About 10 percent of the workforce in Egypt is under 12 years of age. Although laws protecting children are on the books, they are not well enforced, partly because many poverty-stricken parents feel forced to send their children out to help support the family.

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.

Before the enactment of the 1978 law that made it mandatory for dog owners in New York City to clean up after their pets, approximately 40 million pounds of dog excrement were deposited on the streets every year.

Belgium is the only country that has never imposed censorship for adult films.

Chewing gum is outlawed in Singapore because it is a means of "tainting an environment free of dirt."

Connecticut and Rhode Island never ratified the 18th Amendment (Prohibition). Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who wore a beard was required to pay a special tax.

Eleven days before the statute of limitations was to expire on the Brink's robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, that netted nearly $3 million in January 1950, one of the robbers confessed and betrayed his fellow robbers.

Eugene-Francois Midocq, a French thief and outlaw, evaded the police for years, turned police spy, joined the force as a detective and used his knowledge of crime to establish a new crime-fighting organization, the Surete.

Every citizen of Kentucky is required by law to take a bath once a year.

Federal law forbids recycling used eyeglasses in the United States.

For hundreds of years, the Chinese zealously guarded the secret of sericulture; imperial law decreed death by torture to those who disclosed how to make silk.

Hailed as a wonder drug in the late nineteenth century, cocaine was outlawed in the United States in 1914.

Impotence is grounds for divorce in twenty-four states in the United States.

In 1388, English Parliament banned waste disposal in public waterways and ditches.

In 1838, the city of Los Angeles passed an ordinance requiring that a man obtain a license before serenading a woman.

In 1996, Christmas caroling was banned at two major malls in Pensacola, Florida. Apparently, shoppers and merchants complained the carolers were too loud and took up too much space.

In Alaska it is illegal to look at a moose from the window of an airplane or any other flying vehicle.

In ancient times, any Japanese who tried to leave his homeland was summarily put to death. In the 1630's, a decree in Japan forbade the building of any large ocean-worthy ships to deter defection.

In Atlanta, Georgia, it is illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp.

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 Canada, if a debt is higher than 25 cents, it is illegal to pay it with pennies.

In England in 1571, a man could be fined for not wearing a wool cap.

In England, murder is murder. There are no degrees of murder, as in the United States.

In Hazelton, Pennsylvania, there is a law on the books that prohibits a person from sipping a carbonated drink while lecturing students in a school auditorium.

In Idaho, a citizen is forbidden by law to give another citizen a box of candy that weighs more than 50 pounds.

In London, it is a 24-hour detainment if caught sticking gum under a seat on the upper deck of a bus.

In Milan, Italy, there is a law on the books that requires a smile on the face of all citizens at all times. Exemptions include time spent visiting patients in hospitals or attending funerals. Otherwise, the fine is $100 if they are seen in public without a smile on their face.

In most American states, a wedding ring is exempt by law from inclusion among the assets in a bankruptcy estate. This means that a wedding ring cannot be seized by creditors, no matter how much the bankrupt person owes.

In New York State, it is still illegal to shoot a rabbit from a moving trolley car.

In Pakistan, it is rude to show the soles of your feet or point a foot when you are sitting on the floor.

In Paraguay, dueling is legal provided both parties are registered blood donors.

In Pennsylvania, Ministers are forbidden from performing marriages when either the bride or groom is drunk.

In Riverside, California, there is an old law on the city's books which make it illegal to kiss unless both people wipe their lips with rose water.

In San Salvador drunk drivers can be punished by death before a firing squad.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman reportedly may divorce her husband if he does not keep her supplied with coffee.

In seventeenth-century Japan, no citizen was allowed to leave the country on penalty of death. Anyone caught coming or going without permission was executed on the spot.

In Somalia, Africa, it's been decreed illegal to carry old chewing gum stuck on the tip of your nose.

In some smaller towns in the state of Arizona, it is illegal to wear suspenders.

In South America, it would be rude not to ask a man about his wife and children. In most Arab countries, it would be rude to do so.

In Sparta during the 4th century, if you were male and over 20 years of age, you were required by law to eat 2 pounds of meat a day. It was supposed to make a person brave.

In the 1940's, California law made it illegal to serve alcohol to a homosexual or to dress as a member of the opposite sex. Drag queens avoided the latter restriction by attaching pieces of paper to their dresses which read "I'm a boy." The courts accepted the argument that anyone wearing such a notice was technically dressed as a man, not a woman.

In the country of Tibet, it's good manners to stick out your tongue at your guests.

In the U.S., federal law states that children's TV shows may contain only 10 minutes of advertising per hour and on weekends the limit is 10 and one-half minutes.

In Turkey, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, anyone caught drinking coffee was put to death.

Internet access in the country of Burma is restricted by anti-modem laws. Illegal possession of a modem can lead to a prison term. Public typists work at typewriters charging about 14 cents per page. On a good day, a public typist earns about $3.50.

It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

It is not against the law in the U.S. to be a drug addict. In 1962, the Supreme Court called imprisonment for being an addict cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Bill of Rights.

It was illegal for women to wear buttons in fifteenth-century Florence.

Licensed London taxis (otherwise known as black cabs) are required by law to carry a bale of hay at all times. This dates from the days of the horse drawn cab and the relevant law has never been revoked.

Massachusetts Puritans passed America's first law against gambling in 1638.

Nearly 43 percent of convicted criminals serving prison sentences in the U.S. are rearrested within a year of being released from prison.

New York was the first state to require the licensing of motor vehicles. The law was adopted in 1901.

On August 12, 1895, Minnie Dean became the first woman to be hanged in New Zealand. Her crime was "baby farming". She would adopt unwanted babies for a certain fee and then dispose of them, a "service" she began in 1889. The police caught on to Minnie after six years and found her to be most certainly guilty when they dug up three bodies of infants in her flower garden.

Oxford University requires all members upon admission to the Bodleian Library to read aloud a pledge that includes an agreement to not "kindle therein any fire or flame". Regulations also prohibit readers bringing sheep into the library.

Prior to the adoption of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, the candidate who ran second in a presidential race automatically become vice president. Thomas Jefferson became John Adams' vice president in this way.

Private automobiles were forbidden on the island of Bermuda until 1948. This is one reason that there are still so many bicycles there.

Residential, economic, or educational qualification gave half a million Englishmen more than one vote in England in 1885. A university graduate who also owned a business in the City of London voted three times - once at his home, once for his university, and once in the City.

South Pittsburg, Tennessee, better known as "The Cornbread Capitol of the World," has an old ordinance pertaining to the cooking of this southern staple. The law declares: "Cornbread isn't cornbread unless it be made correctly. Therefore, all cornbread must be hereby made in nothing other then a cast iron skillet. Those found in violation of this ordinance are to be fined one dollar."

Surprisingly, electronic or "cyberspace" harassment is not yet a Federal crime, nor is it illegal in most states.

Texas is the only state that permits residents to cast absentee ballots from space. The first to exercise this right to vote while in orbit was astronaut David Wolf, who cast his vote for Houston mayor via e-mail from the Russian space station Mir in November 1997.

The California Board of Equalization has ruled that bartenders cannot be held responsible for misjudging the age of midgets.

The Dieri tribe in Australia has strict laws regarding who can marry whom. For example, a man can legally marry his mother's mother's brother's daughter's daughter. He can also marry his mother's father's sister's daughter's daughter. Go figure!

The film "Cleopatra" (1963) was banned in Egypt for 15 years because its star, Elizabeth Taylor, had converted to Judaism.

The following means of making a living are, according to New York City statues, illegal: the skinning of horses or cows, the growing of ragweed, and the burning of bones.

The Germans considered Casablanca (1943) a propaganda film and made it illegal to show in German theaters during World War II. Even after the war, only a censored version was allowed to be shown in Germany; all references to Nazis were removed.

The greatest funeral for a gangster ever held in Chicago was for a flower shop entrepreneur named O'Banion. The shop,at the corner of State and Superior Streets, was a front for O'Banion's bootlegging and hijacking operations. Ten thousand mourners were in attendance, and the most expensive wreath - it cost $1,000 - came from Al Capone, who had ordered that O'Banion be rubbed out.

The U.S. Congress passed a law in 1832 requiring all American citizens to spend one day each year fasting and praying. For the most part, people ignored the law, and no effort was made to enforce the legislation.

The U.S. interstate highway system requires that 1 mile in every 5 must be straight. These sections can be used as airstrips in a time of war or other emergencies.

The United States Supreme Court once ruled Federal income tax unconstitutional. Income tax was first imposed during the Civil War as a temporary revenue-raising measure.

Two Marble Valley, Vermont prison escapees were caught in New York City in 1996. Police found their to-do list, which read, "Drive to Maine, get safer place to stay, buy guns, get Marie, get car - Dartmouth, do robbery, go to New York..."

Under Norwegian law, a polar bear may be shot only if deemed a menace.

Until 1893, lynching was legal in the United States. The first anti-lynching law was passed in Georgia, but it only made the violation punishable by four years in prison.

Wetaskiwin, Alberta from 1917: "It's against the law to tie a male horse next to a female horse on Main Street."

Women were banned by royal decree from using hotel swimming pools in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in 1979.

Women were not allowed to vote in France until 1944.

Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote.

Twenty-four-karat gold is not pure gold; there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.

The average medium size piano has about 230 strings, each string having about 165 pounds of tension, with the combined pull of all strings equaling approximately eighteen tons.

Two chapters in the Bible, 2 Kings and Isaiah 37, are alike almost word for word.

The average person can live for eleven days without water, assuming a mean temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

U. S. Congressmen expressed surprise on learning in 1977 that it takes fifteen months of instruction at the Pentagon's School of Music to turn out a bandleader but merely thirteen months ot train a jet pilot.

The bandaging of a mummy often took from 6 to 8 months and required a collection of special tools, including a long metal hook that was used to draw the dead person's brains out through his nose.

The best diamonds are colored blue-white.

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.

Until the 1950's, Tibetans disposed of their dead by taking the body up a hill, hacking it into little pieces, and feeding the remains to the birds.

Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.

Verdi wrote the opera Aida at the request of the khedive of Egypt to commemorate the opening of the Suez canal.

Voltaire considered Shakespeare's works so deplorable that he referred to the Bard as "that drunken fool."

Water has a greater molecular density in liquid form than as a solid. This is why ice floats.

When a person dies, hearing is generally the last sense to go. The first sense lost is usually sight. Then follow taste, smell, and touch.

When glass breaks the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour. To photograph the event a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second.

When he was a child, Blaise Pascal once locked himself in his room for several days and would not allow anyone to enter. When he emerged, he had figured out all of Euclid's geometrical propositions totally on his own.

"The Washington Post March" by John Phillip Sousa was named after the newspaper, the Washington Post.

$1,000,000 in $1 bills would weigh approximately one ton. Placed in a pile it would be 360ft/110m high - as tall as 60 average adults standing on top of each other.

A balloon released into the jet stream would take two weeks to travel completely around the globe.

A bubble is round because the air within it presses equally against all its parts, thus causing all surfaces to be equidistant from its center.

A car operates at maximum economy, gas-wise, at speeds between 25 and 35 miles per hour.

A car that shifts manually gets 2 miles more per gallon of gas than a car with automatic shift.

A car uses 1.6 ounces of gas idling for one minute. Half an ounce is used to start the average automobile.

A conventional sign of virginity in Tudor England was a high exposed bosom and a sleeve full to the wrists.

A diamond will not dissolve in acid. The only thing that can destroy it is intense heat.

A female pharaoh was unknown in Egypt before Hatshepsut, who began her reign in 1502 B.C. In order not to shock convention, she had herself portrayed in male costume, with a beard, and without breasts.

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.

While diamonds are usually considered the most precious of stones, a large flawless emerald is worth considerably more than a diamond of the same size.

With an exchange rate running at an average of 428,287.55 Ukranian Karbovanets to the dollar, total assests of just $5.62 will qualify a person as a Ukranian millionaire.

X-rays of the Mona Lisa show that there are three completely different version of the same subject, all painted by Leonardo, under the final portrait.

A jet or turbo-jet powered aircraft uses more fuel flying at 25,000 feet than 30,000 feet. The higher it flies, the thinner the atmosphere and the less atmospheric resistance it must buck.

A mile on the ocean and a mile on land are not the same distance. On the ocean, a nautical mile measures 6,080 feet. A land or statute mile is 5,280 feet.

A perfectly clean fire produces almost no smoke. Smoke simply means that a fire is not burning properly and that bits of unburned material are escaping.

A person uses more household energy shaving with a hand razor at a sink (because of the water power, the water pump, and so on) than he would by using an electric razor.

A person who is lost in the woods and starving can obtain nourishment by chewing on his shoes. Leather has enough nutritional value to sustain life for a short time.

A quarter has 119 grooves on its circumference. A dime has one less.

A rawhide with the hair removed by soaking it in water and lye is called a parfleche.

A study of American coins and currency revealed the presence of bacteria, including staphylococcus, E. coli, and klebsiella, on 18% of the coins and 7% of the bills.

A ten-gallon hat holds less than a gallon of liquid.

A violin contains about 70 separate pieces of wood.

A whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.

A young lady named Ellen Church convinced Boeing Air Transport that her nursing skills and love of flying would qualify her to assist with the passengers and emergencies. She became the first known stewardess.

According to Gambler's Digest, an estimated $1 million is lost at race tracks each year by people who lose or carelessly throw away winning tickets.

According to Gambler's Digest, more cheating takes place in private, friendly gambling game than in all other gambling games combined.

According to Newton's Law of Motion, when a car going 60 miles per hour in one direction gets hit by a mosquito going one mile per hour in the opposite direction, the car will slow down one-millionth of a mile per hour.

According to studies conducted at Northwestern University, men change their minds two to three times more than women. Women tend to take longer to make a decision, but once they do they are more likely to stick to it.

According to The Farmers Almanac - To test your love, you and your lover should each place an acorn in water. If they swim together, your love is true; if they drift apart, so will you.

According to the Federal Aviation Authority, United States airlines are four times safer than the airlines of any other country.

According to the federal Trade Commission. there are 20,000 television commercials made each year that are aimed exclusively at children. Of these, 7,000 are for sugared breakfast cereals.

According to the General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, the typical American spends an average of one year of his or her life speaking on the telephone.

According to the New York Telephone Company, of the 398 million telephone in the world, more than one-third are in the United States.

According to The Old Farmers' Almanac, 1903 - the best time of the day to select a new pair of shoes is in the afternoon, when the exercise of the day has stretched the muscles to their largest extent.

According to the Public Carriage Office, a branch of the Metropolitan Police that licenses all cabs and drivers, there are more than 23,000 cabbies working in London, England. All are self-employed and none has a police record.

According to U.S. Treasury, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, there were more than 10 billion pennies minted in the United States in 1998. The actual number of coins produced, by denomination, was as follows: pennies, 10,257,400,000; nickels, 1,323,672,000; dimes, 2,335,300,000; quarters, 1,867,400,000; half-dollars, 30,710,000.

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.

Air pressure at sea level is roughly equal to the weight of an elephant spread over a small coffee table.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote a 6,000-word epic poem when he was twelve years old.

All pilots on international flights identify themselves in English, regardless of country of origin.

All the proceeds earned from James M. Barrie's book Peter Pan were bequeathed to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for the Sick Children in London.

Almost half the newspapers in the world are published in the United States and Canada.

In a Czechoslovakian church there is a chandelier made of human bones. The ceiling is festooned with the remains of former worshipers.

In ancient Rome, wealthy Romans always drank from goblets made of quartz crystal. They believed the transparent mineral was a safeguard against their enemies, because legend had it that a cup carved from the transparent mineral would not hold poison.

In every hour that one listens to the radio in the United States, one hears approximately 11,000 spoken words.

In France and Belgium, snapping the fingers of both hands has a vulgar meaning.

In Greece, it is a wedding tradition to write the names of all single female friends and relatives of the bride on the sole of her shoe. After the wedding, the shoe is examined, and those whose names have worn off are said to be the next in line for marriage.

In Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more that a hundred years before either moon was discovered.

In India it is perfectly proper for men to wear pajamas in public. Pajamas are accepted as standard daytime wearing apparel.

In James M. Barrie's Peter Pan, the place where children go with Peter Pan is not called "Never-Never Land." It is called "Neverland."

In Japan there is a deadly martial art, called tessenjutsu, based solely on the use of a fan.

In many countries, urine was used as a detergent for washing. (One of urine's major components, ammonia, is used in cleaning products.

Among the Danakil tribesmen of Ethiopia, when a male dies his grave is marked with a stone for every man he killed.

An ice cube in a glass of water will not raise the water level when it melts. The amount of space it displaces as a cube is equal to the amount it takes up when liquified.

Ancient Chinese artists freely painted scenes of nakedness and coition. Never, absolutely never, would they depict a simple bare female foot.

Anyone writing a letter to the New York Times has one chance in twenty-one of having the letter published. Letter writers to the Washington Post do significantly better: one letter out of eight finds it way to print.

As of January 1998, American Express had not issued a single credit card with an expiration date past December 1999. The company hoped to protect cardholders from Y2K problems.

Assuming that each fold neatly overlaps its opposite side, a dollar bill can be folded only six times - seven if put into a vise.

At race tracks, the favorite wins fewer than 30 percent of all horse races.

Bacteria, the tiniest free-living cells, are so small that a single drop of liquid may contain 50 million of them.

BAND-AID Brand Adhesive Bandages first appeared on the market in 1921, however, the little red string that is used to open the package did not get added until 1940.

Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

In medieval times, church bells were often consecrated to ward off evil spirits. Because thunderstorms were attributed to the work of demons, the bells would be rung in an attempt to stop the storms. Numerous bellringers were killed by lightning.

In most advertisements, including newspapers, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

In one night, the World Trade Center in New York used more electricity than the entire city of Troy, New York.

In one second 6,242,000,000,000,000,000 electrons pass any given point in an electrical current.

In order to "become a gentleman" in English polite society, Mohandas K. Gandhi (in his late teens) spent hours practicing the arranging of his tie and hair and taking lessons in dance and music.

In the city of Reykjavik, Iceland, one can see the stars eighteen hours a day during the heart of the winter. During the summer, sunlight is visible 24 hours a day.

In the kingdom of Bhutan, all citizens officially become a year older on New Year's Day.

In trucking circles, a "bumper sticker" is a tailgater who is following another vehicle too closely.

In Turkey the colour of mourning is violet. In most Muslim countries and in China it is white.

It is believed that 90 percent of all scientists who have ever lived realize now, and that as many scientific paper have been published in the years since 1950 as were published in all the centuries before 1950.

Because of the precautions taken to prevent photographers from showing the public what occurred on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the first published picture was made through the empty sleeve of a coat that concealed the camera from the sharp eyes of the exchange's guards. The photo appeared in Pear's magazine in 1907.

Before 1933, the dime was legal as payment only in transactions of $10 or less. In that year Congress made the dime legal tender for all transactions.

Before deciding on the name Sherlock, Arthur Conan Doyle had named his now famous detective - Sherrinford. The name was used in a short story Doyle wrote in 1886. Holme's sidekick in the story was called Ormond Sacker - soon to be renamed Thomas Watson.

By the end of the Civil War, between one-third and one-half of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. This served as the catalyst behind the creation of the U.S. Secret Service. On July 5, 1865, the Secret Service was created under the U.S. Treasury Department. In less than a decade, counterfeiting was sharply reduced.

Castor oil is used as a lubricant in jet planes.

Charles Lindbergh was not the first man to fly the Atlantic. He was the sixty-seventh. The first sixty-six made the crossing in dirigibles and twin-engine mail planes. Lindbergh was the first to make the dangerous flight alone.

Christendom did not begin to date its history from the birth of Christ until 500 years after his death. The system was introduced in 550 by Dionysius Exigus, a monk in Rome.

Crystals grow by reproducing themselves. The come the nearest to being "alive" of all members of the mineral kingdom.

Diamonds are rare: an average of 350 tons of ore must be mined and processed to find an uncut diamond large enough to cut a single one-carat polished diamond. Of all the diamonds mined, only 20 percent are even suitable for jewelry.

Diamonds mined in Brazil are harder than those found in Africa.

The Boston Nation, a newspaper published in Ohio during the mid-nineteenth century, had pages seven and a half feet long and five and a half feet wide. It required two people to hold the paper in proper reading position.

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.

It is estimated that 4 million "junk" telephone calls--phone solicitations by persons or programmed machine--are made every day in the United States.

The cello's real name is the violoncello.

It is estimated that a plastic container can resist decomposition for as long as 50,000 years.

The city morgue in the Bronx, New York, has been so busy at times that next of kin take numbers - as in a corner bakery shop - and wait in line for their body-identification call.

It is possible to drown and not die. Technically the term "drowning" refers to the process of taking water into the lungs, not to death caused by that process.

The color black absorbs heat. White reflects it.

It takes 100 centimos to equal one bolivar, which is Venezuela's basic unit of currency. According to sources, Venezuela is the only country that uses the bolivar as its basic legal tender.

The color combination with the strongest visual impact is black on yellow. Next to follow black on white, yellow on black, white on black, dark blue on white, and white on dark blue.

It takes 120 drops of water to fill a teaspoon.

The country of Tonga once issued a stamp shaped like a banana.

It takes as much heat to turn one ounce of snow to water as it does to make an ounce of soup boil at room temperature.

The country with the most post offices is India with over 152,792 compared with just over 38,000 in the United States.

It takes the same amount of time to age a cigar as wine.

The custom of being clean-shaven is said to date back to Alexander the Great, who had a scanty beard in any case and set the fashion. A century later, shaving entered the roman world in the West and the Eastern world abandoned the custom.

James McNeill Whistler's best known painting, often called "Whistler's Mother," is actually titled "Arrangement in Black and Gray: The Artist's Mother."

The diameter of the wire in a standard paper clip is 1 millimeter - or about 0.04 inch.

Kettle drums were once used as currency on the island of Aler in Indonesia.

Kulang, China runs seven centers for recycled toothpicks. People bringing used toothpicks to the recycling centers are paid the equivalent of 35 cents per pound.

Dinner guests in medieval England were expected to bring their own knives to table - hosts did not provide them. The fork did not appear until the sixteenth century, and fork-and-knife pairs were not in general use in England until the seventeenth century.

Dirty snow melts faster than clean.

Dry ice does not melt. It evaporates.

During the American Revolution, inflation was so great that the price of corn rose 10,000 percent, the price of wheat 14,000 percent, the price of flour 15,000 percent, and the price of beef 33,000 percent.

During the early 1920's, at the height of the inflation in the German Weimar Republic, one American dollar was equal to 4 trillion German marks.

During the early days of the Gold Rush in San Francisco a glass of whiskey would cost as much as $7.

The Eisenhower Interstate System requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

The famous cow used as the corporate symbol on all Elmer's products is actually named Elsie, and she is the spouse of Elmer, the steer who the company is named after.

Ladies in Europe took to wearing lightning rods on their hats and trailing a ground wire - a fad that began after Benjamin Franklin published instructions on how to make them, in his almanac, Poor Richard Improved, in 1753.

The first 12 ounce aluminum soda can was introduced in 1964 by Royal Crown Cola. Coke didn't start using aluminum until 3 years later and that same year Pepsi came out with a seamless can.

Lead poisoning has been blamed for contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire. Women became infertile by drinking wine from vessels whose lead had dissolved in the wine, and the Roman upper classes died out within a couple centuries. The Romans used lead as a sweetening agent and as a cure for diarrhea. It added up to massive self-inflicted poisoning.

The first coin minted in the United States was a silver dollar. It was issued on October 15, 1794.

Leather money was used in Russia right up until the 17th century, as was tea money in China.

The first contraceptive diaphragms - centuries ago - were citrus rinds - i.e.: half an orange rind.

Libra, the Scales, is the only inanimate symbol in the zodiac.

The first female telephone operator was Emma M. Nutt, who started working for the Telephone Dispatch Company in Boston, on September 1, 1878. Prior to that, all operators were men.

Lloyd's of London, the best-known association of insurance underwriters, does not write life insurance.

The first hot air balloon to carry passengers was invented by the Montgolfier brothers in France in 1783. It flew five miles. The air in a hot air balloon is about 212 degrees.

London cabbies estimate their average driving speed to be 9 miles per hour due to increasing traffic congestion.

The first Jewish member of the British House of Commons was Lionel Nathan Rothschild of the prominent family of European bankers. He did not assume his seat for eleven years, until Parliament finally let him take the oath in a manner acceptable to his Jewish faith.

Madam de Montespan, second wife of Louis XIV, once lost 4 million francs in a half-hour at the gambling table.

The first operators employed by the Bell Telephone Company were young boys who worked standing up. Only after several years did it occur to anybody to provide them with chairs.

Many hair sprays (which are really just adhesives for the hair) are made largely of cellulose, the major ingredient of the cell walls of plants. Ethyl Cellulose adhesives dry quickly, do not remain tacky, and wash out with water.

The first successful parachute jump to be made from a moving airplane was made by Captain Berry at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1912.

Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past contains almost 1.5 million words.

Men laugh longer, more loudly, and more often than women.

During the middle ages, only men wore diamonds, as a symbol of their courage and virility. However, since 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Burgundy, diamonds have been the gem of choice for men who wanted to melt a woman's heart.

During the Renaissance, laws were passed that prescribed which fashions could not be worn by the lower classes, so as to keep social distinctions intact. Queen Elizabeth of England would not allow the ruff to be worn by commoners; and in Florence, women of the lower class were not alllowed to use buttons of certain shapes and materials.

Early systems of measurement used body parts to calculate length. A cubit ran from elbow to middle fingertip. The distance from fingertip to fingertip of outstretched arms was a fathom.

English is taught in Russian schools beginning in third or fourth grade, so most citizens speak at least some English. Interestingly, Russia has more teachers of the English language than the U.S.A. has students of Russian.

Fagin, the sinister villain in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, was also the name of Dickens' best friend, Bob Fagin.

Forensic scientists can determine a person's sex, age, and race by examining a single strand of hair.

Fourteen years before the Titanic sailed on an April day in 1912 on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, a novel called Futility was published about an unsinkable and glamorous Atlantic liner, the largest in the world. Like the Titanic, the fictional vessel was triple-screw and could make 24-25 knots; at 800 feet it was a little shorter than the Titanic, but at 70,000 tons its displacement was 4,000 tons greater. Like the Titanic's, its passenger list was the creme de la creme and there were not enough lifeboats. On a cold April night, the fictional "unsinkable" vessel strikes an iceberg and glides to the bottom of the Atlantic. The name of this liner, in the story by Morgan Robertson was The Titan.

Franz Liszt was Richard Wagner's father-in-law. Atruro Toscanini was Vladimir Hhorowitz's father-in-law.

Gasoline has no specific freezing point--it freezes at any temperature between -180 and -240 degrees Fahrenheit. When gasoline freezes, it never solidifies totally, but resembles gum or wax.

Gibbon spent 20 years writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Noah Webster spent 36 years writing his dictionary.

You can call it Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom, or U.K. - however if you buy a stamp there, you won't find any name. Great Britain was the first country in the world to issue postage stamps, and they're the only nation in the world today that doesn't use a national name on their stamps.

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

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 tropps. Out of this need came the ready-made clothing industry.

Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonald's.

The first toy product ever advertised on television was MR. POTATO HEAD. Introduced in 1952, MR. POTATO HEAD took advantage of TV's explosive growth to gain access to tens of millions of newly "plugged-in" households.

Moonstones are so named because they have a soft, luminous glow much like moonlight. The Greeks believed that the stones became brighter or dimmer with the phases of the moon. A moonstone was also believed to be a powerful good luck charm, and wearing one was considered a guarantee of success in a precarious endeavor.

The flag of the U.K. is properly known as the Union Flag. It is only called the Union Jack when it is flown from the jack mast of a ship

More than 1,000 different languages are spoken on the continent of Africa. The Berbers of North Africa have no written form of their language. Somalia is the only African country in which the entire population speaks the same language, Somali.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

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 Greek national anthem has 158 verses.

More than 50 percent of the people who are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States and who go untreated still survive.

The handkerchief had been used by the Romans, who ordinarily wore two handkerchiefs: one on the left wrist and one tucked in at the waist or around the neck. In the fifteenth century, the handkerchief was for a time allowed only to the nobility; special laws were made to enforce this. The classical heritage was rediscovered during the Renaissance.

Most automobile trips in the United States are under 5 miles.

The Indian epic poem the "Mahabhrata" is eight times longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.

Most lipsticks contain fish scales.

The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a playing card.

Most precious gems are actually colorless. Their color comes form impurities in the stone than act as pigmenting agents.

The loop on a belt that holds the loose end is called a "keeper".

Neck ties were first worn in Croatia. That's why they were called cravats (CRO-vats).

No one can drown in the Dead Sea. It is 25 percent salt, which makes the water very heavy.

Gin and canasta are both descended from an ancient Chinese game, mah-jongg, which is more than a thousand years old.

Granite conducts sound ten times faster than air.

Horse-racing regulations state that no race horse's name may contain more than eighteen letters. Names that are too long would be cumbersome on racing sheets.

Hot water weighs more than cold.

Houdini was the first man to fly an airplane solo in Australia.

If a glass of water were magnified to the size of the Earth, the molecules comprising it would be about as big as a large orange.

If hot water is suddenly poured into a glass that glass is more apt to break if it is thick than if it is thin. This is why test tubes are made of thin glass.

If you lace your shoes from the inside to the outside the fit will be snugger around your big toe.

In 1060 a coin was minted in England shaped like a clover. The user could break off any of the four leaves and use them as separate pieces of currency.

The Lord's Prayer appears twice in he Bible, in Matthew VI and Luke XI.

The medal which is presented to Nobel Peace Prize winners depicts three naked men with their hands on each other's shoulders.

No patent can ever be taken out on a gambling machine in the United States.

The men who served as guards along the Great Wall of China in the Middle Ages were often born on the wall, grew up there, married there, died there, and were buried within it. Many of these guards never left the wall in their entire lives.

Norfolk County, Massachusetts, is the birthplace of three United States presidents: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and John F. Kennedy.

The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.

Nothing can be burned again that has already been burned once.

The Mona Lisa measures less than 2 feet by 2 feet.

Obsidian balls, or occasionally brass balls, were placed in the eye sockets of Egyptian mummies.

The name of the first airplane flown at Kitty Hawk by the Wright Brothers was Bird of Prey. The maiden flight of the Bird of Prey, however, was less than a flight--the plane stayed in the air only long enough to sail 59 feet.

Of all professionals in the United States, journalists are credited with having the largest vocabulary--approximately 20,000 words.

The name piano is an abbreviation of Cristofori's original name for the instrument: piano et forte or soft and loud.

Of all the ore dug in diamond mines, only one carat in every 23 tons proves to be a diamond.

The national anthems of Japan, Jordan and San Marino each have only four lines. Does that include "Play Ball"?

On average, Clergymen, Lawyers, and Doctors each have 15,000 words in their vocabulary. Skilled workers who haven't had a college education know between 5,000 and 7,000 words. Farm laborers about 1,600.

The oldest piano still in existence was built in 1720. No one knows where Mozart is buried.

On June 10, 1958, a tornado was crashing through El Dorado, Kansas. The storm pulled a woman out of her house and carried her sixty feet away. She landed, relatively unharmed, next to a phonograph record titled "Stormy Weather."

The only house in England that the Queen may not enter is The House of Commons as she is not a commoner. She is also the only person in England who does not need a license plate.

On March 16, 1970, a bidder at Sotheby & Company in London paid $20,000 for one glass paperweight.

On November 9, 1965, the day of the great blackout in the northeastern United States, 62 million phone calls were placed in New York City during a 24-hour period. that is the greatest number of telephone calls ever made in one day.

In 1776, a man who made $4,000 a year was considered wealthy.

In 1829, when Mrs. Lydia Child wrote The Frugal Housewife, hair care was a lot different from what it is now. New England rum was considered to be excellent for cleaning the hair and keeping it healthy; brandy was supposed to strengthen the roots.

In 18th century English gambling dens, there was an employee whose only job was to swallow the dice if there was a police raid.

In 1950, at the Las Vegas Desert Inn, an anonymous sailor made 27 straight passes (wins) with the dice at craps. The odds against such a feat are 12,467,890 to 1. The dice today are enshrined in the hotel on a velvet pillow under glass.

In 1965, a collection of eight bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild was sold at auction of $2,200.

In 1971, at Memorial Hospital in New York City, a woman weighting less than 100 pounds ran a fever of 114 degrees--and survived without brain damage or physiological after effects.

In 1975, a birdhouse costing $10,000 was built in Quebec by the city fathers.

In 1976, a Los Angeles secretary named Jannene Swift officially married a 50-pound rock. the ceremony was witnessed by more than twenty people.

In 1986, a guard in an armored car was killed when $50,000 worth of quarters fell on him.

In 340 B.C., Aristotle observed that dolphins gave birth to live young that were attached ot their mothers by umbilical cords. For this reason, he considered dolphins and related creatures to be mammals. Biologists agreed with him - twenty-four centuries later.

The only known common metal that is liquid at room temperature is mercury.

The original title of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice was First Impression.

On October 17, 1949, Northwest Airlines became the first airlines in the United States to serve alchoholic beverages in flight.

The Penny is the only coin currently minted in the United States with a profile that faces to the right. All other coins - the silver dollar, half dollar, quarter, dime and nickel - all feature profiles that face to the left.

On the Chinese written language, the ideograph that stands for "trouble" represents two women under one roof.

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.

One 75-watt bulb gives more light than three 25-watt bulbs.

The piece that protrudes from the top end of an umbrella is called a "ferrule". The word "ferrule" is also used to describe the piece of metal that holds a rubber eraser on a pencil.

One ounce of gold can be drawn to 43 miles.

The plastic covering on the end of a shoelace is called an 'aglet'.

Per a British medical journal report, the fungi that feed on old paper may be mildly hallucinogenic, and the "fungal hallucinogens" may cause an "enhancement of enlightenment" in readers. The source of creative inspiration for many great authors through history may have been a quick sniff of moldy books, causing them to get high.

The psychology Department of Dayton University reports that loud talk can be ten times more distracting than the sound of a jackhammer. Loud, incessant chatter can make a listener nervous and irritable, and even start him on the road to insanity.

Persons that engage in solitary endurance sports are the ones most likely to be compulsive exercisers - for example, joggers, long-distance swimmers, weight-lifters, and cross-country skiers. Occasionally, devotees of these activities set unrealistic, ambitious goals and then drive themselves mercilessly to reach them. A study of New York marathoners a few years ago found that their divorce rate - male and female - was twice the national average.

The real name of the Mona Lisa is actually La Giaconda. It is a portrait of a middle-class Florentine woman, the wife of a merchant named Francesco del Giacondo.

Petroleum accounts for nearly half the world's energy supply.

The ruby, sapphire, and emerald are not specific minerals. The ruby is red, a sapphire the blue, variety of corundum. An emerald is the green, and aquamarine the blue, variety of beryl.

Phone calls in the U.S. plummeted as much as 58 percent during the reading of the O.J. Simpson trial verdict in 1995. According to polls, workers across the nation put their jobs on hold for up to 30 minutes. In contrast, phone call volume barely budged when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

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.

Playing cards in India are round.

Portions of the Bible have been printed in 2,212 languages - a complete Bible exists in 366 languages - an additional 928 languages have a New Testament - 918 have at least one book of the Bible.

The shortest verse in the Bible consists of two words: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35).

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.

Railroad conductors and mailmen in the U.S. refused to wear uniforms until after the Civil War. In 1844, policement in New York City staged a strike against their proposed blue uniforms. The reason for their opposition was that they considered uniforms to be symbols of servitude, as maids and butlers wore them in the old country.

The sound heard by a listener when holding a seashell to his ear does NOT come from the shell itself. It is the echo of the blood pulsing in the listeners own ear.

Residents of Nevada bet an average of $846 a year in gambling casinos.

The states of Arizona, Indiana and Hawaii have never adopted Daylight Savings Time. Neither has Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or American Samoa.

Rubber is one of the ingredients of bubble gum. It is the substance that allows the chewer to blow a bubble.

The statue by Auguste Rodin that has come to be called "The Thinker" was not meant to be a portrait of a man in thought. It is a portrait of the poet Dante.

Samuel Beckett's play "Breath" is the shortest recorded play ever written, consisting of 35 seconds of human cries and breathes.

The U.S produces 19% of the world's trash. The annual contribution includes 20 billion disposable diapers, 2 billion razors and 1.7 billion pens.

Shakespeare once wrote a play called "What You Will". (Its alternate title: Twelfth Night.)

The U.S. Automobile Association was formed in 1905 for the purpose or providing "scouts" who could warn motorists of hidden police traps.

Silly Putty started as a mistake in a New Haven laboratory, and turned into a consumer hit in the 1960s by sheer chance. According to engineers, Silly Putty is a self-contradiction. Chemically, it is a liquid, but it resembles a solid. The molecular structure will stretch if the structure is slowly pulled. But if tugged, it snaps apart. The toy has a rebound capacity of 75 to 80 percent, whereas a rubber ball has only about a 50-percent bounce-back. A silicon derivative, Silly Putty won't rot; it can withstand temperatures from -70 degrees Fahrenheit to hundreds degrees above zero. On top of all that, it picks up newsprint, often sharper than the original.

The United States Postal Service assures its customers that whey will not get fat licking stamps. There is no more than one-tenth of a calorie's worth of glue on every stamp.

Someone who faces the glare of publicity may be said to be in the limelight. American chemist Robert Hare discovered that a blowpipe flame acting upon a block of calcium oxide - which is lime - produces a brilliant white light that could be used to illuminate theater stages.

The weight of air in a milk glass is about the same as the weight of one aspirin tablet.

St. Miles Partridge once played dice with Henry VIII for the bells of St. Paul's church, won, and collected the bells.

The working section of the piano is called the action. There are about 7500 parts here, all playing a role in sending the hammers against the strings when keys are struck.

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.

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.

The world consumes 1 billion gallons of petroleum a day.

The world's first iron bridge, built at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, England, in 1782, was the product of three generations of Darbys. Abraham Darby I developed the use of coke; his son manufactured cast iron; his grandson built the bridge.

Studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls indicate that the passage in the bible known as the Sermon on the Mount is actually an ancient Essene prayer dating to hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.

The World's Largest YoYo resides in the National YoYo Museum in Chico, California. Named "Big Yo," the 256-pound yoyo is an exact scale replica of a Tom Kuhn "No Jive 3 in 1 YoYo." Fifty inches tall and 31.5 inches wide, the yoyo is made of California sugar pine, baltic birch from the former USSR, and hardrock maple. It was first launched in San Francisco on October 13, 1979.

Studies shown by the Psychology Department of DePaul University show that the principal reason to lie is to avoid punishment.

There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.

Suzie Derkins is the only character in Bill Watterson's comic strip, 'Calvin and Hobbes,' to have a first and last name. Calvin's parents have no names at all.

There are more than 5,919,682 telephones in New York City, more phones than in the entire country of Spain. The cables serving the New York City area have nearly 33,072,975 miles of wire.

Tablecloths were originally meant to serve as towels with which guests could wipe their hands and faces after dinner.

There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

Taxi drivers in London, England are required to pass a training test based upon "The Blue Book." Preparation for this test takes between two to four years. Of ten who start, eight or nine drop out before completion.

There are odor technicians in the perfume trade with the olfactory skill to distinguish 19,000 different odors at twenty levels of intensity each.

Ten cords of wood stacked 4 feet wide by 4 feet high by 80 feet long have the same heating potential as 1,400 gallons of oil.

There are two radios for every man, women, and child in the United States.

The "Sandcastle Effect" was identified by researchers at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana and first published on June 18, 1997. It explained why sandcastles do not collapse after the sand in them has almost totally dried out.

There is 1 mile of railroad track in Belgium for every one and a half square miles of land.

The A & P was the first chain-store business to be established. It began in 1842.

There is an entire opera written about the Mona Lisa by Mac von Schillings.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first novel ever to be written on a typewriter.

The American Bible Association has published almost a billion Bibles since it was founded in 1816.

There is no living descendant of William Shakespeare.

There is no one who does not dream. Those who claim to have no dreams, laboratory tests have determined, simply forget their dreams more easily than others.

The American League of Physical Culture, the first nudist organization in the United States, was founded on December 4, 1929.

There is one slot machine in Las Vegas for every eight inhabitants.

The amethyst, February's designated birthstone, is the symbol of sincerity. This gem was said to be a favorite of both Cleopatra's and St. Valentine's.

There is only one river in the world that has its source near the equator and from there flows into a temperate zone: the Nile. For some little-understood reason, the flow of most rivers is in the opposite direction.

The ancient occupation of the "Gold Beater" was one who flattened out gold nuggets by hammering them in between the outside membrane of the large intestine from an Ox (known as Goldbeater skin) to produce the gold leaf used in decorative gilding. The adhesive used to attach this metal to paper or plaster, in ancient times and still today, is... egg whites.

To see how many children a newlywed couple will have, the Finns count the number of grains of rice in the bride's hair. Czechs send off the newlyweds under a barrage of peas. Italians throw sugared almonds. An African tradition is to throw corn kernels (to signify fertility).

The average American sees or hears 560 advertisements a day.

Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.

The average American uses eight times as much fuel energy as an average person anywhere else in the world.

Turning a clock's hands counterclockwise while setting it is not necessarily harmful. It is only damaging when the timepiece contains a chiming mechanism.

The average house wife walks 10 miles a day around the house doing her chores. In addition she walks nearly 4 miles and spends 25 hours a year making beds.

A bee could travel 4 million miles (6.5 million km) at 7 mph (11km/h) on the energy it would obtain from 1 gallon (3.785 liters) of nectar.

A dragonfly can fly 25 mph.

A dragonfly flaps its wings 20 to 40 times a second, bees and houseflies 200 times, some mosquitoes 600 times, and a tiny gnat 1,000 times.

A flea is capable of jumping 13 inches in a single leap. In human terms, this would be equivalent to a person leaping 700 feet in one bound.

A fly can react to something it sees and change direction in 30 milliseconds.

A grasshopper can leap over obstacles 500 times its own height. In relation to its size, it has the greatest jumping ability of all animals.

A housefly can transport germs as far as 15 miles away from the original source of contamination.

A male emperor moth can detect and find a female of his species a mile away.

A mature, well-established termite colony with as many as 60,000 members will eat only about one-fifth of an ounce of wood a day.

A mosquito, engorged on blood, is able to fly carrying a load twice its own weight.

A queen bee may lay as many as 3,000 eggs in a single day.

A spider is not an insect. It is an arachnid - it has eight legs instead of six, and has no wings or antennae. The same is true of the daddy longlegs, scorpion's mite, and tick--none is technically part of the insect class.

A strand of spider web may be stronger than an equal diameter of steel.

A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.

According to the United States Deparment of Agriculture, the best time to spray household insects is 4:00 p.m. Insects are most vulnerable at this time.

After mating, the female black widow spider turns on her partner and devours him. The female may dispatch as many as twenty-five suitors a day in this manner.

An ant can lift 50 time its own weight, which is equivalent to a human being pulling a 10-ton trailer.

An ant can survive for up to two weeks underwater.

An insect exerts so much energy in one hour of flying that it may lose as much as a third of its total body weight.

Ants keep slaves. Certain species, the so-called sanguinary ants for example, raid the nests of other ant tribes, kill the queen, and kidnap many of the workers. The workers are brought back to the captors' hive, where they are coerced into performing menial tasks.

Ants stretch when they wake up. They also appear to yawn in a very human manner before taking up the tasks of the day.

As of 1940, total of ninety patents had been taken out on shaving mugs.

Assuming that all the offspring survived, 190,000,000,000,000,000,000 flies could be produced in four months by the offspring of a single pair of flies.

At one "sitting": a mosquito can absorb one and a half times its own weight in blood.

Australia is home to 350 different kinds of butterflies.

Australian scientists have identified some species of baby spiders that bite off the limbs of their mothers and slowly dine on them over a period of weeks. The researchers hypothesize the maternal sacrifice keeps the young from eating one another.

Bees can see ultraviolet light.

Bees have five eyes. There are three small eyes on the top of a bee's head and two larger ones in front.

Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and white worms like fried pork rinds.

Between 20,000 and 60,000 bees live in a single hive. The queen bee lays nearly 1,500 eggs a day and lives for up to 2 years. The drone, whose only job it is to mate with the queen bee, has a lifespan of around 24 days - they have no stinger. Worker bees - all sterile females - usually work themselves to death within 40 days, collecting pollen and nectar. Worker bees will fly up to 9 miles (14km) to find pollen and nectar, flying at speeds as fast as 15 mph (24km/h).

Biologists have discovered that cockroaches can change course as many as 25 times in one second, making them the most nimble animals known.

Bombyx mori, a silkworm moth, has been cultivated for so long that it can no longer exist without human care. Because it has been domesticated, it has lost the ability to fly.

Bugs hold special places in the hearts of many Japanese, who often keep crickets, beetles and fireflies as pets. Their calls are considered soothing and remind the nature-loving Japanese of a simpler, less hectic age.

Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.

Butterflies taste with their hind feet.

Centipedes, or members of the class Chilopoda, always have an uneven number of pairs of walking legs, varying from 15 to more than 171 pairs. Common house centipedes (Scutigera coleoptrato) have 15 pairs of legs.

Cicadas have their hearing organs in their stomachs, at the base of the abdomen. Crickets have their hearing organs in their knees, or, more precisely, in the oval slit of their forelegs.

Cockroaches have lived on the Earth for 250 million years without changing in any way whatsoever.

Cockroaches have quite a capacity for survival. If the head of one is removed carefully, so as to prevent it from bleeding to death, the cockroach can survive for several weeks. When it dies, it is from starvation.

Cockroaches have quite a capacity for survival. If the head of one is removed carefully, so as to prevent it from bleeding to death, the cockroach can survive for several weeks. When it dies, it is from starvation.

The average life expectancy of a queen bee is 6 years, a worker bee, 6 months, and a drone, just 8 weeks.

The bombardier beetle, when disturbed, defends itself by emitting a series of explosions, sometimes setting off 4 or 5 in succession. The noises sound like minature popgun blast and are followed by a cloud of reddish-colored, vile-smelling fluid.

The bumblebee does not die when it stings - it can sting again and again. In bumblebee hives, the entire colony, except for the queen, dies at the end of each summer. Each year, an entirely new colony of bees must be produced.

The buzzing of flies and bees is not produced by any sound-producing apparatus within the insects' bodies. It is simply the sound of their wings moving up and down at a rapid rate.

The caterpillar has more than 2,000 muscles.

The caterpillar of the monarch butterfly will eventually multiply its original weight by 2,700 times. If a 7-pound newborn human gained weight at the same rate, as an adult, it would weigh well over 9 tons.

The common male housefly completes its entire life cycle in just 17 days.

The evolution of social life in ants and termites has been accompanied by an extraordinary royal perk -- a 100-fold increase among queen ants in average maximum lifespan, with some queens surviving for almost 30 years. This longevity can be attributed in part to the sheltered and pampered life of the royal egg layer.

The fastest insect on record, that has been reliably measured, is the Australian dragon fly - which has a top speed of around 57 kph. Contrary to popular myth, the deer botfly CANNOT fly faster than a jet plane. It would be crushed by the pressure.

The female salamander inseminates herself. At mating time, the male deposits a conical mass of jellylike substance containing the sperm. The female draws the jelly into herself, and in so doing fertilizes her eggs.

Contrary to popular myth - flies - DO exist in Alaska. In fact, there are almost no WORMS in Alaska, and the flies fill that ecological niche -- birds of many species are seen feeding on flys and maggots. Fish even eat the maggots from rotting salmon in the streams.

Daddy-longlegs are not spiders and do not bite.

Doctors in ancient India used insect mandibles instead of stitches to bind the two sides of a cut together. The head of a large ant would be removed and its pincers would be brought together through the patient's flesh.

Drosophila, the Small Fruit-fly, has been warmly received by the scientific community, mainly owing to the giant-sized chromosomes possessed by the cells of its salivary glands. These chromosomes, which can stretch to more than a mile long when unravelled, allow scientists to study DNA using only a sheet of white paper and a bright table lamp.

Every night, wasps bite into the stem of a plants, lock their mandibles into position, stretch out at right angles to the stem and, with legs dangling, fall asleep.

Fireflies like to light up together. Two fireflies found near each other will eventually start lighting up at the same time.

Fleas are essential to the health of armadillos and hedgehogs; they provide necessary stimulation of the skin. Deloused armadillos and hedgehogs will die.

Flies prefer to breed in the center of a room. This is why experts advise placing flypaper away from corners.

Gypsy moth larvae are very mobile. They also have a voracious and devastating appetite. Gypsy moth larvae have the potential to defoliate more than 2 million acres of Northeastern U.S. forests per year. In 1869, a Massachusetts naturalist imported gypsy moths from France, hoping to cross them with the American silk moth and create a hardy thread-making caterpillar. Not only did his experiment fail, but disaster resulted when some of the moths escaped. Each generation of offspring, floating in the breeze on tiny sails of spun silk and body hairs, can be carried further than 20 miles away.

Honeybees have hair on their eyes.

The hardiest of all the world's insects is the mosquito. It has been found in the coldest regions of northern Canada and Siberia and can live quite comfortably at the North Poe. It is equally at home in equatorial jungles.

The honey ant of the desert has an unusual method of providing food in times of scarcity. certain members of the colony are stuffed with liquid food or water until the rear of their bodies are enlarged to the size of a pea. When a famine occurs, these ants disgorge their supplies to feed the others.

The honey ant of the desert has an unusual method of providing food in times of scarcity. Certain members of the colony are stuffed with liquid food or water until the rear portions of their bodies are enlarged to the size of a pea. When a famine occurs these ants disgorge their supplies to feed the others.

The honeybee kills more people each year world-wide than venomous snakes.

The Japanese beetle, found in the eastern United States and Canada, is the only bug in these countries to be concerned about if lodged in the ear, for it can chew through the eardrum in a matter of minutes. Other bugs can be removed without the same urgency.

The leaf-cutter ant sometimes makes anthills 16 feet deep and up to an acre wide.

The leaf-cutting ant can lift more than 50 times its own weight.

The male praying mantis often loses his head - literally - after courting the female. The latter is known to decapitate the earnest suitor and she often completely devours him.

The male praying mantis often loses his head--literally--after courting the female. The latter is known to decapitate the earnest suitor, and she often completely devours him.

The Mexican fishing spider attaches itself to a small leaf, floats acoss a pond as if on a raft, and from this vantage point hunts its prey of large tadpoles and small fish.

If humans could jump like fleas, they'd be able to leap over a 100 story building in a single bound.

If one places a minute amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

If the head of a cockroach is removed carefully, so as to prevent it from bleeding to death, the cockroach can survive for several weeks. When it dies, it is from starvation.

If the name of every insect were printed in an average-size book, it would take about 6,000 pages to list them all. There are more than 900,000 known species of insects.

In a beehive, only one and a half ounces of wax are used to build a comb that will hold four pounds of honey.

In September, 1951, seventeen-month-old Mark Bennet of Vancover, B.C., was stung 447 times by wasps and lived. He was released from the hospital after twenty days of treatment.

Insects consume 10% of the world's food supply every year.

It would take 27,000 spiders, each spinning a single web, to produce a pound of web.

It's been documented that locusts have formed swarms measuring up to one mile wide, 100 feet deep, and 50 miles long. They may travel more than 2,000 miles. A swarm this enormous has been known to contain as many as 40 billion locusts.

The monarch butterfly can discern tastes 12,000 times more subtle than those perceivable by human taste buds.

The natural diet of Lady Beetles consists of soft bodied insects such as aphids, spider mites, and young caterpillars. Adults can consume up to 100 aphids a day.

The nephila spider of India spins its webs with strands that are more than twenty feet long.

The reproductive cycle of some worms is in phase with the moon. The sex organs of adult pallolo worms mature once a year at about the same time of day, on a day when the moon is in its last quarter.

The tiny houseflies so often encountered are not, contrary to popular belief, "baby Flies." Baby flies are maggots. The small houseflies are adults of a different species of the ordinary housefly.

The venom of a female black widow spider is more potent than that of a rattlesnake

The venom of the Africanized honey bee is no more toxic than that of the common honey bee's.

There are 4,300 known species of ladybug in the world.

There are 5 million different species of insects in the world. The insect population of the world is at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. The weight of the world's insect population exceeds that of man by a factor of twelve.

There are earthworms as short as one-twenty-fifth of an inch and earthworms as long as 11 feet. The earthworm has now lungs; it breathes through its skin. some earthworms have as many as ten hearts.

Louis Pasteur saved France's silkworm industry. When the industry, in southern France, was dealt a staggering blow by a disease that was killing the silkworms, the call went out for Pasteur - no one but Pasteur. Pasteur's solution, on locating a tiny parasite infesting silkworms and the mulberry leaves that were fed to them, was drastic but rational: Destroy all infested worms and infected food. It was done. It worked. The silk industry was saved.

Many insect hear with their hair. A number of insect, such as the male mosquito, have thousands of tiny hairs growing along their antennae.

Many species of butterflies, like birds, fly south for the winter.

Mass infestation by scales threatened to destroy the burgeoning California citrus groves in the late 19th century. Orchard owners gained complete control of the scale insects within two years after vedalia ladybugs were imported. The operation cost less than $5,000 and saved millions of dollars annually. In the 1940's, DDT spray programs eliminated the ladybugs, and scales reappeared in force. Reintroduction of the beetle and tempering of chemical applications again saved the citrus industry. Vedalia ladybugs now help control scales in more than 60 countries.

Massed opposing armies fight each other along a front. The fighting continues for days, and hundreds die. This is not trench warfare among men. The armies are the weaver ants of African forests. The ants are so fierce that when the battle is resolved and the boundaries of the opposing colonies have been fixed, a "no-ant's-land" exists between them where ants from each side do not dare to enter.

Mayflies live less than a day and never eat in their adulthood. The lifetime of mayflies usually begins in late afternoon when they emerge from their eggs. They fly for the first time, mate, lay eggs themselves, and die before dawn.

Mayflies, after hatching and the spending one to three years developing as naiads, live only one day as adults. During this single day, they molt twice, mate, and lay eggs in water. Because these adults do not have developed mouth parts, they do not feed.

Millipedes never have a thousand legs. They can have from a few dozen to several hundred, but not a thousand.

Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray or lotion blocks the mosquito's sensors, however they will seek out unprotected areas of skin.

Mosquitoes are attracted to the color blue twice as much as to any other color.

There are locusts that have an adult life span of only a few weeks or so, after having lived in the ground as grubs for fifteen years.

There are more beetles on Earth than ony other living creature. The number of species alone is nearly a quarter-million.

There are more different kinds of insects in existence today than the total of all types of other animals put together.

There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.

There are more than 100,000 different species of butterflies.

There are more than 80,000 known species of ants.

There are one-celled creatures that have the properties of both plants and animals. An example is the flagellate Euglena, which is propels itself through the water like an animal by means of undulating snakelike appendages. Also, it contains chlorophyll, a substance as characteristic of plants as blood is of animals.

There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas. Essential to the balance of nature, spiders annually destroy a hundred times their number in insects.

There is an average of 50,000 spiders per acre in green areas. Essential to the balance of nature, spiders annually destroy a hundred times their number in insects.

Mosquitoes do not bite. They stab. A mosquito has no jaws; when attacking a victim it pierces it with its long proboscis and sucks the blood up through a nasal tube.

Most of the 3,500 known species of cockroaches flee from danger, but one rolls up into a ball when threatened. The Florida roach sprays assailants with an irritating fluid.

Most varieties of spiders have eight eyes. These are arranged on top and near the front of the head, usually in two rows of four each.

Moths - at least in the form we know them - are not responsible for damaging woolen clothing. Our wearables are attacked only by moths in the larval state, and then only by one family of moths, the Tineidae.

Moths and butterflies pollinate flowers in the same manner as bees - they move from plant to plant carrying pollen on their hairy feet and promote cross-fertilization just as effectively as bees.

No two spider webs are the same.

Of the million-plus species of insects on earth, 3,000 of them are mosquitoes. More than 165 of those live in the United States.

One silkworm can spin a thread more than half a mile long.

Only female bees work. Males remain in the hive, their only mission in life being to fertilize the queen bee on her maiden flight. After they have served their function, the males are not allowed back into the hive but are left outside, where they starve to death.

Only female mosquitoes bite and drink blood. Male mosquitoes do not bite, but feed on the nectar of flowers.

There is no way to tell a moth from a butterfly. Though there are differences of physiology and habit between then, it is almost impossible to isolate a single differentiating characteristic that applies uniformly to both species.

There really are such thing as "cooties." Though most people believe that "cooties" is just a nonsense word used by children to describe unpleasant insects, cooties are in fact a kind of body lice.

To make a one-pound comb of honey, bees must collect nectar from about two million flowers.

When a queen bee lays the fertilized eggs that will develop into new queens, only one of the newly laid queens actually survives. The first new queen that emerges from her cell destroys all other queens in their cells and, thereafter, reigns alone.

When female wasps return to the colony after foraging, they may initiate aggressive encounters with males and stuff them head first into empty nest cells. Cornell University researchers who observed the behavior call it "male-stuffing," and believe it contributes to the colony's fitness by making more food available to larvae.

Only female wasps, bees, and mosquitoes sting.

Only full-grown male crickets can chirp

Queen termites may live for as many as fifty years.

Scientists discover approximately 7,000 to 10,000 new insect species every year - and it is believe that there are between 1 million and 10 million species yet unfound.

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.

Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that snails can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.

Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that snails can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.

Snails sleep a lot. In addition to several months of winter hibernation, they crawl into their shells to get out of the hot sun, which dries them, or heavy rain, which waterlogs them. Desert snails may even doze for three or four years.

Snails sleep a lot. In addition to several months of winter hibernation, they crawl into their shells to get out of the hot sun, which dries them, or heavy rain, which waterlogs them. Desert snails may even doze for three or four years.

Some crickets burrow megaphone-like tunnels that help transport the sound of their chirps as far as 2,000 feet away.

Some insects, after their head is severed, may live for as much as a year. They react automatically to light, temperature, humidity, chemicals, and other stimuli.

Spiders have transparent blood.

Spiders never spin webs in structures made of chestnut wood. That is why so many European chateaux were built with chestnut beams - spider webs on a 50-foot beamed ceiling can be difficult to clean.

Tarantulas can survive on a diet of one large insect a month.

Termite queens are fertilized regularly by the same mate for life, unlike bee and ant queens, whose male partners die after the first and only mating.

The American lobster can move through the water at a rate of up to 25 feet a second.

The animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size is the ant.

The are more different kinds of insects on existence today than the total of all kinds of other animals put together.

The average airspeed of the common housefly is 4 1/2 mph. A housefly beats its wings about 20,000 times per minute.

The average house fly lives only two weeks.

"To prevent violence," it was at one time customary at certain phases of the moon to chain and flog inmates of England's notorious Bedlam Hospital.

A Venetian law decrees that all gondolas must be painted black. The only exceptions are gondolas belonging to high public officials.

According to law, no store is allowed to sell a toothbrush on the Sabbath in Providence, Rhode Island. Yet these same stores are allowed to sell toothpaste and mouthwash on Sundays.

According to security equipment specialists, security systems that utilize motion detectors won't function properly if walls and floors are too hot. When an infrared beam is used in a motion detector, it will pick up a person's body temperature of 98.6 degrees compared to the cooler walls and floor. If the room is too hot, the motion detector won't register a change in the radiated heat of that person's body when it enters the room and breaks the infrared beam. Your home's safety might be compromised if you turn your air conditioning off or set the thermostat too high while on summer vacation.

According to the Ball Corporation, a major manufacturer of the fruit jars used in home canning, the creator of the screw-top glass containers was a New York City inventor, John L. Mason. Because the embossed legend "Mason's Patent Nov. 30th 1858" was carried on many of the early jars, the public began referring to any jar with a metal screw cap as a "Mason jar." Mason's name became a part of our generic terminology.

According to the Recruitment Code of the U.S. Navy, anyone "bearing an obscene and indecent" tattoo will be rejected.

Air Conditioning firsts: 1939 - Packard Motor Car Company sells the first air conditioned automobile with air as a factory installed accessory. 1936 - United Airlines uses air conditioning in its passenger planes. 1931 - B&O Railroad debuts the first air conditioned train. 1929 - Frigidaire introduces the first room cooler.

Alexander Graham Bell was working to improve the telegraph when he invented the telephone.

Alfred Butts, the inventor of Scrabble®, decided on the frequency and distribution of letters by analyzing the front page of the New York Times. He used a penknife to cut his first set of wooden Scrabble® tiles.

Alfred Nobel used a cellulose adhesive (nitrocellulose) as the chemical binder for nitroglycerin, which he used in his invention of dynamite.

Although John F. Kennedy was reportedly an accomplished yo-yo player, the yo-yo that has commanded the highest price at auction was autographed by President Nixon. This yo-yo was given to "King of Country Music" Roy Acuff onstage at the Grand Ole Opry in 1972, after Nixon introduced Acuff's act. Acuff was famous for yo-yoing on stage and encouraged the President to try. Luckily, the President's awkward performance was captured in a classic news wire photo. The yo-yo fetched $16,029.00 at Acuff's estate auction.

As an advertising gimmick, Carl Mayer, nephew of lunchmeat mogul Oscar Meyer, invented the company's "Wienermobile". On July 18, 1936, the first Oscar Mayer "Wienermobile" rolled out of General Body Company's factory in Chicago. The Wienermobile still tours the U.S. today.

At the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, Richard Blechyden, and Englishman, had a tea concession. On a very hot day, none of the fairgoers were interested in hot tea. Blechyden served the tea cold--and invented iced tea

At the turn of the century, most lightbulbs were handblown, and the cost of one was equivalent to half a day's pay for the average U.S. worker.

BAND-AID Brand Adhesive Bandages first appeared on the market in 1921, however, the little red string that is used to open the package did not get added until 1940.

Barbie and Ken Dolls are named after Mattel founders Ruth and Elliot Handler's son and daughter, Barbara and Ken. Barbies full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts and she is from Willows, Wisconsin. First sold in 1959 - Barbie wasn't given bendable legs until 1965.

Belgian driver Jenatzy was the first to reach a speed of over 100km/h in his electrically powered car 'La Jamais Contente' in 1899

Camel's-hair brushes are not made of camel's hair. They were invented by a man named Mr. Camel.

Chester Greenwood from the United States, was 15 years old in 1873 when he invented earmuffs.

Credit for the invention of the parachute goes to Sebastien Lenormand in 1783. In 1495, Leonardo da Vinci designed a pyramid-shaped chute. J.P. Blanchard (1753-1809), a Frenchman, is said to have been the first to use a parachute. In 1785, he dropped a dog in a basket, to which a parachute was attached, from a balloon high in the air. Blanchard claimed to have descended from a balloon in a parachute in 1793.

Denver, Colorado lays claim to the invention of the cheeseburger. The trademark for the name Cheeseburger was awarded in 1935 to Louis Ballast, the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In. Ballast claimed to have come up with the idea while testing hamburger toppings.

Designer Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel introduced her first perfume in 1921. She gave it the name "Chanel No. 5." According to Chanel, she jumped straight to number five because it was her lucky number. To add luck to the fragrance, she introduced it on the fifth day of May, the fifth month. Chanel No. 5 became the world's best selling perfume.

Did you ever wonder what the WD in WD-40 stands for? WD is an abbreviation for Water Displacement 40th attempt.

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."

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, D.C.

Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio in 1952.

Early hand-held lights used carbo-zinc batteries that did not last very long. To keep the light burning required that the user turn it on for a short time and then turn it off to allow the battery to recover. That's how they became known as a "flashlight".

Early mattresses were filled with straw and held up with a rope stretched across the bed frame. If the rope was tight, sleep was comfortable. Hence the phrase, "sleep tight."

Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson.

English philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon introduced a gunpowder formula to Europe in 1242.

Four wheel roller skates were invented by James L. Plimpton in 1863.

Frederick Winthrop Thayer of Massachusetts and the captain of the Harvard University Baseball Club received a patent for his baseball catcher's mask on February 12, 1878.

Gutenburg invented the printing press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be printed was the Bible. It was, however, in Latin rather than English.

Henri Nestlé was originally a baby food manufacturer. His work and research with condensed milk aided Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter in inventing a method to successfully combine chocolate and milk in a solid form - the first milk chocolate - in 1875.

Henry Ford did not invent the automobile. It was the invention of several 19th century engineers, paramount among them being two Germans, Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. What Ford did was too mass-produce automobiles and provide cheap service for them.

Henry Waterman invented the modern elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour.

In 1843, a mathematician, Ada Byron, published the first computer programs. She based them on Jacquard's punch-card idea. Her programs were for the first general-purpose mechanical digital computer, that was just invented by Charles Babbage.

The first VCR, made in 1956, was the size of a piano.

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.

The German chemist Johann Friedrich Böttger was the first European to discover how to make porcelain in 1708.

The heel of a sock is called the 'gore'. The back panel of a shoe is called the 'counter'.

The idea of using light in telephone communications is not new. Reportedly in 1880, Alexander Graham Bell invented a phone that used sunlight in place of wires.

The invention and development of the telegraph in the 1840s made possible the swift collection of information from widespread weather stations, and thus enabled the first weather maps to be drawn.

The invention of typing correction fluid is credited to Bette Nesmith, the mother of former Monkee Mike Nesmith. In the 1950s Mrs. Nesmith was a typist. One day she brought with her to work a small brush and a bottle of white paint which she used to correct her typos. She shared her "Mistake Out", with other secretaries, and was soon approached by an office supply company to market her invention. She later renamed the product Liquid Paper and in 1979 sold the rights to the Gillette Company for $47.5-million.

The largest light bulb was a 1-foot-long 75,000 - watt bulb, hand-blown at the Corning Glass Works, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Thomas Edison's invention of the incandescent lamp.

The modern zipper, the Talon Slide Fastener, was invented in 1913 but didn't catch on until after World War 1. The first dresses incorporating the zipper appeared in the 1930's.

The monkey wrench is named after its inventor, a London blacksmith named Charles Moncke.

In 1875 the director of the United States Patent Office sent his resignation and advised that his department be closed. There was nothing left to invent, he claimed.

In 1881, Procter & Gamble's Harley Procter decided that adding the word pure to his Ivory soap would give its sales a necessary shot in the arm. Analysis proved that Ivory was almost 100% pure fatty acids and alkali, the stuff that most soap is made of. Ivory's impurities were limited to 0.56%--0.11% uncombined alkali, 0.28% carbonates, and 0.17% mineral matter. Harley marked his soap 99 and 44/100% pure, deciding that using the exact number sounded more credible than rounding up to 100%.

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.

In the 1530's, a printing press was set up in Mexico City, and the first Mexican newspaper was published there in 1541.

In the 16th century, a Dutchman named Zacharias Janssen developed the microscope lens to a high degree of refinement so that it would magnify with little distortion. He became famous for his accomplishment, and was nicknamed "Father of Microscopy." Ironically, Janssen was not trained as a scientist.

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.

In the early 1940's, Swiss inventor George de Mestral went on a walk with his dog... Upon his return home, he noticed that his dog's coat and his pants were covered with cockleburrs. His inventor's curiosity led him to study the burrs under a microscope, where he discovered its natural hook-like shape. This was to become the basis for a unique, two-sided fastener - one side with stiff "hooks" like the burrs and the other side with the soft "loops" like the fabric of his pants. The result was VELCRO® brand hook and loop fasteners, named for the French words"velour" and "crochet."

In the mid 1880's, until approximately 1910, American Undertakers sold "Grave Alarm" Devices. These were elaborate rope and bell/pulley arrangements allowing those buried alive to summon help. The rope was placed into the hand of the (supposed) deceased, and it wound through a series of tubes to the bell outside the grave.

In the year 1886, Herman Hollerith had the idea of using punched cards to keep and transport information, a technology used up to the late 1970's. This device was constructed to allow the 1890 census to be tabulated. In 1896 the Tabulating Machine Company was founded by Hollerith. Twenty-eight years later, in 1924, after several take-overs the company became known as International Business Machines (IBM).

It has been determined that less than one patented invention in a hundred makes any money for the inventor.

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 pop top can was invented in Kettering, Ohio by Ermal Fraze

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 shoestring was invented in England in 1790, Prior to this time all shoes were fastened with buckles.

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 word "yo-yo" itself was a registered trademark of Duncan until 1965.

The world's first patent was granted in 1421 to architect Filippo Brunelleschi in Florence to make a barge crane to transport marble.

The yo-yo is the second oldest known toy in the world (only the doll is older), and was born over 3,000 years ago in the days of ancient Greece.

There was a time when every single source of heat and illumination in a home was activated not by flipping a switch or pushing a button, but by striking a match. Stick matches were kept all around the house. Some were in a tin holder on the kitchen wall next to the stove, and others in more decorative containers throughout the house.

Thomas Edison held over 1,300 US and foreign patents.

It was Swiss chemist Jacques Edwin Brandenberger who invented cellophane, back in 1908.

It was while he was examining urine, seeking the philosopher's stone (the magic elixir needed to change base metals into gold), that the German chemist Hennig Brand discover phosphorus.

James J. Ritty, owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, invented the cash register in 1879 to stop his patrons from pilfering house profits.

James Ramsey invented a steam-driven motorboat in 1784. he ran it on the Potomac River, and the event was witnessed by George Washington.

Johann Behrent built the first piano in America at Philadelphia in 1775 under the name "Piano Forte".

John Greenwood invented the dental drill in 1790.

Joseph C. Gayetty of New York City invented toilet paper in 1857.

Joseph Priestley, the English chemist, invented carbonated water. It was a by-product of his investigations into the chemistry of air.

Kilts are not native to Scotland. They originated in France.

Leonardo da Vinci invented the scissors.

Thomas Edison, "the wizard of Menlo Park," established an "invention factory", the first industrial research laboratory, with the hope of producing a new invention every ten days. In one four-year period he obtained 300 patents, or one every five days.

Thomas Jefferson invented the dumbwaiter.

Vellum, a fine-quality writing parchment, is prepared from animal skin: lambs, kids, and very young calves. Coarser, tougher types are made from the skins of male goats, wolves, and older calves. Vellum replaced papyrus and was superseded by paper.

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.

While fighting with the French underground during World War II, Jacques Yves Cousteau invented the aqualung, the self-contained device that supplies air pressure for underwater divers.

Levi Hutchins of Concord, N.H., invented the first alarm clock in 1787. It only rang at 4 a.m. because that's what time he got up.

M. R. Bissell had a china shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was allergic to the dusty straw scattered on the floor after unpacking china from crates. So, he invented the first carpet sweeper in 1876 to clean up the mess and protect his sinuses.

Mark Twain secured a patent in 1873 for a self-pasting scrapbook. A series of blank pages - coated with gum.

Miami Beach pharmacist Benjamin Green invented the first suntan cream by cooking cocoa butter in a granite coffee pot on his wife's stove, and then testing the batch on his own head. His invention was introduced as Coppertone Suntan Cream in 1944.

More than half a billion yo-yos have been sold in the United States since Donald F. Duncan introduced the toy in 1930.

Most grandfather clocks with metal pendulums lose time in warm weather. This phenomenon occurs because most solids expand when heated. In the case of the clock, the higher temperature makes the metal pendulum longer, and thus slower.

Most Panama hats are manufactured in Ecuador.

Most tin is used to make containers for food and pastes. Over 100 billion such containers are manufactured each year.

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.

Out of the 11 original patents made by Nikola Tessla, for the generation of hydroelectric energy, 9 are still in use, (unchanged) today.

Paul Winchell, the ventriloquist, was not only the voice of Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh films, he also invented the artificial heart. He donated the patent for it to the University of Utah.

PEZ Candy was first marketed as a compressed peppermint candy over 70 years ago in Vienna, Austria. The name PEZ was derived from the German word for peppermint...PfeffErminZ. Today, over 3 billion PEZ Candies are consumed annually in the U.S.A. alone.

Playing Cards were invented by the Chinese as early as 1120.

Roulette was invented by the great French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal. It was a by product of his experiments with perpetual motion.

Rudyard Kipling, living in Vermont in the 1890's invented the game of snow golf. He would paint his golf balls red so that they could be located in the snow.

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.

Samuel Colt received a U.S. patent for his pistol with a six-chamber, revolving barrel on February 25, 1836. With a pocket knife, Colt had whittled a wood model while stationed on the S.S. Corlo.

Shampoo was first marketed in the USA in 1930 by John Breck, who was the captain of a volunteer fire department.

Soviets are buying skateboards from the U.S. - but not for recreational purposes. They see them as an answer to some of the country's transportation needs, because the boards are less expensive than bicycles and require little storage space. The first boards went to school instructors so they could train pupils how to ride them.

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.

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.

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 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 Colgate Company started out making starch, soap, and candles.

The colloquial term "mackintosh" for a raincoat comes from Charles Mackintosh, the Scottish chemist who invented and patented the first practical waterproof cloth in 1823.

The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn in 1860.

The earliest adhesive postage stamps in the world were the "Penny Blacks" of the United Kingdom, bearing the head of Queen Victoria, placed on sale on 1 May for use on 6 May 1840.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist.

The father of the Pink Flamingo (the plastic lawn ornament) is Don Featherstone of Massachusetts. Featherstone graduated from art school and went to work as a designer for Union Products, a Leominster, Massachusetts, company that manufactures flat plastic lawn ornaments. He designed the pink flamingo in 1957 as a follow-up project to his plastic duck. Today, Featherstone is president and part owner of the company that sells an average of 250,000 to 500,000 plastic pink flamingos a year.

The first "braces" were constructed by Pierre Fauchard in 1728. Fauchard's "braces" consisted of a flat strip of metal, which was connected to teeth by pieces of thread.

The first ballpoint pens sold in 1945 were priced at $12.00 a piece.

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.

The first black and white motion picture to be digitally converted to color was "Yankee Doodle Dandy", the 1942 biopic of George M. Cohen.

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.

The first cyanoacrylate (super/krazy glue) was discovered by accident, when chemists at Eastman-Kodak accidentally glued two prisms together when testing new organic compounds for light refracting properties.

The first envelopes with gummed flaps were produced in 1844. In Britain, they were not immediately popular because it was thought to be a serious insult to send a person's saliva to someone else.

The first plastic ever invented was celluloid, it came about as an alternative for billiard balls made from Ivory.

The first product to have a UPC bar code on its packaging was Wrigley's gum.

The first stethoscope, invented in 1816, was made from a roll of paper.

The first subway was built in London (1860-63) by the cut and cover method. Other notable subways: Paris (the Metro 1898), New York (1900).

St. Swithin's Day, July 15: During the 900's, a man named Swithin (spelling also recorded as "Swithun") was the Bishop of Winchester in England. Some years after his death, and for reasons not documented, Bishop Swithin's remains were transferred to Winchester Cathedral on July 15, 971. That same day, there was a tremendous rainstorm. Legend has it that Bishop Swithin was so angry about the move from his final resting place that he caused the storm. According to old English folklore, if it should now rain on July 15th, St. Swithin will make it rain for 40 days thereafter.

About 75,600,000 pumpkin pies are baked each winter holiday season in the United States.

According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.

According to a 1997 Gallup poll, 29 percent of Americans found the Christmas holidays more stressful than enjoyable. Those with the lowest incomes were most likely to find the season stressful, perhaps reflecting their inability to participate fully in the commercial, gift-giving aspects of the holiday.

According to a survey, the most popular day for eating out in the United States is one's own birthday - 49 percent of American adults do. The worst holiday for eating out is Grandparents' Day, with less than 5 percent participating.

According to Gale Research, the average American household wraps 30 Christmas gifts each year.

According to the Data Group, grandparents spend an average of $82 per grandchild for a holiday gift, $42 for a birthday gift, $74 for a special occasion such as a graduation, and $19 for other occasions like Easter or Valentine's Day.

According to the National Christmas Tree Association, Americans buy 37.1 million real Christmas trees each year; 25 percent of them are from the nation's 5,000 choose-and-cut farms.

An AT&T survey estimates that 122.5 million phone calls to Mom are made on Mother's Day. Other Mother's Day findings reveal that 11 percent never call their mothers, and 3 percent of the 68 percent planning to ring Mom up will call her collect. AT&T's query didn't include how many Mother's Day e-mails are sent to Mom.

Approximately 165 million Easter cards are purchased each year in the U.S.

Approximately 80 percent of Americans spend Independence Day - the Fourth of July - with their families.

Christmas caroling began as an old English custom called Wassailing - toasting neighbors to a long and healthy life.

Christmas trees are edible. Many parts of pines, spruces, and firs can be eaten. The needles are a good source of Vitamin C. Pine nuts, or pine cones, are also a good source of nutrition.

December 25 was not celebrated as the birthdate of Christ until the year 440 A.D.

During the Christmas buying season, Visa cards alone are used an average of 5,340 times every minute in the U.S.

For a majority of Americans, Thanksgiving Day must include the following elements to be a perfect Thanksgiving: eating roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, and pie until you're ready to pop; and watching football games and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV (or see it live if you're in New York City). Launched in 1926, retailer Macy's annual parade was immortalized in the film Miracle on 34th Street, and has become a symbol of the official beginning of the Christmas shopping season.

Forty percent of American adults said they expect to gain weight during the winter holiday season. Out of those, about 60 percent said following Christmas and New Year's Day, they would return to their original weight.

George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the United States.

Greeks do not use Christmas trees or give presents at Christmas. A priest may throw a little cross into the village water to drive the kallikantzari (gremlin-like spirits) away. To keep them from hiding in dark, dusty corners, he goes from house to house sprinkling holy water.

In 1947, Toys for Tots started making the holidays a little happier for children by organizing its first Christmas toy drive for needy youngsters.

In Brazil, Christmas is celebrated with fireworks.

In many countries, it is the custom to wish friends a "Happy Birthday" on January 1st, rather than a "Happy New Year." This day is nicknamed "Everyman's Birthday," and is considered the day when everyone becomes a year older, whether it's their actual day of birth or not. Similarly, this practice is observed in horse racing. No matter when a race horse is born, they all "become" a year older on New Year's Day, although there are no records explaining how or why this came to be.

In Mexico, Día de la Madre - Mother's Day - is celebrated the day before it's observed in the United States. It is a huge gala event, with mariachis starting at noon and family festivities throughout the day.

In northern France, children are given their gifts on December 6th, Saint Nicholas Day, instead of Christmas Day.

In Portugal, the traditional Christmas meal (consoada) is eaten in the early hours of Christmas Day. Burning in the hearth is the Yule log (fogueira da consoada). The ashes and charred remains of the Yule log are saved; later in the year, they are burned with pine cones during Portugal's thunderstorm season. It is believed that no thunderbolt will strike where the Yule log smoke has traveled.

In Scotland, New Year's Eve is called hogmanay, and is an occasion when young people go about singing and seeking gifts.

In the Netherlands, Christmas centers on the arrival of Saint Nicholas, who is believed to come on horseback bearing gifts. Before going to bed, children leave out their shoes, hoping to find them filled with sweets when they awaken.

Measuring 78 feet, Spiderman is the longest hot-air balloon floating at Macy's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

More diamonds are purchased at Christmas-time (31 percent) than during any other holiday or occasion during the year.

More than three billion Christmas cards are sent annually in the United States.

Mother's Day Symbolism - The pink carnation is a gesture to honor a living mother, while a white carnation is worn to symbolize remembrance.

New Year's Day is the world's most observed holiday. In most English-speaking countries, it has been observed on January 1 since the British Calendar Act was passed in 1751. There was a time when people wished others a "Happy New Year" on March 25, approximately the date of spring's onset.

New York City's Empire State Building's world famous tower lights are turned off every night at midnight with the exception of New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and St. Patrick's Day, when they are illuminated until 3 a.m.

On Christmas Day, 1989, Eastern Europe was permitted to celebrate Christmas freely and openly for the first time in decades. Church masses were broadcast live for the first time in history.

Only 8 percent of adults say they eat out on Labor Day.

Only 9 minutes are spent by the average parent playing with his/her children on Christmas morning.

Per the results of a three-year Christmas study done by the Center for Lifestyle Management, an average of 10 hours are spent the last week of December arguing and bickering with family members about holiday-related activities.

Right behind Christmas and Thanksgiving, Super Bowl Sunday ranks as the third-largest occasion for Americans to consume food, according to the National Football League.

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer was conceived by author Robert May in 1939. Two other names he thought of before deciding on Rudolph were Reginald and Rollo.

Seventy-five percent of Americans do not believe that public references to the "birth of Christ and Christmas" should be avoided in businesses, schools, and other public venues in order to keep from offending non-Christian Americans during this holiday season.

St. Patrick's Day was celebrated for the first time in America on March 17, 1737, when the Charitable Irish Society, a Protestant group founded that same year, organized a non-religious celebration honoring St. Paddy. It originated in Ireland as a religious holiday honoring the arrival of St. Patrick in 432 A.D. and his death, on March 17, 464 A.D.

The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC, Babylonians celebrated the beginning of a new year on what is now March 23, although they themselves had no written calendar.

The custom of using Christmas wreaths can be traced to the belief that the crown of thorns that Christ was forced to wear when he was crucified was made of holly.

The first Christmas card was created in England on December 9, 1842.

The top two Thanksgiving Day pie picks are pumpkin, at 28 percent, and apple, at 25 percent.

The tradition of using a baby to signify the new year was begun in Greece around 600 BC. It was their tradition at that time to celebrate their god of wine, Dionysus, by parading a baby in a basket, representing the annual rebirth of that god as the spirit of fertility. Early Egyptians also used a baby as a symbol of rebirth.

This abbreviation started with the Greeks. X is the first letter in the Greek word for Christ, Xristos. So saying Xmas is really just the same as saying C-mas.

Valentine's Day means chocolate, and lots of it. According to U.S. candy manufacturers, Americans spend $1,105 million each Valentine's Day on candy, making it the fourth biggest holiday of the year for confectionery purchases. In order, the top three holidays for candy sales are Halloween, Christmas, and Easter.

The world`s first test-tube twins were born in June 1981.

There are 3 million stutterers in the United States and a similar proportion in every other part of the world.

There are 35 million digestive glands in the stomach.

There are more than 10 trillion living cells in the human body.

"Mageiricophobia" is the intense fear of having to cook.

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 fetus in the womb can hear. Tests have shown that fetuses respond to various sounds just as vigorously as they respond to pressures and internal sensations.

A four month old fetus will startle and turn away if a bright light is flashed on it's mother's belly. Babies in the womb will also react to sudden loud noises, even if their mother's ears are muffled.

A human can detect one drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-room apartment.

A human can detect the wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a height of one centimeter.

A human can hear the tick of a watch from 6 meters in very quiet conditions.

A human can see a candle flame from 50 Kilometers on a clear, dark night.

A human can taste one gram of salt in 500 liters of water (.0001M).

A loss of 20 percent of the body's water would result in certain and painful death. Ordinarily the body cannot go more than a week and a half without water; the longest recorded time anyone has gone without water is eleven days.

A newborn baby's head accounts for about one-quarter of it's entire weight.

A person breathes almost 7 quarts of air every minute.

A person who is "scoptophobic" has an intense fear of being seen.

A person's nose and ears continue to grow throughout his or her life.

A recent U.S. study purports that there are fewer births 9 months after a heat wave. The study found that an increase of 12 degrees Celsius (approximately 21.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in summer temperatures reduces births the following spring by up to 6 percent. Researchers at Kinsey Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University concluded that high temperatures could reduce people's sense of well-being, which could result in a reduction in sexual interest. Another study found lower sperm counts and higher rates of miscarriage during hot weather.

A simple, moderately severe sunburn damages the blood vessels to such an extent that it takes four to fifteen months for them to return to their normal condition.

A sneeze can travel as fast as 100 miles per hour. It is impossible to sneeze and keep ones eye's open at the same time.

A survey conducted at Iowa State College in 1969 suggests that a parent's stress at the time on conception plays a major role in determining a baby's sex. The child tends to be of the same sex as the parent who is under less stress.

A Swiss study found that a majority of women unconsciously choose mates with a body odor that differs from their own natural scents, which, as a result, ensures better immune protection for their children. "Longevity" magazine reported that the genes that battle disease-provoking substances also influence body odor.

A woman's arthritic pains will almost always disappear as soon as she becomes pregnant.

A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.

About 75 percent of Americans will have foot problems of one sort or another at some time in their lives.

According to a survey, women prefer blue bedrooms more than other colors; men are happier with white bedrooms.

According to acupuncturists, there is a point on the head that you can press to control your appetite. It is located in the hollow just in front of the flap of the ear.

According to Aristotle, wind direction determined whether a baby would be a boy or a girl.

According to research conducted by Soviet scientists, girls born to men who are older than 50 have an average life span that is six years shorter than their brothers. They believe the X, or female, chromosome a father passes to his daughter contains the gene that determines longevity.

According to researchers at the University of Texas, babies like pretty faces better than plain ones.

According to the Anxiety Disorders Association, one in 11 people suffer from some kind of phobia at some time in their lives. Psychologists know little about the origin of phobias. Women are more prone to phobias than men.

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.

Among his many achievements, the astronomer Johannes Kepler chalked up one about man's inner world. It was Kepler who realized that man's visual apparatus is so constructed that it can produce only inverted images.

An adult human head weighs about 12 pounds (5.4kg), or the same as a light bowling ball.

An adult sitting in a relaxed position inhales approximately one pint of air with every breath.

An average man on an average day excretes two and a half quarts of sweat.

An unusual eating disorder called tomatophagia - but also known as pica - is blamed on iron deficiency anemia. People with tomatophagia develop unusual cravings for such things as tomatoes, ice, detergent, starch, clay, or even dirt.

Ancient Egyptians regarded the heart as the center of intelligence and emotion. They believed the brain to have no signifigance whatsoever, and in the important process of mummification, the brain was removed through the nose and discarded.

As much as six percent of the world's population may experience sleep paralysis, the inability to move and speak for several minutes after awakening.

At sea level there are 2,000 pounds of air pressure on each square foot of your body.

At Tokyo's Keio University Hospital, 30 percent of the outpatients diagnosed with throat polyps - listed the cause as singing karaoke.

Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.

Based on research with the human body's internal clock, the period between the hours of 4 and 6 in the afternoon is when people are the most irritable. Evidence has shown that more human bites are treated in hospitals at this time of the day than any other.

Nerve signals may travel through nerve or muscle fibers at speed as high as 200 miles per hour.

Newborn babies are not blind. Studies have shown that newborns have approximately 20/50 vision and can easily discriminate between degrees of brightness.

No one truly has double joints. Contortionists are actually able to stretch the fibrous tissues known as ligaments. Ligaments hold organs in place and fasten bones together. Ligaments normally restrict the movements of certain joints, but some folks find that their ligaments are more flexible than others.

Of the 206 bones in the average human adult's body, 106 are in the hands and feet. (54 in the hands and 52 in the feet)

One individual organ transplant donor can provide organs, bone, and tissue for 50 or more people in need.

One square inch of skin on the human hand contains some 72 feet of nerve fiber.

One-fourth of the 206 bones in the human body are located in the feet.

One-fourth of the people who lose their sense of smell also lose their desire for sexual relations.

Our hands are recognized by medical professionals as a major source for spreading flu and cold germs. Flu and cold germs can be spread on computer mice and keyboards, chewed pencils, telephones, pens, salad-bar tongs, light switches, door knobs, taxi door handles, and countless other common objects. People can't avoid touching things. To minimize infection, concentrate on keeping hands away from the mouth, nose, and eyes unless the hands are first washed with antibacterial soap, says the Soap and Detergent Association of New York.

People dream an average of five times a night, and each subsequent dream is longer than the one preceding it. The first dream of the evening is about 10 minutes long, and the last dream is about 45 minutes.

Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.

Children born in the month of May are on the average 200 grams heavier at birth than children born in any other month.

Drinking lowers rather than raises the body temperature. There is an illusion of heat because alcohol causes the capillaries to dilate and fill with blood. In very cold weather drinking alcoholic beverages can lead to frostbite.

During menstruation, the sensitivity of a woman's middle finger is reduced.

During pregnancy, the uterus expands to 500 times its normal size.

Each square inch of human skin consists of 19 million cells, sixty hairs, ninety oil glands, nineteen feet of blood vessels, 625 sweat glands, and 19,000 sensory cells.

Even if the stomach, the spleen, 75 percent of the liver, 80 percent of the intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from the pelvic and groin area are removed, the human body can still survive.

People lose more than hair as they grow old. By the age of 70, half of your taste buds will be gone.

Per "Longevity" magazine, a number of plastic surgeons now require their prospective patients to undergo a series of psychological tests to determine if they will become emotionally unstable, excessively anxious, or threatening to the doctor following their cosmetic surgery.

Perspiration is odorless. It is bacteria on the skin that creates an odor.

Plants in the mint family have been used for centuries by people as anti-spasmodics. Current studies suggest that ingesting peppermint oil (available in capsule form) helps relieve internal gas and bloating.

Researchers claim that the color light-green is effective in relieving the feelings of homesickness.

Researchers claim that, on the average, a woman is three times more sensitive than a man to noises while sleeping.

Researchers have discovered that events such as pleasant family celebrations or evenings with friends boost the immune system for the following two days. Unpleasant moments had the opposite effect: negative events, such as being criticized at work, weakened the immune function for one day afterward.

Scientists estimate that there are 3 million to 4 million genes in each human cell, and yet they have been able to identify one particular gene among those millions, produce and image of that gene, and examine it for abnormalities.

Scientists estimate that they could fill a 1,000-volume encyclopedia with the coded instructions in the DNA of a single human cell if the instructions could be translated to English.

Scientists say that people who sleep less than average (less than 6 hours a night) are more organized and efficient than everybody else.

Every person has nearly 400,000 radioactive atoms disintegrating into other atoms in his or her body each second. But there's no need to worry about falling apart. Each body cell contains an average of 90 trillion atoms---225 million times that 400,000.

False teeth are often radioactive. Approximately 1 million Americans wear some form of denture; half of these dentures are made of porcelain compound laced with minute amounts of uranium to stimulate fluorescence. Without the uranium additive the dentures would be a dull green color when seen under artificial light.

From birth to adolescence, selected bones in the human body fuse together. The last bone to fuse is the collarbone, and this occurs between the ages of 18 and 25.

Hair grows slowest at night. It speeds up in the morning, slows in the afternoon, and grows faster again in the evening. Hair grows faster in summer than in winter.

Harvard researchers have found that people who lose a friend, relative, or loved one through death face great physical risks. They are 14 times more likely than normal to suffer a heart attack the day after the death; two days after the traumatic event, they are at risk five times more than normal.

Human nails and hair do not grow after death. They are simply the last part of the body to disintegrate.

Human reproduction follows lunar time rather than sidereal, or solar, time: Gestation is about 266 days -- nine lunar months -- and the menstrual period is one lunar month

Human skin has about 100,000 bacteria per square centimeter. 10% of human dry weight is due to bacteria.

Humans have about 80,000 genes in their DNA.

There are more than 100 different viruses that cause the common cold.

There are ten human body parts that are only three letters long (eye, hip, arm, leg, ear, toe, jaw, rib, lip, gum).

Seeing another person yawn makes it likely that you will yawn yourself. Thinking about, even reading about yawning can set you off. People with mental disorders such as psychoses rarely yawn.

Tongue prints are as unique as fingerprints.

Senior citizens are at greater risk for dehydration than younger people because their bodies are less effective at letting them know when they need water.

Twins are born less frequently born in the eastern part of the world than in the western.

Sight accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all sensory perceptions.

Two out of three adults in the United Sates wear glasses at some time.

Sixty thousand miles of vessels carry blood to every part of your body.

Two phobias for the price of one - a person who has an irrational fear of childbirth can be said to be either maieusiophobic or tocophobic.

Someone maliciously shouted "Fire" at a copper miner's Christmas party in Calumet, Michigan in 1913. Panic ensued and seventy-two lives - mostly children's - were lost.

Type O is the most common blood type in the world. Type AB is the rarest. there is also a subtype called A-H, but to date only three in the world are known to have it.

Someone with an irrational fear of meat is "carnophobic."

Until about age 12, boys cry about as often as girls.

Soviet doctors have noticed a tendency by people living near Chernobyl to blame any and all ills on radiation - an affliction they are calling "radiophobia."

Until the 1920's, babies in Finland were often delivered in saunas. The heat was thought to help combat infection, and the warm atmosphere was considered pleasing to the infant. The Finns also considered sauna as a holy place.

Statistics based on more than a half-million births occurring in New York City hospitals between 1948 and 1957 show a significantly greater number of births taking place during the waning moon than during a waxing moon.

Up to the age of six or seven months a child can breathe and swallow at the same time. An adult cannot do this.

Strangely enough, more than one research group has found that cocoa powder contains a substance that may actually inhibit tooth decay.

Synesthesia is a rare condition in which the senses are combined. Synesthetes see words, taste colors and shapes and feel flavors.

Humans, if they are very sensitive, can detect sweetness in a solution of 1 part of sugar to 200 parts of water. Some moths and butterflies can detect sweetness when the ratio is 1 to 300,000.

If 80 percent of your liver were to be removed, the remaining part would continue to function, and within a few months the liver would have reconstituted itself to its original size.

If a person is "aerophobic," they have an irrational fear of drafts.

If all the blood vessels in a single human body were stretched end to end, they would form a string capable of going around the world.

If one identical twin grows up without a given tooth coming in, the second identical twin will usually also grow up without the tooth.

If one were to unravel the entire human alimentary canal--esophagus, stomach, large and small intestines--it would reach the height of a three-story building.

If someone is "androphobic," they have an extreme, irrational fear of men.

If the roof of your mouth is narrow, you are more prone to snore since you are not getting enough oxygen through your nose.

If the skin of a 150-pound person were spread out flat, it would cover approximately 20 square feet.

If you are afraid that you might die laughing - you are suffering from cherophobia.

Varicose veins are stretched, dilated veins whose valves do not work properly. The Arizona Heart Institute & Foundation reports that women are three times more likely to develop them than men, and people whose jobs require them to stand for long amounts of time often develop them.

We think we cannot see at night. But given enough time to adjust, the human eye can, for a time, see almost as well as an owl's. Ultimately, as the amount of light decreases, an owl detects shapes after a human no longer can.

The African bushman lives in a quiet, remote environment and has no measurable hearing loss at age 60.

When astronauts remain weightless in space for prolonged periods, scientists have discovered, their bones lose a measurable amount of weight and thickness. This means that weightlessness actually cause human beings to shrink.

The average adult stands 0.4 in (1 cm) taller in the morning than in the evening, because the cartilage in the spine compresses during the day.

While 7 men in 100 have some form of colorblindness, only 1 woman in 1,000 suffers from it. The most common form of color blindness is a red-green deficiency.

The average brain comprises 2 percent of a person's total body weight. yet it requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body, as opposed to 12 percent used by the kidneys and 7 percent by the heart.

While reading a page of print the eyes do not move continually across the page. They move in a series of jumps, called "fixations," from one clump of words to the next.

The average female between the ages of 20 and 44 is more likely to be overweight than are males in the same age category.

Whispering is more wearing on your voice than a normal speaking tone. Whispering and shouting stretch the vocal cords.

The average human eye can distinguish about 500 different shades of gray.

The average human eyelash lives about 150 days.

The average human has about 10,000 taste buds - however they're not all on the tongue. Some are under the tongue; some are on the inside of the cheeks, and some are on the roof of the mouth. Some can even be found on the lips - these are especially sensitive to salt.

The average human heart beats about 100,000 times every 24 hours. In a seventy-two-year lifetime the heart beats more than 2.5 billion times.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

The average life of a tastebud is 10 days.

The average male adult can bench press 88 percent of his body weight, having 70 to 80 pounds of muscle.

If you are mysophobic, you have an intense fear of infection.

If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.

If you never get thirsty, you need to drink more water. When the human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

In all of history, the most destructive disease is malaria. More than 1.5 million people die from malaria every year.

In one year the average human heart circulates from 770,000 to 1.6 million gallons of blood through the body, enough fluid to fill 200 tank cars, each with a capacity of 8,000 gallons.

In the latter part of the 18th century, Prussian surgeons treated stutterers by snipping off portions of their tongues.

In the past few years, doctors have identified more than 100 sleep disorders, but the one most people suffer from is simply not taking the time to get enough sleep.

It has been determined that one brow wrinkle is the result of 200,000 frowns.

It is a comparatively recent insight that light travels from the object to the eye. Until about 400 years ago, it was thought that there was "something" in the eye that went out and saw the object.

Women navigate by landmarks and visual memories. Men navigate by direction and distance, and tend to be better at reading maps.

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath. At worst, you would lose consciousness and the lungs would start to breath automatically.

The average person takes from twelve to eighteen breaths per minute.

You will get fewer cavities if you eat a bag of candy in one sitting and then brush your teeth than if you slowly eat the candy a piece at a time all day.

The average person's field of vision is 180 degrees.

Your brain is more active sleeping than it is watching TV.

The average person's hand flexes its finger joints 25 million times during a lifetime.

The average person's total skin covering would weight about 6 pounds if collected in one mass.

The average women's thighs are one and a half times larger in circumference than the average man's.

The body has 70,000 miles of blood vessels. The heart pumps blood through this labyrinth and back again once every minute.

The body's largest internal organ is the small intestine at an average length of 20 feet.

The brain is surrounded by a membrane containing veins and arteries. This membrane is filled with nerve of feeling. However, the brain itself has no feeling; if it is cut into, the person feels no pain.

The brain of Neanderthal man was larger than that of modern man.

The country of Yemen has the worlds highest fertility rate among women at 7.6, the worlds lowest - Switzerland at 1.5.

It is estimated that a healthy individual releases 3.5 oz. of gas in a single flatulent emission, or about 17 oz. in a day.

It requires the use of 72 muscles to speak a single word.

It takes 17 facial muscles to smile but 42 to frown.

It takes the human eyes an hour to adapt to completely to seeing in the dark. Once adapted, however, the eyes are about 100,000 times more sensitive to light than they are in bright sunlight.

Laughing is aerobic. It provides a workout for the diaphragm and increases the body's ability to use oxygen.

Man has tiny bones once meant for a tail and unworkable muscles once meant to move his ears

Man's three-pound brain is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter known of the universe.

Many children occasionally walk in their sleep. Sleepwalking is ordinarily a phase in the growing-up process. Because parts of the child's brain are immature, dreams can be stimulating enough to cause a youngster to take a nocturnal stroll. About 25 percent of all children have one or more sleepwalking episodes between the ages of 7 and 12, according to sleep researchers.

Medical experts are perturbed that TV medical dramas suggest that people who receive CPR usually recover; the truth is, only about 15 percent of victims survive after receiving CPR.

Medical experts have observed that people who stutter rarely do when they are alone or talking to a pet.

The daughters of a mother who is colorblind and a father who has normal vision will have normal vision. The sons will be colorblind, however.

The defect of color vision characterized by the inability to see the color red is called protanopia.

The driver's test was invented in France. In 1893, drivers of all self propelled vehicles had to undergo an exam that included driving ability and vehicle repair.

The easiest sound for the human ear to hear, and those which carry best when pronounced, are, in order, "ah," "aw," "eh," and "oo."

The fingernails grow faster on the hand you favor. If you are right-handed your right fingernails will grow faster,etc. The middle fingernail grows faster than all other nails.

The hair of an adult man or woman can stretch 25 percent of its length without breaking. If it is less elastic, it is not healthy.

The heart beats faster during a brisk walk or heated argument than during sexual intercourse.

The human body consists of about 60 trillion cells, and each cell has about 10,000 times as many molecules as the Milky Way has stars.

The human body has 45 miles of nerves.

The human brain continues sending out electrical wave signals for up to 37 hours following death.

Medical experts warn that compulsive exercising can be just as bad for a person as no exercise at all. The human body needs 24 hours without exercise about once a week in order to cleanse itself of lactic acid and other waste products of strenuous activity.

Men over the age of 24 shave an average of six times a week.

Men reach the peak of their sexual powers in their late teens or early twenties, and then begin to slowly decline. Women, however, do not reach their sexual peak until their late twenties or early thirties, and then remain at this level through their late fifties or early sixties.

Men with mustaches may be allergic to their own lip hair. That is because mustaches may harbor airborne pollens that trigger allergies.

Midgets and dwarfs almost always have normal-sized children, even if both parents are midgets or dwarfs.

More than 100 years ago, the felt hat makers of England used mercury to stabilize wool. Most of them eventually became poisoned by the fumes, as demonstrated by the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." Breathing mercury's fumes over a long period of time will cause erethism, a disorder characterized by nervousness, irritability, and strange personality changes.

Most people by the age of sixty have lost 50 percent of their taste buds and 40 percent of their ability to smell.

Most people's legs are slightly different lengths.

Nationwide, there are about 15,000 people in comas.

Neanderthal man, the first human being in the true sense, had a brain capacity 100 cc larger than modern man's.

The human brain is insensitive to pain. The suffering of a headache come not from the organ itself but from the nerve and muscles lining it.

The human eyes can perceive more than 1 million simultaneous visual impressions and are able to discriminate among nearly 8 million gradations of color.

The human hand has 27 bones and 35 muscles.

The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

The human heart rests between beats. In an average lifetime of 70 years, the total resting time is estimated to be about 40 years.

The human nose can detect the odor of artificial musk in such low concentrations as one part musk to 32 billion parts of air.

The human sense of smell is so keen that it can detect the odors of certain substances even when they are diluted to 1 part to 30 billion.

The human stomach lining replaces itself every three days.

The human tongue tastes bitter things with the taste buds toward the back. Salty and pungent flavors are tasted the middle of the tongue, sweet flavors at the tip.

The hydrochloric acid of the human digestive process is so strong a corrosive that it easily can eat its way though a cotton handkerchief, and even through the iron of an automobile body. Yet, it doesn't endanger the stomach's sticky mucus walls.

The indentation in the middle area between the nose and the upper lip is called the Philtrum. Ancient Greeks considered this to be one of the body's most erogenous zones.

The Ketchua Indians of the Andes Mountains in South America have 2 to 3 more quarts of blood in their bodies than people who live at lower elevations.

The kidney consists of over 1 million little tubes, and the total length of the tubes in both kidneys runs to about forty miles.

The knee is the most easily injured of all the joints in the body and the most frequently treated area by orthopedic surgeons, according to a report from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. More than 6 million people visit an orthopedic surgeon each year for a knee problem, the report said. Hospital emergency rooms log 1.4 million visits per year for knee problems.

The largest cell in the human body is the female ovum, or egg cell. It is about 1/180 inch in diameter. The smallest cell in the human body is the male sperm. It takes about 175,000 sperm cells to weigh as much as a single egg cell.

The lens of the eye continues to grow throughout a person's life.

The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next to your temple, is called a tragus.

The liver is a gland, not an organ.

The longest muscle in the human body is the sartorius. This narrow muscle of the thigh passes obliquely across the front of the thigh and helps rotate the leg to the position assumed in sitting cross-legged. Its name is a derivation of the adjective "sartorial," a reference to what was the traditional cross-legged position of tailors (or "sartors") at work.

The mouth produces a quart of saliva a day.

The nose cleans, warms, and humidifies over 500 cubic feet of air every day.

The older a person gets the less sleep he/she requires. A child should get from 8 to 10 hours a night. An elderly adult can do well with 4 to 6 hours.

The only part of the human body that has no blood supply is the cornea. It takes its oxygen directly from the air.

The palms of the hands and soles of the feet contain more sweat glands than any other part of the body.

The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

The right lung takes in more air than the left.

The sensitivity of the human eye is so keen that on a clear, moonless night a person standing on a mountain can see a match being struck as far as 50 miles away. Much to their amazement, astronauts in orbit were able to see the wakes of ships.

The size of your foot is approximately the size of your forearm.

The skin is only about as deep as the tip of a ball-point pen. First-degree burns affect only the very top layers of the skin; second-degree burns, midway through the skin's thickness. Third-degree burns penetrate and damage the entire thickness of the skin.

The skin of a human weighs nearly six pounds.

The soft mass of the adult brain is motionless. Though it consumes up to 25 percent of the blood's oxygen supply, it does not grow, divide or contract.

The strongest bone in the body, the thigh bone, is hollow. Ounce for ounce it has a greater pressure tolerance and bearing strength than a rod of equivalent size in cast steel.

The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

The substance that human blood resembles most closely in terms of chemical composition in sea water.

The thumbnail grows the slowest; the middle nail grows the fastest.

The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.

"Soldiers disease" is a term for morphine addiction. The Civil War produced over 400,000 morphine addicts.

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."

After telling the press he was an expert in hand gestures, President George Bush gave the "V-for-Victory" sign as he drove in his armored limousine past demonstrators in Canberra, Australia's capital in January 1992. In Australia, holding up two fingers to form a "V" has the same vulgar meaning as the middle-finger gesture in the United States. The Aussie demonstrators were enraged, and they signaled in the same manner back at the U.S. President. Pres. Bush later apologized for his faux pas.

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.

Anne of Burgundy became the first woman to receive a diamond engagement ring. It was given to her by Maximilian I of Germany in 1477.

At funerals in ancient China, when the lid of the coffin was closed, mourners took a few steps backward lest their shadows get caught in the box.

At the height of its power, in 400 B.C., the Greek City of Sparta had 25,000 citizens and 500,000 slaves.

At the height of the teddy bear's huge popularity in the early 1900s, there is record of one Michigan priest who publicly denounced the teddy as an insidious weapon. He claimed that the stuffed toy would lead to the destruction of the instincts of motherhood and eventual racial suicide.

At the outbreak of World War I, the American air force consisted of only fifty men.

Beatrix Potter created the first of her legendary "Peter Rabbit" children's stories in 1902.

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.

Before the Chinese take-over of Tibet in 1952, 25 percent of the males in the country were Buddhist monks.

Birth-control campaigns in Egypt in the late 1970s failed because village women ended up wearing the pills in lockets, as talismans.

By the end of the U.S. Civil War, 33 percent of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. This was a devastating situation for a nation struggling to recover economically from such a destructive war. On July 5, 1865, the Secret Service was created as a part of the Department of the Treasury to help suppress counterfeit currency.

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.

Chief Sitting Bull was originally named "Jumping Badger." Among some American Indian tribes, it was customary to give newborn males temporary names. The names were changed later, as the boys developed character and showed courage in manhood.

During his midnight ride on April 18, 1775, Paul Revere did NOT shout "The British are coming." His call was "The regulars are coming." The regulars were the British Troops.

During the American Revolution, many brides did not wear white wedding gowns; instead, they wore red as a symbol of rebellion.

During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.

During the Civil War, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant believed that onions would prevent dysentery and other physical ailments. He reportedly sent the following message via wire to the War Department: "I will not move my army without onions." Within a day, the U.S. government sent three trainloads of onions to the front.

During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.

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 Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.

During World War I the punishment of homosexuality in the French army was execution.

During World War II, bakers in the United States were ordered to stop selling sliced bread for the duration of the war on January 18, 1943. Only whole loaves were made available to the public. It was never explained how this action helped the war effort.

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.

Early guns took so long to load and fire that bows and arrows - in trained hands - were twelve times more efficient.

England's first great industry was wool. Its export had become the nation's largest source of income by the late Middle Ages.

Every queen named Jane has either been murdered, imprisoned, gone mad, died young, or been dethroned.

Frances Perkins was the first woman appointed to hold a U.S. Cabinet post as Secretary of Labor. She was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and held the post from 1933-1945.

Frederick Mellinger, founder of Frederick's of Hollywood, introduced racy lingerie to postwar America in 1946 through a mail-order business, selling products that his WWII Army buddies told him their girlfriends would like. Frederick's of Hollywood discreetly flourished; by the late 1980s, the company's image improved, with more tasteful lingerie. There were over 100 stores in the U.S., and sales topped $80 million the year prior to Mellinger's death in 1990.

From the monarchs' investment of $6,000 in Columbus's first voyage, Spain had a return of $1,750,000 in gold after only one century.

Gamblers in ancient Greece made dice from the ankle-bones and shoulder blades of sheep.

Hair from the tail of a mule ridden by the crusader Peter the Hermit brought high prices as sacred relics throughout Europe in the 14th century.

Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales were greeted by bad reviews: "…quite unsuitable for children…positively harmful for the mind…"

Henry Clay and other congressmen of that period were called the War Hawks because they favored war with Britain in the early 1800's. They felt that Canada could be added to the U.S. by defeating Britain.

Historians report that the Roman Emporer Gaius (Caligula) (A.D. 37-41) was so proud of his horse that he gave him a place as a senate counsul before he died!

In 1400 B.C. it was the fashion among rich Egyptian women to place a large cone of scented grease on top their heads. As the day wore on, it melted and dripped down their bodies, covering their skin with an oily, glistening sheen and bathing their clothes in fragrance.

In 1418 women's headgear was so tall that the doorways of the royal castle of Vincennes, France had to be raised, on the orders of the queen, to allow the ladies of the court to pass through without ducking.

In 1500 B.C. in Egypt a shaved head was considered the ultimate in feminine beauty. Egyptian women removed every hair from their heads with special gold tweezers and polished their scalps to a high sheen with buffing clothes.

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.

The "Yongle dadian," an encyclopedia of the Chinese Ming dynasty, had 22,937 chapters in 10,000 volumes. Over 2,000 Chinese scholars worked on the book for 5 years before it was finished.

The Americans lost the Battle of Bunker Hill when they ran out of gunpowder and had to retreat.

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 Battle of New Orleans, which made Andrew Jackson a national hero, was fought two weeks after the War of 1812 had ended and more than a month before the news of the war's end had reached Louisiana.

The bouillon cube was once a common snack food in early America. Beef or veal stock was boiled down until it reached a hard jelly texture. The hard cakes didn't spoil, and trappers and hunters nibbled on them when tramping along on long journeys during the 1700's.

The Directors Guild of America initiated a strike on July 14, 1987 in Hollywood, California, against Warner Brothers and Columbia Pictures at 6:00 a.m. Just five minutes later, at 6:05 a.m. that same day, a film and television contract of agreement was reached. It was the shortest strike in Hollywood history.

The expression "the whole nine yards" comes from W.W.II aircraft whose ammo belts were 27 feet long. When you used your entire ammo belt on a target, you gave it "the whole nine yards."

The first baby born on the Mayflower during it's voyage to the New World was named - Oceanus Hopkins. The second child born after the ship set anchor was named Peregrine White.

The first English settlement in what became New England was founded thirteen years before the arrival of the Pilgrims. In 1607, a settlement was established at Popham Beach, Maine. After a year, its inhabitants found the climate too harsh, and departed.

In 1811, Louisiana was the first state in the U.S. to declare, by statute, English as its official language. It would be 109 years before a second state in the U.S. - Nebraska - would issue a constitutional amendment to make English the official state idiom there.

In 1861, John Wentworth fired the entire Chicago Police Department when his term as mayor came to an end. Those terminated included sixty patrolmen, three sergeants, three lieutenants, and one captain. The city of Chicago was entirely without police protection for twelve hours until the Board of Commissioners swore in new officers.

In 1935, "Iran" became the new name for Persia, which was the new name for what had earlier been Iran.

In ancient China people committed suicide by eating a pound of salt.

In ancient China the crimes for abduction, armed robbery, treason, and adultery were punished by castration.

In ancient China, towns were often arranged in patterns so that if seen from the air the whole community would resemble an animal or a symbolic design. Some were arranged to resemble snakes, stars, sunbursts, and dragons.

In ancient Egypt, when merchants left the country on business trips they carried small stone models of themselves. If they died while abroad, these figures were sent back to Egypt for proxy burial.

In ancient Rome it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose.

In ancient Rome, it was considered a sin to eat the flesh of a woodpecker.

In ancient times, the traditional color of bridal gowns was red. The wife of Napoleon III broke the tradition and wore a white gown. Then, brides began wearing white gowns (that were worn only once) as a symbol of their wealth.

The first ever recorded case of a celebrity's being stalked and attacked by an obsessed fan occurred in 1949. A baseball player named Eddie Waitkus was gunned down in his hotel room. The assassin was a woman who'd set a place for him at her dinner table every night, though she'd never met him. Celebrity-stalking attacks were still uncommon in the U.S. - except for those involving government leaders or political activists - until the 1980 murder of former Beatle John Lennon in front of his New York apartment by Mark David Chapman. And then, according to researcher Tom O'Neill, "all hell broke loose."

The first fatalities in the Civil War did not occur on the battlefield. Four members of the Massachusetts militia were stoned to death by a Baltimore mob of Confederate sympathizers, on April 19, 1896.

The first female operator was Emma M. Nutt, who started working for Telephone Dispatch Company in Boston, on September 1, 1878. Prior to that, all operators were men.

The first known encyclopedias date back to ancient Greece.

The first paper notes printed in the United States were in denominations of 1 cent, 5 cents, 25 cents, and 50 cents. The U.S. Department of the Treasury first issued paper U.S. currency in 1862 to make up for the shortage of coins and to finance the Civil War.

The first Spanish vessels to reach the New World were commanded by the Italian Cristoforo Columbo. The first English vessels to reach the New World were commanded by the Italian Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot). The first French vessels to reach the New World were commanded by the Italian Giovanni da Verrazano. No Italian vessels explored the New World.

The first U.S. Chief Justice, John Jay, bought slaves in order to free them.

The Greeks in the time of Alexander the Great liked blond hair as much as we do today. Men and women alike bleached their locks with potash water and herbal infusions.

The Hawaiian shirt, according to researcher H. Thomas Steele, came into being after island missionaries encouraged the natives to cover their nakedness. At one time, Hawaiians used traditional Polynesian designs and native tapa - or bark cloth - for their shirts. Designs and motifs were hand-painted or stenciled from hand-carved wood cuts. Shirts were often one of a kind.

The Hessian soldiers hired by the British to fight the colonists during the Revolutionary War were paid about 25 cents a day.

In Bangkok, Thailand in 1996, police searched the men's room of Thailand's Parliament after an anonymous bomb threat was phoned in. They got a surprise. They found a box they feared contained a bomb, but discovered the contents were an abandoned monitor lizard. "Monitor lizard fails to explode in MPs' toilet," the Bangkok Post reported in its front-page headline.

In early Europe, there was a popular superstition that the wearer of turquoise could never suffer a broken bone. Instead, the turquoise itself would shatter and thus prevent the accident. The stones were also set into horses' bridles to keep them from stumbling and falling. These days, it is common for horses' bridles to be decorated with turquoise (usually imitation), although not many people who own them know the custom's origin.

In feudal Japan the Imperial Army has special soldiers whose only duty was to count the number of severed enemy heads after each battle.

In January 1986, it was revealed that the U.S. government's first effort to rid itself of a surplus of sugar cost taxpayers about $36 million. Approximately 122,000 tons of sugar were sold a month earlier to Shepherd Oil Company of Louisiana for $7.4 million, to be converted into ethanol to blend with gasoline. The sugar had cost the U.S. Agriculture Department $43.2 million. It was estimated that, at those rates, the losses accrued to unload the sugar could exceed $100 million.

In May 1844, James Knox Polk of Tennessee became the first "dark horse" candidate in American political history to receive the presidential nomination as the Democrats ended their Baltimore national convention. Polk surprised his opponents by winning the presidential election the following December.

In medieval China it was not unusual for a mother to breast-feed a child until the child was seven years old.

In olden days, barbers also performed as surgeons. Blood-letting, a remedy of the time believed to cure diseases, was one of their main tasks. The red-and-white striped barber pole originally symbolized a bleeding arm swathed in bandages.

In sixteenth and seventeenth century Peking, one took revenge against one's enemies by placing finely chopped tiger's whiskers in their food. The whisker barbs would get caught in the victim's digestive tract and cause sores and infections.

In the 10th century, the Grand Vizier of Persia took his entire library with him wherever he went. The 117,000 volume library was carried by camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

The last to be guillotined in France, Hamida Djandoubi, was executed in 1977.

The Liberty Bell was not made in the United States and it was not rung on the first 4th of July. It was cast in London in 1752, cracked in 1835 and was not named the Liberty Bell until the 1830's in memory of slaves seeking their freedom.

The name of the Pilgrim's second ship that was to accompany the Mayflower to the "New World" was The "Speedwell". It had to turn back because it wasn't seaworthy.

The Navajo Indian language was used successfully as a code by the U.S. in World War II.

The original American Pledge of Allegiance was published in the Sept. 8, 1892, issue of The Youth's Companion in Boston. For years, the authorship was in dispute between James B. Upham and Francis Bellamy of the magazine's staff. In 1939, after a study of the controversy, the United States Flag Association decided that authorship be credited to Bellamy. The phrase “under God” was added to the pledge on June 14, 1954.

The pinball machine was one of the few successful industries that grew out of the Depression in the United States. The early models typically charged 5 cents for 10 balls, did not have side flippers, and the player had to add up his own score. Because it offered inexpensive and interactive entertainment value, the pinball machine remained popular for decades, until the advent of electronic video games.

The Puritans forbade the singing of Christmas carols.

The Roman Emperor Commodus had all of the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks collected in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Colosseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments

The shortest war, between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896, lasted just 38 minutes.

In the 18th century, the French Comte d'Artois owned a set of diamond buttons, each of which had a miniature clock encased inside it.

In the Declaration of Independence as first written by Thomas Jefferson, there was a clause abolishing slavery. Because of popular pressure, however, Jefferson deleted the clause.

In the early 15th century, scholars in China compiled an encyclopedia consisting of 11,095 volumes.

In the harem of Mughal kings in India, ladies of royal blood changed their garments several times a day and never put them on again. They were then given to slaves.

In the marriage ceremony of the ancient Incas, the couple was considered officially wed when they took off their sandals and handed them to each other.

In the Middle Ages, chicken soup was believed to be an aphrodesiac.

It was reported in 1990 that former President Ronald Reagan's autobiography, "A Life," was a financial catastrophe. Publisher Simon and Schuster had paid the former actor/U.S. leader $7 million in advance for his autobiography and a collection of his speeches. Of the 500,000 copies produced, nearly 300,000 were returned to the publisher, forcing them to revise their advance-payment policy.

It was the style among 18th century Englishmen to wear pantaloons so tight they had to be hung on special pegs that held them open, allowing the wearer to jump down into them.

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.

John Alden is noted for the fact that he was a cooper by trade and was asked to join the Mayflower company for the extremely important task of caring for the Pilgrims' beer kegs while on their New World journey.

The state of Texas is the only state in the nation that has been under six flags, which includes the flags of Spain, France, Mexico, the Lone Star Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of America, and the United States.

The tax imposed on tea that triggered the Boston Tea Party in 1773 was 3 cents per pound.

The toe of the metal statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's Cathedral, Rome, is worn down almost to a nub by the great number of pilgrims who have kissed it through the centuries.

The U.S. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made it more difficult for black slaves to escape to freedom. Prior to the act passing, slaves were free if they could get to a free state or territory. The Fugitive Slave Act required that slaves be returned to their owners.

The U.S. Mint was authorized to produce one-cent copper coins on April 2, 1792. Originally, there were four designs struck: the "chain" cent, the "wreathed" cent, the "flowing hair" cent, and the "liberty" cent.

The wages paid by Ford were much higher than those paid by other automobile companies. In 1914, Ford paid workers who were age 22 or older $5 per day - that was twice the average wage offered by other car factories.

The war with Spain was the shortest war in American history. It lasted five months: April 1898 to August 1898.

There are fifteen nations that had given women the right to vote before the U.S. did in 1920. The earliest were New Zealand, in 1893, Australia, in 1902, and Finland, in 1906.

There are more than 300 references to sheep and lambs, more than any other animal, in the Bible's Old Testament, one of the earliest records of sheep.

John Eliot (1604-1690), an American who was called the "Apostle to the Indians," was the first translator of the Bible into an Indian tongue - the first Bible to be printed in America.

John Hanson - not George Washington - was the first president of the U.S. When the Congress met in 1781, the U.S. was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which were adopted in 1777 and ratified by the states in 1781. At that meeting Congress elected John Hanson its "President of the U.S. in Congress assembled." George Washington became the first president of the U.S. under the U.S. Constitution in 1789.

Legend has it that the prophet Abraham's aged wife Sarah bathed in the Dead Sea before conceiving Isaac.

Lotteries are not new. The original thirteen colonies were financed with the help of lottery dollars. Additionally, the U.S. government used lotteries to raise money to help defray the costs of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

Medical treatment, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was aimed at ridding the sick of "vile humours" by vomiting, purging and bleeding. The treatment was often the immediate cause of death. Some prescriptions called for "letting" more blood than is now known to exist in the whole body.

Nearly 87 percent of the 103 people polled in 1977 were unable to identify correctly an unlabeled copy of the Declaration of Independence. (The poll was conducted at a shopping area in Fort Lauderdale, FL)

New Zealand was the first country to give woman the vote, in 1893.

Oddly, no term existed for "homosexuality" in ancient Greece - there were only a variety of expressions referring to specific homosexual roles. Experts find this baffling, as the old Greek culture regarded male/male love in the highest regard. According to several linguists, the word "homosexual" was not coined until 1869 by the Hungarian physician Karoly Maria Benkert.

Of the thirteen original colonies, New Hampshire was the first to declare its independence from Mother England -- a full six months before the Declaration of Independence was signed.

On January 22, 1976, a guerrilla force blasted into the vaults of the British Bank of the Middle East in Bab Idriss, cleaning out the contents of the safe deposit. The boxes of cash and other valuables were estimated by former finance minister Lucien Dahdah at $50 million. It was the single most lucrative bank robbery in history, occurring during the worst civil unrest period ever in Beirut, Lebanon.

There have been 262 popes since Saint Peter.

To preserve their elaborate coiffures, Geishas in ancient Japan slept with their heads on bags and filled with buckwheat chaff.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century, men's shoes had a square tip, like a duck's beak, a fashion launched by Charles VIII of France to hide the imperfection of one of his feet, which had six toes.

Uninterruptedly since the sixth century, the Japanese throne has been occupied by a member of the same family. The present-day emperor, Akihito, is the 125th in succession.

Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.

Until the Middle Ages, passports were given only to the privileged well-to-do. In 1215, the Magna Carta established that "All merchants are to be safe and secure in leaving and entering England." One of the earliest U.S. passports on record was issued in France in 1778. It was signed by Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, and John Adams.

When a man died in ancient Egypt, the females in his family would smear their heads and faces with mud and wander through the city beating themselves and tearing off their clothes.

When asked about the unexpected impact she had on the women's liberation movement with her 1970's blockbuster song "I Am Woman", singer Helen Reddy said, "I certainly didn't hear it as a hit. I didn't hear it as an anthem."

When Spain declared war on the U.S. in 1898, the U.S. in turn declared war on Spain but backdated the declaration by three days so it would look more heroic to have declared war first.

While serving in Congress, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill that attempted to bar slavery from all future states admitted to the Union, a measure that might later have prevented the Civil War if it had not been defeated - by a single vote.

On January 31, 1968, North Vietnam attacked U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and reached the American Embassy in Saigon. It was a surprise to U.S. troops because January 31 was the Vietnamese New Year's Day, traditionally a day of celebration -- not war. This attack was called the "Tet Offensive".

On March 8, 1910, French aviatrix Madame la Baronne de Laroche became the first certified woman pilot in the world.

On May 16, 1991, Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch in history to address Congress during her U.S. tour.

On September 15, 1830, British MP William Huskisson attended the grand opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Visitors boarded the Northumbrian, which had stopped to take on water. Against instructions, the passengers disembarked to hobnob. Seeing the Duke of Wellington, Huskisson walked across the adjacent line to speak to him just as another train came barreling down the line. Huskisson stumbled and fell beneath the wheels of the oncoming train. He became the world's first railroad passenger fatality.

On the stone temples of Madura in southern India, there are more than 30 million carved images of gods and goddesses.

One of the activities Girl Scouts are best known for is their annual Cookie Sale -- a program and fund-rasing activity that has become an American tradition. During the early 1930's, Girl Scout troops conducted various fund raisers to support their activities. One fund-rasing activity that took place in many U.S. communities was the baking and selling of homemade cookies. In 1936, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. negotiated its first contract with a commercial baker, which generated an increase in Girl Scout Cookie sales.

One out of every three English males between the ages of 17 and 35 was killed in World War I.

Only 16 percent of the able-bodied males in the American colonies participated in the Revolutionary War.

Only eight men were killed in the Battle of Lexington.

Pamela Lyndon Travers - pen name P. L. Travers - wrote her famous children's book "Mary Poppins" in 1934.

While the ancient Egyptians may be the best-known mummy makers, they were far from the first. A very sophisticated fishing tribe called the Chinchoros, who lived on the north coast of what is now Chile, were embalming their dead as early as 5000 B.C.

William Rufus DeVane King was the only U.S. Vice President to take the Oath of Office from outside the United States. He did this in Havana, Cuba in 1853.

Paul Revere, the greatest silversmith of colonial America, was a failure at his second trade, copperplate engraving. His artistry on copper was poor, and he worked at engraving only when he was financially hard put.

Peter the Great of Russia considered men growing beards to signify lack of culture. So, he issued a stiff tax on beards in 1698; those who couldn't pay the tax had to get their beards shaven.

Piercing nipples with rings and the like is not a new punk fad. It was popular among ladies in the late 1800's

Presidents George Washington and John Adams had to employ protection money - paying off certain pirates in the Mediterranean Sea with a couple of million dollars - while Congress debated the creation of a U.S. navy.

Priests in ancient Egyptian temples plucked every hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes

Red coral became a symbol of immortality to the ancient Greeks, presumably because of its branching shape and vibrant color. The Greeks believed it to be a panacea and protector against gout, poisons, and enchantments. Red and pink corals are still said to bring good luck to their owners.

Rich King Croesus of Lydians in Asia Minor issued the first money of gold - an oblong piece - in the 6th century. Soon the Greeks began minting money in the shape of discs, striking them with detailed high relief. Romans introduced the familiar serrated edges of today's coins as a way to discourage the practice of shaving off thin slices.

Since Hollywood, California was primarily a farming community before the movie industry exploded, courses in horticulture at Hollywood High School were popular. Farmers didn't wear ties to the field in 1911, but the students did.

Socrates, Nero, Mark Anthony, Cleopatra, Vincent Van Goh, and Adolf Hitler all committed suicide.

Socrates, one of the mot famous Greek philosophers, never wrote down a single word of his teachings. The only knowledge we have of his thinking today comes from note taken by his great student, Plato. "Exurbia" is the mostly rural residential area beyond the suburbs of a city.

"Oceania" is a name for the thousands of islands in the central and southern Pacific Ocean. It is sometimes referred to as the South Seas.

About 250 million years ago, the state of New York was part of a chain of volcanic islands, with an ocean on one side and a vast inland sea on the other.

About 43 million years ago, the Pacific plate took a northwest turn, creating a bend where new upheavals initiated the Hawaiian Ridge. Major islands formed included Kauai, 5.1 million years old, Maui, 1.3 million years old, and Hawaii, a youngster at only 800,000 years old.

According to a Fortune magazine survey conducted a few years ago, Seattle topped the list of best U.S. major cities to balance work and family.

According to Greek historian Herodotus, Egyptian men never became bald. The reason for this was that, as children, Egyptian males had their heads shaved, and their scalps were continually exposed to the health-giving rays of the sun.

According to the National Geographic Society, a survey of 18- to 24-year-olds from nine nations put the United States dead last in general geographic knowledge scores. One in seven -- about 24 million people -- could not find their own country on a world map. The survey revealed that Americans possess a pathetically poor sense of where they are -- much less any knowledge about the rest of the world. And even more alarming, those who participated in the survey were recent high school and college graduates.

Alaska has a sand desert with dunes over 100 feet high. It is located along the flatland of the Kobuk River in the northwestern part of the state.

Alaska was bought from Russia for about 2 cents an acre.

America purchased Alaska from Russia, in 1867 for $7,200,000 - about two cents an acre.

Antarctica is 98% ice, 2% barren rock. The average thickness of the ice sheet is 7,200 feet; this amounts to 90% of all the ice and 70% of all the fresh water in the world. If the ice cap were to melt, the sea level would rise by an average of 230 feet.

Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes.

Antarctica's inhabitants number about 1,000 people in winter and about 2,000 in summer. More people fill a football stadium for one game than have ever been to Antarctica, which is nearly twice the size of the United States. In fact, the Ross Ice Shelf, hundreds of feet thick, is about the same size in land area as France.

Approximately 70 percent of the earth is covered with water. Only 1 percent of the water is drinkable.

At 12,000 feet above sea level, there is barely enough oxygen in La Paz, Brazil to support combustion. The city is nearly fireproof.

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.

Bangladesh is the most densely populated non-island region in the world, with more than 1,970 humans per square mile.

Barking Sands Beach on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is known for its unusual sand that squeaks or "barks like a dog." The dry sand grains emit an eerie sound when rubbed with bare feet.

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.

Chicago, Illinois was nicknamed the Windy City because of the excessive local bragging that accompanied the Columbian Exhibition of 1893. Chicago has actually been rated as only the 16th breeziest city in America.

Filled with water, gas, electric, telephone, cable, steam, and sewer lines, Manhattan is the most dense underground site in the United States.

Florida is not the southernmost state in the United States. Hawaii is farther south.

For 186 days each year the Sun is not seen at the North Pole.

Four states have active volcanoes: Washington, California, Alaska and Hawaii, whose Mauna Loa is the world's largest active volcano. Hawaii itself was formed by the activity of undersea volcanoes.

Hawaii has 150 recognized ecosystems.

If one were to drive from Los Angeles, California, to Reno, Nevada, the direction in which he/she would be going is west (check the map).

If the Nile River were stretched across the United States, it would run just about from New York to Los Angeles.

In 1507, the first globular map was published showing the Western Hemisphere. It was printed at St. Die in the Vosges Mountains of Alsac, and it was the first map to use the term "America."

In the US the Ku Klux Klan has applied to sponsor more than 16 miles of roadway under state adopt-a-highway programs.

In the world's oceans, there are: 58 species of sea grasses. Less than 1,000 species of cephalopods - squids, octopi, & pearly nautiluses. 1,000 species of sea anemones. 1,500 species of brown algae. 7,000 species of echinoderms - starfishes, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and sea lilies. 13,000 species of fishes. 50,000 species of molluscs.

Israel is one-quarter the size of the state of Maine.

It was reported in 1996 that the measurements of 31 of the 97 mountain peaks listed on the state of Utah's "Official Highway Map" differed from U.S. Geological Survey figures - ten of them by 100 feet or more.

Italy is smaller than the state of Montana (116,304 square miles and 147,138 square miles, respectively).

Jefferson County, Kentucky announced in 1996 that it was going to reduce its pauper burial system to restrain the tide of indigents who came to the county just to die. According to officials, the cost per pauper burial was almost $700.

Lake Baikal, in Siberia, is the only lake in the world that is deep enough to have deep-sea fish.

Lake Erie is about 326 feet higher than Lake Ontario. The Welland Canal provides a navigable waterway between the two. The Canal stretches 27 miles and uses 8 locks to raise and lower the ships. More than 3,000 ships pass through the waterway annually.

Miami Beach, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Palm Beach, Pacific Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach - there are scores of U.S. coastal cities and towns with "beach" in their names. Surprisingly, there's only one city in the United States named merely "Beach." It is found in North Dakota, which is a land-locked state.

Montreal is the largest French-speaking city in the Western Hemisphere.

More than two-thirds of the Earth's land surface lies north of the equator.

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.

Various U.S. cities are named after other countries. You can visit the U.S. city of Peru in the states of Maine, Nebraska, and New York.

Various U.S. cities have been named for popular European cities. If you say you're going to be vacationing in Paris, it could mean the city located in either the states of Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Texas, or West Virginia. Perris, California is another possibility. Then again, it could be in France.

Venezuela possesses more proven oil reserves than any country outside the Middle East.

Washington, D.C. is the birthplace of many celebrities, including David Birney, Blair Brown, Connie Chung, Matt Frewer, Goldie Hawn, Al Gore, John Heard, Edward Hermann, William Hurt, John F. Kennedy, Jr., Michael Learned, Roger Mudd, Maury Povich, Chita Rivera, Pete Sampras, and Peter Tork.

Water is so scarce in the arid regions of China that, in the grasslands, the people never take baths, and sometimes must wash their faces in yak's mil

With about 865 people per square mile, the island of Madeira is one of Europe's most densely populated regions.

Yuletide-named towns in the United States include Santa Claus, located in Arizona and Indiana, Noel in Missouri, and Christmas in both Arizona and Florida.

Of the 3,000 islands of the Bahama chain in the Caribbean, only 20 are inhabited.

Of the twenty-five highest mountains on earth, nineteen are in the Himalayas.

On a diet? Watch out - in West Virginia, there are several cities and towns with food-oriented names: Cranberry, Cucumber, Duck, Pie, and Salt Rock. Also found in West Virginia are Slab Fork, Sand Fork, and Baker.

Panama (because of a bend in the isthmus) is the only place in the world where one can see the sun rise on the Pacific Ocean and set on the Atlantic.

Residents of Hawaii outlive residents of all other states, while Louisianans are the most prone in the U.S. to die an early death.

Rugby, North Dakota is the geographical center of North America, not the geographical center of the United States. That is located in Butte County, South Dakota, on the state's western border. If only the 48 contiguous states are included, the point is in Smith County, Kansas.

San Francisco is the first and last city in the world to operate cable cars. Almost 100 other cities around the world have had cable cars, but all have discontinued use. The cable cars began operation on August 2, 1873. Designed by London born engineer Andrew Hallidie, the cable cars are controlled by a subterranean loop that travels at a constant 9.5 miles per hour.

San Francisco was the birthplace of The United Nations in 1945. After a brief stop at Lake Success, New York, it was moved to New York City because many European nations believed San Francisco was too far to travel.

Since 1901, 15 people have intentionally gone over the Canadian side of Niagra Falls. (2 people went over twice). Five out of 15 (1/3) have lost their lives. The first person to do so was Annie Edson-Taylor. She made the trip in a wooden barrel and survived.

St. Louis was called the "Gateway to the West" in the 1800's because it served as a starting place for wagon train departures.

Texas has 254 counties. Alaska, which is more than twice as large, hasn't any.

The Amazon River has 1,100 tributary streams.

The Amazon river pushes so much water into the Atlantic that, more than a hundred miles at sea, off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of the ocean and drink it.

The Arctic Ocean is the world's smallest ocean. It is mostly covered by solid ice, ice floes, and icebergs.

The border between Canada and the U.S. is the world's longest frontier. It stretches 3,987 miles (6,416km).

The city name "Ottawa" is derived from an Algonquin word meaning "traders".

The city of Los Angeles is more than one-third the size of the entire state of Rhode Island.

The city of San Juan used to be known as Puerto Rico (which means "rich port" in Spanish), while the island of Puerto Rico was originally named San Juan.

The Dead Sea is not a sea, but a landlocked salt lake, 45 miles long by 9 miles wide.

The distance from Honolulu to New York is greater than the distance from Honolulu to Japan.

The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome, Italy in 133 B.C. London, England reached the mark in 1810 and New York, USA made it in 1875. Today, there are over 300 cities in the world that boast a population in excess of 1 million.

The first letter of every continent's name is the same as the last: AmericA, AntarcticA, EuropE, AsiA, AustraliA, AfricA.

The Hawaiian Islands are the projecting tops of the biggest mountain range in the world. Mauna Kea, on the island of Hawaii, is the largest mountain on the earth - though partially submerged, it is 4,000 feet taller than Mount Everest.

The highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis in western Scotland, is just 4,406 feet high. In many other countries a "mountain" of this size would be considered something less than a large hill.

The highest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest, reaches only about halfway through the lowest layer of the troposphere.

The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.

The King Ranch in Texas is bigger than the state of Rhode Island. It comprises 1.25 million acres and was the first ranch in the world to be completely fenced in. At one time, its borders were guarded by armed patrol.

The land area of the country of Greece is slightly smaller than Alabama.

The largest bird colony in the world is located on the islands off the coast of Peru. Ten million Peruvian boobies and cormorants reside there. Their diet - anchovies - produces the world's finest fertilizer, guano. Because of the value of their droppings, the birds were placed under strict protection by the Incas.

The most common town names in the US - 1. Fairview 2. Midway 3. Oak Grove 4. Franklin 5. Riverside 6. Centerville 7. Mount Pleasant 8. Georgetown 9. Salem 10. Greenwood

The names of some cities in the United States are the names of other U.S. states. These include Nevada in Missouri, California Maryland, Louisiana in Missouri, Oregon in Wisconsin, Kansas in Oklahoma, Wyoming in Ohio, Michigan in North Dakota, Delaware in Arkansas, and Indiana in Pennsylvania.

The nation of Bangladesh covers approximately the same land area as the state of Wisconsin. Yet it ranks eighth in population among all the world's countries.

The odd zigzag in the North Carolina-South Carolina state line, just south of Charlotte, resulted when boundary commissioners altered the line in 1772 to avoid splitting the Catawba Indians between the two British colonies.

The Old Chinese Telephone Exchange in San Francisco was completed in 1909. Operators were required to be proficient in English and five Chinese dialects. And were also obliged to learn every phone number of every one of the company's 2,400 clients because the Chinese believed it was rude to refer to a person as a number.

The principality of Monaco consists of only 370 acres.

The Sahara Desert comprises an area as large as Europe. Its total land mass is some 3,565,565 square miles.

The Salto Alto (Angel Falls) is Venezuela is the highest waterfall known. It is more than twenty times higher than Niagara.

The second national city is Port Angeles, Washington, designated by President Abraham Lincoln. That's where they would move the capital if something happened to Washington, D.C.

The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polynesia, at just 1.75 sq miles/4,53 sq km.

The South Pole is actually a desert environment, averaging about the same amount of monthly rainfall as the Sahara Desert.

The state of Maine has at least 28 cities or towns that begin with the word "North," 23 with the word "South," 22 with "West," and 28 with "East."

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 state of Pennsylvania can lay claim to some dubious firsts. The first woman governor. The Zipper. Toilet Paper. And the autogiro, ancestor to the helicopter.

The states of Arizona and Hawaii have never adopted Daylight Savings Time. Neither has Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, or American Samoa.

The town of Fort Atkinson, Iowa was the site of the only fort ever built by the U.S. government to protect one Indian tribe from another.

The town of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, is closer to the equator than it is to the North Pole.

The U.S. Coastline - Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf, involves 25 of the 48 mainland states.

The U.S. state of Maine has 3,500 miles of coastline.

The United States consumes 50% of the world's production of diamonds. However, there is only one diamond mine located in the U.S. - in Arkansas.

The United States would fit into the continent of Africa three and a half times.

The water of the Dead Sea is seven to eight times saltier than ocean water.

There are 4 places in the United States with the word "chicken" in their name. Chicken, Alaska; Chicken Bristle, Illinois & Kentucky; Chickentown, Pennsylvania.

There are 42 other year-round research stations on Antarctica. All told, about 4,000 people live on Antarctica in summer, 1,000 in winter.

There are 61 towns in the United States with the word turkey in their name. Ex: Turkeytown, Alabama and Turkey Foot, Florida.

There are approximately 100,000 glaciers in Alaska.

There are sand dunes in Arcachon, France, that are 350 feet high.

There is a salt mine in the Polish town of Wieliczka, near Cracow, that has been in operation for nearly 1,000 years.

There is only one river in the world that has its source near the equator and from there flows into a temperate zone: the Nile. For some little-understood reason, the flow of most rivers is in the opposite direction.

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. The world's rarest coffee comes from Indonesia. At approximately $300 U.S. dollars per pound, Kopi Luwak is the end product of a cat-like marsupial, called the Paradoxurus, that loves eating coffee berries. The enzymes in the animal's stomach add a unique flavor during the fermentation process.

There are more than 15,000 different kind of rice.

There are more 25,000 McDonald's restaurants in over 115 countries. McDonald's has actually been remarkably responsive to the local cultures; they offer ayran (a popular chilled yogurt drink) in Turkey; McLaks (a grilled salmon sandwich) in Norway, and teriyaki burgers in Japan. In New Delhi, India, where Hindus shun beef and Muslims refuse pork, the burgers are made of mutton and called Maharaja Macs. And if you're vegetarian, as many strict Hindus are: There's the McAloo Tikki burger, a spicy vegetarian patty made of potatoes and peas.

There are professional tea tasters as well as wine tasters.

"Colonial goose" is the name Australians give to stuffed mutton.

"Cook's Illustrated" conducted blind taste testings of vanillas, and the staff was surprised to find that, in baked goods, expensive, aromatic vanillas performed almost exactly the same as the cheaper brands of real vanilla. The differences virtually disappeared during cooking.

"Food & Wine" magazine reported that in Japan, squid is the most popular topping for Domino's pizza.

A hard-boiled egg will spin. An uncooked or soft-boiled egg will not.

A man named Ed Peterson is the inventor of the Egg McMuffin.

A one-pound bag of candy corn usually contains 294 kernels.

A peanut is not a nut; it is a legume.

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.

A tenth of the 7 million tons of rice grown in the U.S. each year goes into the making of beer.

A-1 Steak Sauce contains both orange peels and raisins.

According to a study, the most popular medium of gift-exchange in Eastern Europe is a bottle of vodka, especially a good brand name vodka.

According to a survey of American mothers of school-age kids, 44 percent of elementary school children prefer a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich packed into their lunchbox. Their second sandwich choice is bologna, at 16 percent.

According to Dr. Bruce Ames, UC Berkeley - There are more than 1,000 chemicals in a cup of coffee. Of these, only 26 have been tested, and half caused cancer in rats.

According to many studies, chocolate is the number one food craved by women, but scientists are undecided as to why.

According to the American Popcorn Institute, Americans consumed almost 7.5 billion quarts of popcorn in 1977. Of this amount only 10 percent was eaten in movie theaters and other places of amusement; 90 percent was eaten at home.

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.

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 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.

Alcoholic lemonade is outselling premium bottled lagers in United Kingdom pubs, according to a report in "NASFT Showcase" magazine.

Although the combination of chile 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 chiles, garlic powder, red peppers, oregano, and cumin.

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.

Ancient Greeks wove marjoram into funeral wreaths and put them on the graves of loved ones. The wreaths served as prayers for the happiness of the deceased in a future life.

Argentineans eat more meat than any other nation in the world - an average of 10 ounces per person per day.

As indicated by its Hawaiian name, mahimahi are found in Hawaiian waters, as well as along the Atlantic Coast - mainly in Florida - and along the Pacific coast all the way down to South America. Mahimahi grow as large as 50 pounds, but most fish sold in U.S. stores average between 5 and 10 pounds.

As many as 50 gallons of maple sap are needed to make a single gallon of maple sugar.

At an extravagant party during the reign of William III, the Hon. Edward Russel, captain general of the English forces, used the fountain in his garden as a giant punch bowl for mixing his drinks. The recipe included 560 gallons of brandy, 1,300 pounds of sugar, 25,000 lemons, 20 gallons of lime juice, and 5 pounds of nutmeg. Russel's bartender rowed about in a small boat, filling up the punch cups for the awed guests.

Avoid keeping chocolate too cold. If stored at temperatures below 55 degrees F, chocolate will sweat when brought to room temperature too quickly.

Baby food sales are booming in Japan. A sardine dish is Gerber's top seller in Japan, even though the company doesn't sell a single fish-based product in the U.S.

Baked beans are an extremely popular dish in Great Britain. The British, according to records, consume twice as much baked beans per capita as do the Americans.

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.

Because of its use as a staple of U.S. Navy messes since the mid-nineteenth century, the humble white bean was christened "navy bean."

Because of the political-contribution habits of the two soft drink companies, Democratic administrations traditionally serve Coca-Cola and Republicans serve Pepsi.

Beer was not sold in bottles until 1850. Before then, a person went to the local tavern with a bucket or a pot made specially for holding beer, had it filled, and then carried it home.

Bel paese, caciocavallo, gjetost, herkimer, liederkranz, liptaur, mysost, sapsago, and trappist are all varieties of cheese.

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream company gives their ice cream waste to the local Vermont farmers who use it to feed their hogs. The hogs seem to like all of the flavors except Mint Oreo.

Botanically, the banana is a berry. Bananas grow upside down on a bush. India grows more bananas than any other country in the world.

Burger King® uses approximately 1/2 million pounds of bacon every month in its restaurants.

By the 18th century, apple pie had become so popular a dessert in America that Yale College served it every night at supper, and did so for more than a century.

Cabbage is 91 percent water.

Cashew nuts are expensive, and never have shells because the shell and skin of the cashew nut contains extremely caustic oil that can painfully blister the skin. This dangerous oil must be completely removed before the nut can be touched or eaten.

Legend has it that tortellini was created to honor the Roman goddess Venus's belly button, after an Italian innkeeper spied on her through a keyhole and told the community the titillating details.

Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.

Lettuce and celery will keep longer if stored in the refrigerator in paper bags instead of cellophane ones. Do not remove the outside leaves of either until ready to use.

Lettuce is the world's most popular green.

Lobster was so common in 18th-century Maine that it was used for fertilizer. In 19th-century Europe, oysters were the luxury food of the day, and lobster was considered a poor man's food.

Massachusetts first cultivated its own watermelon in 1629. In those days, nothing was wasted: The rind was pickled, the juice was drunk, the seeds were toasted for snacks, and the flesh was eaten.

McDonald's restaurants in Holland serve a Mac Kroket. A sandwich made with a "kroket" which is a Dutch snack.

Mead, a wine made from honey, is the national drink of Poland.

Milk is generally not healthy for adult Orientals or for adult people of black African origin, because they tend to lack enzymes needed to digest the natural sugar in milk.

Milk is heavier than cream.

Celery has negative calories--it takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

Centuries back, the wealthy English were known for the "surprise" pie. This odd culinary creation was a main dish, and was brought to the banquet table with great fanfare. It was opened ceremoniously, and out of the pie leaped all sorts of live creatures: frogs, squirrels, terriers, foxes, and as the nursery rhyme claims, four-and-twenty blackbirds. At one grand party, a dueling dwarf reportedly popped out and cavorted on top of the banquet table. The serving of "surprise pies" was a gala affair for years, until Oliver Cromwell came into power. He banned the eating of pie in 1644, declaring it a pagan form of pleasure. For 16 years, pie-making and eating went underground. In 1660, the Restoration leaders lifted the ban on pie.

Champagne should be refrigerated for only about 2 hours before serving, according to Sharon Tyler Herbst's "The Food Lover's Tiptionary". Herbst maintains that refrigerating champagne or other white wines for more than a few hours can dull both the flavor and bouquet.

Charles Alderton, a Texan pharmacist, created a soft drink and named it after his prospective father-in-law, Dr. Charles Kenneth Pepper. The doctor was unimpressed, so Alderton dropped the period after the abbreviation for doctor and made his fortune with "Dr Pepper."

Chicken á la King, a dish of diced chicken in a cream and sherry sauce, was originally chicken á la Keene, and only later was corrupted to suggest a royal provenance. Several parties lay claim to the dish's name origin, the most prevalent being London's Claridge's Hotel claim that the Keene in question was equestrian J. R. Keene and said its chef had created the dish to memorialize his 1881 Grand Prix victory.

Chicken drumsticks have a lower ratio of meat to bone and skin than the other parts of a chicken.

Chocolate contains the same chemical, phenylethylamine, that your brain produces when you fall in love. But don't have too much - an excess of phenylethylamine makes people very nervous.

Chocolate contains two types of stimulants: caffeine and the alkaloid theobromine, purine.

Chocolate was once considered a temptation of the devil. In Central American mountain villages during the 18th century, no one under the age of sixty was permitted to drink it, and churchgoers who defied the rule were threatened with excommunication.

Coffee beans are not beans, but the pits of a fruit that resemble beans

More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.

More than one-third of the world's commercial supply of pineapples comes from Hawaii.

Most healthy adults can go without eating anything for a month or longer. But they must drink at least two quarts of water a day.

Of all cheese customs, one of the more unusual was that of the "groaning cheese." Years ago in Europe, a prospective father would nibble on a huge chunk of cheese while awaiting the home birth of his child. Instead of pacing outside the bedroom door, the father would eat from the center of the cheese until a large hole had been gnawed out. Later, his newborn infant was ceremoniously passed through the hole.

Of all the potatoes grown in the United States, only 8% are used to make Potato Chips. Special varieties referred to as "chipping potatoes" are grown for this purpose.

Official FDA guidelines allow whole pepper to be sold with up to 1 percent of the volume made up of rodent droppings.

On food, writer Barbara Costikyan notes, "In the childhood memories of every good cook, there's a large kitchen, a warm stove, a simmering pot, and a mom."

On the average, each American consumes 117 pounds of potatoes, 116 pounds of beef, 100 pounds of fresh vegetable, 80 pounds of fresh fruit, and 286 eggs per year.

On the average, there are 8 peas in a pod.

Dairy products account for 29 percent of all food consumed in the United States.

Despite its popularity as a seasoning, basil has a controversial history. Basil was a sacred plant in ancient Hindu religion, and it was handled warily by European herbalists of the Middle Ages, who feared it as a scorpion breeder.

Each year, the average American consumes nearly two 14-ounce bottles of ketchup. Ketchup is found in 97 percent of U.S. households, beating salt, pepper, and sugar. Eighteen ounces of an average cola drink contain as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.

Ellis Island immigrants were often served a bowl of Jell-O as a "Welcome to America."

Europe and the Soviet Union grow 75 percent of the world crop of potatoes. In a good year, the Russians, who call potatoes their "second bread," account for one-third of the world's crop.

Everyone knows about vitamins A, B, C, D, and E. Few are aware that there are also vitamin K, T, H, and U. These vitamins are helpful in proper liver function, treating anemia, and the healing of ulcers.

Famed 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.

Filet mignon is the tenderest of all beef cuts. However, it lacks the flavor of porterhouse.

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.

Thin-skinned lemons are the juiciest.

On the Italian Riviera in Viareggio, there is a culinary tradition that a good soup must always contain one stone from the sea. This stems from the days when an Italian fisherman's catch was scooped up in nets; fish and stones frequently ended up together in the same cooking pot.

Though most people think of salt as a seasoning, only 5 out of every 100 pounds produced each year go to the dinner table.

One has to eat 11 pounds of potatoes to put on 1 pound of weight--a potato has no more calories than an apple.

To assure full flavor, chill wine appropriately. Observe the 20-minute rule: Pull whites out of the refrigerator 20 minutes before serving; put reds in 20 minutes before serving.

Onions are usually eaten in such small amounts that they make very little difference nutritionally, but the most nutritious ones are scallions, with four times the Vitamin C and 5,000 times the Vitamin A as other onions. If you enjoy eating onions by the pound, one pound has about 175 calories.

To save money on your food bill, look down. Less costly items are often on bottom shelves, whereas more expensive ones are placed at eye level.

Over 180 million Cadbury's Creme Eggs are sold between January and Easter each year, that's more than 3 Creme Eggs for every man, woman and child!

Vinegar was the strongest acid known to the ancients.

Pecan crops need a freeze to help loosen the nuts from their shucks.

Vintage port takes forty years to reach maturity.

Poi, a Hawaiian/Polynesian dip, is made by cooking breadfruit, sweet potatoes, bananas, or taro root until it is soft enough to mash with water in a bowl. Cooked taro is very firm and has to be mashed with a strong hand. In earlier times, a stone and a pounding board would be used to mash it. Traditionally, Hawaiians preferred to let poi stand for a few days until it fermented and turned sour.

Potato Chips are the #1 selling snack in the U.S. Statistics show that they accompany lunch 32% of the time and dinner 18% of the time.

Prepared mustard can be stored for at least 2 years.

When barbequeing, wait until the final 5 to 15 minutes of cooking time to put on the BBQ sauce -- this helps prevent scorching.

Ranch, beginning as a fledgling salad dressing, is now among the five most popular flavors of potato chips, tortilla chips, and corn chips, according to the Snack Foods Association.

Raw broccoli, cup for cup, has twice as much Vitamin C as an orange and almost as much calcium as milk.

Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.

Frederick the Great of Prussia wanted to make coffee off limits to his subjects because of the huge sums of money that was going to foreign exporters. "My people must drink beer," Frederick demanded in a manifesto. Rumors flew furiously, including one that claimed coffee made people sterile. Acclaimed musician Johann Sebastian Bach disagreed vehemently with Frederick and his anti-coffee crowd. In retaliation, the composer wrote his "Coffee Cantata", published in 1732. Bach's composition told the story of a father who threatens to break off his daughter's marriage plans unless she gives up her vile coffee drinking habit. The girl agrees, but changes her mind when her mother and grandmother reveal that they have always been passionate, although secretive, coffee drinkers (and obviously not infertile). Bach himself was the father of 20 children.

French Toast isn't French. It comes from a Roman cookbook which dates back to 1,000 or 2,000 B.C., called "Apicius on Cooking".

Grand Rapids, Michigan is the "SpaghettiOs Capital of the World" because per-capita consumption is highest in that city, per the Franco-American company. Reportedly, there are more than 1,750 "O's" in a 15-ounce can of SpaghettiOs.

Green Tea has 50% more vitamin C then black tea.

Haggis, a traditional Scottish dish, is made from the lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep, chopped with onions, seasonings, suet, and oatmeal, and then broiled in a bag made from the sheep's stomach.

Half the foods eaten throughout the world today were developed by farmers in the Andes Mountains. Potatoes, maize, squash, beans, peanuts, pineapples, chocolate, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, and many others were first grown in the region.

Hawaii is the only U.S. state to produce coffee.

Herbs should be added near the end of the cooking process so you don't lose the herbs' volatile oils, which are dissipated by heat.

Hippocrates noted the medicinal properties of lettuce in 430 B.C.

When potatoes first appeared in Europe in the 17th century, it was thought that they were disgusting and were blamed for starting outbreaks of leprosy and syphilis. As late as 1720 in America eating potatoes was believed to shorten a person's life.

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.

Rennet, a common substance used to curdle milk and make cheese, is taken from the inner lining of the fourth stomach of a calf.

While there are hundreds of species of sharks, only about seven are marketed and eaten with any regularity in the United States. Europe has its own favorite species - most of which never make it to U.S. kitchens.

Researchers have determined that 1 acre of potatoes can yield 1,200 gallons of ethyl alcohol in a year.

Rice is the chief food for half the people in the world.

Rinse food products off knives immediately after use, especially mayonnaise, which is a highly corrosive substance. If staining should occur, use a non-abrasive polishing compound to remove it.

Risotto is typically served as a first course in Italy. It is said that the little grains tickle the tongue and bring the palate to life.

Ritz crackers were introduced by National Biscuit Company in 1933, and became the world's largest selling crackers within three years.

Rubber is one of the ingredients of bubble gum. It is the substance that allows the chewer to blow a bubble.

Wienie History: Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt served hot dogs and beer to King George VI in 1939. Not to be outdone, Queen Elizabeth II served hot dogs at a royal banquet for the American Bar Association. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan also served hot dogs in the White House.

Scallops are considered the safest shellfish to eat raw. Most of the danger in eating raw shellfish stems from the fact that shellfish filter large amounts of sea water to obtain nutrients. Toxins, bacteria, and viruses tend to accumulate in this filtration apparatus. The filtration apparatus in scallops is, however, is discarded; only the scallop's abductor muscle, where few toxins accumulate, is eaten.

Wine experts caution to never serve wine in a glass with a flared lip, which dissipates its aroma. A slight incurving is desirable.

Shrimp is the top seafood ordered in restaurants, followed by salmon and swordfish, according to a National Restaurant Association survey.

Some foods "explode" in the microwave due to trapped steam. Eggs, butter, and margarine have internal water that, when microwaved, turns to steam and splatters the food all over the inside of the oven. It is imperative to cover these foods well when microwaving.

Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.

Ice is a food and like any food, it can go "bad". Every food code in the U.S. and Canada defines ice as food. We eat more ice than we do bread, nearly a hundred million tons a year or about two pounds per person per day.

Ideally, tripe is cooked for 12 hours. As it is difficult to digest, tripe shouldn't be eaten by those who are dyspeptic or goutish.

In 1266 A.D., English bakers were ordered to mark each loaf of bread so that if a faulty one turned up, "it will be knowne in whom the faulte lies." The bakers' marks were among the first trademarks.

In 1889, Aunt Jemima pancake flour, invented at St. Joseph, Missouri, was the first self-rising flour for pancakes and the first ready-mix food ever to be introduced commercially.

In 1984, Britons ate 41 pounds of beef per person per year, according to the Meat & Livestock Commission. By 1994, the figure dropped to 35 pounds. In March 1996, "Mad Cow Disease" in Britain lowered the consumption figure even more, although many Britons continued to eat roast beef despite the food scare.

In 4,000 B.C., Egyptians discovered yeast's leavening abilities and turned out more than 40 types of bread.

In a traditional French restaurant kitchen, a "garde-manger" is responsible for salads.

In ancient China and certain parts of India, mouse flesh was considered a great delicacy.

In ancient Greece, where the mouse was sacred to Apollo, mice were sometimes devoured by temple priests.

Wine tasters never drink the wine they taste. They sip it, swish it about, gargle it, and then spit it out. Swallowing wine is believed to dull the palate, not to mention the brain.

Wine will spoil if exposed to light; hence tinted bottles.

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.

You need approximately 2,000 berries to make a pound of coffee.

Spaghetti is the favorite pasta shape, with 38 percent favoring it over other pasta shapes. The second favorite shape is elbow macaroni, at 16 percent.

Spinach is native to the area of Iran, but didn't spread to other parts of the world until the beginning of the Christian era.

Sugar plays more roles in jams and jellies than just sweetening the fruit. Sugar helps to preserve the fruit in jams and jellies from its ability to "tie up" water in the mixture and inhibit the growth of microorganisms and bacteria.

Sugar was first added to chewing gum in 1869 by a dentist (William Semple).

Summer oysters are less tasty because the oysters may be spawning. Spawning oysters are usually less sweet and sometimes have a milky appearance that makes them less appetizing.

Sweet onions, which include Vidalias and Maui varieties, must be at least 6 percent sugar to be called "sweet."

The "glair" is the white or clear part of an egg. The word glair comes from the Latin clarus, meaning "clear."

The age recorded on a whiskey bottle refers to the number of years it is aged prior to being bottle. Once in the bottle, whiskey does not improve.

The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death.

In ancient Rome it was considered a sin to eat the flesh of a woodpecker.

In ancient Rome, Flamingo tongues were considered a great delicacy. Their existence was threatened by hunters. The Romans made a law making it illegal to hunt flamingos but, it failed.

In cooked poultry, bones that have dark splotches merely indicate that the bird has been frozen. When poultry is frozen, the blood in the bone marrow ruptures. Upon thawing, the ruptured cells leak, which causes the discoloration. Cooking turns the red splotches dark brown.

In cooking, the term chiffonade means to slice into very thin strips or shreds. Literally translated from French, chiffonade means "made of rags".

In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's".

In her 1985 autobiography, "Elvis and Me," Priscilla Presley recalled the lack of dining etiquette of Elvis's buddies when she was the teenage bride of "The King": "Elvis's father, Vernon, resented the regulars acting as if Graceland was their personal club. They'd go into the kitchen at any hour and order anything they wanted. Naturally, everyone ordered something different. The cooks worked night and day keeping them happy... What was really outrageous was that the regulars were ordering sirloin steaks or prime ribs while Elvis usually ate hamburgers or peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I wasn't too popular around Graceland when I started reorganizing the kitchen. I set down a policy of having one menu per meal, and anyone who didn't like what was on it could go to a local restaurant."

In medieval England beer was often served with breakfast.

In order to get the Naples Pizza Association seal of approval, pizza must meet stringent requirements. Approved, authentic pizza must have a thin crust and be made of Italian flour. The sauce must made from scratch with fresh, not dried, basil. The mozzarella must be snow-white, made in Italy, and worked by hand: A knife can cause a metallic flavor in the cheese. Pizza can not exceed 12 inches in diameter. Traditional pizza is nothing like the stuff devoured by millions of Americans - nor by many Italians, either.

In the Middle Ages, chicken soup was believed to be an aphrodesiac.

In the paramount capital of culinary snobbery - Paris - horse meat was all the rage in the 1870's. Apparently, the Parisians were forced to eat it during the Franco-Prussian war when beef was unavailable, and discovered they liked it.

The ancient Greeks awarded celery to winners of sports events, and it often was carried by marathon runners.

The average American consumes 1,500 pounds of food each year. 1,000 gallons of water are required to grow and process each pound of that food. This means that in the U.S., in a single year, an average of 1.5 million gallons of water is invested in the food eaten by just one person. This 200,000-cubic-feet-plus of water-per-person would be enough to cover a football field four feet deep.

The average person ingests about a ton of food and drink each year.

The Aztecs believed that cacao came from heaven and that eating it gives people wisdom. They drank it from goblets made of gold.

The Bible mentions salt more than thirty times.

The Black Mission fig, the most popular variety of fig growing in desert areas, is so named because of its color and because it was the variety introduced at the California and Southwestern Spanish missions.

The Caesar salad is not named after Julius Caesar. It is named for its creator, Caesar Cardini, who first prepared the salad in his Caesar's Palace Restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico.

The candies least harmful to the teeth are pies, plain cakes, and doughnuts.

The candies most likely to cause tooth decay are dark chocolate and fudge.

The capsaicin found in peppers has been found to be an anticoagulant. Anticoagulants tend to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes caused by blood clots.

In the U.S. Colonial period, salmon was quite plentiful and cheap on the eastern coast. Back then, some servants stipulated in their work contracts that they would not be served salmon at a meal more than once a week.

In the vegetable realm, only asparagus and rhubarb can reproduce on their own for several growing seasons. All other vegetables must be replanted every year.

In Wilton, Maine, there is a cannery that imports and cans only dandelion greens.

It takes approximately 190,400 pounds of milk to make 40,000 pounds of butter.

It takes one week to make jelly beans.

Jelly fish are considered a delicacy by many cultures. After they have been dried and de-salted, they are reportedly not only delicious, but low in fat, calories, and salt, and rich in nutrients.

Jerk barbecue can be traced to the 1600's, when Jamaican runaway slaves preserved and cooked meat in dug-out pits and basted it with native herbs, spices, and chile peppers. The name "jerk" has uncertain origins. It is believed by some culinary experts to be derived from the Spanish word "charqui," which means dried meat, or from the French term "charcuterie." One legend suggests that the phrase "jerked pork" was coined because slabs of pork were literally jerked back and forth over a hot grill.

Kernels of popcorn were found in the graves of pre-Columbian Indians.

Ketchup was once sold as a patent medicine.

Legend has it that film actress Marlene Dietrich remarked once that her favorite meal consisted of hot dogs and champagne.

The cashew is part of a fruit that grows in tropical regions called 'a cashew apple'. After harvesting, the cashew apple keeps for only 24 hours before the soft fruit deteriorates. The cashew apple is not commercially important since it spoils quickly, but local people love the fruit. To harvest the nut, the ripe apple is allowed to fall to the ground where natives easily gather it. The apple and nut are separated.

The Chinese drink an average of just eight soft drinks per year, and only one (or less) is a Coca-Cola product.

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.

The custom of serving a slice of lemon with fish dates back to the Middle Ages. It was believed that if a person accidentally swallowed a fish bone, the lemon juice would dissolve it.

The early Indians of the Southwestern U.S. only ate the organs of the animals they hunted for food, and left the muscles for predatory animals. Their meat-eating habits were changed by European influences.

The eggplant was domesticated in Southeast Asia more than 4,000 years ago. It belongs to the same family as the poisonous deadly nightshade (as do potatoes, tomatoes and petunias). In the Middle East and then in Europe, doctors blamed it for all sorts of things, from epilepsy to cancer. In the 5th century, Chinese women made a black dye from the eggplant skins to stain and polish their teeth. And some people in medieval Europe considered eggplant an aphrodisiac.

The first bottles of Coca-Cola sold for a mere 5 cents per bottle in 1899. There are now more than 1,000 Coca-Cola bottling plants worldwide.

The first chocolate chip cookie was developed in the kitchen of a Whitman, Massachusetts, country inn in 1937. Simple experiments led to a recipe combining bits of chocolate candy with a shortbread type cookie dough.

The first known pizza shop, Port 'Alba in Naples, opened in 1830 and is still open today. Gennaro Lombardi opened the first pizzeria in North America in 1905 at 53 1/3 Spring Street in New York City.

The first macaroni factory in the United States was established in 1848. It was started by Antoine Zegera in Brooklyn, New York.

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 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 fortune cookie was invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker.

The Germans do not typically serve potato salad cold, but warm or at room temperature. This reportedly aids in digestion. According to cooking show TV host Ursula, one way to rid yourself of a houseguest who has overstayed his welcome is to serve him ice-cold potato salad straight from the refrigerator. She claims it will upset his stomach, prompting him to think something is wrong with your food, and he'll leave sooner than intended.

The groom's cake dates back to the mid-19th century. At that time, the traditional wedding cake had evolved from a popular single-layer fruitcake into a stacked pound-cake shaped like a church steeple. But guests still wanted fruitcake. To appease the masses, newlyweds would serve two cakes - the wedding cake and the fruitcake. The wedding cake was eaten at the reception; the fruitcake, or the groom's cake (as it soon became known), was sliced and boxed for guests to take home. Legend has it that an ummaried woman who placed her slice under her pillow would dream of her husband-to-be. Two cakes - especially in the southern U.S. - continued to be offered to wedding guests until after World War II.

The herring is the most widely eaten fish in the world. Nutritionally its fuel value is that equal to that of a beefsteak.

The Hershey Foods Corporation can produce thirty three million Hershey's Kisses in one day of production.

The Jerusalem artichoke is neither from Jerusalem nor is an artichoke. It's the knobby nut-brown tuber of a sunflower.

The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma in an emergency. This was discovered by Doctors in Fiji during World War II

The Manhattan cocktail - whiskey and sweet vermouth - was invented by Jennie Jerome, the beautiful New Yorker who was the toast of the town until she went to England as the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, in 1874, and gave birth to Winston.

The modern dinner plate is a fairly recent development. Until the 15th century, it was customary to eat on a thick slice of stale bread, called a "trencher," that soaked up the juice.

The most valuable nutrients of the potato are in the skin.

The nutritional value of squash and pumpkin seeds improves with age. These seeds are among the few foods that increase in nutritional value as they decompose.

The official state dessert of Massachusetts - Boston Cream Pie.

The oldest registered food trademark still in use in the United States is the red devil on cans of Underwood's deviled ham. It dates back to 1886.

The origin of coffee can be traced back to East Africa. Legend has it that an Ethiopian shepard noticed that his sheep stayed awake all night after grazing on coffee cherries. When the shepard ate them, they had the same effect on him

The Popsicle was invented by eleven-year-old Frank Epperson in 1905. He left a container of soda and a stirrer outside overnight and in the morning discovered them frozen together.

The popular beverage 7-Up was originally a version of a "lithiated" patent medicine, containing small amounts of lithium. An irony here is that it was introduced to the U.S. markets during the 1930s--the time of the GREAT DEPRESSION!

The potato was not known in Europe until the 17th century, when it was introduced by returning Spanish Conquistadors.

The purpose of the indentation at the bottom of a wine bottle is to strengthen the structure of the bottle and to trap the sediments in the wine.

The Romans were so fond of eating dormice that the upper classes raised them domestically. The rodents were kept in specially designed cages and were fed a mixture of nuts.

The strongest any liquor can be is 190 proof. This means the beverage is a little more than 97 percent alcohol.

The Swedes drink more coffee than any other people in the world.

The term "cocktail" was invented in Elmsford, New York. A barmaid named Betsy Flanagan decorated her establishment with the tail feathers of cocks. On day a patron asked for "one of those cock tails." She served him a drink with a feather in it.

The United States Department of Agriculture reports that the average American eats eight and a half pounds of pickles a years. Dill pickles are twice as popular as sweet.

The word "steak" means a thick cut of food, and it can include anything from an eggplant steak to a salmon streak. However, according to food experts, beefsteak must be cut at least an inch thick if it's to be broiled over or under the flames. If it's thinner than this, the heat of the broiler penetrates the inside of the meat before the outside is browned. The inside then becomes well-done, the juices seep out, and the flavor is bland.