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FACTS OF THE MONTH:
Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat it than the celery has to begin with.
Bulls don't get mad because they see red: they're color-blind.
A regular (statute) mile is 5280 feet. An ocean (nautical) mile is 6080 feet.
An average adult resident of Nome, Alaska drinks around four gallons of alcohol a year.
Only excessive heat can destroy a diamond. Not even acid will do the trick.
"'No Comment' is a comment."--George Carlin
There are 20 million bricks in the Empire State Building.
The twenty largest states are all west of the Mississippi River. The largest state east of it is Georgia.
Prior to 1943, NBC owned two networks, NBC Red and NBC Blue. The government charged the company with antitrust laws and forced them to sell one of the networks. NBC Blue then became ABC.
Charles Lindbergh was not the first to fly across the Atlantic; 78 people had done it before him. Lindbergh, however, was the first to do it solo.
The statistically-easiest "Monopoly" space to land on is Illinois Avenue, followed by B&O Railroad & Free Parking.
A cockroach can live for weeks after it has been beheaded.
Alaska has no state motto.
Eighty years ago the average American family earned only $700 a year.
The Grand Canyon gets more snow annually than Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven.
| from WORD WEEK:
Roman soldiers were paid in salt, a valuable seasoning of the time. This payment was called a 'salarium', from which we get today's word 'salary'. When automation was introduced in France, workers who lost their jobs as a result revolted by throwing their workboots, or sabot, into the works, destroying the machines. Hence the term, sabotage. Of the nearly half-million words in the English language, only about half of them existed in Shakespeare's time. Of the words remaining, around half of them were created just since World War II. Long ago, the Ampersand (&) was a letter in the English alphabet. Pneumoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis: lung disease acquired from inhaling underground fumes. Common among coal miners. 'Queue' is the only English word that is pronounced the same when you remove the last four letters. Arachibutryophobia: Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. |
Mice prefer sweets like candy rather than cheese.
The parachute was invented over a century before the airplane. People used to jump from hot air balloons.
Arkansas is the only non-coastal state that, in places, is north of every state it touches.
Nineteenth-century political cartoonist Thomas Nast not only created the ideas of the donkey for Democrats and and the elephant for Republicans, he also added a red suit and beard to the design of Santa Claus.
Just ending its eleventh season, the Arena Football League is the second-longest lasting professional football league in American history.
Washington D.C. has more telephones than people.
The Egyptian pyramids were not among the original Seven Wonders of the World. The Sphinx, however, was.
The Pacific Ocean may be larger, but the Atlantic is saltier.
The Ancient Greek inventor Hero designed the very first steam engine nearly two millenia before the second steam engine. He never found a use for it, but we have: the principle he used was adapted for lawn sprinklers.
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