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

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.

A passionate kiss uses up 6.4 calories per minute.

During a kiss as many as 278 bacteria colonies are exchanged.

Captain Cook lost 41 of his 98 crew to scurvy (a lack of vitamin C) on his first voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. By 1795 the importance of eating citrus was realized, and lemon juice was issued on all British Navy ships.

Undertakers report that human bodies do not deteriorate as quickly as they used to. The reason, they believe, is that the modern diet contains so many preservatives that these chemicals tend to prevent the body from decomposition too rapidly after death.

Gold salts are sometimes injected into the muscles to relieve arthritis.

You can see a candle flame from 50 Kilometers on a clear, dark night. You can hear the tick of a watch from 6 meters in very quiet conditions. You can taste one gram of salt in 500 liters of water (.0001M). You can detect one drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-room apartment. You can detect the wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a height of one centimeter.

According to the Journal of American Medical Association, as of 1998, more than 100,000 Americans die annually from adverse reactions to prescription drugs.

If you combined all the muscles in an average human in to one muscle, the force it would be capable of producing is about 2,000 tonnes.

Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman is considered to be the godfather of the modern vaccine era. Having created nearly three dozen vaccines - more than any other scientist, Hilleman is also credited with saving more lives than any other scientist. Probably best known for his preventive vaccine for mumps, Hilleman has also developed vaccines for measles, rubella, chicken pox, bacterial meningitis, flu and hepatitis B.

A study by researcher Frank Hu and the Harvard School of Public Health found that women who snore are at an increased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.

"Soldiers disease" is a term for morphine addiction. The Civil War produced over 400,000 morphine addicts.

Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremities develop faster than the rest of us.

People who have never been married are seven and a half times more likely than married people to be admitted to a psychiatric facility.

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

The short-term memory capacity for most people is between five and nine items or digits. This is one reason that phone numbers were kept to seven digits for so long.

Females have 500 more genes than males, and because of this are protected from things like color blindness and hemophilia.

There are 10 trillion living cells in the human body.

The brain requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body.

The right lung takes in more air than the left lung.

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

The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terrabytes.

Your thumb is the same length as your nose.

You lose enough dead skin cells in your lifetime to fill eight five-pound flour bags.

The average Human bladder can hold 13 ounces of liquid.

During his or her lifetime, the average human will grow 590 miles of hair.

The first known heart medicine was discovered in an English garden. In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action. Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of blood pumped per heartbeat.

It takes an interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 18 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed for the common cold in the United States per year. Research shows that colds are caused by viruses. 50 million unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed for viral respiratory infections.

In 1977, a 13 year old child found a tooth growing out of his left foot.

The human brain stops growing at the age of 18.

The first Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages were three inches wide and eighteen inches long. You made your own bandage by cutting off as much as you needed.

Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons for men versus 0.875 gallons for women.

Sumerians (from 5000 BC) thought that the liver made blood and the heart was the center of thought.

Approximately 16 Canadians have their appendices removed, when not required, every day.

In 1815 French chemist Michael Eugene Chevreul realized the first link between diabetes and sugar metabolism when he discovered that the urine of a diabetic was identical to grape sugar.

Between 25% to 33% of the population sneeze when they are exposed to light.

People who have a tough time handling the stress of money woes are twice as likely to develop severe gum disease, a new study finds.

The adult human heart weighs about ten ounces.

The number one cause of blindness in the United States is diabetes.

In 1972, a group of scientists reported that you could cure the common cold by freezing the big toe.

No one seems to know why people blush.

The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.

Medical researchers contend that no disease ever identified has been completely eradicated.

The toilet was invented by an Englishman named Thomas Crapper.

Kleenex tissues were originally used as filters in gas masks.

Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called his counterpart in Alameda, California.

Lillian Moller Gilbreth (1878-1972), the mother of 12 children, had good reason to improve the efficiency and convenience of household items. A pioneer in ergonomics, Gilbreth patented many devices, including an electric food mixer, and the trash can with step-on lid-opener that can be found in most households today.

You could milk about six cows per hour by hand, but with modern machinery, you can milk up to 100 cows per hour.

George Seldon received a patent in 1895 - for the automobile. Four years later, George sold the rights for $200,000.

In 1769 the British designer Edward Beran enclosed wooden slats in a frame to adjust the amount of light let into a room. These became known as venetian blinds from their early use over Italianate windows.

Rubber bands were first made by Perry and Co. of London in 1845.

The game that would become Scrabble was created by an unemployed architect, Alfred Mosher Butts in the early 1930s. He called it Lexiko, then Criss Cross Words and then sold the rights to James Brunot. In 1948 it was renamed Scrabble and was manufactured in a converted school house in Connecticut. Bruno sold the game to Selchow and Righter, who were bought out by Coleco in 1987, and in 1989 Milton Bradley bought it. More than 100 million Scrabble games have been sold worldwide.

During one four-year period, Thomas Edison obtained 300 patents, or one every five days.

The first umbrella factory in the U.S. was founded in 1928 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Two French toolmakers were the first engineers to put the engine in the front of the car. This gave the car better balance, made it easier to steer, and made it much easier to get all your luggage in.

Russian submarine designers are building military submarines out of concrete. Because concrete becomes stronger under high pressure, (C-subs) could settle down to the bottom in very deep water and wait for enemy ships to pass overhead. Concrete would not show up on sonar displays (it looks just like sand or rocks), so the passing ships would not see the sub lurking below.

The windmill originated in Iran in AD 644. It was used to grind grain.

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

On the first neon sign, the word neon was spelled out in red by Dr. Perley G. Nutting, 15 years before neon signs became widely used commercially.

On November 23, 1835, Henry Burden of Troy, New York, developed the first machine for manufacturing horseshoes. Burden later oversaw the production of most of the horseshoes used by the Union cavalry during the Civil War.

Dutch engineers have developed a computerized machine that allows a cow to milk itself. Each cow in the herd has a computer chip in its collar. If the computer senses that the cow has not been milked in a given period of time, the milk-laden animal is allowed to enter the stall. The robot sensors locate the teats, apply the vacuum devices, and the cow is milked. The machine costs a mere $250,000 and is said to boost milk production by 15%.

Benjamin Franklin had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals.

Thomas Edison had a collection of over 5,000 birds.

King Gilette spent 8 years trying to invent and introduce his safety razor.

Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of the rocking chair.

The Roman civilization invented the arch.

George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.

The patent number of the telephone is 174465.

Disc Jockey Alan Freed popularized the term "Rock and Roll."

It is recorded that the Babylonians were making soap around 2800 B.C. and that it was known to the Phoenicians around 600 B.C. These early references to soap and soap making were for the use of soap in the cleaning of textile fibers such as wool and cotton in preparation for weaving into cloth.

The safety pin was patented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. He sold the patent rights for $400.

According to company lore, Ole Evinrude, a Norwegian immigrant, got the idea for an outboard motor while on a picnic with his sweetheart Bessie. They were on a small island in Lake Michigan, when Bessie decided she wanted some ice cream. Ole obligingly rowed to shore to get some, but by the time he made it back the ice cream had melted. So Ole built a motor that could be attached to his rowboat, and founded the Evinrude company in 1909.

Maximum tunnel depth below ground level is 221ft (67.4m)

Maximum tunnel depth below mean sea level is 70ft (21.3m)

Average scheduled train speed (including station stops) 20.5 mph (33 kmh).

Today, the London Underground Limited (LUL) is a major business with 2.5 million passenger journeys a day, nearly 500 trains, serving over 260 stations, around 16,000 staff and vast engineering assets.

Ornithologists often use Scotch tape to cover cracks in the soft shells of fertilized pigeon eggs, allowing the eggs to hatch. Scotch tape has also been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp.

The first coin operated machine ever designed was a holy-water dispenser that required a five-drachma piece to operate. It was the brainchild of the Greek scientist Hero in the first century AD.

Sylvan N. Goldman of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets developed the shopping cart so that people could buy more in a single visit to the grocery store. He unveiled his creation in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937.

Donald F. Duncan, the man who made the yo-yo an American tradition, is also credited with popularizing the parking meter and introducing Good Humor "ice cream on a stick.

The first lightweight luggage designed for air travel was conceived by aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart.

Self-made millionaire Cyrus Field championed the idea of a telegraph from England to Newfoundland. Britain quickly agreed to subsidize. Congress went along by a one-vote margin. That was in 1856. Laying cable was tough. It kept breaking. The first line - two years later - died almost immediately. But 10 years later, there were two working lines. Communications changed forever.

While known as a painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer, Leonardo da Vinci was the first to record that the number of rings in the cross section of a tree trunk reveal its age. He also discovered that the width between the rings indicates the annual moisture.

When using the first pay telephone, a caller did not deposit his coins in the machine. He gave them to an attendant who stood next to the telephone. Coin telephones did not appear to 1899.

The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

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

Naugahyde, plastic "leather" was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.

Two days before Alexander Graham Bell married Mabel Hubbard in 1877, he gave her 99 percent of his company shares as a wedding gift. He kept a mere ten for himself.

The commercial wireless phone was first introduced in Chicago in 1982 by Ameritech.

American sculptor, Alexander Calder, rigged the front door of his Paris apartment so that he could open it from his bathtub.

The wristwatch was invented in 1904 by Louis Cartier.

Fifty years ago the B. F. Goodrich Company, the American corporation known for its automobile tires, thought it was really on to something. Its engineers came up with the prototype of an atomic golf ball. The ball, with a radioactive core, would be easy to locate with a Geiger counter if hit into the rough. But the company abandoned the invention as unworkable.

Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.

The Direct Action Committee, a group pushing for nuclear disarmament, invented the peace symbol in 1958. The forked symbol is actually a composite of the semaphore signals "N" and "D," to stand for nuclear disarmament.

The horse race starting gate is a Canadian invention, designed in the early 1900s by Philip McGinnis, a racetrack reporter from Huntingdon, Quebec. The device proved popular because it prevented arguments caused when horses started prematurely.

Venetian blinds were invented in Japan.

Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.

Because Napoleon believed that armies marched on their stomachs, he offered a prize in 1795 for a practical way of preserving food. The prize was won by a French inventor, Nicholas Appert. What he devised was canning. It was the beginning of the canned food industry of today.

Root Beer was invented in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1898 by Edward Adolf Barq, Sr.

George Eastman, inventor of the Kodak camera, hated having his picture taken.

Germany holds the title for most independent inventors to apply for patents.

The shoe string was invented in England in 1790. Until then shoes were fastened with buckles.

The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite.

After his death in 1937, Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless telegraph was honored by broadcasters worldwide as they let the airwaves fall silent for two minutes in his memory.

Thomas Edison’s first major invention was the quadruplex telegraph. Unlike other telegraphs at the time, it could send four messages at the same time over one wire.

The hypodermic needle was invented in 1853. It was initially used for giving injections of morphine as a painkiller. Physicians mistakenly believed that morphine would not be addictive if it by-passed the digestive tract.

California police in the 1920s thought they had gotten the drop on a moonshiner. They raided what they thought was a still and found, instead, inventor Philo T. Farnsworth, working on something that was later to become television.

Because he felt such an important tool should be public property, English chemist John Walker never patented his invention — matches.

The state of Maine was once known as the "Earmuff Capital of The World". Earmuffs were invented there by Chester Greenwood in 1873.

The man who invented shorthand, John Gregg, was deaf.

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

The single blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.

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

The rickshaw was invented by the Reverend Jonathan Scobie, an American Baptist minister living in Yokohama, Japan, built the first model in 1869 in order to transport his invalid wife. Today it remains a common mode of transportation in the Orient.

The power lawn mower was invented by Ransom E. Olds (of Oldsmobile fame) in 1915.

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

The paper clip was patented by Norwegian inventor Johan Vaaler in 1899. Because Norway had no patent law at the time, he had to travel to Germany where he received his patent in 1900. His U.S. Patent was granted in 1901.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first commercial vacuum cleaner was so large it was mounted on a wagon. People threw parties in their homes so guests could watch the new device do its job.

In 1889, the first coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank. Soon, "pay phones" were installed in stores, hotels, saloons, and restaurants, and their use soared. Local calls using a coin-operated phone in the U.S. cost only 5 cents everywhere until 1951.

Ferdinand Porsche, who later went on to build sports cars bearing his own name, designed the original 1936 Volkswagen.

The coffee filter was invented by Melissa Bentz, in Germany in 1908. She pierced holes in a tin container, put a circular piece of absorbent paper in the bottom of it and put her creation over a coffee pot.

The classic toy wagon was designed by Antonio Pasin, who founded his company in 1918. Pasin wanted to give his wagons a modern flair, and chose the word "radio" for what was then a new form of communication, and "flyer" for the wonder of flight — hence, "Radio Flyer."

The Chinese invented eyeglasses. Marco Polo reported seeing many pairs worn by the Chinese as early as 1275, 500 years before lens grinding became an art in the West.

The British import Spirograph was introduced in the United States in 1967 by Kenner and has racked up millions of dollars in sales. It was invented by a British electronics engineer, Denys Fisher, who was inspired to create the toy while doing research on a new design for bomb detonators for NATO.

Eli Whitney made no money from the cotton gin because he did not have a valid patent on it.

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

Dr. John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida, invented mechanical refrigeration in 1851. He patented his device on May 6, 1851. There is a statue which honors this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

In 1966, Elliot Handler, one of the co-founders of Mattel, Inc. and part of the Barbie doll empire, was the inventor of Hot Wheels®. Handler experimented with axles and rotating wheels being attached to tiny model cars. The innovative gravity-powered car he developed had special low-friction styrene wheels. Hot Wheels® have been clocked at speeds of up to 300 miles per hour.

Bavarian immigrant Charles August Fey invented the first three-reel automatic payout slot machine, the Liberty Bell, in San Francisco in 1899.

According to U.S. law, a patent may not be granted on a useless invention, on a method of doing business, on mere printed matter, or on a device or machine that will not operate. Even if an invention is novel or new, a patent may not be obtained if the invention would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the same area at the time of the invention.

Fifteen years after its invention in 1876, there were five million phones in America. Fifteen years after its invention, more than 33 million wireless phones were in the U.S.

Phone service was established at the White House one year after its invention. President Rutherford B. Hayes was the first to have phone service (1877-81).

Western Electric invented the loudspeaker which was initially called "loud-speaking telephone."

Carbonated beverages became popular in 1832 after John Mathews invented an apparatus for charging water with carbon dioxide gas.

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

Teflon was discovered in 1938.

Games Slayter, a Purdue graduate, invented fiberglass.

A machine has been invented that can read printed English books aloud to the blind, and it can do so at speed half again as fast as normal speech.

A device invented as a primitive steam engine by the Greek engineer Hero, about the time of the birth of Christ, is used today as a rotating lawn sprinkler.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

The guillotine was originally called a louisette. Named for Antoine Louis, the French surgeon who invented it. It became known as the guillotine for Joseph Ignace Guillotin, the French physician who advocated it as a more merciful means of execution than the noose or ax.

The parachute was invented by Leonardo da Vinci in 1515.

The same man who led the attack on the Alamo, Mexican Military General, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, is also credited with the invention of chewing gum.

In 1916, Jones Wister of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania invented a rifle for shooting around corners. It had a curved barrel and periscopic sights.

Craven Walker invented the lava lamp, and its contents are colored wax and water.

The alarm clock was not invented by the Marquis de Sade, as some suspect, but rather by a man named Levi Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire, in 1787. Perversity, though, characterized his invention from the beginning. The alarm on his clock could ring only at 4 am. Rumor has it that Hutchins was murdered by his wife at 4:05 am on a very dark and deeply cold New England morning.

The waffle iron was invented August 24, 1869.

The toothbrush was invented in 1498.

In the early 1800s, a French silk weaver called Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a way of automatically controlling the warp and weft threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes in a string of cards.

The first words that Thomas A. Edison spoke into the phonograph were, "Mary had a little lamb."

Four wheel roller skates were invented by James L. Plimpton in 1863. Can you guess where?

Dr. Jonas Salk developed the vaccine for polio in 1952, in New York (aaah!).

Electrical hearing aids were invented in 1901 by Miller R. Hutchinson, who was (you guessed it) from New York.

The corkscrew was invented by M.L. Bryn, also of New York, in 1860.

John Greenwood, also of New York invented the dental drill in 1790.

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

Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for the "New York Tribune" from 1851 to 1862.

Early Egyptians wore sandals made from woven papyrus leaves.

When Thomas Jefferson became U.S. President in 1801, 20 percent of all people in the young nation were slaves.

If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard" foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.

Jahangir, a 17th-century Indian Mughal ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.

When he resigned in 1923 because of illegal behavior in the Teapot Dome Affair, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by President Harding. In 1931, Fall was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to defraud.

Napoleon, the famous French general, was not born in France. He was born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.

When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.

Today the painting hangs in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, France.

Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pinewood, 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) in the year 1506.

The Fish Bowl was invented by Countess Dubarry, Mistress of King Louis XV (Born 1710 Died 1774)

It is estimated that a few years after Columbus discovered the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.

Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.

Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.

In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.

Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.

The first aerial photograph was taken from a balloon during the U.S. civil war.

It was only after 440 A.D. that December 25 was celebrated as the birth date of Jesus Christ.

There was a "pony express" in Persia many centuries before Christ. Riders on this ancient circuit, wearing special colored headbands, delivered the mails across the vast stretch of Asia Minor, sometimes riding for hundreds of miles without a break.

High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.

The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.

In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate - on the basis of positional probability - where enemy submarines might surface.

During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

During the Spanish American War in 1898 there were 45 stars on the American flag.

During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.

During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.

During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.

During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.

General Henry Heth (1825-1888) leading a confederate division in the Battle of Gettysburg, was hit in the head by a Union bullet, but his life was saved because he was wearing a hat two sizes too large, with newspaper folded inside the sweatband. The paper deflected the bullet, and the general, unconscious for 30 hours, recovered and lived another 25 years.

The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle—made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was considered more valuable than gold.

After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. These he gathered together, crucified, covered in pitch (tar), and burnt alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.

India tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974.

A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.

The Korean War began on June 25, 1950.

Socrates committed suicide by drinking poison hemlock.

There were 57 countries involved in World War II.

Seat belts became mandatory on U.S. cars on March 1, 1968.

Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 A.D.

Ishi had made it very clear before he died that he did not want to be autopsied. However, his wishes were ignored and his body was autopsied and the brain removed and sent to the Smithsonian, where scientists were collecting brains for a study of brain size and race. After 83 years, the Smithsonian is finally returning the brain of Ishi to his closest relatives so they can bury his remains.

In the 15th century, scholars in China compiled a set of encyclopedia that contained 11,095 volumes.

Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.