More than one million stray dogs and over 500,000 stray cats live in the New York City metropolitan area.

The eggplant has many names worldwide. In addition to "eggplant," it is called aubergine, brinjal, melanzana, garden egg, and patlican.

The smallest visible sunspots have an area of 500 million square miles, about fifty times the size of Africa. The largest sunspots have an area of about 7,000 million square miles.

The first "braces" were constructed by Pierre Fauchard in 1728. Fauchard's "braces" consisted of a flat strip of metal, which was connected to teeth by pieces of thread.

Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) currently published by Wizards of the Coast. The original Dungeons & Dragons, designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, was first published in 1974 by Gygax's company, Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). Originally derived from tabletop games played with paper, ...Read more

Considering the company the Mustang has kept, forty-two years is quite a feat. Consider: The original Model-T only lasted 20 years. The Galaxie, the Falcon and Fairlane (which shared floor space with the Mustang) are lost to the winds of history. The competition have taken hits too, with the Camaro, Firebird, Challenger, and Barracuda all ...Read more

ROT13 ("rotate by 13 places", sometimes hyphenated ROT-13) is a simple substitution cipher used in online forums. ROT13 has been described as the "Usenet equivalent of a magazine printing the answer to a quiz upside down". ROT13 is its own inverse; that is, to undo ROT13, the same algorithm is applied, so the same action can be used for encoding...Read more

The Romans had three words for kissing: basium was the kiss exchanged by acquaintances; osculum, the kiss between close friends; and suavium, the kiss between lovers.

In ancient times, the traditional color of bridal gowns was red. The wife of Napoleon III broke the tradition and wore a white gown. Then, brides began wearing white gowns (that were worn only once) as a symbol of their wealth.

A normal cow's stomach has four compartments: the rumen, the recticulum (storage area), the omasum (where water is absorbed), and the abomasum ( the only compartment with digestive juices).

Henry Waterman invented the modern elevator in 1850. He intended it to transport barrels of flour.

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.