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There are orange peels and raisins in A-1 Steak Sauce.

There are over 3,500 bras hanging behind the bar at Hogs and Heifers, a bar in Manhattan. So many, in fact, that they caused a beam to collapse in the ceiling.

There are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world today. However, about 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers. The most widely spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. There are 885,000,000 people in China that speak that language.

There are seven suicides in the Bible: Abimelech. Samson, Saul, Saul's armor-bearer, Ahithophel, Zimri, Judas.

There are six U.S. Presidents with the first name James: Madison, Monroe, Garfield, Buchanon, Carter, Polk.

There are songs in all of Shakespeare's plays except The Comedy of Errors.

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

There are ten million bricks in the Empire State Building.

There are thirteen languages spoken by more than 100 million people. They are: Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian, French, Japanese, German, and Urdu.

There are two credit cards for every person in the U.S.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

There are two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."

There are, on average, 259 raisins in a box of Raisin Bran and 388 in a box of Premium Raisin Bran.

There has never been a time in Super Bowl history where a punt return resulted in a touchdown.

There have been about 30 films made at or about Alcatraz, the now-closed federal prison island in San Francisco Bay, including The Rock (1996), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), and Escape from Alcatraz (1979).

There have been no recorded instances of anybody being killed by a meteorite.

There have been over 600 lawsuits against Alexander Grahm Bell over rights to the patent of the telephone, the most valuable patent in U.S. history.

There is a 1 in 4 chance that New York will have a white Christmas.

There is a 6-foot tall stone monument dedicated to the cartoon character Popeye in Crystal City, TX. .

There is a butterfly found in Brazil that has the smell and color of a chocolate.

There is a flower called the Scarlet Pimpernel that can forecast the weather. If the flower is closed up, rain is coming and if it is opened up, the day will be sunny.It is a.k.a 'the poor man's weatherglass'

There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs tied during the month of April.

There is a member of the spider family called the demodex folliculorum that lives at the root of people's eye lashes. It's harmless and normal.(so they claim) To look for them, grab a handful of your eyelashes and dunk them in warm water. They'll start swimming out. It is prevalent in nearly 100% of old people in the U.S.

There is a sea squirt (found in the seas near Japan) that digests its own brain. When the sea squirt is mature it permanently attaches itself to a rock. At this point it does not need to move anymore and has no need for a brain.

There is a seven letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

There is a street in Canada that runs for a distance of nearly 1900 kms.

There is a way of writing 1 by using all ten single-digit numbers at once: 148/296 + 35/70 = 1.

There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs five times: "indivisibility."

There is about 1/4 pound of salt in every gallon of seawater.

There is about 200 times more gold in the oceans than has been mined throughout history.

There is actually no danger in swimming right after you eat, though it may feel uncomfortable.

There is air in space, but very little of it. In fact, it is equivalent to a marble in a box 5 miles wide. Most of the gas is captured by the gravitational pull of other celestial bodies.Thanx M.Lerner

There is an average of 61,000 people airborne over the US at any given moment.

There is an extra leg in the Iwo Jima memorial statue and extra hand. While the legend is that these extremedies belong to God, who is helping the Marines win, they are actually there for added support to the statue, and designed not to look like a metal rod going throught the middle of the group of Marines.

There is coffee flavored Pez.

There is cyanide in apple pits.

There is more bacteria in your mouth than the human population of U.S and Canada combined. Thanx Julie for this and a couple more

There is no alcohol left in food that's cooked with wine. The alcohol evaporates at 172 degrees Fahrenheit.

There is no difference in flavor or nutritional value between brown and white eggs. Aside form color, they are identical. Most white eggs come from White Longhorns and browns come from a commercial cross of Rhode Island Reds and Barred Plymouth Rocks.

There is no ice covering Iceland.

There is no single cat called the panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.

William Fox, the founder of 20th Century Fox, was bankrupt a few years after selling his studio, and served a prison sentence in Pennsylvania for bribing a judge.

William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was the first US president to die in office. At 32 days, he also had the shortest term in office.

William Howard Taft had a bathtub that could hold four people installed in the white because he couldn't fit into the present one.

William Howard Taft was the first President to own a car.

William Penn purchased a pound of coffee in New York in 1683 for $4.68.

William Shakespeare used a vocabulary of 29,066 different words. By way of comparison, the average person uses about 8,000 different words.

William Shatner is credited for being the first person on TV to say "hell" as well as to have the first inter-racial kiss (with Nichelle Nichols), both in episodes of Star Trek.

William Taft is only man to become President and then chief justice.

Willow bark, which provides the salicylic acid from which aspirin was originally synthesized, has been used as a pain remedy ever since the Greeks discovered its therapeutic power nearly 2,500 years ago.

Windmills always turn counter-clockwise except in one country.

Wine grapes, oranges, figs and olives were first planted in North America by Father Junipero Sera in 1769.

Wine is kept in tinted bottles because it will spoil if it's exposed to light.

Wine will spoil if exposed to light, hence tinted bottles.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.

Witchcraft was first legalized in the colony of Pennsylvania.

With a 3 by 5 card you can make a paper ring that can go around 3 adults

With the exception of Antarctica, all continents are wider in the north than in the south.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Women burn fat more slowly than men, by a rate of about 50 calories a day.

Women say that the part of a man's body that they admire the most is his buttocks.

Women shoplift more often than men; the statistics are 4 to 1.

Women wear engagement and wedding rings on the third finger of the left hand because an ancient belief held that a delicate nerve runs directly from that finger to the heart.

Women who respond to sex surveys in magazines have had five times as many lovers as non-respondents.

Women's hearts beat faster than men's.

Wonder Woman was the world's first comic book superheroine. She was introduced in All Star Comics in December 1941 and created by psychologist William Moulton Marston.

Woodbury Soap was the first product to use a picture of a nude woman in its advertisements. In 1936, a photo by Edward Steichen showed a rear full-length view of a woman sunbathing.

Work on St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, began in 1506. Construction took over a century, reaching completion in 1612.

Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.

Worldwide, the most common environmental allergy is dust.

Worn or outdated US Flags are destroyed, preferably by burning.

Would you believe that pigs are smarter than dogs? On the human intelligence scale, pigs are third removed from humans, while dogs are 13th removed, and only primates and dolphines are smarter than pigs. They are quick one time learners, and some learn by watching others. (I dont know how much of this is true, coming from a site called Pig's Peace Sanctuary

Wrigley's gum was the first product to have a bar code on the packaging.

Wrigley's promoted their new spearmint-flavored chewing gum in 1915 by mailing 4 sample sticks to each of the 1.5 million names listed in US telephone books.

Writing in ancient Greece "hadnospacebetweenthewords."

Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote.

X-ray technology has shown there are 3 different versions of the Mona Lisa under the visible one.

Xylophones(Greek xylon,"wood"; phone,"sound") were actually developed in South East Asia in the 14th centuary

Yellowstone is the world's 1st national park. It was dedicated in 1872.

You are born with 300 bones, but whe ... Read more »

Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in 1895. The idea for using electric Christmas lights came from an American, Ralph E. Morris. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles.

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.

- Zawadi: Gifts

- Kikombe Cha Umoja: The Unity Cup

- Kinara: The Candleholder

- Mishumaa Saba: The Seven Candles

- Vibunzi: Ear of Corn

- Mkeka: Place Mat

- Mazao: Fruits, Nuts, and Vegetables

Kwanzaa has seven basic symbols, which represent values and concepts reflective of African culture.

Before settling on the name of Tiny Tim for his character in "A Christmas Carol", three other alliterative names were considered by Charles Dickens. They were: Little Larry, Puny Pete and Small Sam.

In 1997 a Menorah was built in Latrun, near the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. It was more than 60-feet tall, weighed 17 metric tons, and took up an area of 600-square meters. A rabbi was lifted in a crane each night of the holiday to light the candles on the menorah, which was made of metal pipes.

A gator in the road is a huge piece of tire from a blow out on a truck, called a gator because the fly up when a truck runs one over and take out your air lines causing you to lose air and forcing your spring brakes to come on which causes a rather abrupt stop.

In the Catholic church, St. Gabriel, an archangel, is the patron saint of telecommunications.

The first transatlantic wedding took place on December 2, 1933.The groom was in Michigan. The bride, in Sweden. The ceremony took seven minutes and cost $47.50.

Sometimes, early telephone operators would get to know their customers so well, the customers would ask for a reminder call when it was time to remove a cake from the oven, leave the phone off the hook near their sleeping child when they left the house, hoping the operator would hear any cries of distress, request a wake up call before taking a long nap.

The use of telephone answering machines became popular in 1974.

Northern Telecom, Alcatel N.V. and NEC all had roots in Western Electric.

Western Electric mass-produced color telephones for the first time in 1954.

The first "Hello" badge used to identify guests and hosts at conventions, parties, etc. was traced back to September 1880. It was on that date that the first Telephone Operators Convention was held at Niagara Falls and the "Hello" badge was created for that event.

Jane Barbie was the woman who did the voice recordings for the Bell System.

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.

The original IBM punch-card is the same size as a Civil War era dollar bill.

7.5 million toothpicks can be created from a cord of wood.

Studebaker still exists, but is now called Worthington.

Ivory Soap was originally named P&G White Soap. In 1879, Harley Proctor found the new name during a reading in church of the 45th Psalm of the Bible: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad."

The official soft drink of the state of Nebraska - Kool-Aid.

The Holland and Lincoln Tunnels under the Hudson River connecting New Jersey and New York are an engineering feat. The air circulators in the tunnels circulate fresh air completely every ninety seconds.

The roads on the island of Guam are made with coral. Guam has no sand. The sand on the beaches is actually ground coral. When concrete is mixed, the coral sand is used instead of importing regular sand from thousands of miles away.

Police dogs are trained to react to commands in a foreign language; commonly German but more recently Hungarian.

The foundations of the great European cathedrals go down as far as forty or fifty feet. In some instances, they form a mass of stone as great as that of the visible building above the ground.

The first revolving restaurant, The Top of the Needle, was located at the 500-foot level of the 605-foot-high steel-and-glass tower at the Century 21 Exposition in Seattle, Washington. It contained 260 seats and revolved 360 degrees in an hour. The state-of-the-art restaurant was dedicated on May 22, 1961.

The first manager of the Seattle Space Needle, Hoge Sullivan, was acrophobic - fearful of heights. The 605 foot tall Space Needle is fastened to its foundation with 72 bolts, each 30 feet long. The Space Needle sways approximately 1 inch for every 10 mph of wind. It was built to withstand a wind velocity of 200 miles-per-hour.

In 1931, an industrialist named Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago and lived in it for several years. The tower is still there.

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

A standard 747 Jumbo Jet has 420 seats.

The number 4 is the only number that has the same number of letters in its name as its meaning.

Revolvers cannot be silenced because of all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.

A man named John Bellavia has entered over 5000 contests, and has never won a thing.

In 1982, the last member of a group of people who believed the Earth was hollow died.

The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear i ... Read more »

military would be portrayed positively.

For the movie "Mission To Mars", director Brian DePalma and crew needed to re-create the surface of the planet Mars. They chose the more than two million square feet of a 45-acre sand dune in Vancouver, Canada. To give the sand dune the color of the planet Mars, they covered it with over 15,000 gallons of red paint.

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

The first female monster to appear on the big screen was Bride of Frankenstein.

The first far eastern country to permit kissing in films was China. The first oriental screen kiss was bestowed on Miss Mamie Lee in the movie "Two Women in the House" (China, 1926).

The movie "Clue" has three different endings. Each ending was randomly chosen for different theaters. All three endings are present in the home video.

In the Return of the Jedi special edition during the new Coruscant footage at the end of the film a stormtrooper can be seen being carried over the crowds.

Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World WarII were made of wood.

From Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me — In the U.S., "shag" is far less offensive than in other English-speaking countries. Singapore briefly forced a title change to "The Spy Who Shioked Me." ("Shioked" means "treated nicely.")

In every show that Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks) wrote, there is at least one song about rain.

The studios wanted Matthew McConaughey, the newest heartthrob in the industry, cast as hero Jack Dawson in the 1997 box office hit Titanic, but director James Cameron insisted on Leonardo DiCaprio.

The most popular sport as a topic for a film is boxing.

In "Cliff Hanger" when the girl is dangling off Stallone’s arm, the camera flashes to the chopper and the old man in the picture is laughing.

David Niven and George Lazenby were the only two actors who played James Bond only once.

In the original "Star Wars: A New Hope", Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, called out the name of actress Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia, instead of actually calling out "Leia" in the scene near the end where he gets out of his X-wing after destroying the Death Star. The error was never caught.

In the movie Ghost (Patrick and Demi) when Demi is making something on the pottery wheel her hands are covered in clay. But when her husband comes up behind her to give her a kiss she turns around and they are completely clean.

In Hitchcock’s movie, "Rear Window", Jimmy Stewart plays a character wearing a leg cast from the waist down. In one scene, the cast switches legs, and in another, the signature on the cast is missing.

The TV sitcom Seinfeld was originally named "The Seinfeld Chronicles". The pilot which was broadcast in 1989 also featured a kooky neighbor named Kessler. This character later became known as Kramer.

Dooley Wilson appeared as Sam in the movie Casablanca. Dooley was a drummer - not a pianist in real life. The man who really played the piano in Casablanca was a Warner Brothers staff musician who was at a piano off camera during the filming.

"60 Minutes" is the only show on CBS that doesn’t have a theme song.

For many years, the globe on the NBC Nightly News spun in the wrong direction. On January 2, 1984, NBC finally set the world spinning back in the proper direction.

A two hour motion picture uses 10,800 feet of film. Not including the previews and commercials.

The original title of the musical "Hello Dolly!" was "Dolly: A Damned Exasperating Woman." Why did they change it? The original had such music, poetry, and pizzazz.

Bruce was the nickname of the mechanical shark used in the "Jaws" movies.

A theater manager in Seoul, Korea felt that The Sound of Music was too long, so he shortened it by cutting out all the songs.

The writers of The Simpsons have never revealed what state Springfield is in.

Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)

The 1997 Jack Nicholson film - "As Good As It Gets", is known in China as "Mr. Cat Poop".

The person who performs the Muppets - Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Animal, and Grover is Frank Oz. Oz is also the voice of Star Wars Yoda. By the way, his real name is Frank Oznowicz.

Beaver Cleaver graduated in 1953.

The first ever televised murder case appeared on TV in 1955, Dec. 5-9. The accused was Harry Washburn.

- Number of tarantulas: 50

- Number of boas, cobras and pythons used in the film: 7,500

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the first film featuring the character Indiana Jones, was crawling with four-, eight-, and no-legged creatures:

Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, was home to Rocky and Bullwinkle.

The average raindrop reaches a top speed of 22 miles per hour.

Seven billion gallons of water are flushed down toilets in the U.S. every day.

The only country to register zero births in 1983 was the Vatican City.

The one extra room new-home shoppers want the most is the laundry room, at 95 percent. Only 66 percent of new-home buyers request an extra room to use as an office.

53% of high school grads and 27% of college grads "get most of their information from TV."

Smoking accounts for at least 7% of all health care costs in the US.

The 3 largest newspaper circulations are Russian. < ... Read more »

The average American looks at eight houses before buying one.

75% of people wash from top to bottom in the shower.

8% of Americans twiddle their thumbs.

5,840 people with pillow related injuries checked into U.S. emergency rooms in 1992.

"Evaluation and Parameterization of Stability and Safety Performance Characteristics of Two and Three Wheeled Vehicular Toys for Riding." Title of a $230,000 research project proposed by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to study the various ways children fall off bicycles.

According to the US Government people have tried nearly 28,000 different ways to lose weight.

40,000 Americans are injured by toilets every year.

The average person over fifty will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.

Statistically speaking, the most dangerous job in the United States is that of Sanitation Worker. Firemen and Policeman are a close second and third, followed by Leather Tanners in fourth.

Since the Lego Group began manufacturing blocks in 1949, more than 189 billion pieces in 2000 different shapes have been produced. This is enough for about 30 Lego pieces for every living person on Earth.

Since 1978, at least 37 people have died as a result of shaking vending machines, in an attempt to get free merchandise. More than 100 have been injured.

Seventy-three percent of Americans are willing to wear clothes until the clothes wear out. The poll conducted by Louis Harris and Associates also revealed: 92 percent are willing to eliminate annual model changes in automobiles; 57 percent are willing to see a national policy that would make it cheaper to live in multiple-unit apartments than in single-family homes; 91 percent are willing to eat more vegetables and less meat for protein.

Seventy percent of house dust is made up of dead skin flakes.

Half of all people who have ever smoked have now quit.

Adults spend an average of 16 times as many hours selecting clothes (145.6 hours a year) as they do on planning their retirement.

Results of a survey show that 76 percent of women make their bed every day, compared to 46 percent of men.

Police estimated that 10,000 abandoned, orphaned and runaway children were roaming the streets of New York City in 1852.

Per capita, it is safer to live in New York City than it is to live in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

In 1996, Americans bought only 12 inches of dental floss per capita.

In 1995, each American used an annual average of 731 pounds of paper, more than double the amount used in the 1980s. Contrary to predictions that computers would displace paper, consumption is growing.

In 1990 the life expectancy of the average American male was 72.7 years and 76.1 years for females. In 1900 the life expectancy was 46.6 for males and 48.7 for females.

In 1977, less than 9 percent of physicians in the U.S. were women.

In 1970 only 5 percent of the American population lived in cities.

In 1915, the average annual family income in the United States was $687 a year.

Per a national survey, 80 percent of U.S. teachers in grades kindergarten through eighth grade have received chocolate as a gift from their students.

Per a "Newsweek" poll, 49 percent of American fathers described themselves as better parents than their dads.

Pediatricians estimate that 58 percent of their young patients go to child care or school even when ill, according to a Gallup survey. This despite the fact that 81 percent of mothers working full-time have stayed home at times to care for a sick child.

In 1990 there were about 15,000 vacuum cleaner related accidents in the U.S.

There have been several documented cases of women giving birth to twins who had different fathers, including cases where the children were of different races. To do so, the mother had to have conceived both children in close proximity. There has also been one recent case where a mother gave birth to unrelated "twins." In that instance, the mother underwent in vitro fertilization and had her own child and the embryo of another couple accidentally implanted in her.

While the average cost of air travel is about $60 per hour, using an air-phone during that plane trip can cost as much as $160 per hour.

Over 15 billion prizes have been given away in Cracker Jacks boxes.

Two out of three adults in the United States have hemorrhoids.

Hawaii is the only state in the United States where male life expectancy exceeds 70 years. Hawaii also leads all states in life expectancy in general, with an average of 73.6 years for both males and females.

Hawaii has the highest percentage of cremations of all other U.S. states, with a 60.6 percent preference over burial.

Only 3 percent of Americans ages 18 to 21 attended college in 1890.

Executives work an average 57 hours a week, but just 22 percent say their hours are a major cause of stress.

Out of the 34,000 gun deaths in the U.S. each year, fewer than 300 are listed as "justifiable homicide," the only category that could include shooting a burglar, mugger, or rapist.

Only about 30 percent of teenage males consistently apply sun protection lotion when going poolside, compared to 46 percent of female teens.

There are more telephones than people in Washington DC.

Occasionally, hot dog sales at baseball stadiums exceed attendance, but typically, hot dog sales at ballparks average 80 percent of the attendance.

Each year approximately 250,000 American husbands are physically attacked and beaten by their wives.

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German chemist Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus while he was examining urine.

There are five tillion trillion atoms in one pound of iron.

The pressure at the center of the Earth is 27,000 tons per square inch.

Bacteria can reproduce sexually.

A temperature of 70 million degrees Celsius was generated at Princeton University in 1978. This was during a fusionism experiment and is the highest man-made temperature ever.

Every cubic mile of seawater holds over 150 million tons of minerals.

An iceberg contains more heat than a match.

Air is denser in cold weather. A wind of the same speed can exert 25 percent more force during the winter as compared to the summer.

The Sun has a diameter of 864,000 miles.

There are 3 golf balls sitting on the moon.

The color black is produced by the complete absorption of light rays.

Sound at the right vibration can bore holes through a solid object.

Lab tests can detect traces of alcohol in urine six to 12 hours after a person has stopped drinking.

It takes a plastic container 50000 years to start decomposing.

The sun is estimated to be between 20 and 21 cosmic years old.

A car traveling at a constant speed of 60 miles per hour would take over 48 million years to reach the nearest star (other than our sun), Proxima Centauri. This is about 685,000 average human lifetimes.

Traveling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, light take 6 hours to travel from Pluto to the earth.

To an observer standing on Pluto, the sun would appear no brighter than Venus appears in our evening sky.

Dissolved salt makes up 3.5 percent of the oceans.

Blood is 6 times thicker than water.

Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is predicted to topple over between 2010 and 2020.

The nearest galaxy to our own is Andromeda.

The speed of sound must be exceeded to produce a sonic boom.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.

There are 7 stars in the Big Dipper.

Out of all the senses, smell is most closely linked to memory.

Three astronauts manned each Apollo flight.

All organic compounds contain carbon.

The first atomic bomb exploded at Trinity Site, New Mexico.

The planet Venus has the longest day.

Because of the salt content of the Dead Sea, it is difficult to dive below its surface.

Carolyn Shoemaker has discovered 32 comets and approximately 800 asteroids.

The first portable calculator placed on sale by Texas Instruments weighed only 2-1/2 pounds and cost a mere $150. (1971)

The planet Saturn has a density lower than water. If there was a bathtub large enough to hold it, Saturn would float.

The shockwave from a nitroglycerine explosion travels at 17,000 miles per hour.

The fastest moon in our solar system circles Jupiter once every seven hours - traveling at 70,400 miles per hour.

Because of the rotation of the earth, an object can be thrown farther if it is thrown west.

Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.

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

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top. This is because the carbonation in the drink gets pockets of air stuck in the wrinkles of the raisin, which is light enough to be raised by this air. When it reaches the surface of the champagne, the bubbles pop, and the raisin sinks back to the bottom, starting the cycle over.

On December 2, 1942, a nuclear chain reaction was achieved for the first time under the stands of the University of Chicago’s football stadium. The first reactor measured 30 feet wide, 32 feet long, and 21.5 feet high. It weighed 1,400 tons and contained 52 tons of uranium in the form of uranium metal and uranium oxide. Although the same process led to the massive energy release of the atomic bomb, the first artificially sustained nuclear reaction produced just enough energy to light a small flashlight.

Experiments conducted in Germany and at the University of Southampton in England show that even mild and incidental noises cause the pupils of the eyes to dilate. It is believed that this is why surgeons, watchmakers, and others who perform delicate manual operations are so bothered by noise. The sounds cause their pupils to change focus and blur their vision.

STASI, the East German secret police organization, devised a devilishly clever way to prevent someone from giving them the slip during the Cold War: they managed to synthesize the scent of a female dog in heat, which they applied to the shoes of the person under surveillance. Then they simply had a male dog follow the scent.

If you stand in the bottom of a well, you would be able to see the stars even in the daytime.

A "fulgerite" is fossilized lightning. It forms w ... Read more »