The ancient occupation of the "Gold Beater" was one who flattened out gold nuggets by hammering them in between the outside membrane of the large intestine from an ox (known as "Goldbeater skin") to produce the gold leaf used in decorative gilding. The adhesive used to attach this metal to paper or plaster, in ancient times and still today, is.....Read more

The White House receives approximately 6,000 visitors a day and has 6 floors (two are basements), 132 rooms, 32 bathrooms, 147 windows, 412 doors, 12 chimneys, 3 elevators, and 7 staircases. It takes 570 gallons of white paint to cover the outside.

Salt Lake City, Utah, gets an average of 17 inches more snow annually than Fairbanks, Alaska. Santa Fe, New Mexico, gets an average of 9 inches more snow each year than New Haven, Connecticut.

The Bear Road Elementary School children in North Syracuse were instrumental in getting the Governor to sign a bill making the Apple Muffin the official New York State muffin.

France is the largest Western European country. Its area is slightly less than twice the size of Colorado.

In 1962, University of Utah student Nolan Bushnell received his first exposure to video games, playing Spacewar in the University's computer lab. Bushnell spent the next 7 years trying to reproduce Spacewar on a smaller, less expensive computer. When it was finally completed in 1971, Bushnell's Spacewar variation (dubbed "Computer Space"), ...Read more

The country with the most post offices is India with over 152,792, compared with just over 38,000 in the United States.

The term "sandlot baseball" originated in San Francisco. The term dates to the 1860s when a cemetery that stands where the Civic Center is now located was converted into a park. A sand hill was leveled to create a 17-acre park, which became known as the sandlots.

Libra the Scales is the only inanimate symbol in the zodiac.

Alchemy refers to both an early protoscience and an early philosophical discipline, both combining elements of chemistry, metallurgy, physics, medicine, astrology, semiotics, mysticism, spiritualism, and art. Alchemy has been practiced in Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Persia, India, and China, in Classical Greece and Rome, in the Islamic ...Read more

After signing a major label deal with Elektra Records in 1984, Metallica released a new album entitled Master of Puppets on February 21, 1986. The album is regarded by many fans as their finest work and is considered by some to be the greatest heavy metal album of all time. Despite the fact that no singles were ever released for the album...Read more

In the city of Reykjavik, Iceland, one can see the stars eighteen hours a day during the heart of the winter. During the summer, sunlight is visible 24 hours a day.

Variations in color in pearls are still a mystery, but some experts believe that high water temperatures contribute a golden cast to some pearls.

Antarctica is the only continent without reptiles or snakes.

In A Little Book of The Green Man Mike Harding gives some examples of similar figures in Borneo, Nepal and India: the earliest is a foliate head from an 8th century Jain temple in Rajasthan. He also notes that heads from Lebanon and Iraq can be dated to the 2nd century and that there are early Romanesque foliate heads in 11th century ...Read more

Perhaps not for the casual player -- The longest recorded Monopoly game was 1,680 hours. That's over 70 days.

The world's fastest reptile (measured on land) is the spiny-tailed iguana of Costa Rica. It has been clocked at 21.7 miles per hour.

Specializing in showing only newsreels, the Embassy Theatre opened in New York City in November 1929. It proved to be popular for a time, and was the first theater of its kind.

Christmas trees are known to have been popular in Germany as far back as the sixteenth century. In England, they became popular after Queen Victoria's husband Albert, who came from Germany, made a tree part of the celebrations at Windsor Castle. In the United States, the earliest known mention of a Christmas tree is in the diary of a German who ...Read more

The symbols of Kwanzaa includes crops (mzao) which represents the historical roots of African-Americans in agriculture and also the reward for collective labor. The mat (mkeka) lays the foundation for self- actualization. The candle holder (kinara) reminds believers in the ancestral origins in one of 55 African countries. Corn/maize (muhindi) ...Read more