The term "hush money," meaning a bribe to keep someone form revealing scandalous or damaging information, was first used in the early 1700s.

The Xanadu Houses were a series of experimental houses built to showcase computers and automation in the home. The architectural project began in 1979, and during the early 1980s three houses were built in Kissimmee, Florida, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, and Gatlinburg, Tennessee in the United States. The houses were notable for being built with ...Read more

A fly can react to something it sees and change direction in 30 milliseconds.

Surprisingly, there was a time that the Vatican owned shares of the Watergate complex in Washington D.C., the Pan American building in Paris, and the Hilton hotel in Rome.

The major themes of Heinlein's work were social: radical individualism, libertarianism, religion, the relationship between physical and emotional love, and speculation about unorthodox family relationships. His iconoclastic approach to these themes has led to wildly divergent perceptions of his works. His 1959 novel Starship Troopers was ...Read more

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.

The Twinkie was invented on April 6, 1930 by bakery manager James Dewar, making thrifty use of shortcake pans that were usually only used during the strawberry season. Twinkies originally contained a banana cream filling, but this was replaced with a vanilla cream filling during a banana shortage

A "duffer" is Australian slang for a cattle thief.

Sherwood Schwartz, who wrote both The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island TV themes, reported that he earns about $60,000 each year from those two theme songs alone.

The nutritional value of squash and pumpkin seeds improves with age. These seeds are among the few foods that increase in nutritional value as they decompose.

The story of Don Juan has been told over 35 times in the movies. The 1926 version, starring John Barrymore holds a place in movie history, as Don Juan (Barrymore) plants 191 kisses on various females during the course of the film, an average of one every 53 seconds.

In southern France, some people burn a log in their homes from Christmas Eve until New Year’s Day. This stems from an ancient tradition in which farmers would use part of the log to ensure a plentiful harvest the following year.

Water is so scarce in the arid regions of China that, in the grasslands, the people never take baths, and sometimes must wash their faces in yak's milk.

The tarantula spends most of its life within its burrow, which is an 18-inch vertical hole with an inch-wide opening. When male tarantulas are between the ages of 5 to 7 years, they leave the burrow in search of a female, usually in the early fall. This migration actually signals the end of their life cycle. The males mate with as many females ...Read more

The last person to be guillotined in France, Hamida Djandoubi, was executed in 1977.

In 1811, Louisiana was the first state in the U.S. to declare, by statute, English as its official language. It would be 109 years before a second state in the U.S. -- Nebraska -- would issue a constitutional amendment to make English the official state idiom there.

The General Sherman Tree in Sequoia National Park, California, is the largest tree in the world. It weighs more than 6,000 tons.

The now-extinct ancestor of the horse, eohippus, had a short neck, a pug muzzle, and stood no higher than a medium-sized dog.

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.