We bid a hearty welcome to the millions of new earthlings who arrive in August, the month with the highest birth rate. You are the proud results of a joyous Christmas season… even if your parents did not put up Christmas trees. 19.5% of new August babies are born in India and 11.6% in China, [...]
Category: did you know
The characters in the movies Psycho and Silence of the Lambs are based on a real person, Ed Gein. He died on July 26, 1984 of respiratory failure in the Mendota Mental Health Institute, Wisconsin. His victims were not so lucky. Ed was a grave robber who had developed a taste for slicing up people. [...]
It is the fire of life. It can be kind but it can get angry. But it never throws its weight around. It is the sun. And although it is 330,000 more massive than earth and contains 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, it is small in comparison with some other stars. The [...]
In 1976 Mrs Janine Swift of Los Angeles married a 50lb (22kg) rock in a ceremony that was witnessed by 20 people. With a divorce rate of about 50% in the West, it is doubtful that she’s still married to the rock. In fact, the chance of a first marriage ending in divorce is between [...]
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers to prevent them from drawing the renowned English longbow in the future. The famous weapon was made of the English Yew tree, and the act drawing the longbow was [...]
Valentine’s Day originates from the ancient Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia, which was celebrated on 15 February in honor of the gods Lupercus and Faunus, as well as the legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. During the festival, young men would draw the names of women from a box, and each couple would be [...]
In 1637 Rene Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher, predicted that it would never be possible to make a machine that thinks as humans do. That was a rather astonishing observation considering that the concept of the analytical machine was devised by Charles Babbage only two hundred years later. Babbage never completed his analytical engine [...]
What runs all around the yard without moving? The fence What is it that someone else has to take before you can get it? Your photograph When asked how old she was, Suzie replied, “In two years I will be twice as old as I was five years ago.” How old is she now? 12 [...]
Tobacco is a $200 billion industry, producing six trillion cigarettes a year – about 1,000 cigarettes for each person on earth. And this is what you’ll find in cigarettes: ~ Formaldehyde, which embalmer use to preserve dead bodies; ~ Toluene, which is commonly used as an ingredient in paint thinner; ~ Acetone, an active ingredient [...]
Celebrated annually as a public holiday on the first Monday in September, Labor Day signifies the end of summer for many in the USA. The first Labor Day, however, was held on a Tuesday in 1882. In “pursuit of happiness” through shorter hours and higher pay, printers were the first to go on a strike, [...]
