Walter Brennan started out in films as a stuntman. He began playing old men at age 32 after his teeth were knocked out in a mob scene.

On the first neon sign, the word "neon" was spelled out in red by Dr. Perley G. Nutting, 15 years before neon signs became widely used commercially.

During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.

The phrase "To not budge an inch" is from Will Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, "Induction," Scene 1. This phrase was first uttered by the drunken tinker Christopher Sly. Sly's refusal to budge altered what had been a neutral verb up until then to a negation, according to word researcher Michael Macrone. As he points out in his book, Brush Up ...Read more

The ball on top of a flagpole is called a "truck."

The bumblebee does not die when it stings – it can sting again and again. In bumblebee hives, the entire colony, except for the queen, dies at the end of each summer. Each year, an entirely new colony of bees must be produced.

According to the Recruitment Code of the U.S. Navy, anyone "bearing an obscene and indecent" tattoo will be rejected.

When baby opossum are born, they are so small that an entire litter can fit in a tablespoon. They live inside their mother's pouch for three months before climbing out and riding on her back.

Hit tunes of the Baby Boomer era are being used (or overused) as advertising jingles. The tip of the pop-hit ice berg include Carly Simon's "Anticipation" for Heinz ketchup, Frank Sinatra's "My Way" for Kids' Cuisine, The Village People's "Macho Man" for Old El Paso, The Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry" for Johnson & Johnson hair detangler, ...Read more

It depends on how you define "better". Coke drinkers are more likely to have graduated college and speak more than one language. Coke people prefer things like sushi, and might have tasted caviar. Pepsi drinkers prefer American snacks. Coke drinkers read the New York Times, while Pepsi drinkers read the USA Today. Coke drinkers are more likely ...Read more

Theodore Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to ride in an automobile.

Agatha Christie claimed she did most of her plotting for her books while sitting in a bathtub munching on apples.

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

The average male adult can bench-press 88 percent of his body weight, having 70 to 80 pounds of muscle.

Key lime, a yellow lime with a bitter rather than sour taste, was named after the Florida Keys. Key lime pie became popular in the 1950s – a custardlike pie made with lime juice, condensed milk, and eggs and served in a pastry shell.

Sports historians have traced roller skating to the early 1800s when an unknown Dutchman sought to find a warm-weather equivalent to ice skating. He decided to attach wooden disks to shoes; after a short period of refinement, roller skating became a popular pastime in Holland. The sport attained even greater popularity among the North American ...Read more

About 43 million years ago, the Pacific plate took a northwest turn, creating a bend where new upheavals initiated the Hawaiian Ridge. Major islands formed included Kauai, 5.1 million years old, Maui, 1.3 million years old, and Hawaii, a youngster at only 800,000 years old.

Anthropologists believe that people have been making and wearing shoes for more than 10,000 years. The Egyptians wore sandals woven from papyrus leaves.

Dr Joel Poinsett, the first US ambassador to Mexico, brought the plant back in 1828. Mexicans had long revered poinsettia because it resembled the Star of Bethlehem.

Besides exchanging gifts they eat turkey on Christmas Day, and in some places there are even community Christmas trees. They decorate their houses with evergreens and mistletoe, and in some homes Christmas carols are sung gaily.