gas.
Alfred Nobel used a cellulose adhesive (nitrocellulose) as the chemical binder for nitroglycerin, which he used in his invention of dynamite.
Teflon was discovered in 1938.
Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.
A machine has been invented that can read printed English books aloud to the blind, and it can do so at speed half again as fast as normal speech.
A device invented as a primitive steam engine by the Greek engineer Hero, about the time of the birth of Christ, is used today as a rotating lawn sprinkler.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
The guillotine was originally called a louisette. Named for Antoine Louis, the French surgeon who invented it. It became known as the guillotine for Joseph Ignace Guillotin, the French physician who advocated it as a more merciful means of execution than the noose or ax.
The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515.
The same man who led the attack on the Alamo, Mexican Military General, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, is also credited with the invention of chewing gum.
In 1916, Jones Wister of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania invented a rifle for shooting around corners. It had a curved barrel and periscopic sights.
Craven Walker invented the lava lamp, and its contents are colored wax and water.
The alarm clock was not invented by the Marquis de Sade, as some suspect, but rather by a man named Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1787. Perversity, though, characterized his invention from the beginning. The alarm on his clock could ring only at 4 am. Rumor has it that Hutchins was murdered by his wife at 4:05 am on a very dark and deeply cold New England morning.
The waffle iron was invented August 24, 1869.
The toothbrush was invented in 1498.
In the early 1800s, a French silk weaver called Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards.
The first words that Thomas A. Edison spoke into the phonograph were, "Mary had a little lamb."
Four wheel roller skates were invented by James L. Plimpton in 1863. Can you guess where?
Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio in 1952, in New York (aaah!).
Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson, who was (you guessed it) from New York.
The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn, also of New York, in 1860.
John Greenwood, also of New York invented the dental drill in 1790.
Henry Waterman, of New York, invented the elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour.
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for the "New York Tribune" from 1851 to 1862.
Early Egyptians wore sandals made from woven papyrus leaves.
When Thomas Jefferson became U.S. President in 1801, 20 percent of all people in the young nation were slaves.
If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard" foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.
Jahangir, a 17th-century Indian Mughal ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.
When he resigned in 1923 because of illegal behavior in the Teapot Dome Affair, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by President Harding. In 1931, Fall was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to defraud.
Napoleon, the famous French general, was not born in France. He was born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.
When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.
Today the painting hangs in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, France.
Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pinewood, 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) in the year 1506.
The Fish Bowl was invented by Countess Dubarry, Mistress of King Louis XV (Born 1710 Died 1774)
It is estimated that a few years after Columbus discovered the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.
Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.
Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.
In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.
Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.
The first aerial photograph was taken from a balloon during the U.S. civil war.
It was only after 440 A.D. that December 25 was celebrated as the birth date of Jesus Christ.
There was a "pony express" in Persia many centuries before Christ. Riders on this ancient circuit, wearing special colored headbands, delivered the mails across the vast stretch of Asia Minor, sometimes riding for hundreds of miles without a break.
High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.
The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.
In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.
During World War II, the U.S. Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate - on the basis of positional probability - where enemy submarines might surface.
During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
During the Spanish American War in 1898 there were 45 stars on the American flag.
During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.
During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.
During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.
During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.
General Henry Heth (1825-1888) leading a confederate division in the Battle of Gettysburg, was hit in the head by a Union bullet, but his life was saved because he was wearing a hat two sizes too large, with newspaper folded inside the sweatband. The paper deflected the bullet, and the general, unconscious for 30 hours, recovered and lived another 25 years.
The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle—made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was considered more valuable than gold.
After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. These he gathered together, crucified, covered in pitch (tar), and burnt alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.
India tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974.
A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950.
Socrates committed suicide by drinking poison hemlock.
There were 57 countries involved in World War II.
Seat belts became mandatory on U.S. cars on March 1, 1968.
Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 A.D.
Ishi had made it very clear before he died that he did not want to be autopsied. However, his wishes were ignored and his body was autopsied and the brain removed and sent to the Smithsonian, where scientists were collecting brains for a study of brain size and race. After 83 years, the Smithsonian is finally returning the brain of Ishi to his closest relatives so they can bury his remains.
In the 15th century, scholars in China compiled a set of encyclopedia that contained 11,095 volumes.
Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.
It is a well known trivial fact that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step onto the moon. However, many do not know that he stepped onto the moon with his left foot.
The very first enclosed shopping mall was and is Valley Faire in Appleton, Wisconsin. Not in Minnesota as most people believe. Appleton is also famous for being the birth place of Harry Houdini and the first city in America to use Hydro-electric power in homes.
U.S. Army doctor D.W. Bliss had the unique role of attending to two U.S. presidents after they were shot by assassins. In 1865 he was one of 16 doctors who tried to save Abraham Lincoln, and in 1881 he supervised the care of James Garfield.
A painting of the Madonna in Fiorano Castle, Italy, escaped without even being scorched when invading soldiers set the castle afire, yet all the rest of the building was destroyed.
In Britain, the law was changed in 1789 to make the method of execution hanging. Prior to that, burning was the modus operandi. The last female to be executed by burning in England was Christian Bowman. Her crime was making counterfeit coins.
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the first minimum wage in the United States. The new law, considered controversial at the time, established at.25 cents per hour minimum wage and a maximum 44 hour work week for minors.
Many hundreds of years ago when the well-known style of Irish dancing began in the country side of Ireland, most houses of the poor - and that means most houses - only had a dirt floor which was not a lot of use for dancing on if you were holding a ceildh (pronounced kay-lee and meaning party - more or less). So in order to make the dancing easier the owners of the house which was holding the party would take the doors off their hinges and lay them on the floor. There was just enough room on each door for two people to dance, providing they did not fling their arms about - hence the original name for Irish dancing - Door Dancing.
King Charles VII, who was assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed. No one knows why. To add to the mystery, almost 300 years went by before there was a Charles VIII (1448-57).
Before all-porcelain false teeth were perfected in the mid-19th century, dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers following a battle. Teeth extracted from U.S. Civil War soldier cadavers were shipped to England by the barrel to dentists.
At the outbreak of World War I, the American air force consisted of only fifty men.
Akhbar the Great Mughal routed the Hindus under Hemu by turning their elephants against them at the battle of Panipat in the Hindu revolt.
In 1974 there were 90 tornadoes in the U.S. in one day.
In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London. More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month.
In ancient Greece, courtesans wore sandals with nails studded into the sole so that their footprints would leave the message "Follow me".
Before winning the election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.
Unfortunately Gaius grew up and became emperor, incongruously retaining his boyhood diminutive. "Little boots" in Latin is "Caligula." As you may know, he was a bloodthirsty, sadistic fiend.
"John has a long mustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.
Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
Traffic engineering was not developed in London, New York or Paris, but rather in ancient Rome. The Romans, of course, were noted road builders. The Appian Way, for example, stretched 350 miles from the Eternal City to Brundisium. In Rome itself there were actually stop signs and even alternate-side-of-the-street parking.
The first time an enormous amount of clothing was needed all at once was during the Civil War, when the Union needed hundreds of thousands of uniforms for its troops. Out of this need came the ready-made clothing industry.
The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names. It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company in February, 1878.
Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
The right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times. It first crossed for display at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and in New York, where money was raised for the foundation and pedestal. It was returned to Paris in 1882 to be reunited with the rest of the statue, which was then shipped back to the U.S.
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
Marco Polo was born on the Croatian island of Korcula (pronounced Kor-Chu-La).
All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.
The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.
The ancient Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall paintings they used to decorate tombs.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
More than 5,600 men died while building the Panama Canal. Today, it takes more than 8,000 workers to run and maintain the canal. It takes a ship an average of 33 hours to travel the length of the canal.
The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.
Although most people think that Napoleon was short, he was actually five feet six inches tall (1.676 meters), an average height for a Frenchman in those days.
When Gaius Caesar was a boy, Roman soldiers affectionately nicknamed him "little boots" for the boy-sized military footwear he sported.
DaVinci wrote notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick that kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death. It is believed that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Leonardo observed.
DaVinci made detailed drawings of human anatomy, which are still highly regarded today.
1892 By Presidential Proclamation 1.8 million acres of Crow Indian reservation in Montana were opened to White settlers. The U.S. government had induced the Crow to give up a sizable portion of their land in the mountainous western area of Montana. The Crow received 50 cents per acre for their land.
The steel industry, in 1943, introduced the 5-day, 40 hour work week. Henry Ford adopted it in 1926.
When Napoleon wore black silk handkerchiefs around his neck during a battle, he always won. At Waterloo, he wore a white cravat and lost the battle and his kingdom.
Civil War General Stonewall Jackson died when he was accidentally hit by fire from his own troop.
"Hot cockles" was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.
The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his students over a mathematical computation. He wore a silver replacement nose for the rest of his life.
After being forced to state in public that the earth does not rotate, Galileo is said to have muttered under his breath, "But it does move."
A female pharaoh was unknown in Egypt before Hatshepsut, who had herself portrayed in male costume, with a beard and without breasts.
The first telephone exchange opened on January 28, 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Taj Mahal complex in India was built between 1631 and 1634 at a cost of about 40-million rupees.
New Zealand was the first place in the world to allow women to vote. The state of South Australia was next, in 1894, and it was also the first place to allow women to stand for parliament.
The U.S. Automobile Association was formed in 1905 for the purpose or providing "scouts" who could warn motorists of hidden police traps.
Soldiers arrived to fight the Battle of Marne in World War I - not on foot or by military airplane or military vehicle - but by taxi cabs. France took over all the taxi cabs in Paris to get soldiers to the front.
Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic "Little Women," hated kids. She only wrote the book because her publisher asked her to.
Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo Da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.
Catherine the Great relaxed by being tickled.
WWI flying ace Jean Navarre attacked a zeppelin armed with only a kitchen knife.
In 1907 the first taxicab took to the streets of New York City.
When the U.S. War Department was established in 1789, there were 840 soldiers in the regular army. Their job was to supervise public lands and guard the indian frontier.
The traditional symbol of the pawnbroker—three golden balls—is thought to be derived from the coat of the arms of the Medici family, who ruled Italian city of Florence between the 15th and 16th centuries. The symbol was spread by the Lombards—Italian bankers, goldsmiths, and moneylenders who set up businesses in medieval London.
In Northern parts of China it was once a common practice to shave pigs. When the evenings got cold the Chinese would take a pig to bed with them for warmth and found it more comfortable if the pig was clean-shaven.
In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.
The Coliseum received its name not for its size, but for a colossal statue of Nero that stood close by, placed there after the destruction of his palace.
While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.
The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings, many of which still remain standing today.
American astronomer, mathematician, clock-maker, surveyor and almanac editor Benjamin Banneker has been called the "first black man of science." Banneker took part in the original survey of Washington, DC. His almanac was published 1792 to 1797.
Pope Paul IV, who was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that he ordered Michelangelo to paint on to them.
President George Washington oversaw construction of the White House, but he never lived there. It was our second President, John Adams, elected in 1796, who first lived in the White House. His term was almost over by the time he moved in, and only six rooms had been finished.
Seating on the first scheduled inter-city commuter airplane flight consisted of moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with aluminum framed leather chairs.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
New York was the first state to require the licensing of motor vehicles. The law was adopted in 1901.
The practice of exchanging presents at Christmas originated with the Romans.
Before 1863, postal service in the United States was free.
Louis XIV had forty personal wigmakers and almost 1000 wigs.
Czar Paul 1 banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.
The first advertisement printed in English in 1477 offered a prayer book. The ad was published by William Caxton on his press in Westminster Abbey. No price was mentioned, only that the book was "good chepe."
Civil War General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson has two separate burial sites. His left arm, which was amputated after the battle of Chancellorsville was buried on a nearby farm. A week later, Jackson died and was buried in Lexington, Virginia.
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
George Washington, who was nearly toothless himself, was meticulous with the teeth of the six white horses that pulled his presidential coach. He had their teeth picked and cleaned daily to improve their appearance.
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.
It took 214 crates to transport the Statue of Liberty from France to New York in 1885.
It took 20,000 men 22 years to build the Taj Mahal.
Vincent Van Gogh painted a picture a day in the last 70 days of his life.
In the original architectural design, the French Cathedral of Chartes had six spires (It was built with two spires).
The Tower of London, for which construction was begun in 1078 by William the Conqueror, once housed a zoo. It also has served as an observatory, a mint, a prison, a royal palace, and (at present) the home of the Crown Jewels.
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
Historians report that the Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (AD 37-41) was so proud of his horse that he gave him a place as a senate consul before he died.
Shakespeare spelled his OWN name several different ways.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.
Salim (1569-1627, heir to the throne of India, had 4 wives when he was only 8 years of age.
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
Louis XV was the first person to use an elevator: in 1743 his "flying chair" carried him between the floors of the Versailles palace.
All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.
The first Bowie knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas.
Human skulls had been used as drinking cups for hundreds of years. The muscles and flesh were scraped away, the bottom was hacked off and then they were suitable to hold any beverage.
The first European to visit the Mississippi River was DeSoto.
Emir Beysari (1233-1293), an Egyptian of great wealth, drank wine from gold and silver cups, yet he never in all his life used the same cup twice.
Florence Nightingale served only two years of her life as a nurse. She contracted fever during her service in the Crimean War, and spent the last 50 years of her life as an invalid.
Alexander Hamilton and his son, Philip, both died on the same spot, and both during duels. Philip went first, 3 years before his father would be killed in that same field by Aaron Burr.
The British once went to war over a sailor’s ear. It happened in 1739, when Britain launched hostilities against Spain because a Spanish officer had supposedly sliced off the ear of a ship’s captain named Robert Jenkins.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Egyptian men never became bald. The reason for this, Herodotus claimed, was that as children Egyptian males had their heads shaved, and their scalps were continually exposed to the health-giving rays of the sun.
During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
On November 29, 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." Today you can visit the site—now a shrine—where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.
Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.
When airplanes were still a novel invention, seat belts for pilots were installed only after the consequence of their absence was observed to be fatal - several pilots fell to their deaths while flying upside down.
The first wooden shoe comes from the Netherlands. The Netherlands have many seas so people wanted a shoe that kept their feet dry while working outside. The shoes were called klompen and they had been cut of one single piece of wood. Today the klompen are the favorite souvenir for people who visit the Netherlands.
Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was primitive but effective — potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then thawed and stomped on to remove excess water.
Values on the Monopoly gameboard are the same today as they were in 1935.
Escape maps, compasses, and files were inserted into Monopoly game boards and smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during W.W.II; real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of Monopoly money.
The first United States coast to coast airplane flight occurred in 1911 and took 49 days.
John Hancock was the only one of fifty signers of the Declaration of Independence who actually signed it on July 4.
No automobile made after 1924 should be designated as antique.
The first dictionary of American English was published on April 14th, 1828, by - who else? - Noah Webster.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
The first Eskimo Bible was printed in Copenhagen in 1744.
Henry Ford flatly stated that history is "bunk."
In 1956 the phrase, "In God We Trust", was adopted as the U.S. national motto.
The first paperback book was printed - by Penguin Publishing in 1935.
In France - Captain Sarret made the first parachute jump from an airplane in 1918.
"Scientific America" carried the first magazine automobile ad in 1898. The Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH, invited readers to "dispense with a horse".
The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.
The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death.
The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten gold. Some fabrics had up to 500 gold threads per one inch of cloth.
More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years, the Chinese kept this discovery a secret. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky. Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.
The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed turquoise would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used these green and blue stones to decorate their battle shields.
The first man to distill bourbon whiskey in the United States was a Baptist preacher, in 1789.
On international license plates Spain is represented by the letter E for Espana.
Arguably the largest state in the world, Western Australia covers one-third of the Australian continent. It spans over 2.5 million square kilometers (1 million square miles).
Pennsylvania has more covered bridges than any other state. Vermont, a much smaller state, claims a greater density of covered bridges. (More bridges per square mile). Parke County, Indiana, claims more covered bridges than any other county, but Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, comes in second.
If global warming forecasts are true, the island country of Tuvalu might cease to exist within 100 years.
Surprisingly, there was a time that the Vatican owned shares of the Watergate complex in Washington DC, the Pan American building in Paris, and the Hilton hotel in Rome.
The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined.
The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq miles/4,53 sq km.
St. Petersburg, FL once had 427 consecutive days of sunshine.
The state of Oregon has one city named Sisters and another called Brothers. Sisters got its name from a nearby trio of peaks in the Cascade Mountains known as the Three Sisters. Brothers was named as a counterpart to Sisters.
Los Angeles and San Francisco become 2.5 inches closer together each year because they are on opposite sides of the San Andreas fault.
Residents of the Havasupai Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona get their mail delivered by mule.
Ellis Island opened to begin the processing of what would amount to more than 20 million immigrants to the United States in 1892. The immigration center was also used as a deportation station, and later, a Coast Guard Station, and then, a national park. Ellis Island is now a museum.
The twin towers of New Yorks World Trade Center contain 208 elevators. Elevators rank as the safest form of transportation, boasting only one fatality every 100 million miles traveled. Stairs, in comparison, are five times more dangerous.
The Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. has 365 steps, representing every day of the year.
When the Eiffel Tower was built in 1884, Parisians referred to it as "the tragic lamppost" and nearly universally hated it.
The royal house of Saudi Arabia has close to 10,000 princes and princesses.
The first people to arrive on Iceland were Irish explorers, in 795 A.D.
The Philippines consist of 7,100 islands.
The country of Costa Rica does not have an army.
Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States in 1789.
Persia changed its name to Iran in 1935.
Adolf Hitler had planned to change the name of Berlin to Germania.
The smallest country in Central America is El Salvador.
There are more people in New York City (7,895,563) than there are in the states of Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii, Delaware, and New Mexico combined.
There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.
US Route 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, approximating the course of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, a railroad which, we might mention, no longer goes to any of those three towns.
Toronto’s original name was York, but it had another name long before that. The area near the shores of Lake Ontario was called "the meeting place" by the Ojibway of Southern Ontario. Their word: Toronto.
Mongolia is the largest landlocked country.
There is a resort town in New Mexico called "Truth or Consequences."
Several nations (Norway, Australia, New Zealand, France, Great Britain, Chile, and Argentina) have advanced claims on sections of the continent of Antarctica. The United States does not recognize any claims.
In ancient Japan public contests were held to see who in a town could break wind loudest and longest. Winners were awarded many prizes and received great acclaim.
Pittsburgh was named for a British prime minister.
Katmandu is the capital of Nepal.
Spains biggest source of income is tourism.
Honolulu boasts the only royal palace in the U.S.
The city of Dallas is known as "The Big D."
Zanzibar is known as "Spice Island."
The largest lake in South America is Lake Maracaibo.
The three winter months in the southern hemisphere are June, July and August.
Norway contains the largest icefield in Europe.
The largest island in the Mediterranean sea is Sicily.
The Sahara desert is expanding half a mile south every year.
Thailand used to be called Siam.
The largest city in Africa is Cairo in Egypt.
The Nile river flows North.
The Sphinx sits on guard over the Great Pyramids.
England is smaller than New England.
Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language.
In 1825 Upper Peru became Bolivia.
Without any greenhouse effect, Earth would be cold and lifeless with an average temperature of 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
In May 1948, Mt. Ruapehu and Mt. Ngauruhoe, both in New Zealand, erupted simultaneously.
In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette.
In Papua New Guinea there are villages within five miles of each other which speak different languages.
In Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile, it has never rained.
The forest of Canadian Lake District is so dense that during winter the snow stays on top of the trees and the forest floor stays bare.
The 4-H Club started in Holmes County.
The King and Queen of the Gypsies are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Meridian.
The oldest Holiday Inn is in Clarkesdale.
The birthplace of Elvis was in Tupelo.
Football great Walter Peyton was from Columbia.
The first PTA was in Crystal Springs.
The company that makes Icee Drinks is in Edwards.
Belzoni is the Catfish Capital of the world.
Mississippi was the first state to outlaw imprisonment of debtors.
Coca Cola was founded by Joseph A. Biedenharn in Vicksburg.
The Mississippi Legislature passed one of the first laws in 1839 to protect the property rights of married women.
The Vicksburg National Cemetery is the second oldest in the country.
Resin Bowie, the inventor of the Bowie knife is buried at Pt. Gibson.
The International Checkers Hall Of Fame is in Petal.
Alcorn State University in Lorman is the oldest black land grant college in the world.
The oldest field game in America is Stickball founded by the Choctaw Indians of Philadelphia.
The McCoy Federal Building in Jackson is the first federal building in the U.S. named for an African American.
MCW in Columbus was the first state college for women in the country established in 1884.
There are 3,900 islands in the country Japan, the country of islands.
French speaking residents of Belgium are called Walloons.
The most remote island in the world is Tristan da Cunha, which is above the sub-Antarctic zone.
West Virginia consists of those counties of Virginia which refused to secede from the Union at the start of the Civil War. Maine used to be part of Massachusetts. The original colonies made all kinds of land claims for the frontier west of them.
Since the 1930’s the town of Corona, CA has buried, and lost, all 17 of its time capsules.
The largest country in Africa is the Sudan. The Arc of the Covenant is said to be located in Axum, Ethiopia.
Australia is the richest source of mineral sands in the world.
The city of Istanbul straddles two separate continents, Europe and Asia.
The smallest state in the US has also the longest name. The official name of Rhode Island is Rhode Island and Plantation Provinces.
The official, neutral name of Switzerland, which has multiple official languages, is the latin "Confederation Helvetica", or the Helvetic Confederation, thus the "CH" on license plates, stickers and e-mail addresses.
Shortest Intercontinental Commercial Flight in the world is from Gibraltar (Europe) to Tangier (Africa.) Distance 34 miles, flight time 20 minutes.
People in Sweden, Japan, and Canada are more likely to know the population of the United States than are Americans.
Dominica, Mexico, Zambia, Kiribati, Fiji and Egypt all have birds on their flags.
Australia is the richest source of mineral sands in the world.
Iowa has more independent telephone companies than any other state.
Reversing Falls is in Canada, where the St. John River flows into the Bay of Fundy at St. John, New Brunswick. The rapids at this juncture flows normally at low tide, backwards at high tide. Between tides there is a 15-minute period in which the river is placid and boaters sail by very quickly.
The many sights that represent the Chinese city of Beijing were built by foreigners: the Forbidden City was built by the Mongols, the Temple of Heaven by the Manchurians.
Devon is the only county in Great Britain to have two coasts.
Only five countries in Europe touch only one other: Portugal, Denmark, San Marino, Vatican City, and Monaco.
There are only three world capitals that begin with the letter "O" in English: Ottawa, Canada; Oslo, Norway; and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The chiao is an official unit of currency in China. Also known as jiao, it is a copper-zinc coin that is one-tenth of a yuan and equal to 10 fen.
The San Blas Indian women of Panama consider giant noses a mark of great beauty. They paint black lines down the center of their noses to make them appear longer.
Despite a population of over a billion, China has only about 200 family names.
The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either direction depending on the tide.
Although people in the majority of countries of the world drive on the right side of roads, there are some fifty nations in which people drive on the left. These include England and many former English colonies such as Australia and New Zealand—but not the U.S. or Canada. There are several non-English countries where people also drive on the left including Japan.
Using satellite-surveying techniques, scientists have determined that Los Angeles, California is moving east. At a rate estimated to be about one-fifth on an inch per year, the city is moving closer to the San Gabriel Mountains.
La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia is the highest capital in the world. Ski resorts there operate only on weekends during the South American summer (November to March). At an elevation of over 17,000 feet, it is too cold to operate during the South American winter.
In Brazil, Christmas is celebrated with fireworks.
Alaska is the only state without a state motto.
Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land areas below sea level.
In downtown Lima, Peru, there is a large brass statue dedicated to Winnie-the-Pooh.
If you could cut out the United States, its center of gravity would be at Friend, Nebraska.
Rome is considered "The Eternal City."
There is a prison in Ossining, New York named "Sing Sing."
Mount St. Helens dropped 1,313 feet in 1980.
Guam has seven public elementary schools.
On a trip to the South Sea islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.
The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.
The U.S. mint in Denver, Colorado is the only mint that marks its pennies.
Female aristocrats on the island of Portugese Timor in Malaya, indicate their status by notching their ears.
The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq. miles/4,53 sq. km.
There are more psycho-analysts per capita in Buenos Aires than any other place in the world.
Ireland currently has the fastest growing economy in Europe - the economy grew by 40% from 1993-1997. It is for this reason that the country is referred to as the Celtic Tiger.
Bore-hole seismometry indicates that the land in Oklahoma moves up and down 25cm throughout the day, corresponding with the tides. Earth tides are generally about one-third the size of ocean tides.
The Chang Jiang river is the fourth longest river in the world.
The Dominican Republic was called Santo Domingo when it first gain independence.
The state of Oregon has one city named Sisters and another called Brothers. Sisters got its name from a nearby trio of peaks in the Cascade Mountains known as the Three Sisters. Brothers was named as a counterpart to Sisters.
The surface area of the Earth is 197,000,000 square miles.
According to experts, large caves tend to "breathe"; they inhale and exhale great quantities of air when the barometric pressure on the surface changes, and air rushes in or out seeking equilibrium.
At 840,000 square miles, Greenland is the largest island in the world. It is 3 times the size of Texas. By comparison Iceland is only 39,800 square miles.
Zion, Illinois - located on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago - was founded by the followers of John Alexander Dowie, whose Christian Catholic Church disapproved of pharmacies, doctors, theaters or dance halls. Smoking, drinking and the eating of pork also was prohibited in town.
Ninety percent of all volcanic activity occurs in the oceans. In 1993, scientists located the largest known concentration of active volcanoes on the sea floor in the South Pacific. This area, the size of New York state, hosts 1,133 volcanic cones and sea mounts. Two or three could erupt at any moment.
Given their sheer volume, ninety-nine percent of the living space on the planet is found in the oceans. The average depth of the oceans is 2.5 miles (4 km). The deepest point lies in the Mariana Trench, 6.8 miles (10.9 km) down. By way of comparison, Mount Everest is only 5.5 miles (8.8 km) high.
The exact geographic center of the United States is near Lebanon, Kansas.
What is the difference between a yam and a sweet potato? According to the Mayo Clinic dietician, a true yam is a large, starchy root that can get up to 100 pounds. It is native to Africa and Asia and is seldom available in the USA. The sweet potato is a native American plant. It was a staple for early settlers and was actually brought to Europe by Columbus. There are two varieties of sweet potatoes: One is moist and orange-fleshed, the other is drier and yellow. The orange-fleshed potato is commonly - and incorrectly - called a yam. This common practice has resulted in confusion when it comes to labels. Some stores incorrectly label the darker of the two sweet potatoes as being a yam, and they list the nutrient content for yams. True yams have no vitamin A. So consumers mistakenly think that the product has no vitamin A, even though it actually does. Consumers are most likely eating sweet potatoes - and sweet potatoes are rich in vitamin A, vitamin C and fiber.
The first U.S. consumer product sold in the old Soviet Union was Pepsi-Cola.
The most widely eaten fruit in America is the banana.
The dark meat on a roast turkey has more calories than the white meat.
The color of a chile is no indication of its spiciness, but size usually is - the smaller the pepper, the hotter it is.
A bushel of apples weighs about 42 pounds.
Over 15 billion prizes have been given away in Cracker Jacks boxes.
It takes more than 500 peanuts to make one 12-ounce jar of peanut butter.
Carrots were first grown as a medicine not a food. The Ancient Greeks called carrots "Karoto".
Goat milk is used to produce Roquefort cheese.
Though most people think of salt as a seasoning, only 5 out of every 100 pounds produced each year go to the dinner table.
Thin-skinned lemons are the juiciest.
There are two types of asparagus: green and white. One of the most popular varieties of green asparagus is named after Martha Washington, the wife of George Washington.
There are thousands of varieties of shrimp, but most are so tiny that they are more likely to be eaten by whales than people. Of the several hundred around the world that people do eat, only a dozen or so appear with any regularity in the United States.
There are professional tea tasters as well as wine tasters.
Soy milk, the liquid left after beans have been crushed in hot water and strained, is a favorite beverage in the East. In Hong Kong, soy milk is as popular as Coca-Cola is in the U.S.
There are more than 7,000 varieties of apples grown in the world. The apples from one tree can fill 20 boxes every year. Each box weighs an average 42 pounds.
According to the National Safety Council, coffee is not successful at sobering up a drunk person, and in many cases it may actually increase the adverse effects of alcohol.
A tenth of the 7 million tons of rice grown in the U.S. each year goes into the making of beer.
The "last meal" for Death Row inmates has became embedded in the American death-penalty ritual. Reporters have dutifully recorded the last meal menus: John Wayne Gacy had fried chicken and strawberries; Ted Bundy passed on steak and eggs; James Smith, executed in Texas in 1990, requested a "lump of dirt" (request was denied); Missouri inmate Lloyd Schlup asked for venison and hare (request was granted).
Europeans drink more wine than Americans. France and Italy produce over 40% of all wine consumed in the world.
Strawberry Pop Tarts may be a cheap and inexpensive source of incendiary devices. Toasters which fail to eject Pop Tarts cause the Pop Tarts to emit flames 10-18 inches in height.
Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.
Many wonder what the difference is between jelly, preserves, jam, and marmalade. In all cases, jelly is the common denominator. Jelly is fruit juice with added sugar, cooled and congealed, usually by the addition of gelatin or pectin. Preserves preserve the largest percentage of the original fruit, containing whole chunks of it in addition to jelly. Jam is jelly plus fruit pulp. Marmalade has bits of fruit and the rinds in a jelly. Although the orange variety is most common, it is often made from other citrus fruits. Spread either of the four on toast, add a nice cup of tea, and you have one sweet treat.
Every year, Bavarians and their guests drink 1.2 million gallons of beer during Oktoberfest. The first Oktoberfest was in 1810 and celebrated the marriage of King Ludwig Iof Bavaria.
The MAI TAI COCKTAIL was created in 1945 by Victor Bergeron, the genius of rum, also known as Trader Vic. The drink got its name when he served it to two friends from Tahiti, who exclaimed "Maitai roa ae!" which in Tahitian means out of this world - the best!
Under U.S. federal guidelines, there should be 21 to 25 jumbo shrimp in a pound.
Most common sports drinks are the equivalent of sugar-sweetened human sweat. That is, they have the same salt concentration as sweat (but are less salty than your blood). An increase of as little as 1% in blood salt will cause you to become thirsty.
In Australia, the popular McOz Burger combines 100 percent Australian beef, cheese, tomato, beetroot, lettuce, and cooked onions on a toasted bun. This burger was created by Australian McDonald’s restaurant owners, and became a permanent menu item after a successful promotional period in 1998.
The wheat that produces a one-pound loaf of bread requires 2 tons of water to grow.
Milk delivered to the store today was in the cow two days ago.
Only men were allowed to eat at the first self-service restaurant, the Exchange Buffet in New York, opened in 1885. Customers ate standing up.
Lithiated Lemon was the creation of Charles Griggs from Missouri, who introduced the lemon-lime drink in 1929. Four years later he renamed it 7-Up. Sales increased significantly.
There are 2,000,000 different combinations of sandwiches that can be created from a SUBWAY menu.
The Chuck E. Cheese franchise was created by Atari, a restaurant combining robotic animals and arcade games with family meals. They name the franchise a Pizza Time Theater. Chuck E. Cheese was first opened in 1977.
Brussels sprouts are called Brussels sprouts because they were discovered in Brussels.
During the Middle Ages, almost all beef, pork, mutton, and chicken were chopped fine. Forks were unknown at the time and the knife was a kitchen utensil rather that a piece of tableware.
You should not eat a crawfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was cooked.
Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators where it was first developed.
When tea was first introduced in the American colonies, many housewives, in their ignorance, served the tea leaves with sugar or syrup after throwing away the water in which they had been boiled.
For beer commercials, they add liquid detergent to the beer to make it foam more.
Worcestershire Sauce is basically an Anchovy ketchup.
Sixty cows can produce a ton of milk a day.
Ancient Greeks and Romans believed asparagus had medicinal qualities for helping prevent bee stings and relieve toothaches.
Alcoholic lemonade is outselling premium bottled lagers in United Kingdom pubs, according to a report in "NASFT Showcase" magazine.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat more than 22 pounds of tomatoes every year. More than half this amount is eaten in the form of ketchup and tomato sauce.
According to the National Safety Council, coffee is not successful at sobering up a drunk person, and in many cases it may actually increase the adverse effects of alcohol.
According to the head chef at the United Nations, the president of Iceland eats fish every day for lunch. Additionally, the queen of Denmark has a taste for Japanese food, and Pres. Bill Clinton has a passion for chicken.
Chocolate not only does not promote tooth decay, it might prevent it. According to the American Dental Association, milk chocolate contains ingredients, such as calcium and phosphate, that might modify acid production in the mouth that leads to cavities. Some oils in chocolate might also prevent tooth decay. Chocolate does contain sugar, of course, but these are simple sugars that are less harmful than the complex sugars contained in other foods.
Beer foam will go down by licking your finger then sticking it in the beer.
"Colonial goose" is the name Australians give to stuffed mutton.
Fanta Orange is the third largest selling soft drink in the world.
The number 57 on a Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickle the company once had.
The flesh of the puffer fish (fugu) is considered a delicacy in Japan. It is prepared by chefs specially trained and certified by the government to prepare the flesh free of the toxic liver, gonads, and skin. Despite these precautions, many cases of tetrodotoxin poisoning are reported each year in patients ingesting fugu. Poisonings usually occur after eating fish caught and prepared by uncertified handlers. The end result, in most cases, is death.
The five favorite U.S. school lunches nationwide, according to the American School Food Service Association, are, in order, pizza, chicken nuggets, tacos, burritos, and hamburgers.
The first macaroni factory in the United States was established in 1848. It was started by Antoine Zegera in Brooklyn, New York.
Ovaltine, the drink was from milk, malt, egg and cocoa, was developed in 1904 in Berne, Switzerland. It was originally named Ovomaltine. A clerical error changed it when the manufacturer registered the name.
When it originally appeared in 1886 - Coca Cola was billed as an "Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage".
The letters VVSOP on a cognac bottle stand for - Very Very Superior Old Pale.
Opera stars Nellie Melba and Luisa Tetrazzini are famous for more than singing. They are also known for food that has been named after them. Nellie Melba (peach melba and melba toast) and Luisa Tetrazzini (chicken tetrazzini).
Sliced bread was introduced under the Wonder Bread label in 1930.
Herring is the most widely eaten fish in the world.
A hard-boiled egg will spin. An uncooked or soft-boiled egg will not.
Over a third of all pineapples come from Hawaii.
Wine will spoil if exposed to light, hence tinted bottles.
Turkey contains an amino acid called tryptophan, which can cause sleepiness (warm milk also contains tryptophan).
Dairy products account for about 29% of all food consumed in the U.S.
As much as 50 gallons of Maple Sap are used to make a single gallon of Maple Sugar.
Rice is the main food for half of the people of the world.
There are more than 15,000 different kinds of rice.
The famous baby appearing on jars of Gerber baby food is actually a girl named Ann Turner. The picture was drawn by artist Dorothy Hope Smith in 1928.
Before it was unsolicited email, Spam was a luncheon meat. It is so resistant to spoilage that, if kept in the closed can, it may well outlast eternity and will certainly live longer than you. Believe it or not it was first promoted as a health food. In Korea it comes in gift boxes, and placed end to end, all the Spam ever sold would circle the Earth more than ten times.
Only food that does not spoil: honey.
Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.
Researchers in Denmark found that beer tastes best when drunk to the accompaniment of a certain musical tone. The optimal frequency is different for each beer, they reported. The correct harmonious tone for Carlsberg Lager, for example, is 510-520 cycles per second.
In medieval England beer often was served with breakfast.
Spirit of proof strength was the technical standard by which strength was measured until 1st January, 1980. Hundreds of years ago, spirit of this strength was proved when Whiskey and gunpowder were mixed and ignited. If the gunpowder flashed, then there was enough Whiskey in the mixture to permit ignition. Such Whiskey was held to have been proved - i.e. "tested". If the spirit was weaker than this, then ignition did not take place and the Whiskey failed the "test". The amount of black powder used was the same amount as was, and indeed still is, used to "proof" the barrels of smooth-bore fire-arms.
The estimated number of M & M’s sold each day in the United States is 200,000,000.
Spam stands for Shoulder Pork and hAM.
Americans eat an average of 18 pounds of fresh apples each year. The most popular variety in the United States is the Red Delicious.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat more than 22 pounds of tomatoes every year. More than half this amount is eaten in the form of ketchup and tomato sauce.
Pigturducken is a pig, stuffed with a turkey, which is stuffed with a chicken, deep fried in oil, which is usually put into something similar to a horse trough over propane burners.
The famous Chef Wolfgang Puck chose the Italian word "Spago" as the name for his popular chain of restaurants. In Italian - spago = "String" or "Twine" - slang for spaghetti.
Native Americans never actually ate turkey; killing such a timid bird was thought to indicate laziness.
The Chinese used to open shrimp by flaying the shells with bamboo poles. Until a few years ago, in factories where dried shrimp were being prepared, "shrimp dancers" were hired to tramp on the shells with special shoes.
Ice cream was originally made without sugar and eggs.
There are more than 200 kinds of chili peppers, none of which belong to the pepper family.
Burger King® uses approximately 1/2 million pounds of bacon every month in its restaurants.
Table salt is the only commodity that hasn’t risen dramatically in price in the last 150 years.
In South Africa, termites are often roasted and eaten by the handful, like pretzels or popcorn.
The secret recipe for Coca Cola, code-named "Merchandise 7X" is kept under lock and key in a vault in the SunTrust Bank Building in Atlanta, Georgia, the home of Coke inventor Dr. John S. Pemberton and current world headquarters of Coca Cola International.
John Kellogg invented corn flakes, for a patient with bad teeth. Charles Post invented Grape Nuts. Dr. Kellogg was the manager of a Michigan health spa and Post was a patient. The spa was founded by Sylvester Graham...inventor of the Graham cracker and pioneer of the early 1800s movement to eat more bran.
Mr. Peanut was invented in 1916 by a Suffolk, Virginia schoolchild who won $5 in a design contest sponsored by Planters Peanuts.
An apple, onion, and potato all have the same taste. The differences in flavor are caused by their smell. To prove this - pinch your nose and take a bite from each. They will all taste sweet.
Americans eat an average of 18 pounds of fresh apples each year. The most popular variety in the United States is the Red Delicious.
Although the combination of chili peppers and oregano for seasoning has been traced to the ancient Aztecs, the present blend is said to be the invention of early Texans. Chili powder today is typically a blend of dried chilies, garlic powder, red peppers, oregano, and cumin.
A man named Ed Peterson is the inventor of the Egg McMuffin.
The fortune cookie was invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker.
The Ritz cracker was introduced to markets in 1934, but gourmets had to wait until 1953 for the invention of cheese in a can.
A black cow is a chocolate soda with chocolate ice cream. The term dates from the Roaring Twenties, although it also came to be used to describe a root beer float. Another term for a black cow was a mud fizz.
If you would like to make a Siberian happy, give him a horse-meat steak.
A Linthicum, Maryland woman, dressed only in bra and panties, lost her balance while putting down linoleum in her home and fell smack into the glue that was spread on the floor, according to Battalian Chief John M. Scholz of the county Fire Department. She became stuck to the floor (mistake one) but somehow managed to free herself after awhile and called the emergency number 911.
When the EMTs arrived they found her sitting on her couch (mistake number two). She was now glued to her couch. She had crossed her legs (mistake number three). Her legs were now glued together. And they also found her cordless phone glued to her hand.
Crews, using solvent-dipped sterile gauze pads, eventually freed her legs, hands and extremities. She refused to be taken to the hospital.
Student Robert Ricketts, 19, had his head bloodied when he was struck by a Conrail train. He told police he was trying to see how close to the moving train he could place his head without getting hit.
A 20 year old protester was arrested in Montana after he assaulted a congress women from Iowa with a salmon.
Edney Raphael, 39, running from a stabbing in Philadelphia with a bloody knife in his hand, was captured following a foot chase; he had turned his head to see where the officers were and run smack into a parking meter.
A young criminal walked into a bank and quietly handed the teller a note demanding several thousand dollars. Disguised, the man could have easily gotten away. However, he had idiotically written the note on a piece of his own stationery; it included his full name and address.
Sawney Beane, his wife, 8 sons, 6 daughters, and 32 grandchildren were a family of cannibals that lived in the caves near Galloway, Scotland in the early 17th Century. Although the total number is not known, it is believed they claimed over 50 victims per year. The entire family was taken by an army detachment to Edinburgh and executed, apparently without trial.
Airport security personnel find about six weapons a day searching passengers.
A man robbed a convenience store and ran out with a bag full of cash. He got down the street and realized he had left his car keys on the counter. When he returned to the store, he was promptly arrested.
A guy wearing pantyhose on his face tried to rob a store in a mall. When security came, he quickly grabbed a shopping bag and pretended to be shopping, forgetting that he was still wearing the pantyhose. He was captured and his loot was returned to the store.
In a stroke of irony, the maximum security prison in St. Albans, Vermont, was responsible in 1996 for sending out public relations brochures enticing tourists to visit Vermont.
Eugene-Francois Midocq, a French thief and outlaw, evaded the police for years, turned police spy, joined the force as a detective, and ultimately used his knowledge of crime to establish a new crime-fighting organization, the Surete.
A judge in Louisville decided a jury went "a little bit too far" in recommending a sentence of 5,005 years for a man who was convicted of five robberies and a kidnapping. The judge reduced the sentence to 1,001 years.
A teenager in Belmont, New Hampshire robbed the local convenience store. Getting away with a pocket full of change, the boy walked home. He did not realize, however, that he had holes in both of his pockets. A trail of quarters and dimes led police directly to his house.
A man was arrested and charged with the robbery—of vending machines. The man posted bail, entirely in quarters.
A Texan convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600 in damages rather than serve a two-year prison sentence. For payment, he gave the court a forged check. He got his prison term back, plus eight more years.
R.C. Gaitlan, 21, walked up to two patrol officers who were showing their squad car computer felon-location equipment to children in a Detroit neighborhood. When he asked how the system worked, the officer asked him for identification. Gaitlan gave them his drivers license, they entered it into the computer, and moments later they arrested Gaitlan because information on the screen showed Gaitlan was wanted for a two-year-old armed robbery in St. Louis, Missouri.
In South Carolina, an inmate who was paralyzed behind bars says in a lawsuit that Spartanburg County jail guards should have stopped him from doing back flips off a desk in his cell. Torrence Johnson, who is suing for unspecified damages, said recently that he fell and crushed a vertebra while being held in maximum-security in 1998.
A man went in to rob a bank. He demanded the clerk to give him all the money. They told him to go sit out in his car and they would bring him the bags of money. He agreed and went out to his car. In the meantime, the people in the bank called the police. When they got there the man was still sitting in his car waiting for the money and they arrested him.
A couple robbing a store caught on camera could not be identified until the police reviewed the security tape. The woman filled out an entry form for a free trip prior to robbing the store.
A reward of $1,000 was offered for information leading to the capture and conviction of a man robbing taxi drivers. The man turned himself in and demanded the reward as a result. He received a 20 year sentence for aggravated robbery instead.
Archduke Karl Ludwig (1833-1896), brother of the Austrian emperor, was a man of such piety that on a trip to the Holy Land, he insisted on drinking from the River Jordan, despite warnings that it would make him fatally ill. He died within a few weeks.
Lawsuits filed by California inmates cost the taxpayers more than $25 million in 1994.
A Hawaiian stamp of 1851 with a face value of 2 cents was the sole reason Gaston Leroux, a Parisian philatelist, murdered its owner, Hector Giroux.
Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US President whose name contains all the letters from the word "0." William Jefferson Clinton is the 2nd.
The record for the world’s worst drivers is a toss-up between two candidates: First, a 75-year-old man who received 10 traffic tickets, drove on the wrong side of the road four times, committed four hit-and-run offenses, an caused six accidents, all within 20 minutes on October 15, 1966. Second, a 62-year-old woman who failed her driving test 40 times before passing it in August, 1970 (by that time, she had spent over $700 in lessons, and could no longer afford to buy a car).
Princess Grace was once on the board of 20th Century-Fox.
Abraham Lincoln had a wart on his face.
Bill Cosby was the first black to win a best actor Emmy.
Vincent Van Gogh shot and killed himself while painting "Wheatfield with Crows."
President Theodore Roosevelt wrote 37 books.
Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Dostoyevsky were all epileptics.
When Yul Brynner had hair, it was dark brown.
Ignce Paderewski, one of the greatest concert pianists of all time, was also premier of Poland.
John F. Kennedy and Warren Harding were the only United States presidents to be survived by their fathers.
Before he catapulted to fame, Bob Dylan was paid $50 in 1960 for playing the harmonica on a Harry Belafonte album.
When Errol Flynn appeared as a contestant on the mid-1950s TV quiz show The Big Surprise, he was questioned about sailing and won $30,000.
Reportedly, Virginia Woolf wrote all her books while standing.
The godfather of actress Winona Ryder was the late Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD guru of the 1960s. Winona’s father, Michael Horowitz, served at one time as Leary’s archivist and ran a bookstore called Flashback Books. Additionally, her parents were politically active intellectuals, and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was a good family friend.
When asked to name his favorite among all his paintings, Pablo Picasso replied "the next one."
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger bought the first Hummer manufactured for civilian use in 1992. The vehicle weighed in at 6,300 lbs and was 7 feet wide.
Napoleon was terrified of cats.
James Dean died in a Porsche Spider.
Mickey Mouse was the first non-human to win an Oscar.
The first U.S. president to visit Moscow was Richard Nixon.
The first atomic bomb exploded at Trinity Site, New Mexico.
The planet Venus has the longest day.
Because of the salt content of the Dead Sea, it is difficult to dive below its surface.
Carolyn Shoemaker has discovered 32 comets and approximately 800 asteroids.
The first portable calculator placed on sale by Texas Instruments weighed only 2-1/2 pounds and cost a mere $150. (1971)
The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. If there was a bathtub large enough to hold it, Saturn would float.
The shockwave from a nitroglycerine explosion travels at 17,000 miles per hour.
The fastest moon in our solar system circles Jupiter once every seven hours - traveling at 70,400 miles per hour.
Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west.
Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.
Bacteria, the tiniest free-living cells, are so small that a single drop of liquid contains as many as 50 million of them.
A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top. This is because the carbonation in the drink gets pockets of air stuck in the wrinkles of the raisin, which is light enough to be raised by this air. When it reaches the surface of the champagne, the bubbles pop, and the raisin sinks back to the bottom, starting the cycle over.
On December 2, 1942, a nuclear chain reaction was achieved for the first time under the stands of the University of Chicago’s football stadium. The first reactor measured 30 feet wide, 32 feet long, and 21.5 feet high. It weighed 1,400 tons and contained 52 tons of uranium in the form of uranium metal and uranium oxide. Although the same process led to the massive energy release of the atomic bomb, the first artificially sustained nuclear reaction produced just enough energy to light a small flashlight.
Experiments conducted in Germany and at the University of Southampton in England show that even mild and incidental noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by noise. The sounds cause their pupils to change focus and blur their vision.
STASI, the East German secret police organization, devised a devilishly clever way to prevent someone from giving them the slip during the Cold War: they managed to synthesize the scent of a female dog in heat, which they applied to the shoes of the person under surveillance. Then they simply had a male dog follow the scent.
If you stand in the bottom of a well, you would be able to see the stars even in the daytime.
A "fulgerite" is fossilized lightning. It forms when a powerful lightning bolt melts the soil into a glass-like state.
Some early TV screens did emit excessive X-rays, as did computer monitors, but that was fixed long ago. Doctors suggest that at worst, sitting too close might cause some temporary eye fatigue—the same for reading with insufficient light—but no permanent damage, no matter what your mother claimed.
Dirty snow melts faster than clean.
Clouds fly higher during the day than the night.
Clothes that are dried outside DO smell better because of a process called photolysis. What happens is this: sunlight breaks down compounds in the laundry that cause odor, such as perspiration and body oils.
In 1980, Namco released PAC-MAN, the most popular video game (or arcade game) of all time. The original name was going to be PUCK MAN, but executives saw the potential for vandals to scratch out part of the P in the games marquee and labeling.
The opposite of a "vacuum" is a "plenum."
If the world were tilted one degree more either way, the planet would not be habitable because the area around the equator would be too hot and the poles would be too cold.
A bowl of lime Jell-O, when hooked up to an EEG machine, exhibited movement which is virtually identical to the brain waves of a healthy adult man or woman.
A full moon always rises at sunset.
The hardness of ice is similar to that of concrete.
The first man-made item to exceed the speed of sound is the bull whip our leather whip. When the whip is snapped, the knotted end makes a "crack" or popping noise. It is actually causing a mini sonic boom as it exceeds the speed of sound.
From the smallest microprocessor to the biggest mainframe, the average American depends on over 264 computers per day.
From bridges to rebar, rust is everywhere. According to a recent study, the annual cost of metallic corrosion in the U.S. is approximately $300 billion. The report, by Battelle, Columbus, Ohio, and the Specialty Steel Industry of North America, Washington, D.C., estimated that about one-third of that cost could be avoided through broader application of corrosion-resistant material and "best anti-corrosive practice" from design through maintenance.
ENIAC, the first electronic computer, appeared 50 years ago. The original ENIAC was about 80 feet long, weighed 30 tons, had 17,000 tubes. By comparison, a desktop computer today can store a million times more information than an ENIAC, and 50,000 times faster.
Rain contains vitamin B12.
The first U.S. census to be tallied by computer was in 1950. UNIVAC did the tallying.
A scientist at Michigan State University has calculated that the production of a single hen egg requires about 120 gallons of water, a loaf of bread requires 300 gallons, and a pound of beef, 3,500.
You know the three physical dimensions, and the fourth dimension, time. For years, people have speculated about other dimensions. Experts in theoretical physics now say the major theories about the universe make sense together - and all the math seems to work - if there are 10 dimensions.
A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The unlucky canine is the only creature known to have been killed by a meteor.
A day on the planet Mercury is twice as long as its year. Mercury rotates very slowly but revolves around the sun in slightly less than 88 days.
A cosmic year is the amount of time it takes the sun to revolve around the center of the Milky Way, about 225 million years.
A car traveling at a constant speed of 60 miles per hour would take over 48 million years to reach the nearest star (other than our sun), Proxima Centauri. This is about 685,000 average human lifetimes.
A bucket filled with earth would weigh about 5 time more than the same bucket filled with the substance of the sun. However, the force of gravity is so much greater on the sun that the man weighing 150 pounds on our planet would weigh 2 tons on the sun.
Traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, light take 6 hours to travel from Pluto to the earth.
To an observer standing on Pluto, the sun would appear no brighter than Venus appears in our evening sky.
Tiny dust particles surround a comet. They are swept into a long tail by the solar wind, which consists of subatomic particles speeding from the sum at speed of hundred of miles per second.
Time slows down near a black hole; inside it stops completely.
The wick of a trick candle has small amounts of magnesium in them. When you light the candle, you are also lighting the magnesium. When someone tries to blow out the flame, the magnesium inside the wick continues to burn and, in just a split second (or two or three), relights the wick.
On December 23, 1947, Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., held a secret demonstration of the transistor which marked the foundation of modern electronics.
Western Electric successfully brought sound to motion pictures and introduced systems of mobile communications which culminated in the cellular telephone.
At a glance, the Celsius scale makes more sense than the Fahrenheit scale for temperature measuring. But its creator, Anders Celsius, was an oddball scientist. When he first developed his scale, he made freezing 100 degrees and boiling 0 degrees, or upside down. No one dared point this out to him, so fellow scientists waited until Celsius died to change the scale.
An ordinary TNT bomb involves atomic reaction, and could be called an atomic bomb. What we call an A-bomb involves nuclear reactions and should be called a nuclear bomb.
A chip of silicon a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber. A ball of solid steel will bounce higher than one made entirely of glass.
Sterling silver is not pure silver. Because pure silver is too soft to be used in most tableware it is mixed with copper in the proportion of 92.5 percent silver to 7.5 percent copper.
Starch is used as a binder in the production of paper. It is the use of a starch coating that controls ink penetration when printing. Cheaper papers do not use as much starch, and this is why your elbows get black when you are leaning over your morning paper.
On average, half of all false teeth have some form of radioactivity.
Sound travels 15 times faster through steel than through the air.
The original IBM-PCs, that had hard drives, referred to the hard drives as Winchester drives. This is due to the fact that the original Winchester drive had a model number of 3030. This is, of course, a Winchester firearm.
The radioactive substance, Americanium - 241 is used in many smoke detectors.
Plutonium - first weighed on August 20th, 1942, by University of Chicago scientists Glenn Seaborg and his colleagues - was the first man-made element.
Hot water is heavier than cold.
Every year about 98% of atoms in your body are replaced.
Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
Outside the USA, Ireland is the largest software producing country in the world.
The final resting-place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker - the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer, trained the Apollo astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Mr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon in an attempt to learn if there is water on the moon.
Ethernet is a registered trademark of Xerox, Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T.
The Siberian larch accounts for more than 20% of all the worlds trees.
A plant in central Australia, the candlesticks of the sun, grows a candle-shaped flower once every 7 years.
The bark of a redwood tree is fireproof. Fires that occur in a redwood forest take place inside the trees.
While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonard da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk revealed its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicated the annual moisture.
The fragrance of flowers is due to the essences of oil which they produce.
The primary purpose of growing rice in flooded paddies is to drown the weeds surrounding the young seedlings. Rice can, in fact, be grown in drained areas.
The slippers plant (bulbo stylis) of Haiti looks like a pair of fuzzy slippers.
The giant puffball, lycoperdon giganteum, produces 7,000,000,000,000 spores, each of which could grow into a puffball a foot in diameter and collectively cover an area of 280,000 square mile, greater than the size of Texas. Fortunately, only one of the spores actually becomes a puffball, and all the others die.
The telegraph plant of Asia has leaves that flutter constantly, even when there is no breeze.
Of the 15,000-odd known species of orchids in the world, 3,000 of them can be found in Brazil.
The tree dictated on the Lebanese flag is a Cedar.
An ear of corn averages 800 kernels in 16 rows. A pound of corn consists of approximately 1,300 kernels. 100 bushels of corn produces approximately 7,280,000 kernels. Corn is produced on every continent of the world with the exception of Antarctica.
Heroin is derived from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, which means the poppy that brings sleep.
Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbecuing. These woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food. Only hardwoods should be used for smoking and grilling, such as oak, pecan, hickory, maple, cherry, alder, apple, or mesquite, depending on the type of meat being cooked.
Lightning keeps plants alive. The intense heat of lightning forces nitrogen in the air to mix with oxygen, forming nitrogen oxides that are soluble in water and fall to the ground in rain. Plants need nitrates to survive, so without lightning, plants could not live.
The squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), when brushed by a passerby, ejects its seeds and a stream of poisonous juice that stings the skin.
Leaves of the Sumatra breadfruit tree are notched when they first form, yet have no indentations when the leaves mature.
There are an estimated 285,000 species of flowering plants on Earth compared to 148,000 for all other plants. Flowering plants are very important because they provide food for herbivores - plant-eating animals - and for humans.
The giant sequoia, which produces millions of seeds, can take 175 to 200 years to flower. No other organism takes this long to mature sexually.
The partridge berry is a botanical Siamese twin. Each berry develops from 2 flowers.
A person standing under an oak tree is 16 more times liable to be hit by lightning than if he had taken refuge beneath a beech tree. The oak tree has vertical roots which provide a more direct route to ground water.
Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.
American colonists discovered that superior candles could be made from the fruit of a squat bush growing in the sand dunes along the New England seashore. The small, grayish bayberry was picked, crushed, and boiled. It had to be skimmed several times before the pale, nearly transparent, green fat was sufficiently refined. Bayberry candles were highly prized, because so much labor and so many berries were needed to make just one candle.
The shape of plant collenchyma cells and the shape of the bubbles in beer foam are the same - they are orthotetrachidecahedrons.
Kudzu is not indigenous to the South, but in that climate it can grow up to six inches a day.
Bamboo can grow up to three feet in a 24 hour period.
A single coffee tree yields only one pound of roasted, ground coffee annually.
In ancient religions, the Norsemen considered the mistletoe a baleful plant that caused the death of Baldur, the shining god of youth.
The average ear of corn has eight-hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rows.
The Mexican Jumping Bean is not a bean. It is actually a thin-shelled section of a seed capsule containing the larva of a small gray moth called the jumping bean moth (Laspeyresia saltitans).
The Curly Redwood Lodge is one of northern California’s most unique lodges. It was built from one curly redwood tree that produced 57,000 board feet of lumber. The tree - cut down in 1952 - was 18 feet 2 inches at the trunk. Curly redwood is unique because of the curly grain of the wood, unlike typical straight grained redwood.
Orchids are grown from seed so small that it would take thirty thousand to weigh as much as one grain of wheat.
The leaves of the Victorian water lily are sometimes over six feet in diameter.
In 1764 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played for the Royal Family at Versailles in France. He was even given the honor of standing behind the Queen at dinner - Mozart was only eight years old.
At age 22, Jerry Lee Lewis married for the third time. His bride? His thirteen year old cousin.
At age 4, Mozart composed a concerto for the clavier.
At age 15, Jerry Garcia swapped his birthday accordion for an electric guitar.
John Philip Sousa enlisted in the Marines at age 13. He worked as an apprentice in the band.
The Japanese national anthem is expressed in only four lines. The Greek anthem runs 158 verses.
Vaudevillian Jack Norworth wrote "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in 1908 after seeing a sign on a bus advertising BASEBALL TODAY - POLO GROUNDS. Norworth and his friend Albert von Tilzer (who write the music) had never been to a baseball game before his song became a hit sing-along.
Mass murderer Charles Manson recorded an album called "Lie."
Elvis Presley received his U.S. army discharge on March 5, 1960.
The leading female singer in an opera is called the prima donna.
Brian Epstein managed The Beatles to superstardom.
The Beatles performed their first U.S. concert in Carnegie Hall.
The Beach Boys formed in 1961.
George Anthiel composed film scores, but earlier in his life he had been an avant garde composer. In 1924 his "Ballet mecanique" was performed at Carnegie Hall. The work was scored for a fire siren, automobile horns, and an airplane propeller. After only a few minutes of this racket, an aging gentleman in the orchestra seats tied his handkerchief to his cane and began waving a white flag.
Brian Epstein, a record store owner in London, was asked by a customer for a copy of the record, "My Bonnie", by a group known as The Silver Beatles. He didn’t have it in stock so he went to the Cavern Club to check out the group. He signed to manage them in a matter of days and renamed them The Beatles.
Montgomery is the birthplace of music great Nat King Cole, pop singers Clarence Carter and Toni Tenille, Metropolitan Opera singer Nell Rankin, and blues legend Willie Mae Big Mama Thornton.
An eighteenth-century German named Matthew Birchinger, known as the little man of Nuremberg, played four musical instruments including the bagpipes, was an expert calligrapher, and was the most famous stage magician of his day. He performed tricks with the cup and balls that have never been explained. Yet Birchinger had no hands, legs, or thighs, and was less than 29 inches tall.
In every show that Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks) did there was at least one song about rain.
Peter Batten was a deserter from the British Army at the time of the creation of the film. In the final weeks of production, he was arrested for desertion, and Paul Angelis had to finish voicing the part of George.
The Beatles appear at the end of "The Yellow Submarine" in a short live action epilogue. Their voices for the cartoon movie were done by Paul Angelis (Ringo), Peter Batten (George), John Clive (John), and Geoffrey Hughes (Paul).
Jazz began in the 20th century, when bands in New Orleans began to apply the syncopated rhythms of ragtime to a variety of other tunes. In the first days of jazz, ensemble playing was emphasized. Only gradually did jazz come to be based on improvised solos.
The Beatles played the Las Vegas Convention Center in 1964. Some 8,500 fans paid just $4 each for tickets.
Warner Communications paid $28 million for the copyright to the song "Happy Birthday".
Verdi wrote the opera Aida at the request of the khedive of Egypt to commemorate the opening of the Suez canal.
No one knows where Mozart is buried.
"Mr. Mojo Risin" is an anagram for Jim Morrison.
Brian Setzer, of the Brian Setzer Orchestra, started out in a garage band called Merengue.
Dark Side of The Moon (a Pink Floyd album) stayed on the top 200 Billboard charts for 741 weeks! That is 14 years.
In 1992, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon, better known to country music fans as singer/comedienne Minnie Pearl, was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President George Bush. In 1994, Minnie became the first woman to be inducted into the Comedy Hall of Fame. She was too frail and sick to attend the ceremony, and so good friend and comedian George Lindsey ("Goober") accepted the award for her. She died in 1996 at age 83.
The famous Russian composer Aleksandr Borodin was also a respected chemistry professor in St. Petersburg.
The song "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" was written by George Graff, who was German, and was never in Ireland in his life.
In the band KISS, Gene Simmons was "The Demon", Paul Stanley was "Star Child", Ace Frehley was "Space Man", and Peter Criss was "The Cat.
At the tender age of 7, the multi-award-winning composer and pianist Marvin Hamlisch ("The Way We Were," "The Sting") was one of the youngest students ever admitted to the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York City.
The rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd took their name from a high school teacher named Leonard Skinner who had suspended several students for having long hair.
Most toilets flush in E flat.
The brass family of instruments include the trumpet, trombone, tuba, cornet, flügelhorn, French horn, saxhorn, and sousaphone. While they are usually made of brass today, in the past they were made of wood, horn, and glass.
According to Margaret Jones, author of a Patsy Cline biography, there are a dozen places in Virginia that could claim to be the hometown of the nomadic Cline. Her family moved 19 times before she was 15.
A person breathes 7 quarts of air every minute.
The kidneys filter about 500 gallons of blood each day.
Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.
Human lungs are 100 times easier to blow up than a standard toy balloon. But they tend to make lousy party favors.
Electrical stimulation in certain areas of the brain can revive long lost memories.
Urine was once used as a detergent for washing.
The human kidney consists of over 1 million little tubes with a total length of about 40 miles in both kidneys.
Your hearing is less sharp if you eat too much.
Sometimes when you belch, a little bit of your stomach acids comes along. This makes for a very disgusting and burning burp.
The hardest substance in the human body is enamel.
Pain travels through the body at 350 feet per second.
When honey is swallowed, it enters the blood stream within a period of 20 minutes.
Several well documented instances have been reported of extremely obese people flushing aircraft toilets whilst still sitting on them. The vacuum action of these toilets sucked the rectum inside out.
If you squeezed out all of the bacteria from your intestines, you could almost fill up a coffee mug.
The average square inch of skin holds 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, 60,000 melanocytes, and during the summer months, six or seven mosquito bites.
Each red blood cell lives an average of 4 months and travels between the lungs and other tissues 75,000 times before returning to the bone marrow to die.
You blink every 2-10 seconds. As you focus on each word in this sentence, your eyes swing back and forth 100 times a second, and every second; the retina performs 10 billion computer-like calculations.
The sense of touch: electrical impulses travel from the skin toward the spinal cord at a rate of up to 425 feet per second.
Between the ages of 30 and 70, you nose may lengthen and widen by as much as half an inch.
Skin is the largest organ of the human body.
The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.
Mouth ulcers are the most common human affliction.
The most common non-contagious disease in the world is tooth decay.
The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.
The iris membrane controls the amount of light that enters your eye.
Lacrimal fluid lubricates the eyes.
Lead poisoning is known as plumbism.
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter had an operation for hemorrhoids while he was in office.
Human blood travels 60,000 miles per day on its journey through the arteries, arterioles and capillaries and back through the venules and veins.
Hay fever is the sixth most prevalent chronic condition in the United States.
Your jaw muscle is the most powerful muscle in your body.
Despite accounting for just one-fiftieth of body weight, the brain burns as much as one-fifth of our daily caloric intake.
From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size.
Devoid of its cells and proteins, human blood has the same general makeup as sea water.
Scientists have identified more than 300 viruses capable of bringing fatal diseases to insects. The organisms are believed to be entirely different than those that cause disease in humans, and are thus harmless to man.
During a lifetime, one person generates more than 1,000 pounds of red blood cells.
If you lock your knees while standing long enough, you will pass out.
In 1918 and 1919, a world epidemic of simple influenza killed 20 million people in the United States and Europe.
One group, the Hunza in Northwest Kashmir, reportedly have not experienced cancer. The group is also said to have unusual longevity.
By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds.
Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.
Americans spend an estimated $500 million each year on allergy treatments.
In 1990, a 64-year old Hartsville, Tennessee, woman entered a hospital for surgery for what doctors diagnosed as a tumor on her buttocks. What surgeons found, however, was a four-inch pork chop bone, which they removed. They estimated that it had been in place for five to ten years. The woman could not remember sitting on it, or eating it for that matter.
Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.
Every person has a unique tongue print.
Did you know that you can actually die from a broken heart? Studies have shown that people who had experienced great loss or sadness can develop cracks in their heart which could lead to death.
A follicle that is more oval in shape will produce curlier hair, which, when viewed under a microscope, is more "flat" in appearance than a straight hair, which is "round".
Smoking makes it almost impossible for a male to have a natural erection and it shrinks the penis. It also reduces the mobility of sperm.
A new born baby breathes five times faster than an adult man.
Brain surgery is done with the patient still awake. The brain has no nerves therefore it has no sensation. The person is put to sleep to open the skull but after that the person wakes up to see the operation be completed.
It only takes 7 lbs of pressure to rip off your ears.
There are more than one form of the Ebola virus. Different strains are named after the area they were discovered in.
Over 25% of Zaire is infected with a form of the Ebola virus that does not kill.
There have been cases of people dying from paper cuts. The paper cut gets infected, and without proper treatment you can die from the infection.
The first drug that was offered as a water-soluble tablet, was aspirin in 1900.
The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next to your temple, is called a tragus.
Hailed as a wonder drug in the late nineteenth century, cocaine was outlawed in the United States in 1914.
Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.
A passionate kiss uses up 6.4 calories per minute.
During a kiss as many as 278 bacteria colonies are exchanged.
Captain Cook lost 41 of his 98 crew to scurvy (a lack of vitamin C) on his first voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. By 1795 the importance of eating citrus was realized, and lemon juice was issued on all British Navy ships.
Undertakers report that human bodies do not deteriorate as quickly as they used to. The reason, they believe, is that the modern diet contains so many preservatives that these chemicals tend to prevent the body from decomposition too rapidly after death.
Gold salts are sometimes injected into the muscles to relieve arthritis.
You can see a candle flame from 50 Kilometers on a clear, dark night. You can hear the tick of a watch from 6 meters in very quiet conditions. You can taste one gram of salt in 500 liters of water (.0001M). You can detect one drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-room apartment. You can detect the wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a height of one centimeter.
According to the Journal of American Medical Association, as of 1998, more than 100,000 Americans die annually from adverse reactions to prescription drugs.
If you combined all the muscles in an average human in to one muscle, the force it would be capable of producing is about 2,000 tonnes.
Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman is considered to be the godfather of the modern vaccine era. Having created nearly three dozen vaccines - more than any other scientist, Hilleman is also credited with saving more lives than any other scientist. Probably best known for his preventive vaccine for mumps, Hilleman has also developed vaccines for measles, rubella, chicken pox, bacterial meningitis, flu and hepatitis B.
A study by researcher Frank Hu and the Harvard School of Public Health found that women who snore are at an increased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.
"Soldiers disease" is a term for morphine addiction. The Civil War produced over 400,000 morphine addicts.
Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremities develop faster than the rest of us.
People who have never been married are seven and a half times more likely than married people to be admitted to a psychiatric facility.
Studies shown by the Psychology Department of DePaul University show that the principal reason to lie is to avoid punishment.
The short-term memory capacity for most people is between five and nine items or digits. This is one reason that phone numbers were kept to seven digits for so long.
Females have 500 more genes than males, and because of this are protected from things like color blindness and hemophilia.
There are 10 trillion living cells in the human body.
The brain requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body.
The right lung takes in more air than the left lung.
The substance that human blood resembles most closely in terms of chemical composition is sea water.
The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terrabytes.
Your thumb is the same length as your nose.
You lose enough dead skin cells in your lifetime to fill eight five-pound flour bags.
The average Human bladder can hold 13 ounces of liquid.
During his or her lifetime, the average human will grow 590 miles of hair.
The first known heart medicine was discovered in an English garden. In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action. Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of blood pumped per heartbeat.
It takes an interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 18 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed for the common cold in the United States per year. Research shows that colds are caused by viruses. 50 million unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed for viral respiratory infections.
In 1977, a 13 year old child found a tooth growing out of his left foot.
The human brain stops growing at the age of 18.
The first Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages were three inches wide and eighteen inches long. You made your own bandage by cutting off as much as you needed.
Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons for men versus 0.875 gallons for women.
Sumerians (from 5000 BC) thought that the liver made blood and the heart was the center of thought.
Approximately 16 Canadians have their appendices removed, when not required, every day.
In 1815 French chemist Michael Eugene Chevreul realized the first link between diabetes and sugar metabolism when he discovered that the urine of a diabetic was identical to grape sugar.
Between 25% to 33% of the population sneeze when they are exposed to light.
People who have a tough time handling the stress of money woes are twice as likely to develop severe gum disease, a new study finds.
The adult human heart weighs about ten ounces.
The number one cause of blindness in the United States is diabetes.
In 1972, a group of scientists reported that you could cure the common cold by freezing the big toe.
No one seems to know why people blush.
The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.
Medical researchers contend that no disease ever identified has been completely eradicated.
The toilet was invented by an Englishman named Thomas Crapper.
Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks.
Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called his counterpart in Alameda, California.
Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), the mother of 12 children, had good reason to improve the efficiency and convenience of household items. A pioneer in ergonomics, Gilbreth patented many devices, including an electric food mixer, and the trash can with step-on lid-opener that can be found in most households today.
You could milk about six cows per hour by hand, but with modern machinery, you can milk up to 100 cows per hour.
George Seldon received a patent in 1895 - for the automobile. Four years later, George sold the rights for $200,000.
In 1769 the British designer Edward Beran enclosed wooden slats in a frame to adjust the amount of light let into a room. These became known as venetian blinds from their early use over Italianate windows.
Rubber bands were first made by Perry and Co. of London in 1845.
The game that would become Scrabble was created by an unemployed architect, Alfred Mosher Butts in the early 1930s. He called it Lexiko, then Criss Cross Words and then sold the rights to James Brunot. In 1948 it was renamed Scrabble and was manufactured in a converted school house in Connecticut. Bruno sold the game to Selchow and Righter, who were bought out by Coleco in 1987, and in 1989 Milton Bradley bought it. More than 100 million Scrabble games have been sold worldwide.
During one four-year period, Thomas Edison obtained 300 patents, or one every five days.
The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was founded in 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Two French toolmakers were the first engineers to put the engine in the front of the car. This gave the car better balance, made it easier to steer, and made it much easier to get all your luggage in.
Russian submarine designers are building military submarines out of concrete. Because concrete becomes stronger under high pressure, (C-subs) could settle down to the bottom in very deep water and wait for enemy ships to pass overhead. Concrete would not show up on sonar displays (it looks just like sand or rocks), so the passing ships would not see the sub lurking below.
The windmill originated in Iran in AD 644. It was used to grind grain.
Out of the 11 original patents made by Nikola Tessla, for the generation of hydroelectric energy, 9 are still in use, (unchanged) today.
On the first neon sign, the word neon was spelled out in red by Dr. Perley G. Nutting, 15 years before neon signs became widely used commercially.
On November 23, 1835, Henry Burden of Troy, New York, developed the first machine for manufacturing horseshoes. Burden later oversaw the production of most of the horseshoes used by the Union cavalry during the Civil War.
Dutch engineers have developed a computerized machine that allows a cow to milk itself. Each cow in the herd has a computer chip in its collar. If the computer senses that the cow has not been milked in a given period of time, the milk-laden animal is allowed to enter the stall. The robot sensors locate the teats, apply the vacuum devices, and the cow is milked. The machine costs a mere $250,000 and is said to boost milk production by 15%.
Benjamin Franklin had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals.
Thomas Edison had a collection of over 5,000 birds.
King Gilette spent 8 years trying to invent and introduce his safety razor.
Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of the rocking chair.
The Roman civilization invented the arch.
George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.
The patent number of the telephone is 174465.
Disc Jockey Alan Freed popularized the term "Rock and Roll."
It is recorded that the Babylonians were making soap around 2800 B.C. and that it was known to the Phoenicians around 600 B.C. These early references to soap and soap making were for the use of soap in the cleaning of textile fibers such as wool and cotton in preparation for weaving into cloth.
The safety pin was patented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. He sold the patent rights for $400.
According to company lore, Ole Evinrude, a Norwegian immigrant, got the idea for an outboard motor while on a picnic with his sweetheart Bessie. They were on a small island in Lake Michigan, when Bessie decided she wanted some ice cream. Ole obligingly rowed to shore to get some, but by the time he made it back the ice cream had melted. So Ole built a motor that could be attached to his rowboat, and founded the Evinrude company in 1909.
Maximum tunnel depth below ground level is 221ft (67.4m)
Maximum tunnel depth below mean sea level is 70ft (21.3m)
Average scheduled train speed (including station stops) 20.5 mph (33 kmh).
Today, the London Underground Limited (LUL) is a major business with 2.5 million passenger journeys a day, nearly 500 trains, serving over 260 stations, around 16,000 staff and vast engineering assets.
Ornithologists often use Scotch tape to cover cracks in the soft shells of fertilized pigeon eggs, allowing the eggs to hatch. Scotch tape has also been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp.
The first coin operated machine ever designed was a holy-water dispenser that required a five-drachma piece to operate. It was the brainchild of the Greek scientist Hero in the first century AD.
Sylvan N. Goldman of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets developed the shopping cart so that people could buy more in a single visit to the grocery store. He unveiled his creation in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937.
Donald F. Duncan, the man who made the yo-yo an American tradition, is also credited with popularizing the parking meter and introducing Good Humor "ice cream on a stick.
The first lightweight luggage designed for air travel was conceived by aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.
Self-made millionaire Cyrus Field championed the idea of a telegraph from England to Newfoundland. Britain quickly agreed to subsidize. Congress went along by a one-vote margin. That was in 1856. Laying cable was tough. It kept breaking. The first line - two years later - died almost immediately. But 10 years later, there were two working lines. Communications changed forever.
While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonardo da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk reveal its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicates the annual moisture.
When using the first pay telephone, a caller did not deposit his coins in the machine. He gave them to an attendant who stood next to the telephone. Coin telephones did not appear to 1899.
The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.
As of 1940, total of ninety patents had been taken out on shaving mugs.
Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.
Two days before Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard in 1877, he gave her 99 percent of his company shares as a wedding gift. He kept a mere ten for himself.
The commercial wireless phone was first introduced in Chicago in 1982 by Ameritech.
American sculptor, Alexander Calder, rigged the front door of his Paris apartment so that he could open it from his bathtub.
The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier.
Fifty years ago the B. F. Goodrich Company, the American corporation known for its automobile tires, thought it was really on to something. Its engineers came up with the prototype of an atomic golf ball. The ball, with a radioactive core, would be easy to locate with a Geiger counter if hit into the rough. But the company abandoned the invention as unworkable.
Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.
The Direct Action Committee, a group pushing for nuclear disarmament, invented the peace symbol in 1958. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals "N" and "D," to stand for nuclear disarmament.
The horse race starting gate is a Canadian invention, designed in the early 1900s by Philip McGinnis, a racetrack reporter from Huntingdon, Quebec. The device proved popular because it prevented arguments caused when horses started prematurely.
Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.
Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.
Because Napoleon believed that armies marched on their stomachs, he offered a prize in 1795 for a practical way of preserving food. The prize was won by a French inventor, Nicholas Appert. What he devised was canning. It was the beginning of the canned food industry of today.
Root Beer was invented in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr.
George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, hated having his picture taken.
Germany holds the title for most independent inventors to apply for patents.
The shoe string was invented in England in 1790. Until then shoes were fastened with buckles.
The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite.
After his death in 1937, Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph was honored by broadcasters worldwide as they let the airwaves fall silent for two minutes in his memory.
Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex telegraph. Unlike other telegraphs at the time, it could send four messages at the same time over one wire.
The hypodermic needle was invented in 1853. It was initially used for giving injections of morphine as a painkiller. Physicians mistakenly believed that morphine would not be addictive if it by-passed the digestive tract.
California police in the 1920s thought they had gotten the drop on a moonshiner. They raided what they thought was a still and found, instead, inventor Philo T. Farnsworth, working on something that was later to become television.
Because he felt such an important tool should be public property, English chemist John Walker never patented his invention — matches.
The state of Maine was once known as the "Earmuff Capital of The World". Earmuffs were invented there by Chester Greenwood in 1873.
The man who invented shorthand, John Gregg, was deaf.
Roulette was invented by the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It was a by product of his experiments with perpetual motion.
The single blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.
The shoestring was invented in England in 1790, Prior to this time all shoes were fastened with buckles.
The rickshaw was invented by the Reverend Jonathan Scobie, an American Baptist minister living in Yokohama, Japan, built the first model in 1869 in order to transport his invalid wife. Today it remains a common mode of transportation in the Orient.
The power lawn mower was invented by Ransom E. Olds (of Oldsmobile fame) in 1915.
The pop top can was invented in Kettering, Ohio by Ermal Fraze.
The paper clip was patented by Norwegian inventor Johan Vaaler in 1899. Because Norway had no patent law at the time, he had to travel to Germany where he received his patent in 1900. His U.S. Patent was granted in 1901.
The monkey wrench is named after its inventor, a London blacksmith named Charles Moncke.
James Ramsey invented a steam-driven motorboat in 1784. He ran it on the Potomac River, and the event was witnessed by George Washington.
James J. Ritty, owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, invented the cash register in 1879 to stop his patrons from pilfering house profits.
It was Swiss chemist Jacques Edwin Brandenberger who invented cellophane, back in 1908.
It has been determined that less than one patented invention in a hundred makes any money for the inventor.
The first VCR, made in 1956, was the size of a piano.
The first commercial vacuum cleaner was so large it was mounted on a wagon. People threw parties in their homes so guests could watch the new device do its job.
In 1889, the first coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank. Soon, "pay phones" were installed in stores, hotels, saloons, and restaurants, and their use soared. Local calls using a coin-operated phone in the U.S. cost only 5 cents everywhere until 1951.
Ferdinand Porsche, who later went on to build sports cars bearing his own name, designed the original 1936 Volkswagen.
The coffee filter was invented by Melissa Bentz, in Germany in 1908. She pierced holes in a tin container, put a circular piece of absorbent paper in the bottom of it and put her creation over a coffee pot.
The classic toy wagon was designed by Antonio Pasin, who founded his company in 1918. Pasin wanted to give his wagons a modern flair, and chose the word "radio" for what was then a new form of communication, and "flyer" for the wonder of flight — hence, "Radio Flyer."
The Chinese invented eyeglasses. Marco Polo reported seeing many pairs worn by the Chinese as early as 1275, 500 years before lens grinding became an art in the West.
The British import Spirograph was introduced in the United States in 1967 by Kenner and has racked up millions of dollars in sales. It was invented by a British electronics engineer, Denys Fisher, who was inspired to create the toy while doing research on a new design for bomb detonators for NATO.
Eli Whitney made no money from the cotton gin because he did not have a valid patent on it.
Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson.
Dr. John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida, invented mechanical refrigeration in 1851. He patented his device on May 6, 1851. There is a statue which honors this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.
In 1966, Elliot Handler, one of the co-founders of Mattel, Inc. and part of the Barbie doll empire, was the inventor of Hot Wheels®. Handler experimented with axles and rotating wheels being attached to tiny model cars. The innovative gravity-powered car he developed had special low-friction styrene wheels. Hot Wheels® have been clocked at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour.
Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.
According to U.S. law, a patent may not be granted on a useless invention, on a method of doing business, on mere printed matter, or on a device or machine that will not operate. Even if an invention is novel or new, a patent may not be obtained if the invention would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same area at the time of the invention.
Fifteen years after its invention in 1876, there were five million phones in America. Fifteen years after its invention, more than 33 million wireless phones were in the U.S.
Phone service was established at the White House one year after its invention. President Rutherford B. Hayes was the first to have phone service (1877-81).
Western Electric invented the loudspeaker which was initially called "loud-speaking telephone."
Carbonated beverages became popular in 1832 after John Mathews invented an apparatus for charging water with carbon dioxide gas.
Alfred Nobel used a cellulose adhesive (nitrocellulose) as the chemical binder for nitroglycerin, which he used in his invention of dynamite.
Teflon was discovered in 1938.
Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.
A machine has been invented that can read printed English books aloud to the blind, and it can do so at speed half again as fast as normal speech.
A device invented as a primitive steam engine by the Greek engineer Hero, about the time of the birth of Christ, is used today as a rotating lawn sprinkler.
Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.
The guillotine was originally called a louisette. Named for Antoine Louis, the French surgeon who invented it. It became known as the guillotine for Joseph Ignace Guillotin, the French physician who advocated it as a more merciful means of execution than the noose or ax.
The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515.
The same man who led the attack on the Alamo, Mexican Military General, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, is also credited with the invention of chewing gum.
In 1916, Jones Wister of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania invented a rifle for shooting around corners. It had a curved barrel and periscopic sights.
Craven Walker invented the lava lamp, and its contents are colored wax and water.
The alarm clock was not invented by the Marquis de Sade, as some suspect, but rather by a man named Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1787. Perversity, though, characterized his invention from the beginning. The alarm on his clock could ring only at 4 am. Rumor has it that Hutchins was murdered by his wife at 4:05 am on a very dark and deeply cold New England morning.
The waffle iron was invented August 24, 1869.
The toothbrush was invented in 1498.
In the early 1800s, a French silk weaver called Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards.
The first words that Thomas A. Edison spoke into the phonograph were, "Mary had a little lamb."
Four wheel roller skates were invented by James L. Plimpton in 1863. Can you guess where?
Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio in 1952, in New York (aaah!).
Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson, who was (you guessed it) from New York.
The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn, also of New York, in 1860.
John Greenwood, also of New York invented the dental drill in 1790.
Henry Waterman, of New York, invented the elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour.
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for the "New York Tribune" from 1851 to 1862.
Early Egyptians wore sandals made from woven papyrus leaves.
When Thomas Jefferson became U.S. President in 1801, 20 percent of all people in the young nation were slaves.
If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard" foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.
Jahangir, a 17th-century Indian Mughal ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.
When he resigned in 1923 because of illegal behavior in the Teapot Dome Affair, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by President Harding. In 1931, Fall was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to defraud.
Napoleon, the famous French general, was not born in France. He was born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.
When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.
Today the painting hangs in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, France.
Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pinewood, 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) in the year 1506.
The Fish Bowl was invented by Countess Dubarry, Mistress of King Louis XV (Born 1710 Died 1774)
It is estimated that a few years after Columbus discovered the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.
Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.
Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.
In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.
Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.
The first aerial photograph was taken from a balloon during the U.S. civil war.
It was only after 440 A.D. that December 25 was celebrated as the birth date of Jesus Christ.
There was a "pony express" in Persia many centuries before Christ. Riders on this ancient circuit, wearing special colored headbands, delivered the mails across the vast stretch of Asia Minor, sometimes riding for hundreds of miles without a break.
High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.
The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.
In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.
During World War II, the U.S. Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate - on the basis of positional probability - where enemy submarines might surface.
During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.
During the Spanish American War in 1898 there were 45 stars on the American flag.
During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.
During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.
During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.
During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.
General Henry Heth (1825-1888) leading a confederate division in the Battle of Gettysburg, was hit in the head by a Union bullet, but his life was saved because he was wearing a hat two sizes too large, with newspaper folded inside the sweatband. The paper deflected the bullet, and the general, unconscious for 30 hours, recovered and lived another 25 years.
The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle—made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was considered more valuable than gold.
After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. These he gathered together, crucified, covered in pitch (tar), and burnt alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.
India tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974.
A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.
The Korean War began on June 25, 1950.
Socrates committed suicide by drinking poison hemlock.
There were 57 countries involved in World War II.
Seat belts became mandatory on U.S. cars on March 1, 1968.
Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 A.D.
Ishi had made it very clear before he died that he did not want to be autopsied. However, his wishes were ignored and his body was autopsied and the brain removed and sent to the Smithsonian, where scientists were collecting brains for a study of brain size and race. After 83 years, the Smithsonian is finally returning the brain of Ishi to his closest relatives so they can bury his remains.
In the 15th century, scholars in China compiled a set of encyclopedia that contained 11,095 volumes.
Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.
It is a well known trivial fact that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step onto the moon. However, many do not know that he stepped onto the moon with his left foot.
The very first enclosed shopping mall was and is Valley Faire in Appleton, Wisconsin. Not in Minnesota as most people believe. Appleton is also famous for being the birth place of Harry Houdini and the first city in America to use Hydro-electric power in homes.
U.S. Army doctor D.W. Bliss had the unique role of attending to two U.S. presidents after they were shot by assassins. In 1865 he was one of 16 doctors who tried to save Abraham Lincoln, and in 1881 he supervised the care of James Garfield.
A painting of the Madonna in Fiorano Castle, Italy, escaped without even being scorched when invading soldiers set the castle afire, yet all the rest of the building was destroyed.
In Britain, the law was changed in 1789 to make the method of execution hanging. Prior to that, burning was the modus operandi. The last female to be executed by burning in England was Christian Bowman. Her crime was making counterfeit coins.
In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the first minimum wage in the United States. The new law, considered controversial at the time, established at.25 cents per hour minimum wage and a maximum 44 hour work week for minors.
Many hundreds of years ago when the well-known style of Irish dancing began in the country side of Ireland, most houses of the poor - and that means most houses - only had a dirt floor which was not a lot of use for dancing on if you were holding a ceildh (pronounced kay-lee and meaning party - more or less). So in order to make the dancing easier the owners of the house which was holding the party would take the doors off their hinges and lay them on the floor. There was just enough room on each door for two people to dance, providing they did not fling their arms about - hence the original name for Irish dancing - Door Dancing.
King Charles VII, who was assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed. No one knows why. To add to the mystery, almost 300 years went by before there was a Charles VIII (1448-57).
Before all-porcelain false teeth were perfected in the mid-19th century, dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers following a battle. Teeth extracted from U.S. Civil War soldier cadavers were shipped to England by the barrel to dentists.
At the outbreak of World War I, the American air force consisted of only fifty men.
Akhbar the Great Mughal routed the Hindus under Hemu by turning their elephants against them at the battle of Panipat in the Hindu revolt.
In 1974 there were 90 tornadoes in the U.S. in one day.
In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London. More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month.
In ancient Greece, courtesans wore sandals with nails studded into the sole so that their footprints would leave the message "Follow me".
Before winning the election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.
Unfortunately Gaius grew up and became emperor, incongruously retaining his boyhood diminutive. "Little boots" in Latin is "Caligula." As you may know, he was a bloodthirsty, sadistic fiend.
"John has a long mustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.
Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
Traffic engineering was not developed in London, New York or Paris, but rather in ancient Rome. The Romans, of course, were noted road builders. The Appian Way, for example, stretched 350 miles from the Eternal City to Brundisium. In Rome itself there were actually stop signs and even alternate-side-of-the-street parking.
The first time an enormous amount of clothing was needed all at once was during the Civil War, when the Union needed hundreds of thousands of uniforms for its troops. Out of this need came the ready-made clothing industry.
The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names. It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company in February, 1878.
Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
The right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times. It first crossed for display at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and in New York, where money was raised for the foundation and pedestal. It was returned to Paris in 1882 to be reunited with the rest of the statue, which was then shipped back to the U.S.
Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.
Marco Polo was born on the Croatian island of Korcula (pronounced Kor-Chu-La).
All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.
The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.
The ancient Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall paintings they used to decorate tombs.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
More than 5,600 men died while building the Panama Canal. Today, it takes more than 8,000 workers to run and maintain the canal. It takes a ship an average of 33 hours to travel the length of the canal.
The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.
Although most people think that Napoleon was short, he was actually five feet six inches tall (1.676 meters), an average height for a Frenchman in those days.
When Gaius Caesar was a boy, Roman soldiers affectionately nicknamed him "little boots" for the boy-sized military footwear he sported.
DaVinci wrote notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick that kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death. It is believed that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Leonardo observed.
DaVinci made detailed drawings of human anatomy, which are still highly regarded today.
1892 By Presidential Proclamation 1.8 million acres of Crow Indian reservation in Montana were opened to White settlers. The U.S. government had induced the Crow to give up a sizable portion of their land in the mountainous western area of Montana. The Crow received 50 cents per acre for their land.
The steel industry, in 1943, introduced the 5-day, 40 hour work week. Henry Ford adopted it in 1926.
When Napoleon wore black silk handkerchiefs around his neck during a battle, he always won. At Waterloo, he wore a white cravat and lost the battle and his kingdom.
Civil War General Stonewall Jackson died when he was accidentally hit by fire from his own troop.
"Hot cockles" was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.
The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his students over a mathematical computation. He wore a silver replacement nose for the rest of his life.
After being forced to state in public that the earth does not rotate, Galileo is said to have muttered under his breath, "But it does move."
A female pharaoh was unknown in Egypt before Hatshepsut, who had herself portrayed in male costume, with a beard and without breasts.
The first telephone exchange opened on January 28, 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Taj Mahal complex in India was built between 1631 and 1634 at a cost of about 40-million rupees.
New Zealand was the first place in the world to allow women to vote. The state of South Australia was next, in 1894, and it was also the first place to allow women to stand for parliament.
The U.S. Automobile Association was formed in 1905 for the purpose or providing "scouts" who could warn motorists of hidden police traps.
Soldiers arrived to fight the Battle of Marne in World War I - not on foot or by military airplane or military vehicle - but by taxi cabs. France took over all the taxi cabs in Paris to get soldiers to the front.
Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic "Little Women," hated kids. She only wrote the book because her publisher asked her to.
Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo Da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.
Catherine the Great relaxed by being tickled.
WWI flying ace Jean Navarre attacked a zeppelin armed with only a kitchen knife.
In 1907 the first taxicab took to the streets of New York City.
When the U.S. War Department was established in 1789, there were 840 soldiers in the regular army. Their job was to supervise public lands and guard the indian frontier.
The traditional symbol of the pawnbroker—three golden balls—is thought to be derived from the coat of the arms of the Medici family, who ruled Italian city of Florence between the 15th and 16th centuries. The symbol was spread by the Lombards—Italian bankers, goldsmiths, and moneylenders who set up businesses in medieval London.
In Northern parts of China it was once a common practice to shave pigs. When the evenings got cold the Chinese would take a pig to bed with them for warmth and found it more comfortable if the pig was clean-shaven.
In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.
The Coliseum received its name not for its size, but for a colossal statue of Nero that stood close by, placed there after the destruction of his palace.
While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.
The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings, many of which still remain standing today.
American astronomer, mathematician, clock-maker, surveyor and almanac editor Benjamin Banneker has been called the "first black man of science." Banneker took part in the original survey of Washington, DC. His almanac was published 1792 to 1797.
Pope Paul IV, who was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that he ordered Michelangelo to paint on to them.
President George Washington oversaw construction of the White House, but he never lived there. It was our second President, John Adams, elected in 1796, who first lived in the White House. His term was almost over by the time he moved in, and only six rooms had been finished.
Seating on the first scheduled inter-city commuter airplane flight consisted of moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with aluminum framed leather chairs.
Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.
New York was the first state to require the licensing of motor vehicles. The law was adopted in 1901.
The practice of exchanging presents at Christmas originated with the Romans.
Before 1863, postal service in the United States was free.
Louis XIV had forty personal wigmakers and almost 1000 wigs.
Czar Paul 1 banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.
The first advertisement printed in English in 1477 offered a prayer book. The ad was published by William Caxton on his press in Westminster Abbey. No price was mentioned, only that the book was "good chepe."
Civil War General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson has two separate burial sites. His left arm, which was amputated after the battle of Chancellorsville was buried on a nearby farm. A week later, Jackson died and was buried in Lexington, Virginia.
The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.
George Washington, who was nearly toothless himself, was meticulous with the teeth of the six white horses that pulled his presidential coach. He had their teeth picked and cleaned daily to improve their appearance.
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.
It took 214 crates to transport the Statue of Liberty from France to New York in 1885.
It took 20,000 men 22 years to build the Taj Mahal.
Vincent Van Gogh painted a picture a day in the last 70 days of his life.
In the original architectural design, the French Cathedral of Chartes had six spires (It was built with two spires).
The Tower of London, for which construction was begun in 1078 by William the Conqueror, once housed a zoo. It also has served as an observatory, a mint, a prison, a royal palace, and (at present) the home of the Crown Jewels.
Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.
Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.
Historians report that the Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (AD 37-41) was so proud of his horse that he gave him a place as a senate consul before he died.
Shakespeare spelled his OWN name several different ways.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic.
Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.
Salim (1569-1627, heir to the throne of India, had 4 wives when he was only 8 years of age.
Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
Louis XV was the first person to use an elevator: in 1743 his "flying chair" carried him between the floors of the Versailles palace.
All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.
The first Bowie knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas.
Human skulls had been used as drinking cups for hundreds of years. The muscles and flesh were scraped away, the bottom was hacked off and then they were suitable to hold any beverage.
The first European to visit the Mississippi River was DeSoto.
Emir Beysari (1233-1293), an Egyptian of great wealth, drank wine from gold and silver cups, yet he never in all his life used the same cup twice.
Florence Nightingale served only two years of her life as a nurse. She contracted fever during her service in the Crimean War, and spent the last 50 years of her life as an invalid.
Alexander Hamilton and his son, Philip, both died on the same spot, and both during duels. Philip went first, 3 years before his father would be killed in that same field by Aaron Burr.
The British once went to war over a sailor’s ear. It happened in 1739, when Britain launched hostilities against Spain because a Spanish officer had supposedly sliced off the ear of a ship’s captain named Robert Jenkins.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Egyptian men never became bald. The reason for this, Herodotus claimed, was that as children Egyptian males had their heads shaved, and their scalps were continually exposed to the health-giving rays of the sun.
During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.
Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
On November 29, 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." Today you can visit the site—now a shrine—where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.
Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.
When airplanes were still a novel invention, seat belts for pilots were installed only after the consequence of their absence was observed to be fatal - several pilots fell to their deaths while flying upside down.
The first wooden shoe comes from the Netherlands. The Netherlands have many seas so people wanted a shoe that kept their feet dry while working outside. The shoes were called klompen and they had been cut of one single piece of wood. Today the klompen are the favorite souvenir for people who visit the Netherlands.
Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was primitive but effective — potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then thawed and stomped on to remove excess water.
Values on the Monopoly gameboard are the same today as they were in 1935.
Escape maps, compasses, and files were inserted into Monopoly game boards and smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during W.W.II; real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of Monopoly money.
The first United States coast to coast airplane flight occurred in 1911 and took 49 days.
John Hancock was the only one of fifty signers of the Declaration of Independence who actually signed it on July 4.
No automobile made after 1924 should be designated as antique.
The first dictionary of American English was published on April 14th, 1828, by - who else? - Noah Webster.
The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."
The first Eskimo Bible was printed in Copenhagen in 1744.
Henry Ford flatly stated that history is "bunk."
In 1956 the phrase, "In God We Trust", was adopted as the U.S. national motto.
The first paperback book was printed - by Penguin Publishing in 1935.
In France - Captain Sarret made the first parachute jump from an airplane in 1918.
"Scientific America" carried the first magazine automobile ad in 1898. The Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH, invited readers to "dispense with a horse".
The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.
The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death.
The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten gold. Some fabrics had up to 500 gold threads per one inch of cloth.
More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years, the Chinese kept this discovery a secret. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky. Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.
The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed turquoise would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used these green and blue stones to decorate their battle shields.
The first man to distill bourbon whiskey in the United States was a Baptist preacher, in 1789.
On international license plates Spain is represented by the letter E for Espana.
Arguably the largest state in the world, Western Australia covers one-third of the Australian continent. It spans over 2.5 million square kilometers (1 million square miles).
Pennsylvania has more covered bridges than any other state. Vermont, a much smaller state, claims a greater density of covered bridges. (More bridges per square mile). Parke County, Indiana, claims more covered bridges than any other county, but Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, comes in second.
If global warming forecasts are true, the island country of Tuvalu might cease to exist within 100 years.
Surprisingly, there was a time that the Vatican owned shares of the Watergate complex in Washington DC, the Pan American building in Paris, and the Hilton hotel in Rome.
The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined.
The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq miles/4,53 sq km.
St. Petersburg, FL once had 427 consecutive days of sunshine.
The state of Oregon has one city named Sisters and another called Brothers. Sisters got its name from a nearby trio of peaks in the Cascade Mountains known as the Three Sisters. Brothers was named as a counterpart to Sisters.
Los Angeles and San Francisco become 2.5 inches closer together each year because they are on opposite sides of the San Andreas fault.
Residents of the Havasupai Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona get their mail delivered by mule.
Ellis Island opened to begin the processing of what would amount to more than 20 million immigrants to the United States in 1892. The immigration center was also used as a deportation station, and later, a Coast Guard Station, and then, a national park. Ellis Island is now a museum.
The twin towers of New Yorks World Trade Center contain 208 elevators. Elevators rank as the safest form of transportation, boasting only one fatality every 100 million miles traveled. Stairs, in comparison, are five times more dangerous.
The Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. has 365 steps, representing every day of the year.
When the Eiffel Tower was built in 1884, Parisians referred to it as "the tragic lamppost" and nearly universally hated it.
The royal house of Saudi Arabia has close to 10,000 princes and princesses.
The first people to arrive on Iceland were Irish explorers, in 795 A.D.
The Philippines consist of 7,100 islands.
The country of Costa Rica does not have an army.
Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States in 1789.
Persia changed its name to Iran in 1935.
Adolf Hitler had planned to change the name of Berlin to Germania.
The smallest country in Central America is El Salvador.
There are more people in New York City (7,895,563) than there are in the states of Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, South Dakota, New Hampshire, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii, Delaware, and New Mexico combined.
There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin, Ireland; more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Italy; and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv, Israel.
US Route 66 ran from Chicago to Los Angeles, approximating the course of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, a railroad which, we might mention, no longer goes to any of those three towns.
Toronto’s original name was York, but it had another name long before that. The area near the shores of Lake Ontario was called "the meeting place" by the Ojibway of Southern Ontario. Their word: Toronto.
Mongolia is the largest landlocked country.
There is a resort town in New Mexico called "Truth or Consequences."
Several nations (Norway, Australia, New Zealand, France, Great Britain, Chile, and Argentina) have advanced claims on sections of the continent of Antarctica. The United States does not recognize any claims.
In ancient Japan public contests were held to see who in a town could break wind loudest and longest. Winners were awarded many prizes and received great acclaim.
Pittsburgh was named for a British prime minister.
Katmandu is the capital of Nepal.
Spains biggest source of income is tourism.
Honolulu boasts the only royal palace in the U.S.
The city of Dallas is known as "The Big D."
Zanzibar is known as "Spice Island."
The largest lake in South America is Lake Maracaibo.
The three winter months in the southern hemisphere are June, July and August.
Norway contains the largest icefield in Europe.
The largest island in the Mediterranean sea is Sicily.
The Sahara desert is expanding half a mile south every year.
Thailand used to be called Siam.
The largest city in Africa is Cairo in Egypt.
The Nile river flows North.
The Sphinx sits on guard over the Great Pyramids.
England is smaller than New England.
Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined.
Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language.
In 1825 Upper Peru became Bolivia.
Without any greenhouse effect, Earth would be cold and lifeless with an average temperature of 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
In May 1948, Mt. Ruapehu and Mt. Ngauruhoe, both in New Zealand, erupted simultaneously.
In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette.
In Papua New Guinea there are villages within five miles of each other which speak different languages.
In Calama, a town in the Atacama Desert of Chile, it has never rained.
The forest of Canadian Lake District is so dense that during winter the snow stays on top of the trees and the forest floor stays bare.
The 4-H Club started in Holmes County.
The King and Queen of the Gypsies are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Meridian.
The oldest Holiday Inn is in Clarkesdale.
The birthplace of Elvis was in Tupelo.
Football great Walter Peyton was from Columbia.
The first PTA was in Crystal Springs.
The company that makes Icee Drinks is in Edwards.
Belzoni is the Catfish Capital of the world.
Mississippi was the first state to outlaw imprisonment of debtors.
Coca Cola was founded by Joseph A. Biedenharn in Vicksburg.
The Mississippi Legislature passed one of the first laws in 1839 to protect the property rights of married women.
The Vicksburg National Cemetery is the second oldest in the country.
Resin Bowie, the inventor of the Bowie knife is buried at Pt. Gibson.
The International Checkers Hall Of Fame is in Petal.
Alcorn State University in Lorman is the oldest black land grant college in the world.
The oldest field game in America is Stickball founded by the Choctaw Indians of Philadelphia.
The McCoy Federal Building in Jackson is the first federal building in the U.S. named for an African American.
MCW in Columbus was the first state college for women in the country established in 1884.
There are 3,900 islands in the country Japan, the country of islands.
French speaking residents of Belgium are called Walloons.
The most remote island in the world is Tristan da Cunha, which is above the sub-Antarctic zone.
West Virginia consists of those counties of Virginia which refused to secede from the Union at the start of the Civil War. Maine used to be part of Massachusetts. The original colonies made all kinds of land claims for the frontier west of them.
Since the 1930’s the town of Corona, CA has buried, and lost, all 17 of its time capsules.
The largest country in Africa is the Sudan. The Arc of the Covenant is said to be located in Axum, Ethiopia.
Australia is the richest source of mineral sands in the world.
The city of Istanbul straddles two separate continents, Europe and Asia.
The smallest state in the US has also the longest name. The official name of Rhode Island is Rhode Island and Plantation Provinces.
The official, neutral name of Switzerland, which has multiple official languages, is the latin "Confederation Helvetica", or the Helvetic Confederation, thus the "CH" on license plates, stickers and e-mail addresses.
Shortest Intercontinental Commercial Flight in the world is from Gibraltar (Europe) to Tangier (Africa.) Distance 34 miles, flight time 20 minutes.
People in Sweden, Japan, and Canada are more likely to know the population of the United States than are Americans.
Dominica, Mexico, Zambia, Kiribati, Fiji and Egypt all have birds on their flags.
Australia is the richest source of mineral sands in the world.
Iowa has more independent telephone companies than any other state.
Reversing Falls is in Canada, where the St. John River flows into the Bay of Fundy at St. John, New Brunswick. The rapids at this juncture flows normally at low tide, backwards at high tide. Between tides there is a 15-minute period in which the river is placid and boaters sail by very quickly.
The many sights that represent the Chinese city of Beijing were built by foreigners: the Forbidden City was built by the Mongols, the Temple of Heaven by the Manchurians.
Devon is the only county in Great Britain to have two coasts.
Only five countries in Europe touch only one other: Portugal, Denmark, San Marino, Vatican City, and Monaco.
There are only three world capitals that begin with the letter "O" in English: Ottawa, Canada; Oslo, Norway; and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The chiao is an official unit of currency in China. Also known as jiao, it is a copper-zinc coin that is one-tenth of a yuan and equal to 10 fen.
The San Blas Indian women of Panama consider giant noses a mark of great beauty. They paint black lines down the center of their noses to make them appear longer.
Despite a population of over a billion, China has only about 200 family names.
The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either direction depending on the tide.
Although people in the majority of countries of the world drive on the right side of roads, there are some fifty nations in which people drive on the left. These include England and many former English colonies such as Australia and New Zealand—but not the U.S. or Canada. There are several non-English countries where people also drive on the left including Japan.
Using satellite-surveying techniques, scientists have determined that Los Angeles, California is moving east. At a rate estimated to be about one-fifth on an inch per year, the city is moving closer to the San Gabriel Mountains.
La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia is the highest capital in the world. Ski resorts there operate only on weekends during the South American summer (November to March). At an elevation of over 17,000 feet, it is too cold to operate during the South American winter.
In Brazil, Christmas is celebrated with fireworks.
Alaska is the only state without a state motto.
Antarctica is the only continent that does not have land areas below sea level.
In downtown Lima, Peru, there is a large brass statue dedicated to Winnie-the-Pooh.
If you could cut out the United States, its center of gravity would be at Friend, Nebraska.
Rome is considered "The Eternal City."
There is a prison in Ossining, New York named "Sing Sing."
Mount St. Helens dropped 1,313 feet in 1980.
Guam has seven public elementary schools.
On a trip to the South Sea islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.
The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.
The U.S. mint in Denver, Colorado is the only mint that marks its pennies.
Female aristocrats on the island of Portugese Timor in Malaya, indicate their status by notching their ears.
The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq. miles/4,53 sq. km.
There are more psycho-analysts per capita in Buenos Aires than any other place in the world.
Ireland currently has the fastest growing economy in Europe - the economy grew by 40% from 1993-1997. It is for this reason that the country is referred to as the Celtic Tiger.
Bore-hole seismometry indicates that the land in Oklahoma moves up and down 25cm throughout the day, corresponding with the tides. Earth tides are generally about one-third the size of ocean tides.
The Chang Jiang river is the fourth longest river in the world.
The Dominican Republic was called Santo Domingo when it first gain independence.
The state of Oregon has one city named Sisters and another called Brothers. Sisters got its name from a nearby trio of peaks in the Cascade Mountains known as the Three Sisters. Brothers was named as a counterpart to Sisters.
The surface area of the Earth is 197,000,000 square miles.
According to experts, large caves tend to "breathe"; they inhale and exhale great quantities of air when the barometric pressure on the surface changes, and air rushes in or out seeking equilibrium.
At 840,000 square miles, Greenland is the largest island in the world. It is 3 times the size of Texas. By comparison Iceland is only 39,800 square miles.
Zion, Illinois - located on the shores of Lake Michigan north of Chicago - was founded by the followers of John Alexander Dowie, whose Christian Catholic Church disapproved of pharmacies, doctors, theaters or dance halls. Smoking, drinking and the eating of pork also was prohibited in town.
Ninety percent of all volcanic activity occurs in the oceans. In 1993, scientists located the largest known concentration of active volcanoes on the sea floor in the South Pacific. This area, the size of New York state, hosts 1,133 volcanic cones and sea mounts. Two or three could erupt at any moment.
Given their sheer volume, ninety-nine percent of the living space on the planet is found in the oceans. The average depth of the oceans is 2.5 miles (4 km). The deepest point lies in the Mariana Trench, 6.8 miles (10.9 km) down. By way of comparison, Mount Everest is only 5.5 miles (8.8 km) high.
The exact geographic center of the United States is near Lebanon, Kansas.
What is the difference between a yam and a sweet potato? According to the Mayo Clinic dietician, a true yam is a large, starchy root that can get up to 100 pounds. It is native to Africa and Asia and is seldom available in the USA. The sweet potato is a native American plant. It was a staple for early settlers and was actually brought to Europe by Columbus. There are two varieties of sweet potatoes: One is moist and orange-fleshed, the other is drier and yellow. The orange-fleshed potato is commonly - and incorrectly - called a yam. This common practice has resulted in confusion when it comes to labels. Some stores incorrectly label the darker of the two sweet potatoes as being a yam, and they list the nutrient content for yams. True yams have no vitamin A. So consumers mistakenly think that the product has no vitamin A, even though it actually does. Consumers are most likely eating sweet potatoes - and sweet potatoes are rich in vitamin A, vitamin C and fiber.
The first U.S. consumer product sold in the old Soviet Union was Pepsi-Cola.
The most widely eaten fruit in America is the banana.
The dark meat on a roast turkey has more calories than the white meat.
The color of a chile is no indication of its spiciness, but size usually is - the smaller the pepper, the hotter it is.
A bushel of apples weighs about 42 pounds.
Over 15 billion prizes have been given away in Cracker Jacks boxes.
It takes more than 500 peanuts to make one 12-ounce jar of peanut butter.
Carrots were first grown as a medicine not a food. The Ancient Greeks called carrots "Karoto".
Goat milk is used to produce Roquefort cheese.
Though most people think of salt as a seasoning, only 5 out of every 100 pounds produced each year go to the dinner table.
Thin-skinned lemons are the juiciest.
There are two types of asparagus: green and white. One of the most popular varieties of green asparagus is named after Martha Washington, the wife of George Washington.
There are thousands of varieties of shrimp, but most are so tiny that they are more likely to be eaten by whales than people. Of the several hundred around the world that people do eat, only a dozen or so appear with any regularity in the United States.
There are professional tea tasters as well as wine tasters.
Soy milk, the liquid left after beans have been crushed in hot water and strained, is a favorite beverage in the East. In Hong Kong, soy milk is as popular as Coca-Cola is in the U.S.
There are more than 7,000 varieties of apples grown in the world. The apples from one tree can fill 20 boxes every year. Each box weighs an average 42 pounds.
According to the National Safety Council, coffee is not successful at sobering up a drunk person, and in many cases it may actually increase the adverse effects of alcohol.
A tenth of the 7 million tons of rice grown in the U.S. each year goes into the making of beer.
The "last meal" for Death Row inmates has became embedded in the American death-penalty ritual. Reporters have dutifully recorded the last meal menus: John Wayne Gacy had fried chicken and strawberries; Ted Bundy passed on steak and eggs; James Smith, executed in Texas in 1990, requested a "lump of dirt" (request was denied); Missouri inmate Lloyd Schlup asked for venison and hare (request was granted).
Europeans drink more wine than Americans. France and Italy produce over 40% of all wine consumed in the world.
Strawberry Pop Tarts may be a cheap and inexpensive source of incendiary devices. Toasters which fail to eject Pop Tarts cause the Pop Tarts to emit flames 10-18 inches in height.
Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.
Many wonder what the difference is between jelly, preserves, jam, and marmalade. In all cases, jelly is the common denominator. Jelly is fruit juice with added sugar, cooled and congealed, usually by the addition of gelatin or pectin. Preserves preserve the largest percentage of the original fruit, containing whole chunks of it in addition to jelly. Jam is jelly plus fruit pulp. Marmalade has bits of fruit and the rinds in a jelly. Although the orange variety is most common, it is often made from other citrus fruits. Spread either of the four on toast, add a nice cup of tea, and you have one sweet treat.
Every year, Bavarians and their guests drink 1.2 million gallons of beer during Oktoberfest. The first Oktoberfest was in 1810 and celebrated the marriage of King Ludwig Iof Bavaria.
The MAI TAI COCKTAIL was created in 1945 by Victor Bergeron, the genius of rum, also known as Trader Vic. The drink got its name when he served it to two friends from Tahiti, who exclaimed "Maitai roa ae!" which in Tahitian means out of this world - the best!
Under U.S. federal guidelines, there should be 21 to 25 jumbo shrimp in a pound.
Most common sports drinks are the equivalent of sugar-sweetened human sweat. That is, they have the same salt concentration as sweat (but are less salty than your blood). An increase of as little as 1% in blood salt will cause you to become thirsty.
In Australia, the popular McOz Burger combines 100 percent Australian beef, cheese, tomato, beetroot, lettuce, and cooked onions on a toasted bun. This burger was created by Australian McDonald’s restaurant owners, and became a permanent menu item after a successful promotional period in 1998.
The wheat that produces a one-pound loaf of bread requires 2 tons of water to grow.
Milk delivered to the store today was in the cow two days ago.
Only men were allowed to eat at the first self-service restaurant, the Exchange Buffet in New York, opened in 1885. Customers ate standing up.
Lithiated Lemon was the creation of Charles Griggs from Missouri, who introduced the lemon-lime drink in 1929. Four years later he renamed it 7-Up. Sales increased significantly.
There are 2,000,000 different combinations of sandwiches that can be created from a SUBWAY menu.
The Chuck E. Cheese franchise was created by Atari, a restaurant combining robotic animals and arcade games with family meals. They name the franchise a Pizza Time Theater. Chuck E. Cheese was first opened in 1977.
Brussels sprouts are called Brussels sprouts because they were discovered in Brussels.
During the Middle Ages, almost all beef, pork, mutton, and chicken were chopped fine. Forks were unknown at the time and the knife was a kitchen utensil rather that a piece of tableware.
You should not eat a crawfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was cooked.
Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators where it was first developed.
When tea was first introduced in the American colonies, many housewives, in their ignorance, served the tea leaves with sugar or syrup after throwing away the water in which they had been boiled.
For beer commercials, they add liquid detergent to the beer to make it foam more.
Worcestershire Sauce is basically an Anchovy ketchup.
Sixty cows can produce a ton of milk a day.
Ancient Greeks and Romans believed asparagus had medicinal qualities for helping prevent bee stings and relieve toothaches.
Alcoholic lemonade is outselling premium bottled lagers in United Kingdom pubs, according to a report in "NASFT Showcase" magazine.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat more than 22 pounds of tomatoes every year. More than half this amount is eaten in the form of ketchup and tomato sauce.
According to the National Safety Council, coffee is not successful at sobering up a drunk person, and in many cases it may actually increase the adverse effects of alcohol.
According to the head chef at the United Nations, the president of Iceland eats fish every day for lunch. Additionally, the queen of Denmark has a taste for Japanese food, and Pres. Bill Clinton has a passion for chicken.
Chocolate not only does not promote tooth decay, it might prevent it. According to the American Dental Association, milk chocolate contains ingredients, such as calcium and phosphate, that might modify acid production in the mouth that leads to cavities. Some oils in chocolate might also prevent tooth decay. Chocolate does contain sugar, of course, but these are simple sugars that are less harmful than the complex sugars contained in other foods.
Beer foam will go down by licking your finger then sticking it in the beer.
"Colonial goose" is the name Australians give to stuffed mutton.
Fanta Orange is the third largest selling soft drink in the world.
The number 57 on a Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of varieties of pickle the company once had.
The flesh of the puffer fish (fugu) is considered a delicacy in Japan. It is prepared by chefs specially trained and certified by the government to prepare the flesh free of the toxic liver, gonads, and skin. Despite these precautions, many cases of tetrodotoxin poisoning are reported each year in patients ingesting fugu. Poisonings usually occur after eating fish caught and prepared by uncertified handlers. The end result, in most cases, is death.
The five favorite U.S. school lunches nationwide, according to the American School Food Service Association, are, in order, pizza, chicken nuggets, tacos, burritos, and hamburgers.
The first macaroni factory in the United States was established in 1848. It was started by Antoine Zegera in Brooklyn, New York.
Ovaltine, the drink was from milk, malt, egg and cocoa, was developed in 1904 in Berne, Switzerland. It was originally named Ovomaltine. A clerical error changed it when the manufacturer registered the name.
When it originally appeared in 1886 - Coca Cola was billed as an "Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage".
The letters VVSOP on a cognac bottle stand for - Very Very Superior Old Pale.
Opera stars Nellie Melba and Luisa Tetrazzini are famous for more than singing. They are also known for food that has been named after them. Nellie Melba (peach melba and melba toast) and Luisa Tetrazzini (chicken tetrazzini).
Sliced bread was introduced under the Wonder Bread label in 1930.
Herring is the most widely eaten fish in the world.
A hard-boiled egg will spin. An uncooked or soft-boiled egg will not.
Over a third of all pineapples come from Hawaii.
Wine will spoil if exposed to light, hence tinted bottles.
Turkey contains an amino acid called tryptophan, which can cause sleepiness (warm milk also contains tryptophan).
Dairy products account for about 29% of all food consumed in the U.S.
As much as 50 gallons of Maple Sap are used to make a single gallon of Maple Sugar.
Rice is the main food for half of the people of the world.
There are more than 15,000 different kinds of rice.
The famous baby appearing on jars of Gerber baby food is actually a girl named Ann Turner. The picture was drawn by artist Dorothy Hope Smith in 1928.
Before it was unsolicited email, Spam was a luncheon meat. It is so resistant to spoilage that, if kept in the closed can, it may well outlast eternity and will certainly live longer than you. Believe it or not it was first promoted as a health food. In Korea it comes in gift boxes, and placed end to end, all the Spam ever sold would circle the Earth more than ten times.
Only food that does not spoil: honey.
Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.
Researchers in Denmark found that beer tastes best when drunk to the accompaniment of a certain musical tone. The optimal frequency is different for each beer, they reported. The correct harmonious tone for Carlsberg Lager, for example, is 510-520 cycles per second.
In medieval England beer often was served with breakfast.
Spirit of proof strength was the technical standard by which strength was measured until 1st January, 1980. Hundreds of years ago, spirit of this strength was proved when Whiskey and gunpowder were mixed and ignited. If the gunpowder flashed, then there was enough Whiskey in the mixture to permit ignition. Such Whiskey was held to have been proved - i.e. "tested". If the spirit was weaker than this, then ignition did not take place and the Whiskey failed the "test". The amount of black powder used was the same amount as was, and indeed still is, used to "proof" the barrels of smooth-bore fire-arms.
The estimated number of M & M’s sold each day in the United States is 200,000,000.
Spam stands for Shoulder Pork and hAM.
Americans eat an average of 18 pounds of fresh apples each year. The most popular variety in the United States is the Red Delicious.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans eat more than 22 pounds of tomatoes every year. More than half this amount is eaten in the form of ketchup and tomato sauce.
Pigturducken is a pig, stuffed with a turkey, which is stuffed with a chicken, deep fried in oil, which is usually put into something similar to a horse trough over propane burners.
The famous Chef Wolfgang Puck chose the Italian word "Spago" as the name for his popular chain of restaurants. In Italian - spago = "String" or "Twine" - slang for spaghetti.
Native Americans never actually ate turkey; killing such a timid bird was thought to indicate laziness.
The Chinese used to open shrimp by flaying the shells with bamboo poles. Until a few years ago, in factories where dried shrimp were being prepared, "shrimp dancers" were hired to tramp on the shells with special shoes.
Ice cream was originally made without sugar and eggs.
There are more than 200 kinds of chili peppers, none of which belong to the pepper family.
Burger King® uses approximately 1/2 million pounds of bacon every month in its restaurants.
Table salt is the only commodity that hasn’t risen dramatically in price in the last 150 years.
In South Africa, termites are often roasted and eaten by the handful, like pretzels or popcorn.
The secret recipe for Coca Cola, code-named "Merchandise 7X" is kept under lock and key in a vault in the SunTrust Bank Building in Atlanta, Georgia, the home of Coke inventor Dr. John S. Pemberton and current world headquarters of Coca Cola International.
John Kellogg invented corn flakes, for a patient with bad teeth. Charles Post invented Grape Nuts. Dr. Kellogg was the manager of a Michigan health spa and Post was a patient. The spa was founded by Sylvester Graham...inventor of the Graham cracker and pioneer of the early 1800s movement to eat more bran.
Mr. Peanut was invented in 1916 by a Suffolk, Virginia schoolchild who won $5 in a design contest sponsored by Planters Peanuts.
An apple, onion, and potato all have the same taste. The differences in flavor are caused by their smell. To prove this - pinch your nose and take a bite from each. They will all taste sweet.
Americans eat an average of 18 pounds of fresh apples each year. The most popular variety in the United States is the Red Delicious.
Although the combination of chili peppers and oregano for seasoning has been traced to the ancient Aztecs, the present blend is said to be the invention of early Texans. Chili powder today is typically a blend of dried chilies, garlic powder, red peppers, oregano, and cumin.
A man named Ed Peterson is the inventor of the Egg McMuffin.
The fortune cookie was invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker.
The Ritz cracker was introduced to markets in 1934, but gourmets had to wait until 1953 for the invention of cheese in a can.
A black cow is a chocolate soda with chocolate ice cream. The term dates from the Roaring Twenties, although it also came to be used to describe a root beer float. Another term for a black cow was a mud fizz.
If you would like to make a Siberian happy, give him a horse-meat steak.
A Linthicum, Maryland woman, dressed only in bra and panties, lost her balance while putting down linoleum in her home and fell smack into the glue that was spread on the floor, according to Battalian Chief John M. Scholz of the county Fire Department. She became stuck to the floor (mistake one) but somehow managed to free herself after awhile and called the emergency number 911.
When the EMTs arrived they found her sitting on her couch (mistake number two). She was now glued to her couch. She had crossed her legs (mistake number three). Her legs were now glued together. And they also found her cordless phone glued to her hand.
Crews, using solvent-dipped sterile gauze pads, eventually freed her legs, hands and extremities. She refused to be taken to the hospital.
Student Robert Ricketts, 19, had his head bloodied when he was struck by a Conrail train. He told police he was trying to see how close to the moving train he could place his head without getting hit.
A 20 year old protester was arrested in Montana after he assaulted a congress women from Iowa with a salmon.
Edney Raphael, 39, running from a stabbing in Philadelphia with a bloody knife in his hand, was captured following a foot chase; he had turned his head to see where the officers were and run smack into a parking meter.
A young criminal walked into a bank and quietly handed the teller a note demanding several thousand dollars. Disguised, the man could have easily gotten away. However, he had idiotically written the note on a piece of his own stationery; it included his full name and address.
Sawney Beane, his wife, 8 sons, 6 daughters, and 32 grandchildren were a family of cannibals that lived in the caves near Galloway, Scotland in the early 17th Century. Although the total number is not known, it is believed they claimed over 50 victims per year. The entire family was taken by an army detachment to Edinburgh and executed, apparently without trial.
Airport security personnel find about six weapons a day searching passengers.
A man robbed a convenience store and ran out with a bag full of cash. He got down the street and realized he had left his car keys on the counter. When he returned to the store, he was promptly arrested.
A guy wearing pantyhose on his face tried to rob a store in a mall. When security came, he quickly grabbed a shopping bag and pretended to be shopping, forgetting that he was still wearing the pantyhose. He was captured and his loot was returned to the store.
In a stroke of irony, the maximum security prison in St. Albans, Vermont, was responsible in 1996 for sending out public relations brochures enticing tourists to visit Vermont.
Eugene-Francois Midocq, a French thief and outlaw, evaded the police for years, turned police spy, joined the force as a detective, and ultimately used his knowledge of crime to establish a new crime-fighting organization, the Surete.
A judge in Louisville decided a jury went "a little bit too far" in recommending a sentence of 5,005 years for a man who was convicted of five robberies and a kidnapping. The judge reduced the sentence to 1,001 years.
A teenager in Belmont, New Hampshire robbed the local convenience store. Getting away with a pocket full of change, the boy walked home. He did not realize, however, that he had holes in both of his pockets. A trail of quarters and dimes led police directly to his house.
A man was arrested and charged with the robbery—of vending machines. The man posted bail, entirely in quarters.
A Texan convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600 in damages rather than serve a two-year prison sentence. For payment, he gave the court a forged check. He got his prison term back, plus eight more years.
R.C. Gaitlan, 21, walked up to two patrol officers who were showing their squad car computer felon-location equipment to children in a Detroit neighborhood. When he asked how the system worked, the officer asked him for identification. Gaitlan gave them his drivers license, they entered it into the computer, and moments later they arrested Gaitlan because information on the screen showed Gaitlan was wanted for a two-year-old armed robbery in St. Louis, Missouri.
In South Carolina, an inmate who was paralyzed behind bars says in a lawsuit that Spartanburg County jail guards should have stopped him from doing back flips off a desk in his cell. Torrence Johnson, who is suing for unspecified damages, said recently that he fell and crushed a vertebra while being held in maximum-security in 1998.
A man went in to rob a bank. He demanded the clerk to give him all the money. They told him to go sit out in his car and they would bring him the bags of money. He agreed and went out to his car. In the meantime, the people in the bank called the police. When they got there the man was still sitting in his car waiting for the money and they arrested him.
A couple robbing a store caught on camera could not be identified until the police reviewed the security tape. The woman filled out an entry form for a free trip prior to robbing the store.
A reward of $1,000 was offered for information leading to the capture and conviction of a man robbing taxi drivers. The man turned himself in and demanded the reward as a result. He received a 20 year sentence for aggravated robbery instead.
Archduke Karl Ludwig (1833-1896), brother of the Austrian emperor, was a man of such piety that on a trip to the Holy Land, he insisted on drinking from the River Jordan, despite warnings that it would make him fatally ill. He died within a few weeks.
Lawsuits filed by California inmates cost the taxpayers more than $25 million in 1994.
A Hawaiian stamp of 1851 with a face value of 2 cents was the sole reason Gaston Leroux, a Parisian philatelist, murdered its owner, Hector Giroux.
Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US President whose name contains all the letters from the word "0." William Jefferson Clinton is the 2nd.
The record for the world’s worst drivers is a toss-up between two candidates: First, a 75-year-old man who received 10 traffic tickets, drove on the wrong side of the road four times, committed four hit-and-run offenses, an caused six accidents, all within 20 minutes on October 15, 1966. Second, a 62-year-old woman who failed her driving test 40 times before passing it in August, 1970 (by that time, she had spent over $700 in lessons, and could no longer afford to buy a car).
Princess Grace was once on the board of 20th Century-Fox.
Abraham Lincoln had a wart on his face.
Bill Cosby was the first black to win a best actor Emmy.
Vincent Van Gogh shot and killed himself while painting "Wheatfield with Crows."
President Theodore Roosevelt wrote 37 books.
Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Dostoyevsky were all epileptics.
When Yul Brynner had hair, it was dark brown.
Ignce Paderewski, one of the greatest concert pianists of all time, was also premier of Poland.
John F. Kennedy and Warren Harding were the only United States presidents to be survived by their fathers.
Before he catapulted to fame, Bob Dylan was paid $50 in 1960 for playing the harmonica on a Harry Belafonte album.
When Errol Flynn appeared as a contestant on the mid-1950s TV quiz show The Big Surprise, he was questioned about sailing and won $30,000.
Reportedly, Virginia Woolf wrote all her books while standing.
The godfather of actress Winona Ryder was the late Dr. Timothy Leary, LSD guru of the 1960s. Winona’s father, Michael Horowitz, served at one time as Leary’s archivist and ran a bookstore called Flashback Books. Additionally, her parents were politically active intellectuals, and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was a good family friend.
When asked to name his favorite among all his paintings, Pablo Picasso replied "the next one."
Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger bought the first Hummer manufactured for civilian use in 1992. The vehicle weighed in at 6,300 lbs and was 7 feet wide.
Napoleon was terrified of cats.
James Dean died in a Porsche Spider.
Mickey Mouse was the first non-human to win an Oscar.
The first U.S. president to visit Moscow was Richard Nixon.