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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 is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear. Any cup-shaped object placed over the ear produces the same effect.

There are 52 cards in a standard deck and there are 52 weeks in a year. There are 4 suits in a deck of cards and 4 seasons in a year. If you add the values of all the cards in a deck (jack=11 queen=12, etc.) you get a total of 365 the same as the number of days in a year.

The Douglas DC-3 passenger airplane was the first to make a profit carrying people.

The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book which does not mention the name of God.

Carnegie Mellon University offers bag piping as a major. The instructor James McIntosh, who is a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and who began bag piping at the age 11.

How valuable is the penny you found laying on the ground? If it takes just a second to pick it up, a person could make $36.00 per hour just picking up pennies.

The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

When wearing a Kimono, Japanese women wear socks called "Tabi". The big toe of the sock is separated from the rest of the toes, like a thumb from a mitten.

Cleveland spelled backwards is "DNA level C".

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, Mass., 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."I did it to keep from starving." - Don Featherstone (flamingo creator)

acetwothreefourfivesixseveneightninetenjackqueenking Excluding the joker, if you add up the letters in all the names of the cards in the deck (Ace, two, three, four,...,king). the total number of letters is 52, the same as the number of cards in the deck.

George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state of the U.S as of a few years ago.

The largest crossword puzzle ever published had 2631 clues across and 2922 clues down. It took up 16 sq. feet of space.

The hardest crossword puzzles according to experts appear in two British papers: "The London Times" and "Observer." Only few readers can complete these and it takes them 2 to 3 hours. The record time for completing a "Times" puzzle was an incredible 3 minutes and 45 seconds by a British diplomat named Roy Dean in 1970.

Some 30,000,000 Americans slave over crosswords in newspaper, journals, and paperback books.

The first crossword puzzle appeared in 1913 in an American paper called "World." It was devised by its editor Arthur Wynne. It was of 32 words and diamond shaped. There were no black boxes in the puzzle.

The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons.

Success magazine recently declared bankruptcy.

Zip code 12345 is assigned to General Electric in Schenectady, NY.

If you had enough water to fill one million goldfish bowls, you could fill an entire stadium.

The external tank on the space shuttle is not painted.

203 million dollars is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.

Eskimos never gamble.

The San Francisco Cable cars are the only mobile National Monuments.

If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher.

The Chinese national anthem is called "the march of volunteers."

The "Calabash" pipe, most often associated with Sherlock Holmes, was not used by him until William Gillette (an American) portrayed Holmes on stage. Gillette needed a pipe he could keep in his mouth while he spoke his lines.

The Hoover Dam was built to last 2,000 years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years.

The St. Louis Gateway Arch had a projected death toll while it was being built. No one died.

If you were born in Los Alamos, New Mexico during the Manhattan project (where they made the atomic bomb), your birth place is listed as a post office box in Albuquerque.

The numbers on opposite sides of a die always add up to 7.

On average, there are 333 squares of toilet paper on a roll.

Public typists work at typewriters charging about 14 cents per page. On a good day, a public typist earns about $3.50.

People generally say there are 365 days in a year. By a year, I mean this is the time period it takes the earth to travel around the sun: 365 days. Actually, however, it takes the Earth 365.25 days to make this trip. In other words, for every year we gain one-fourth of a day and every for years we gain an extra day. If nothing was done about this, our calendar would move backwards one full day every four years in relation to our seasons.

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

The surface area of an average-sized brick is 79 cm squared.

In Britain’s House of Commons, the government and opposition sides of the House are separated by two red lines. The distance between the lines is two swords’ lengths, a reminder of just how seriously the Brits used to take their politics.

In the name of art, Chris Burden arranged to be shot by a friend while another person photographed the event. He sold the series of pictures to an art dealer. He made $1750 on the deal, but his hospital bill was $84,000.

It took Leo Tolstoy six years to write "War & Peace".

Calvin and Hobbes: Hobbes originally had pads on his hands and feet but Bill Waterson (the creator) found them too distracting and removed them.

Parker Brothers prints about 50 billion dollars worth of Monopoly money in one year.

On the new hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.

The Boeing 767 aircraft is a collection of 3.1 million parts from 800 different suppliers around the world: fuselage parts from Japan, center wing section from Southern California, flaps from Italy.

Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from cannons. At last report, thirty-one of these have been killed.

The largest Great White Shark ever caught measured 37 feet and weighed 24,000 pounds. It was found in a herring weir in New Brunswick in 1930. The harmless Whale Shark, holds the title of largest fish, with the record being a 59-footer captured in Thailand in 1919.

The oldest domestic cat was a male named Grandpa that lived to be 34 years, 2 months, and 4 hours.

The Angel of the North, Gateshead, UK, with a wingspan of 177 ft/54 m, is the largest sculpture of an angel in the world.

The surface speed record on the moon is 10.56 miles per hour. It was set in a lunar rover.

The oldest public park in the U.S. is Boston Common.

The Sahara desert has the highest sand dunes.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world.

The CN Tower, in Toronto, is the tallest free standing structure in the world.

Tom Wolfe was paid $5 million for the film rights to his novel, Bonfire of the Vanities, the most ever earned by an author.

When stuntman and parachutist Dar Robinson leaped from the ledge of the 1,170 foot high CN Tower in Toronto, he was paid $150,000, the most ever for a single stunt.

Most insects used in a film: 22 million bees in The Swarm.

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.

The most powerful earthquake to strike the United States occurred in 1811 in New Madrid, Missouri. The quake shook more than one million square miles, and was felt as far as 1,000 miles away.

Diane Sheer holds the record for licking the most stamps in a five minute period. She slobbered on 225 of the little things.

In 1935, Jesse Owens set six track and field world records in less than one hour.

The greatest snowfall ever in a single storm was 189 inches at the Mount Shasta Ski Bowl in February, 1959.

The largest stained-glass window in the world is at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. It can be seen on the American Airlines terminal building and measures 300 feet long by 23 feet high.

The largest pyramid in the world is not in Egypt but in Cholulu de Rivadahia, Mexico. It is 177 feet tall and covers 25 acres. It was built sometime between 6 and 12 AD.

The largest movie theater in the world, Radio City Music Hall in New York City, opened in December, 1932. It originally had 5,945 seats.

New York City has the most skyscrapers of any city in the world with 140. Chicago is a distant second at 68. The term "skyscraper" technically describes all habitable buildings with a height of more than 500 ft (152m).

Lang Martin balanced seven golf balls vertically without adhesive at Charlotte, NC on 9 February 1980.

The company, Kodak, is the largest user of silver.

The first skyscraper in the United States was built in Chicago.

The greatest measured water discharge was an estimated 740,000-1,000,000 gallons by the Giant Geyser, in Yellowstone National Park. However, this estimate made in the 1950s, was only a rough calculation.

The total area of Denver International Airport is 53 square miles, twice the size of Manhattan Island, New York, and larger than the city boundary of Boston, Miami or San Francisco.

Jackie Bibby holds the record for sitting in a bathtub with the most live rattlesnakes. He sat in a tub with 35 of them.

The largest incense stick ever made was almost fifteen-feet long and six-inches thick.

The Corinthian columns in the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, are among the tallest in the world at 75 feet high, 8 feet in diameter, 25 feet in circumference, each built of 70,000 bricks.

Christianity has over a billion followers. Islam is next in representation with half this number.

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

As of September 1998, the highest recorded mileage for a car was 1,615,000 miles for a 1966 Volvo P-1800.

The escalator in the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia is the longest freestanding escalator in the world, rising 160 feet or approximately eight stories in height.

The mother of all mothers? The largest number of children born to one woman is recorded at 69. From 1725-1765 a Russian peasant woman gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets.

The longest bout of sneezing recorded was by Donna Griffith. It began in January 1981 and continued until September 1983. It lasted for 978 days, and 4,687,514 gesundheits.

The deepest canyon in the USA is Kings Canyon, East Fresno, CA, which runs through Sierra and Sequoia National Forests. The deepest point, that measures 8,200 ft, is in the Sierra National Park Forest section of the canyon.

Behram, an Indian thug, holds the record for most murders by a single individual. He strangled 931 people between 1790-1840 with a piece of yellow and white cloth, called a ruhmal. The most by a woman is 610, by Countess Erzsebet Bathory of Hungary.

The Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah is the biggest manmade hole on Earth. It is more than a half-mile deep and 2.5 miles across. An astronaut can see this hole from the space shuttle with his bare eyes.

The longest street in the world is Yonge Street, which starts in Toronto, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, and winds its way north then west to end at the Ontario-Manitoba-Minnesota border.

Bernard Clemmens of London managed to sustain a fart for an officially recorded time of 2 minutes 42 seconds.

The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people.

The smallest volcano in the world is Taal.

The Stratosphere Hotel and Casino is 1,149 feet tall, making it the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.

At the turn of the last millennium, Dublin Ireland had the largest slave market in the world, run by the Vikings.

Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

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

Did you know that the beam of light shining from the top of the Luxor hotel is the most powerful in the world. The equivalent of 40 billion candle power, the beam is visible to airplanes from a distance of 250 miles.

The duration record for a face-slapping contest was set in Kiev, USSR, in 1931 when a draw was declared between Bezbordny and Goniusch after 30 hours.

The Bible is the number one shoplifted book in America.

The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has the largest water clock in North America.

Never mind what you saw in the film "The Poseidon Adventure." The biggest wave on record, reported by a reliable source, was estimated to have attained a height of 112 feet. It was measured, at some distance, I hope, by a tanker traveling between Manila and San Diego in 1933. The wind was blowing at 70 mph at the time.

The biggest hog ever recorded was a creature named Big Boy who weighed in at 1, 904 pounds.

France had the first supermarket in the world. It was started by relatives of the people who started the Texas Big Bear supermarket chain.

The largest school in the world is a k-12 school in the Philippines, with an enrollment of about 25,000.

The biggest bell is the "Tsar Kolokol" cast in the Kremlin in 1733. It weighs 216 tons, but alas, is cracked and has never been rung. The bell was being stored in a Moscow shed which caught fire. To "save" it, caretakers decided to throw water on the bell. This did not succeed, as the water hit the superheated metal and a giant piece immediately cracked off, destroying the bell forever.

In 1968, Steve McPeak traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on a unicycle. The trip took him six weeks, but he planned for the long bike journey. He brought an extra tire and a spare heinie.

Toronto, Ontario was home to the biggest swimming pool in the world in 1925. It held 2000 swimmers, and was 300ft x 75ft. It is still in operation.

At 12 years old, an African named Ernest Loftus made his first entry in his diary and continued everyday for 91 years.

On July 31, 1994, Simon Sang Sung of Singapore turned a single piece of dough into 8,192 noodles in 59.29 seconds!

The largest web-footed bird is the albatross.

Howard Kinsey and Mrs. R. Roark, during a game of tennis, batted the ball back and forth 2001 consecutive times.

The highest wind velocity ever recorded in the United States was 231 miles per hour, on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, in 1934.

The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was 99 hours long.

The Tokyo World Lanes Bowling Center is the largest bowling establishment in the world. It has 252 lanes and one very tired pinsetter.

The word "puppy" comes from the French poupee, meaning "doll."

Samuel Clemens, the creator of the adventuresome Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, took "Mark Twain" as his pen name. This was not because he WAS a riverboat captain, but because he once wanted very badly to be one.

"Doubleheader," which refers to two baseball games played back to back, was originally a railroad term that referred to two engines in a switching yard hooked up back to back on a single train. The train could also be called a "two-header."

Would you believe that "on the nose" comes from radio? When broadcasting began, directors had to communicate with people on the air without making noise, so they developed hand signals. Time is always a key element in live broadcasts. The person at the mike needed to know if the program was on schedule. If things were "just right," the director signaled with a finger to the side of his or her nose.

"Acre" literally means the amount of land plowable in one day.

Ukulele means "little jumping flea" in Hawaiian.

The abbreviation e.g. stands for "Exempli gratia", or "For example."

A phrenologist feel and interpret skull features.

A notaphile collects bank notes.

Xenophobia is the fear of strangers or foreigners.

The name of the point at which condensation begin is called the dew point.

A male witch is called a warlock.

Women who wink at men are known as "nictitating" women.

A deltiologist collects postcards.

Scatologists are experts who study poop (a.k.a. crap, dung, dookie, dumps, feces, excrement, etc...).

The explative, "Holy Toledo," refers to Toledo, Spain, which became an outstanding Christian cultural center in 1085.

The Ouija board is named for the French and German words for yes - oui and ja.

The study of nose picking is called "rhinotillexomania."

The word constipation (con sta PAY shun) comes from a Latin word that means "to crowd together."

A greenish facial tint has long been associated with illness, as suggested by the phrase "green around the gills." As a person who is very envious is considered by many folks to be unwell, these people have been described as "green (or sick) with envy."

Ekistics is the science of human settlements, including city or community planning and design.

A "clue" originally meant a ball of thread. This is why one is said to "unravel" the clues of a mystery.

The American Heritage Dictionary was once banned from the Eldon, Missouri library because it contained 39 "objectionable" words.

Hoi polloi is a Greek phrase meaning "the many". Hoi polloi are the masses.

Graffito is the little-used singular of the much used plural word graffiti.

"Yakka" means "hard work" in Australian slang.

"Toboggan" is derived from the Algonquin language and loosely meant "instrument with which to drag a cord."

"Romanji" is a system of writing Japanese using the Latin alphabet.

"Turnip" used to be a U.S. slang expression for a pocket watch.

"To whinge" is Australian slang for "to complain constantly."

"Mrs." is the abbreviation of Mistress, which originally was a title and form of address for a married woman. It was always capitalized.

"Lobster shift" is a colloquial term for the night shift of a newspaper staff.

"Kemo Sabe" reportedly means "soggy shrub" in Navajo.

"I am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

"Hagiology" is the branch of literature dealing with the lives and legends of saints.

"E" is the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet, "Q" is the least.

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

Hairy people are called "hirsute."