An ant can lift 50 times its own weight, which is equivalent to a human being pulling a 10-ton trailer.

L. Frank Baum, the author of the "The Wizard of Oz," couldn't swim. He always smoked a cigar when he was wading in the water so he could tell when he was getting in too deep.

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

Butter is made from the milk of cows, sheep, goats, donkeys, horses, water buffaloes, and yaks. Camel's milk has very small fat globules and is difficult to churn into butter. Butter has been colored yellow since the 14th century.

Several of the Bond girls namely Ursula Andress, Shirley Eaton, Eunice Gayson, and Claudine Auger were unable to match an alluring voice to their sexy physical attributes. For each of them, their lines were dubbed by aspirant actress Nikki van der Zyl, who later left the film industry to practice as a barrister. On Doctor No, van der Zyl did ...Read more

A cluster or bunch of bananas is called a hand. Individual bananas are called fingers.

In regions of India where the soil is red, elephants take on a permanent pink tinge because they regularly spray dust over their bodies to protect themselves against insects.

A type of lizard, the chuckwalla, escapes pursuers by crawling into a crack in a rock and inflating its body with air so that it is wedged tightly into the crack and can't be pulled out.

Mary Shelley always maintained that she derived the name "Frankenstein" from a dream-vision, yet the name and what it means has been a source of many speculations. Literally, in German, the name Frankenstein means stone of the Franks. Frankenstein is the former name of Zbkowice Slaskie, a city in Silesia. There is a town called Frankenstein in ...Read more

Javelinas are very noisy animals among each other and squeal, snort, woof, and click their teeth to communicate.

As of 1940, a total of 90 patents had been taken out on shaving mugs.

The land area of the country of Greece is slightly smaller than Alabama.

There is no proof that Phineas Taylor Barnum ever said "there's a sucker born every minute." He did, however, say that "every crowd has a silver lining," and acknowledged that "the public is wiser than many imagine."

One of the deadliest diseases in the world is Japanese River Fever, with a mortality rate of more than 50 percent. It is found only near rivers in certain areas of Japan, China, Korea, Burma, and India.

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

Migrating geese fly in a V-formation to save energy. A goose's wings churn the air and leave an air current behind. In the flying wedge, each bird is in position to get a lift from the current left by the bird ahead. It is easier going for all, except the leader. During a migration, geese are apt

Dead sponges can resist bacterial decay for more than five years when submerged in fresh water.

The Veil nebula was formed by an explosion which took place over 30,000 years ago, when the first people lived on Earth.

The U.S. Mint was authorized to produce one-cent copper coins on April 2, 1792. Originally, there were four designs struck: the "chain" cent, the "wreathed" cent, the "flowing hair" cent, and the "liberty" cent.

One way birds learn is by trial and error. Scientists have discovered that many of their learned motor patterns are linked to appetite. For instance, young doves must learn to drink water. The pecking of domestic chicks improves about 30 hours after hatching. They snatch up a grain with increased efficiency. Simple trial-and-error learning is ...Read more