Hedy Lamarr: Not just a pretty face

Hedy Lamarr wasn't just a beautiful movie star. According to a new play, Frequency Hopping, she was also a shrewd inventor who devised a signal technology that millions of people use every day.

Lamarr—born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Austria in 1914—developed a passion for helping the U.S. military after walking away from an unhappy marriage to an Austrian Fascist weapons manufacturer in 1937. In an attempt to stall her acting career, he had brought her to his business meetings, where she found herself continuously listening to "fat bastards argue antiaircraft this, vacuum tube that," explains Lamarr's character—played by Erica Newhouse—in the play, Frequency Hopping. In the meetings, they had talked about developing detection devices to listen to, and jam, the radio signals that American aircraft and weapons used to communicate with one another; and Lamarr wanted to foil their plans. "Can you guide your torpedo towards an enemy target—or just use radio control period—without being detected? Or jammed?" Lamarr's character asks.

Lamarr realized that by transmitting radio signals along rapidly changing, or "hopping," frequencies, American radio-guided weapons would be far more resilient to detection and jamming. The sequence of frequencies would be known by both the transmitter and receiver ahead of time, but to the German detectors their message would seem like gibberish. "No jammer could detect it, no German code-breaker could decipher a completely random code," she says in the play.

In 1940 after working on the project for several years, Lamarr called on an unlikely invention partner: avant-garde composer George Antheil, 13 years her senior. As the play—which includes a 25-piece robotic orchestra performing one of Antheil's most renowned pieces—makes clear, frequency hopping spread spectrum is based on a musical concept. The frequencies are "carried in waves through space like melodies," Lamarr's character explains.

More broadly, frequency hopping can be compared with aspects of human communication, argues the production's Brooklyn-based playwright and director Elyse Singer, whose other works include Love In The Void (alt.fan.c-love), a play about Courtney Love's Internet postings. Just as the frequencies "hop" to avoid detection, "we send secret codes to each other, shift and hop and avoid, especially in romantic relationships," Singer says. The play explores this theme in the tumultuous relationship that develops between Lamarr and Antheil.

The pair succeeded in patenting their technology, and presented the concept to the National Inventors Council in 1940, but their invention—which used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies—was not well received. "The U.S. Navy said, 'Thank you very much for the patent, Miss Lamarr—we won't be needing your services here in Washington,'" Lamarr's character laments onstage.

The technology, says Singer, was far ahead of its time. Although her ideas were at first ignored, the technology (which she and Antheil patented in 1942) was later used by the military—during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, for example—and more recently, it has been employed in wireless technologies like cell phones. It was eventually recognized in 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored Lamarr with a special Pioneer Award and she became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention's BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award.

Fittingly, Frequency Hopping is itself a highly technological production. In addition to the 25-piece robotic orchestra developed by the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, the play uses a number of special effects. Singer wanted to portray "surrealist-inspired dreams and fantasies," such as objects popping out of bodies, so she incorporated two screens onto the set—one in front of the actors and one behind them. The front screen is transparent, so the actors can perform behind it; Singer explains that it utilizes a special invisible polymer that reflects projected or solid images so that they appear in three dimensions, like holograms.

Singer hopes that these images, which are used to suggest what the characters are thinking, will help the audience peer into their minds. "Being able to project images on two planes helps us to get into Lamarr and Antheil's mindscape, which is really where artists and scientists develop new ideas," she says.

Frequency Hopping runs until June 29 at New York City's 3LD Art & Technology Center. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by calling 212-352-3101 or visiting www.frequencyhopping.net

Bizarre Illegal Immigration techniques

Plenty of inventive (and desperate) people have come up with a number of imaginative schemes for sneaking themselves and others across national borders.

On 2003, Illegal immigrants from India and Pakistan being smuggled from mainland China to Hong Kong were found inside suitcases).

On 2001, a 135-lb. woman was hidden behind the dashboard of a car. The "passenger" might be quite cramped and uncomfortable and the automobile difficult to maneuver after the modifications, but the ruse wouldn't have to be maintained for long — the car could be loaded just out of sight of border agents, driven the short distance to the crossing, and unloaded not far across the other side.



Similarly, another would-be border crosser was caught attempting to enter the U.S. concealed inside a seat occupied by another passenger:

When property manager Ryan Froerer got a call from a realtor to check on a townhouse, he knew something was up. "It was the sickest thing I've ever seen. Just unimaginable that someone could live in that." He couldn't even open the front door. It was blocked from inside. As he finally entered the house, he found about 70,000 empty beer cans.

Inside, he took just a few snapshots to document the scene. Beer cans by the tens of thousands. Mountains of cans burying the furniture. Froerer e-mailed his photos to a couple of friends, who sent them to friends, and so the news spread through the internet.

The water and heat were shut off, apparently on purpose by the tenant, who evidently drank Coors Light beer exclusively for the eight years he lived there. "It's just unbelievable that a human being could live like that", said Froerer.



To all outward appearances, the person who lived in the townhouse was the perfect tenant. He always paid on time and he never complained. He kept a low profile in the neighborhood. The cans were finally recycled for 800 dollars, an estimated 70,000 cans: 24 beers a day for 8 years.

Crazy Old Cigarette Ads

You can have an erection once dead

A death erection (sometimes referred to as "angel lust") is a post-mortem erection which occurs when a male individual dies vertically or face-down – the cadaver remaining in this position. During life, the pumping of blood by the heart ensures a relatively even distribution around the blood vessels of the human body. Once this mechanism has ended, only the force of gravity acts upon the blood. As with any mass, the blood settles at the lowest point of the body and causes edema or swelling to occur; the discoloration caused by this is called lividity.

It's true, Men can breastfeed

The phenomenon of male lactation in humans has become more common in recent years due to the use of medications that stimulate a human male's mammary glands.

Male lactation is most commonly caused by hormonal treatments given to men suffering from prostate cancer. It is also possible for males (and females) to induce lactation through constant massage and simulated 'sucking' of the nipple over a long period of time (months).

You can die on the Toilet

There are many toilet-related injuries and some toilet-related deaths throughout history and in urban legends.

In young boys, one of the most common causes of genital injury is when the toilet seat falls down while using the toilet.

George II of Great Britain died on the toilet on 25 October 1760 from an aortic dissection. According to Horace Walpole's memoirs, King George "rose as usual at six, and drank his chocolate; for all his actions were invariably methodic. A quarter after seven he went into a little closet. His German valet de chambre in waiting heard a noise, and running in, found the King dead on the floor."

Picking one's nose and eating it might be healthy

Mucophagy (literally mucus-eating, also referred as picking one's nose and eating it) is the consumption of the nasal mucus, boogers, and other detritus obtained from nose-picking.

Some research suggests that mucophagy may be a natural and even healthy activity, which exposes the digestive system to bacteria accumulated in the mucus, thereby helping to strengthen the immune system.

Being Stung by Bees: "You get used to it"--Carol Fassbinder-Orth

FINALIST YEAR: 1999

HER FINALIST PROJECT: Reducing mite loads in honeybee colonies, using natural compounds

WHAT LED TO THE PROJECT: Carol Fassbinder-Orth grew up in Elgin, Iowa, where her mother and father owned an apiary featuring 2,000 colonies of bees. A colony has about 50,000 members, meaning Fassbinder-Orth played amidst, and later helped take care of, 100 million of the buzzing creatures. They stung as she drove her truck up to the colonies. They stung as she set up the honey boxes and stung as she took them off. They stung when she administered treatments for parasites. She and her siblings might get stung several times a day. "I can't say that it hurts any less" when it happens all the time, she says, "but you don't react to it as much the more you get stung. You learn how to deal with it."

There was some sweetness amid the stinging. Throughout her school career, Fassbinder-Orth experimented with different natural treatments for honeybee parasites. In high school, she discovered that a compound from the perilla plant could reduce the mite load in a colony by 80 to 90 percent. She entered this result in the 1999 Intel Science Talent Search, and placed fourth. She was thrilled—and surprised. She had taken no advanced placement science classes, and perhaps only a third of her 30-odd Elgin classmates planned to go to college.

THE EFFECT ON HER CAREER: The $20,000 award helped her go to Iowa State to continue studying bees. Fassbinder-Orth then started her PhD studying honeybees at Louisiana State, but eventually she decided to switch from diseased bees to diseased birds—or "avian immunology." She transferred to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she could also work at the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center, a biosafety level 3 facility.

There, she infected birds with the West Nile virus in order to figure out what makes some more susceptible to the disease than others. She took lots of precautions. Still, "it makes you a little nervous when you're giving a syringe full of the West Nile virus to a bird, knowing that if they flinch a little, you could stab yourself," she says. As with bee stings, though, "you get used to it." She worked quickly. She worked efficiently. Even though she'd switched universities, she finished her PhD in five years.

That was important because, all this time, she had a sidekick—a daughter. Being the working mom of a small child is never easy, but "the hardest thing for me was paying for day care and getting by on a graduate student budget," Fassbinder-Orth says. Her husband was also just starting in his career as a park ranger, and worked odd hours (often nights and weekends). So the couple did what they could. They found a day care that opened at 6 A.M. He would pick up a second job; she would teach a night class at a community college and schedule her lab work around all of this. There was little time for anything other than work and family. "I didn't go out with lab mates much," she says. "Lunch often didn't happen." She mentored undergraduates, but if they couldn't respect her time, they were out.

WHAT SHE'S DOING NOW: All this prioritization, however, helped her focus. She had defended her thesis earlier in the week we talked. She passed: "My advisor said it went unusually well."

The day after she defended her thesis, Fassbinder-Orth hopped in her car and drove to her new employer, Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. She had interviewed for a professorship there when she was eight months pregnant with her second child, a son, born this winter. The interviewers could not mention the elephant-size belly in the room, but "I did address it straight on, and I think it did help," says Fassbinder-Orth. She spoke of her experience juggling one child, teaching gigs and lab work, and said, simply, "I can handle this. There isn't a problem." Creighton agreed—she'll be teaching physiology and a new course on the ecology of zoonotic diseases— infections that can transfer between animals and people—this year.

Of course, moving with small kids is never simple. Fassbinder-Orth's four-month-old son screamed in the car for five of the seven hours between Madison and Omaha. But "you get used to it," she says. After all, compared with daily bee stings, a little hollering is nothing.

Strange facts

101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan are the only two Disney cartoon features with both parents that are present and don't die throughout the movie.

142857 is a cyclic number, the numbers of which always appear in the same order but rotated around when multiplied by any number from 1 to 6. 142857 * 2 = 285714 142857 * 3 = 428571 142857 * 4 = 571428 142857 * 5 = 714285 142857 * 6 = 857142

A barnacle has the largest penis of any other animal in the world in relation to its size.

A dragonfly has a lifespan of twenty-four hours.

A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

A flush toilet exists that dates back to 2000 BC.

A fully loaded supertanker traveling at normal speed takes a least twenty minutes to stop.

A hard working adult sweats up to 4 gallons per day. Most of the sweat evaporates before a person realizes it's there, though!

A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second!
A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

A lion's roar can be heard from five miles away.

A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court!

A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

A rhinoceros' horn is made of compacted hair.

A species of earthworm in Australia grows up to 10 feet in length.

A ten-gallon hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.

A walla-walla scene is one where extras pretend to be talking in the background -- when they say "walla-walla" it looks like they are actually talking.

A whale's penis is called a dork.

According to Genesis 1:20-22 the chicken came before the egg.

Actor Tommy Lee Jones and vice-president Al Gore were freshman roommates at Harvard.

After human death, post-mortem rigidity starts in the head and travels to the feet, and leaves the same way it came -- head to toe.

Albert Brooks's real name is Albert Einstein.

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother.

They were both deaf.

Alexander the Great was an epileptic.

Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

Ancient drinkers warded off the devil by clinking their cups.

Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.

Anteaters prefer termites to ants.

Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the mornings!

Armored knights raised their visors to identify themselves when they rode past their king. This custom has become the modern military salute.

Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

Barbie's full name is Barbra Millicent Roberts.

Barbie's measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.

Bela Lugosi died during the filming of "PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE". Director Edward D.

Wood Jr. used a taller relative who held a cape in front of his face so the audience wouldn't know the difference so he could complete filming.

Bingo is the name of the dog on the Cracker Jack box.

Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.

Blueberry Jelly Bellies were created especially for Ronald Reagan.

Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Zimmerman.

Bob May played the Robot on "Lost In Space" (1965-68) and Dick Tufeld was the voice.

Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

Both Hitler and Napoleon were missing one testicle.

Boys who have unusual first names are more likely to have mental problems than boys with
conventional names. Girls don't seem to have this problem.

Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.

Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to SLOW a film down so you could see his moves.

That's the opposite of the norm.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you can't sink in quicksand.

Casey Kasem is the voice of Shaggy on "Scooby-Doo."

Cat urine glows under a black light.

Catgut comes from sheep not cats.

Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

Cheryl Ladd (of Charlie's Angels fame) played the voice, both talking and singing, of Josie in the

70s Saturday morning cartoon "Josie and the Pussycats."

Chop-suey is not a native Chinese dish, it was created in California by Chinese immigrants.

Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan. Mitsubishi built the Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant call Diamond Star.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down -- hence the statement "to get fired."

Clark Gable used to shower more than 4 times a day.

Compact discs read from the inside to the outside edge, the reverse of how a record works.

Crickets hear through their knees.

Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.

Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.

Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.

Despite the hump, a camel's spine is straight.

Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was the physician who set the leg of Lincoln's assassin John Wilkes Booth, and whose shame created the statement for ignominy, "His name is Mudd."

Dr. Seuss and Kurt Vonnegut went to college together. They were even in the same fraternity, where Seuss decorated the fraternity house walls with drawings of his characters.

Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.

During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance.

During World War II, W.C. Fields kept US $50,000 in Germany 'in case the little bastard wins'.

Earth is the only planet not named after a God.

Elvis had a twin brother named Jesse Garon, who died at birth, which is why Elvis' middle name was spelled Aron; in honor of his brother.

Every episode of "Seinfeld" contains at least one Superman.

Every photograph of an American atomic bomb detonation was taken by Harold Edgerton.

Every Swiss citizen is required by law to have a bomb shelter or access to a bomb shelter.

Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie!

Evian (the bottled water) spelled backwards is "naive."

February 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

Flying from London to New York by Concord, due to the time zones crossed, you can arrive 2 hours before you leave.

Former US President Ulysses S. Grant had the boyhood nickname 'Useless'.

Four people played Darth Vader: David Prowse was his body, James Earl Jones did the voice,

Sebastian Shaw was his face and a fourth person did the breathing.

From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size.

George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.

Gerald Ford pardoned Robert E. Lee posthumously of all crimes of treason.

Gilligan of Gilligan's Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show. His first name was Willy. The skipper's real name on Gilligan's Island is Jonas Grumby. It was mentioned once in the first episode on the radio newscast about the wreck. The Professor's real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann's last name was Summers and Mrs. Howell's maiden name was Wentworth.

Halloween took place in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois but almost all the cars in the film had California license plates.

Hara kiri is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."

Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.

Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.

Hindu men believe(d) it to be unluckily to marry a third time. They could avoid misfortune by marrying a tree first. The tree ( his third wife ) was then burnt, freeing him to marry again.

Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

Human hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death.

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete!

Hummingbirds can't walk.

If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

If a surgeon in Ancient Egypt lost a patient while performing an operation, his hands were cut off.

If the population of the Earth continued to increase at its present rate indefinitely, by 3530 A.D. the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the Earth. By 6826 A.D. it would equal the mass of the known universe.

If you are locked in a completely sealed room, you will die of carbon dioxide poisoning before you will die of oxygen deprivation.

If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun. If you don't, you can't see it.

If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion!

If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.

If you multiply 526,315,789,473,684,210 with _any_ number you will always find the original number in the result!

If you pause "Saturday Night Fever" at the "How Deep Is Your Love" rehearsal scene, you will see the camera crew reflected in the dance hall mirror.

If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.

Iguanas, koalas and Komodo dragons all have two penises.

In Ancient Peru, when a woman found an 'ugly' potato, it was the custom for her to push it into the face of the nearest man.

In Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart never said "Play it again, Sam." Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson." Captain Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty," but he did say, "Beam me up, Mr. Scott."

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it's smiling.)

In the 40's, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it 'Bitch.'

In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette.

In the film 'Star Trek : First Contact', when Picard shows Lilly she is orbiting Earth, Australia and Papa New Guinea are clearly visible .. but New Zealand is missing.

It is a criminal offence to drive around in a dirty car in Russia.

It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.

It is illegal to be a prostitute in Siena, Italy, if your name is Mary.

It takes 8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.

It was illegal to sell ET dolls in France because there is a law against selling dolls without human faces.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breath-alyzer to read 0.

Ivory bar soap floating was a mistake. They had been over mixing the soap formula causing excess air bubbles that made it float. Customers wrote and told how much they loved that it floated, and it has floated ever since.

Jacques Cousteau invented scuba gear while in the French resistance during World War II.

James Doohan, who plays Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, is missing the entire middle finger of his right hand.

Jean-Claude Van Damme was the alien in the original "PREDATOR" in almost all the jumping and climbing scenes.

Jet lag was once called boat lag, back before jets existed.

John Larroquette of "Night Court" and "The John Larroquette Show" was the narrator of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and was found in a warehouse. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and was found in a theatre.

John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.

June Foray, the voice of Talking Tina from the classic Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll", was also the voice of Rocky the talking squirrel from "Rocky & Bullwinkle".

Kathleen Turner was the voice of Jessica Rabbit, and Amy Irving was her singing voice.

King Kong is the only movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released the same year (1933).

Lady Astor once told Winston Churchill 'if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee'. His reply ' if you were my wife, I would drink it!'

Leonardo De Vinci invented the scissors.

Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright's son.

Liquid paper was invented by Mike Nesmith's (of the Monkees) mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, in 1951.

Lizzie Borden was acquitted.

Lorne Greene had one of his nipples bitten off by an alligator while he was host of "Lorne Greene's Wild Kingdom."

Lynyrd Skynard was the name of the gym teacher of the boys who went on to form that band.
He once told them, "You boys ain't never gonna amount to nothin'."

Melanie Griffith's mother is actress Tippi Hendren, best known for her lead role in Alfred
Hitchcock's The Birds.

Men leave their hotel rooms cleaner than women do.

Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."

Montpelier, Vermont is the only U.S. state capital without a McDonalds.

More money is printed daily for the Monopoly game than by the U.S. Treasury.

More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.

Most Americans' car horns beep in the key of F.

Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.

Mr. Rogers is an ordained minister.

Nine pennies weigh exactly one ounce.

Ninety eight per cent of the weight of water is made up from oxygen.

No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins, which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as 'supercooling.' If you disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die.

No matter its size or thickness, no piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half!

Non-dairy creamer is flammable.

Oak trees do not have acorns until they are fifty years old or older.

Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)

On 15 April 1912 the SS Titanic sunk on her maiden voyage and over 1,500 people died.
Fourteen years earlier a novel was published by Morgan Robertson which seemed to foretell the disaster. The book described a ship the same size as the Titanic which crashes into an iceberg on its maiden voyage on a misty April night. The name of Robertson's fictional ship was the Titan.

On an American one-dollar bill, there is an owl in the upper left-hand corner of the "1" encased in the "shield" and a spider hidden in the front upper right-hand corner.
On the new one hundred dollar bill the time on the clock tower of Independence Hall is 4:10.
One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers -- they saw it as competition. It is not chemically addictive as is nicotine, alcohol, or caffeine.

One ragweed plant can release as many as one billion grains of pollen!

Only female mosquitoes bite.

Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

Other than humans, black lemurs are the only primates that have blue eyes.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people!

Pamela Lee-Anderson is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.

Panama hats come from Ecuador not Panama.

Peanuts are used in the production of dynamite.

Pearls melt in vinegar.

Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eyes."

Pogonophobia is the fear of beards.

Polar bear fur is not white, it's clear.

Race car is a palindrome.

Ralph Lauren's original name was Ralph Lifshitz.

Residents of the island of Lesbos are Lesbosians, rather than Lesbians. (Of course, lesbians are called lesbians because Sappho was from Lesbos.)

Revolvers cannot be silenced, due to all the noisy gasses which escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel.

Rhythm and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels.

Robert E. Lee, of the Confederate Army, remains the only person, to date, to have graduated from the West Point military academy without a single demerit.

Roosters can't crow if they can't fully extend their necks.

Russians generally answer the phone by saying, 'I'm listening.'

S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash.

Samuel Clemens's pseudonym "Mark Twain" was the nickname of a riverboat pilot about whom

Clemens wrote a needless nasty satirical piece. Apparently, Clemens felt guilty later and adopted the nom de plume as some sort of expiation. The phrase "mark twain" from which the river pilot got his name does not mean two fathoms (twelve feet.)

Sharon Stone was the first "Star Search" spokes model.

Smelling bananas and/or green apples (smelling, not eating) can help you lose weight!

Smithee is a pseudonym that filmmakers use when they don't want their names to appear in the credits.

Snails can sleep for 3 years without eating.

Soda water does not contain soda.

Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.

Soweto in South Africa was derived from SOuth WEst TOwnship.

Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits.'

Speak of the Devil is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention and he would appear.

St. Bernards, famous for their role as alpine rescue dogs, do NOT wear casks of brandy around their necks.

Steve Young, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, is the great-great-grandson of Mormon leader Brigham Young.

Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.

Talk show host Montel Williams had a nose job.

Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.

The "Grinch" singer and voice of Tony the Tiger is a man named Thurl Ravenscroft.

The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutter on backwards.

The allele for six fingers and toes is dominant in humans.

The Andy Griffth Show was the first spin-off in TV history. It was spun-off from the Danny Thomas Show.

The average ice berg weighs 20,000,000 tons!

The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.

The band "Duran Duran" got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella."

The bat on the Bacardi symbol is there because the soil where the sugar cane grows is fertile from the excessive guano (bat droppings.)

The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

The bubbles in Guiness Beer sink to the bottom rather than float to the top like all other beers.
No one knows why.

The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Huptmobile.

The car manufacturer Henry Ford was awarded Hitler's Supreme Order of the German Eagle.

The childrens' nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-Round-The-Rosies' actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.

The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof'.

The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."

The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.

The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone that was placed on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When Joan of Arc was martyred, she was wearing one of them.

The Earth weighs around 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons!

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one-mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist!

The famous split-fingered Vulcan salute is actually intended to represent the first letter ("shin," pronounced "sheen") of the word "shalom." As a small boy, Leonard Nimoy observed his rabbi using it in a benediction and never forgot it; eventually he was able to add it to "Star Trek" lore.

The fingerprints of koala bears are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.

The first Ford cars had Dodge engines.

The first inter-racial kiss on TV was in an original "STAR TREK" episode entitled "Plato's

Stepchildren". The kiss was between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner.

The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

The first time the word "hell" was spoken on TV was in an original "STAR TREK" episode entitled "City on the Edge of Forever". The exact quote was "...let's get the hell out of here...", spoken by William Shatner.

The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".

The 'Hundred Years War' lasted 116 years.

The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

The launching mechanism of a carrier ship that helps planes to take off could throw a pickup truck over a mile.

The lead singer of The Knack, famous for "My Sharona," and Jack Kevorkian's lead defense attorney are brothers, Doug & Jeffrey Feiger.

The Les Nessman character on the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati wore a band-aid in every episode. Either on himself, his glasses, or his clothing.

The lifespan of a tastebud is ten days.

The little bags of netting for gas lanterns (called 'mantles') are radioactive--so much so that they will set of an alarm at a nuclear reactor.

The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California.

The magic word "Abracadabra" was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.

The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.

The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.

The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used!

The name for Oz in the "Wizard of Oz" was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence "Oz."

The name of the Vulcan's heaven is Sha Ka Ree, this is a play on the name Sean Connery who was considered for the part of Sarek, Spock's father.

The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan."

The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru: See no evil, Mikazaru: Hear no evil, and Mazaru: Speak no evil.

The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence - he invented dynamite.

The numbers '172' can be found on the back of the U.S. $5 dollar bill in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.

The NY phone book had 22 Hitlers before WWII. The NY phone book had 0 Hitlers after WWII.

The only member of the band ZZ Top without a beard has the last name Beard.

The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven!

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is lost. The copy in Washington D.C. is what is referred to as a holograph. That is a term for a handmade copy of a document and is not the same as a laser produced hologram.
The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

The pet ferret (Mustela putorias furo) was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.

The Phillips-head screwdriver was invented in Oregon.

The phrase ' The 3 R's ' ( standing for 'reading, writing and arithmetic' ) was created by Sir William Curtis, who was illiterate.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times.

The province of Alberta in Canada has been completely free of rats since 1905.
The screwdriver was invented before the screw.
The 'Screwdriver' was invented by oilmen, who used the tool to stir the drink.

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!

The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is 'Live Free or Die'. These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord.

The spaceship 'Valley Forge' from "Silent Running" (1971) actually got it's name from the location used to film some of its interiors; a decommissioned aircraft carrier named the U.S.S. Valley Forge.

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth!

The term "devil's advocate" comes from the Roman Catholic church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil's advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.

The term "Mayday" is used for signaling for help. It comes from the French term "M'aidez" which is pronounced "MayDay" and means, "Help Me."

The turkey was wrongly named after what was thought to be it's country of origin.

The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY.

There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a ten-dollar bill.

There are more beetles than any other kind of creature in the world.

There are more nutrients in the cornflake package itself than there are in the actual cornflakes.

There are more than 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building!

There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year!

There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.

There are only three cities that are named exactly after the state they are located in: Maine, ME; New York, NY; and Wyoming, WY.

There is a city called Rome on every continent.

There is a town in Texas called 'Ding Dong.'

There is about 200 times more gold in the world’s oceans, than has been mined in our entire history.

There is no mention of Adam and Eve eating an apple in the Bible.

There were no squirrels on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts until 1989.

Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.

Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark!

To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

Tomb robbers believed that knocking Egyptian sarcophagi's noses off would forestall curses.

Turkey's often look up at the sky during a rainstorm. Unfortunately some have been known to drown as a result.

U.S. Interstates which go north-south are numbered sequentially starting from the west with odd numbers, and Interstates which go east-west are numbered sequentially starting from the south with even numbers.

Until 1967, LSD was legal in California.

Video Killed the Radio Star was the very first video ever played on MTV.

Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated for some time.

Walt Disney's autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo.

Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.

When opossums are playing opossum, they are not "playing." They actually pass out from sheer terror.

When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.

While at Havard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a Spanish exam.

While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.

Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland!

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan carries the designation M-1, named so because it was the first paved road anywhere.

You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206!

Does Turning Fluorescent Lights Off Use More Energy Than Leaving Them On?

So you bought a compact fluorescent lightbulb in a bid to be green. Such bulbs are vastly more energy-efficient than traditional incandescents and screw into standard sockets. Should you treat them like their older cousins?

After all, four- and eight-foot- (1.2- and 2.4-meter-) long tubular bulbs common in more institutional settings are sometimes left on permanently, perhaps due to their slow, flickering start-ups. The thinking is that the boost of energy such bulbs require to power up means that it might be best to keep them on when leaving a room, rather than subjecting them to the stress of a restart on your return.

Turns out, however, that power surge is so brief that its energy draw doesn't amount to much: the equivalent of a few seconds or so of normal operation, according to U.S. Department of Energy estimates. In other words, from a strict energy-conservation standpoint, it's almost always beneficial to shut off fluorescents when leaving the room—the start-up energy is offset by the power saved in even the briefest outages.

But what about the wear and tear on the bulb itself? Being too switch-happy reduces the operating life of the lamp, and given that newer fluorescents are still a few times more expensive than old-fashioned incandescents, it makes sense to forestall burnouts. There are also real environmental impacts of their production and disposal to consider.

A simple rule of thumb that balances both concerns is to shut off fluorescents if you’re planning to leave a room for more than five minutes, according to Francis Rubinstein, a staff scientist in the Building Technologies Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division. Mary Beth Gotti, manager of the GE Lighting & Electrical Institute in Cleveland, agrees. For all practical purposes, "it almost always makes sense to turn the lights off," Gotti says. "From an environmental standpoint, the best way to save energy is to turn off the things that you're not using."

Rubinstein notes that, even for fluorescents, the cost of electricity over a bulb's lifetime far outpaces the cost of the bulb itself. "Even if you switch on and off a fluorescent light frequently," he says, "the slight reduction in lamp life is a small effect relative to the energy savings you accomplish by being a good citizen." Gotti adds that the reduction in lamp life from frequent on-and-off switching can often be counterbalanced by the extension of "calendar life"—the actual passage of time between lightbulb replacements—that results from using the bulb for fewer hours.

That sort of calculation will probably become more common as compact fluorescent lightbulbs come down in price, cast more pleasant light and, most importantly, force their power-hungry competitors from store shelves. The Australian government will phase out the sale of traditional incandescents in that country by 2010, and the U.S. Congress has effectively mandated the same ban domestically by 2012. But whereas that new fluorescent bulb is sure to lower utility bills in your home, the real energy-crunch savior has been there all along: the light switch.

Can You Catch Up on Lost Sleep?

Let's do some sleep math. You lost two hours of sleep every night last week because of a big project due on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, you slept in, getting four extra hours. Come Monday morning, you were feeling so bright-eyed, you only had one cup of coffee, instead of your usual two. But don't be duped by your apparent vim and vigor: You're still carrying around a heavy load of sleepiness, or what experts call "sleep debt"—in this case something like six hours, almost a full nights' sleep.

Sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get. It's a deficit that grows every time we skim some extra minutes off our nightly slumber. "People accumulate sleep debt surreptitiously," says psychiatrist William C. Dement, founder of the Stanford University Sleep Clinic. Studies show that such short-term sleep deprivation leads to a foggy brain, worsened vision, impaired driving, and trouble remembering. Long-term effects include obesity, insulin resistance, and heart disease. And most Americans suffer from chronic deprivation.
A 2005 survey by the National Sleep Foundation reports that, on average, Americans sleep 6.9 hours per night—6.8 hours during the week and 7.4 hours on the weekends. Generally, experts recommend eight hours of sleep per night, although some people may require only six hours of sleep while others need ten. That means on average, we’re losing one hour of sleep each night—more than two full weeks of slumber every year.

The good news is that, like all debt, with some work, sleep debt can be repaid—though it won't happen in one extended snooze marathon. Tacking on an extra hour or two of sleep a night is the way to catch up. For the chronically sleep deprived, take it easy for a few months to get back into a natural sleep pattern, says Lawrence J. Epstein, medical director of the Harvard-affiliated Sleep HealthCenters.

Go to bed when you are tired, and allow your body to wake you in the morning (no alarm clock allowed). You may find yourself catatonic in the beginning of the recovery cycle: Expect to bank upward of ten hours shut-eye per night. As the days pass, however, the amount of time sleeping will gradually decrease.

For recovery sleep, both the hours slept and the intensity of the sleep are important. Some of your most refreshing sleep occurs during deep sleep. Although such sleep's true effects are still being studied, it is generally considered a restorative period for the brain. And when you sleep more hours, you allow your brain to spend more time in this rejuvenating period.

As you erase sleep debt, your body will come to rest at a sleep pattern that is specifically right for you. Sleep researchers believe that genes—although the precise ones have yet to be discovered—determine our individual sleeping patterns. That more than likely means you can't train yourself to be a "short sleeper"—and you're fooling yourself if you think you've done it. A 2003 study in the journal Sleep found that the more tired we get, the less tired we feel.

So earn back that lost sleep—and follow the dictates of your innate sleep needs. You’ll feel better. "When you put away sleep debt, you become superhuman," says Stanford's Dement, talking about the improved mental and physical capabilities that come with being well rested. Finally, a scientific reason to sleep in on Saturday.

Did Researchers Cook Data from the First Test of General Relativity?

On May 29, 1919, two British expeditions, positioned on opposite sides of the planet, aimed telescopes at the sun during a total eclipse. Their mission: to test a radical theory of gravity dreamed up by a former patent clerk, who predicted that passing starlight should bend toward the sun. Their results, announced that November, vaulted Albert Einstein into the public consciousness and confirmed one of the most spectacular experimental successes in the history of science.

In recent decades, however, some science historians have argued that astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington, the junior member of the 1919 expedition, believed so strongly in Einstein's theory of general relativity that he discounted data that clashed with it.

In 1919 general relativity was on the cusp of eclipsing Sir Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation, put forth in 1687. Newton's law cast gravity as a type of bond between objects, all floating within the gridlike arena of space and time. Einstein's insight was that gravity is the grid, which is warped by massive objects such as the sun. As a consequence, light passing the sun should literally fall toward it like a moon rover clipping the edge of a giant crater and falling in.

Eddington, then director of the University of Cambridge Observatory, convinced his senior colleague and England's Astronomer Royal, Sir Frank Dyson, to mount the expedition. The group split into two teams: Dyson's crew from what was then the Royal Observatory in Greenwich headed to the town of Sobral, Brazil, as Eddington and cohorts set up on the western African island of Príncipe. Their task was to independently record the positions of the stars near the moon-blotted sun and compare them with the positions of the same stars at night.

If general relativity was right, the apparent positions of the nearest stars would drift 1.75 arc seconds (a measure of angularity) closer to its rim during the eclipse (a pencil width seen at half a mile). Eddington was hampered by overcast skies on the long-awaited day and photographed only five stars. It was too few for a solid result, but he gave some weight to his final value of 1.61 arc seconds.

Dyson's team had mixed results. One of the group's two telescopes functioned correctly and gave them a value of 1.98 arc seconds. The second instrument yielded a value of 0.93 arc second, which was rather close to the Newtonian prediction of 0.87. The instrument, however, had lost focus during the eclipse, which cast doubt on the accuracy of the photo comparison, so they excluded the measurement from their final result. Based on the remaining evidence, they declared general relativity triumphant.

Over time, experts looked askance at the sweeping conclusion, which both ignored the possibility that some other theory of gravity might have better fit the results and also didn't match general relativity very precisely after known sources of error were taken into account. "No experiment is decisive in the way that Eddington's experiment was presented as being decisive," says Harry Collins, a sociologist of science at Cardiff University in Wales. Indeed, researchers didn't truly nail the light-bending prediction until they used quasar measurements made in the 1960s, says physicist Clifford Will of Washington University in St. Louis, an expert in tests of general relativity.

Science historians John Earman, then at the University of Minnesota, and Clark Glymour of the University of Pittsburgh, revisited the eclipse study in a 1980 paper, concluding that Eddington had erred by suppressing the clashing Sobral result.

But the historical revision never received much scrutiny, physicist–historian Daniel Kennefick of the University of Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences in Fayetteville argues. "It's actually like you can see two myths layered on top of each other," he says.

To disentangle them, he dug into the historical record. Letters between Eddington and Dyson indicate that the two analyzed their data separately to avoid influencing each other, Kennefick reports in a recent paper. That means Dyson, who was at first ambivalent about Einstein's theory, made the initial judgment to exclude the 0.93–arc second result. Kennefick documents that Eddington acted properly when Dyson, presumably overeager at the potential discovery, put aside his first instinct and proposed averaging the three measurements to get a value that was closer to Einstein's prediction.

Eddington squelched the idea, because it would have meant giving added weight to the suspect measurement from Sobral. Biased or not, Eddington made the right call, says Kennefick, who discovered that Royal Observatory staff in Greenwich had reanalyzed the Sobral data in 1978 using modern computer-based methods. (The Príncipe data hadn't survived.) Their correction put the 0.93–arc second shift at 1.55 arc seconds, plus or minus 0.34—much closer to the 1.75 value. In other words, the researchers were right to suspect that the measurement was flawed.

"If I was in the same position, I would have done the same thing," says Washington University's Will, who adds that he never believed Eddington had cooked the numbers. "It just didn't seem credible to me that someone of his stature would throw out data because it didn't look right."

Funniest Newspaper Headlines ever

Live Frogs and Rats (Yang Dingcai - China)

Yang Dingcai, in southeast China says 40 years of swallowing tree frogs and rats live has helped him avoid intestinal complaints and made him strong. Jiang Musheng, a 66-year-old resident of Jiangxi province, suffered from frequent abdominal pains and coughing from the age of 26, until an old man called Yang Dingcai suggested tree frogs as a remedy, the Beijing News said on Tuesday.

"At first, Jiang Musheng did not dare to eat a live, wriggling frog, but after seeing Yang Dingcai swallow one, he ate ... two without a thought," the paper said. "After a month of eating live frogs, his stomach pains and coughing were completely gone."

Over the years Jiang had added live mice, baby rats and green frogs to his diet, and had once eaten 20 mice in a single day, the paper said.

Unfortunately Placed Ads

Black and White Twins

A mixed-race British mom, Kylie Hodgson, gave birth in 2005 to twins, one of each. No, not a boy and a girl. Two girls — one black, the other white. The odds of such a birth are about a million to one, experts said. Although occurrences of this nature sometimes occur when a woman conceives twins fathered by two different men, this was a much rarer case in which a single pairing produced twins with distinctly different physical attributes (e.g., skin tone, hair color, eye color) rather than a blending of their parents' characteristics.

Most Of Your Body’s Cells Aren’t Yours

Strange but true. There are more microbial cells in your body than cells that have your own DNA. As NPR’s Robert Krulwich reported in 2006, the human body has 20 times more microbes than cells! I guess that pretty well justifies the “Imperial We.”

Octopus Beats Grinch, Heart for Heart

The Grinch (that green fuzzy guy who stole Christmas) became an official good-guy when his heart grew three sizes one day. The octopus does even better - he has three hearts!

[Further facts: The blue-ringed octopus pictured here is the most poisonous octopus, with venom that can kill an adult human in minutes. There is no known antidote.].

Love and Sex with Robots

"Human-robot marriages will be legal by 2050"

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.

At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon," Levy said. In his thesis, "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners," Levy conjectures that robots will become so human-like in appearance, function and personality that many people will fall in love with them, have sex with them and even marry them. "It may sound a little weird, but it isn't," Levy said. "Love and sex with robots are inevitable."

Which U.S. Cities Contribute Most to Global Warming?

If you care about reducing your emissions of greenhouse gases, then you might want to move to Honolulu, Los Angeles or Portland, Ore., according to a new study from The Brookings Institution. These three metropolises boast, respectively, the lowest three per capita levels of world warming pollution (read: carbon dioxide) in the nation's top 100 metro areas.

"Large metropolitan areas give their inhabitants smaller carbon footprints," says energy policy expert Marilyn Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta (ranked 67th), lead author of the study. "Footprints are the smallest in areas with high density and good rail transit."

"Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America" examined fuel use in transportation and energy use in homes, landing, from fourth to 10th ranking, New York City; Boise, Idaho; Seattle; San Jose, Calif.; San Francisco; El Paso, Tex.; and San Diego.

But the survey did not take into account key municipal contributors such as commercial buildings and industry—or transportation other than that on highways, thereby neglecting the carbon output of the air freight resupply on which Honolulu relies. The researchers also used the U.S. Census Bureau's metropolitan boundaries, allowing cities like Los Angeles to avoid having the carbon emitted by its legions of suburban commuters count against its total. Weather played a role as well. Cities in moderate climes fared better than those whose residents must expend more energy to cool and heat their homes.

The report, the first of its kind, reveals that southern and eastern cities contribute most to climate change. The reason: residents there rely more on coal and cars than denizens in other parts of the country. "The nation's carbon footprint has a very distinct geography," Brown says. "Those who live in an area relying on coal and gasoline are likely to see a large increase in energy costs. There is a business and economic vulnerability that these metropolitan areas have."

The residents of Lexington, Ky., Indianapolis and Cincinnati emit the most greenhouse gases—nearly 2.5 times as much carbon on a per capita basis as their peers at the top of the list with smaller footprints. But these cities have the added burden of being major regional transportation hubs; in other words, their per capita emissions burden is skewed upward by the freight needs of the rest of the country, according to senior research analyst Andrea Sarzynski at Brookings (based in Washington, D.C., ranked 89th).

Rounding out the bottom 10 biggest emitters per capita are: Knoxville, Tenn., Harrisburg, Pa., Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Nashville, Louisville, Ky., and Toledo, Ohio.

The report authors say the goal of the study is to show cities how to reduce emissions by taking a page from those already keeping a lid on them. The research also demonstrates that city dwellers in general are faring better than their country (or suburban) cousins, because of mass transit and densely packed populations in smaller areas.

But despite climate change warnings, city emissions continue to rise, creeping up by slightly over 1 percent per year since 2000. Environmental scientist Martin Parry at the University of East Anglia in England and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns this week in Nature Reports Climate Change that the trend must be reversed and emissions slashed by at least 80 percent to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

The study authors recommend that the federal government put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, establish a national renewable energy standard and, also, fork over funds for research and development of new energy sources. "Energy R&D should be in line with health care and national defense in terms of spending," Sarzynski says. "The feds really seem to be behind."

The report also calls for reform of existing federal policy, including a shift from funding highways to mass transit and realigning the mortgage interest deduction so as to no longer reward those who purchase the largest and most energy-wasting homes. "Metropolitan regions and the built environment are often neglected when talking about solutions [to global warming]", Brown adds. "They are major emitters and they are poised to be part of the solution."

Farting as a Defence Against Unspeakable Dread

"When feeling endangered, Peter used his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud"

According to it's author, "this paper describes some features of the behaviour of a severely disturbed adopted latency boy. Peter was born premature, suffered several early hospitalizations and surgical operations, and at 2 months of age was removed from his mother's care by Social Services for neglect and abandonment. When feeling endangered, Peter had developed a defensive olfactive container using his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud of familiarity against the dread of falling apart, and to hold his personality together."

Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans

"The animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences"

Authors at the Stockholm University explain it: "We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice-versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations. We discuss this result in the light of current debate on the meaning of sexual signals, and suggest further tests of existing hypotheses about the origin of sexual preferences."

«Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature»

"The study reports, among other items: a beer glass, a suitcase key and a magazine"

The citations include reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.

MALDIVE ISLANDS: the paradisiac island nation with 1,192 islets

The Maldives is an island nation consisting of a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives is located south of India's Lakshadweep islands, and about seven hundred kilometers (435 mi) south-west of Sri Lanka. The Maldives' twenty-six atolls encompass a territory featuring 1,192 islets, roughly two hundred of which are inhabited by local communities.

Originally the inhabitants were Buddhist, but Islam was introduced in 1153. It later became a Portuguese (1558), Dutch (1654), and British (1887) colonial possession. In 1965, the Maldives obtained independence from Britain (originally under the name "Maldive Islands"), and in 1968 the Sultanate was replaced by a Republic. However, in thirty-eight years, the Maldives have seen only two Presidents, though political restrictions have loosened somewhat recently. The Maldives is the smallest Asian country in terms of population. It is also the smallest predominantly Muslim nation in the world.

Bad Weather Makes for a Long Day

Do you ever feel like some days drag on longer than others? That feeling may be psychological, but actual day length really does fluctuate--by a fraction of a millisecond. (A millisecond is one thousandth of a second)

The length of a day, which is measured by the time it takes Earth to rotate once on its axis, can be measured to an accuracy of about 10 microseconds, or 10 millionths of a second. Earth's rotational rate depends on the distribution of mass across its surface. This includes the roiling aggregation of gases that comprise the atmosphere, the solid earth itself, its fluid core, and the sloshing ocean. For example, when a major earthquake shifts the planet's mass, it can slow or speed the day by as much as a few thousandths of a second.

In fact, the Indonesian Sumatra earthquake in December 2004 that spawned a deadly tsunami moved so much water that it slightly changed our planet's shape and sped its rotation by 2.68 microseconds, or nearly three millionths of a second.

This change in rotational speed, though it is minimal, has been observed for centuries. In 1695 English astronomer Sir Edmund Halley (who also discovered the eponymous periodic comet) hypothesized that the moon was accelerating in its orbit. In reality, Earth's rotation was slowing down, making it appear that the moon was gathering speed.

Since then, scientists have used various methods to measure our planet's rotation, including astronomical devices such as the sundial as well as satellites and lunar observations. And these days scientists have placed thousands of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers around the world that can track Earth's orientation to within a few millimeters, says geophysicist Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. JPL keeps an in-house database of Earth's rotation dating back to 1962.

Gross says that the most important processes affecting day length are changes in the weather, especially unusual variations in the strength and direction of the winds, which bring on alterations in the global circulation of the atmosphere and ocean. In particular, the vast, high-altitude wind currents known as jet streams, which arise from the differences in temperature between the warm tropics and cooler high latitudes, are responsible for shortening or speeding the day.

Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that global warming may actually speed the day, a fact noted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In one study published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2007, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, estimated the mass redistribution resulting from ocean warming would shorten the day by 120 microseconds, or nearly one tenth of a millisecond, over the next two centuries.

Such changes—whether caused by global warming or earthquakes—remain too small to be reliably detected at present, Gross says. After all, there are 86,400 seconds in a 24-hour day and billions of microseconds. Even with GPS, predicting changes in day length remains as difficult as forecasting the weather.

On April 17, 2008, for instance, the day lasted 1.1686 milliseconds longer than the norm According to Gross, the excess varies: Just a few years ago, days were about three milliseconds longer. And all those milliseconds add up: Over the course of a year, scientists estimate that the fluctuations add about a second.

But don't worry, scientists are on top of the phenomenon. The National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colo., occasionally adds a "leap second" to the atomic clocks used to standardize time. The last such update took place on January 1, 2006. There's plenty of time to adjust your calendars: "If the excess length of day continues to be about 1.2 milliseconds, another leap second won't be needed for about three years," Gross wrote in an e-mail.

The Earth Has More Than One North Pole

You may think of the North Pole only as the top of the world—its northernmost point and, if you're younger, Santa's home. But it turns out there are a host of "north (and south) poles" on our planet.

First, and most simply, there is a town in Alaska called "North Pole" which isn't near any of the other north poles (but it does get snow and receives a lot of mail addressed to Santa Claus). Then there is the geographic north pole, also known as "true north." This is the spot in the Arctic Ocean where all the man-made lines of longitude converge on a map as well as the conceptual point on the ice-encrusted waters that countless explorers sought to stab with their national banner–bearing flagpoles, beginning in 1827 with British rear admiral, Sir William Edward Parry.

Somewhat related to the geographic north pole is the considerably less famous instantaneous north pole, where Earth's rotational axis meets its surface, as well as the celestial north pole, where the axis spears the night sky (in an imaginary extension kind of way). The instantaneous north pole is not fixed. Rather, it moves in an irregular circle caused by "the Chandler wobble"—named for astronomer Seth Carlo Chandler, who discovered in 1891 that our planet wobbles as it rotates. His discovery gives rise to the "north pole of balance," which lies at the center of this circle.

All of this jargon separates into unique, if not pedantic, definitions. So although they all share the term "north pole," each has clearly staked out its own semantic territory. The same cannot be said, however, of the last two "north poles" in this rundown, and both relate to Earth's very real magnetic field, which is generated by fluid motion inside the planet's core. That motion—affected by Earth's rotation—sets up a naturally occurring electric generator that sustains the magnetic field.

The magnetic pole describes the two locations (north and south) where the planet's magnetic field is vertical. So if you're standing over the north magnetic pole with a compass, the needle would dip and try to point straight down—hence its other name: the magnetic dip pole. Over the south magnetic pole, your compass needle would point upward.

But there is another magnetically based north pole: the north geomagnetic pole. "One thing that's very confusing is the fact that there's a magnetic pole and a geomagnetic pole and that they're different," says Stefan Maus, a geomagnetic field modeler at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Geophysical Data Center. "It's a historical and slightly outdated definition."

The geomagnetic poles are almost an artifact of reducing Earth's complex and varied magnetic field to that of a simple bar magnet, or dipole. "The only thing that we really want to know is where the field is really vertical," Maus says. "This other pole, which is just an approximation, is generally not very useful and often leads to confusion." So while the north dip pole lies in Northern Canada, the northern dipole is roughly off the northwest coast of Greenland.

But the geomagnetic pole is useful, if you're in space, argues Jeffrey J. Love, a U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist. The farther away from Earth you get, the more its magnetic field actually does act like a dipole, or a bar magnet—even if in reality it is no such thing.

"A space physicist usually thinks in terms of this tilted dipole that the earth has," Love says, "whereas a navigator would probably be more interested in the magnetic dip poles."

To further confuse things the dip poles move around—sometimes with daily frequency. The north magnetic pole in recent years has started shifting quickly toward Siberia. Its annual movement has accelerated from 10 to 50 kilometers (6.2 to 31 miles), says Larry Newitt, an emeritus scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, who has pegged the pole's location on many expeditions since 1973.

And here's something to add even more confusion to the north magnetic pole (aka dip pole) versus north geomagnetic pole (aka dipole): the magnetic pole in Earth's northern hemisphere acts like the south pole of a bar magnet.

"If you look at the north pole of the bar magnet you have the field lines going from the north pole to the south pole, but for the earth it's exactly opposite," Maus explains. So the north magnetic pole is where the earth's magnetic field lines pull toward the planet, acting like the south pole of a bar magnet.

From a physics standpoint, then, the north needle of a compass (or any magnet) points to what is physically—but not in name—the south magnetic pole of the earth, in other words, in the direction of the Arctic.

"The north pole of your bar magnet is attracted to the north [magnetic] pole of the earth," Maus adds, the reverse of the usual situation in which like poles on magnets repel one another. "That is why some people have suggested that to avoid this confusion we should call the north magnetic pole the 'north seeking pole.'"

Whether that would add or subtract from the confusion remains unclear. What is clear is that—even in Santa Claus–related matters—one must be very precise in specifying exactly what one is talking about when referring to the "north pole."

Straight Hair Is Knottier Than Curly Hair

On a cool Saturday afternoon at the überhot Garren hair salon in New York City a few masters of fashion were debating something many would call obvious: Which is more likely to tangle—curly hair or straight hair?

The seemingly straight answer, if you will: "When we put a [model] in a wind machine, we can still put a comb through her hair—if it's straight. Curly? Forget it," says Robert Vasquez, a hairstylist who specializes in what his industry terms "difficult" hair.

But what appears, at first thought, to be obvious can become surprisingly fuzzy. "I'm not convinced that curly hair tangles more," says Steven Fernandes, who combs up to 20 manes daily at Garren. "Straight hair is lighter and strands move individually, but curly hair moves as one movement and so is less tangled."

Jean-Baptiste Masson, a young brain imaging researcher at the École Polytechnique in France, recently pulled apart this question as a class exercise in mathematical modeling.

With hundreds of thousands of micro-thin strands colliding in every direction, hair is an unusually complicated system—a set of independent objects working as an integrated whole. And, unlike other systems such as fluids and solids, hair mechanics remains unsolved, with no widely accepted model to explain it. "I needed a problem for my students, and I thought hair is something that could be simplified," Masson says.

He enlisted two hairdressers to count the number of tangles on 212 heads over three weeks. The stylists were instructed to look for true tangles, namely a clump that resisted the draw of a comb but was not a cluster of hair—like a ringlet, or curl.

Based on these criteria, curly hair averages about three tangles per head whereas straight averages more than five tangles. The surprising results, and a mathematical model of tangling, were recently published in the American Journal of Physics.

In Masson's model, it turns out that even though curly strands meet more often than straight strands, the angle at which two straight hairs meet is the angle most likely to lead to tangling.

But there's no particular explanation for why different angles lead to different tangling patterns, argues Alain Goriely, professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who studies the math of biological systems.

Masson explains that the optimal tangle angle is one that is large enough to hook the microscopic, fishlike "scales" that coat hair cuticles. If this angle is too narrow—meaning the two hairs are nearly parallel—they won't lock.

It turns out that Masson's model predicts the real-world hairdresser data with surprising accuracy.

Masson's "math lesson" has inspired computer scientists like Florence Bertails, an expert in hair behavior at The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, to consider using models like the one Masson devised to inform her more complicated computer algorithms.

Back at Garren, Fernandes has the last point, "You know what the real issue is? The real issue is fine versus coarse. Curly or straight, fine hair is what tangles. The cuticle is open and puffy, like Velcro—it'll stick to anything."

The others nod their heads dramatically. "Oh yes, that's it," says Vasquez, "dry, fine, chemically treated hair tangles the most."

The Other Brain Cells: New Roles for Glia

Neurons have always been the stars of brain research, but scientists are now realizing that nonneuronal cells known as glia—which make up around 90 percent of cells in the brain—are not the mild-mannered understudies they appeared to be. Some glia may even fire electrical signals, a finding that overturns a central dogma of neuroscience that holds that neurons are the only cells in the brain with such signaling ability.


Last winter, when neuroscientists at University College London examined glia known as oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs), they were astounded to find that, just like neurons, one subtype fired electrical signals in response to electrical stimulation. Before this study little was known about the function of OPCs, says study leader Ragnhildur Karadottir, except that they could develop into new oligodendrocytes, a type of glial cell that forms an insulating sheath around neurons like the rubber on an electrical cord.

Getting a Handle on Space Toilets

NASA says that the sole commode on the International Space Station is working again after a week on the fritz, but that it's not 100 percent.

The problem: a pump that separates out liquid waste malfunctioned, forcing the station's three crew members to play space plumbers.

"They swapped out lots of pieces of hardware," NASA spokesperson Nicole Cloutier said, noting, "It's still not working in the most ideal sense." To maintain pressure in the pump, she says, crew members (Russian cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman) must manually add water after every three flushes. She says final repairs will likely be made next week when Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to arrive bearing gifts of toilet hardware.

Over the weekend, the crew briefly switched to a toilet on the Russian Soyuz capsule docked with the station that is used for return flights to Earth and has a few days' capacity. They had also been grappling with baglike "wring collectors" that attach to the toilet and bypass the pump.

Space has never been the easiest place to find a bathroom. In microgravity, urine forms floating spheres and feces have no force to separate them from the buttocks. Space toilets use fans to create airflow that pulls urine down the drain, to be either recycled or ejected from the vehicle.

Ejecting liquid waste has caused problems in the past. In 1984 the urine collection system on Discovery had to be shut down when a urine icicle formed that threatened to damage the craft's protective heat tiles if it stuck around and broke free on reentry.

But the urine disposal system apparently had its fans (for reasons other than the obvious): In an interview published in 1977 Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart called the dump of waste liquid at sunset "one of the most beautiful sights" in orbit. "As the stuff comes out, and as it hits the exit nozzle, it instantly flashes into 10 million little ice crystals which go out almost in a hemisphere … a spray of sparklers, almost," he said. "It's really a spectacular sight."

Defecating, however, is apparently a bit less majestic. The Apollo module had no privacy, let alone a bathroom. When Schweickart or one his fellow highly trained colleagues felt nature's call, they taped a plastic bag to their backsides.

"You just float around for awhile doing things with a bag on your butt," Schweickart tells ScientificAmerican.com. Then came the task of dislodging the excrement (no gravity, remember?) without spreading it everywhere. All told, Schweickart said, the process took about an hour.

But it seems like that beats the other alternative—pooping in a spacesuit that contains a "fecal containment system"—a tight-fitting pair of elastic Bermuda shorts. A glorified diaper, in other words. Schweickart said he never used one.

He says that Skylab, the first U.S. space station, launched into orbit in 1973, contained the first proper space toilet.

The space shuttle still carries "Apollo bags" for emergencies, such as the 1984 icicle incident.

"Even with failures," Schweickart says, "life today with the weightless bathroom is easier than it was in the old days."

Strange But True Laws

Alabama

• A 1950 anti-obscenity law in Irondale, Ala., prohibited any showing of anyone nude or "in a substantially nude state" except a babe in arms.
• Anniston: You may not wear blue jeans down Noble Street.
• An ordinance in Linden, Ala., provided that all women of "uncertain chastity" had to be off the streets by 9 p.m.
• Bear wrestling matches are prohibited.
• Boogers may not be flicked into the wind.
• Children of incestuous couples are deemed legitimate.
• Dominoes may not be played on Sunday.
• Hunting is not allowed on Sunday.
• Incestuous marriages are legal.
• It is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while operating a vehicle.
• It is illegal to impersonate a person of the clergy.
• It is illegal to maim oneself to escape duty.
• It is illegal to stab yourself to gain someone's pity.
• It is illegal to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church.
• It is legal to drive the wrong way down a one-way street if you have a lantern attached to the front of your automobile.
• It is legal to drive the wrong way on a one way street if you have a lantern on the front of your car.
• It is unlawful to wear women's pumps with sharp, high heels.
• It's against the law for a man to seduce "a chaste woman by means of temptation, deception, arts, flattery or a promise of marriage."
• It's illegal to play dominoes on Sunday.
• Jasper: It is illegal for a husband to beat his wife with a stick larger in diameter than his thumb.
• Lee County: It is illegal to sell peanuts in Lee County after sundown on Wednesday.
• Masks may not be worn in public
• Men may not spit in front of the opposite sex.
• Mobile: It is unlawful to howl at ladies inside the city limits. It is unlawful to wear women's pumps with sharp, high heels.
• Montgomery: It is considered an offense to open an umbrella on a street, for fear of it spooking horses.
• No persons may sell "blow-out nuts".
• Peanuts are not allowed to be sold in Lee County, Alabama after sunset on Wednesdays.
• Pool halls may not be operated between 11:30 PM and 6 AM.
• Putting salt on a railroad track may be punishable by death.
• Slavery is still legal in Decatur, Alabama.
• The game of crackaloo is illegal in Fairfield, Ala.
• Women are able to retain all property they owned prior to marriage in the case of divorce. However, this provision does not apply to men.
• Women are able to retain all property they owned prior to marriage in the case of divorce. However, this provision does not apply to men.
• You cannot chain your alligator to a fire hydrant.
• You may not drive barefooted.
• You may not have an ice cream cone in your back pocket at any time.
• You must have windshield wipers on your car.

Strange But True Facts

More Monopoly money is printed yearly than real money throughout the world.

Penguins are not found in the North Pole

People photocopying their buttocks are the cause of 23% of all photocopier errors worldwide.

A dentist invented the Electric Chair.

Rudolf the Red-nosed reindeer was actually created as a promotional figure for Montgommery Wards department stores.

A cockroach can live nine days without its head before it starves to death.

Percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% Percentage of North America that is wilderness: 38%

A whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.

About 100 people choke to death on ballpoint pens each year.
About a third of all Americans flush the toilet while they're still sitting on it.

Alexander Graham Bell's wife and mother were both deaf .

The "O" when used as a prefix in Irish surnames means "descendant of."

Alfred Hitchcock did not have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

Cockroaches break wind every 15 minutes.

Charlie Brown's dad was a barber.

Fish scales are an ingredient in most lipsticks.

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp (a variety of the marijuana plant) paper

On average, every chocolate bar contains at least three insect legs.

Up until the early 20th century, New Jersey and Wisconsin had laws allowing the castration of epileptics

"A motion to table a motion to reconsider a vote to table an appeal of a ruling that a point of order was not in order against a motion to table another point of order against a motion to bring to a vote the motion to call up the resolution that would institute a rules change."

"Adcomsubordcomphibspac" is the longest acronym. It is a Navy term standing for Administrative Command, Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet Subordinate Command.

"Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar, La Allah Il Allah, La Allah Il Allah U Mohammed Rassul Allah" is heard by more people than any other sound of the human voice. This is the prayer recited by muezzins from each of the four corners of the prayer tower as Moslems all over the world face toward Mecca and kneel at sunset. It means: "God is great. There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God."

"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.

"Aromatherapy" is a term coined by French chemist René Maurice Gattefossé in the 1920's to describe the practice of using essential oils taken from plants, flowers, roots, seeds, etc., in healing.

"Asthma" and "isthmi" are the only six-letter words that begin and end with a vowel and have no other vowels between.

"Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson was the first video to air on MTV by a black artist.

"Conservationalists" & "Conversationalists" (18 letters) are the longest non-scientific transposals (word formed from another by changing its letters).

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

"Duff" is the decaying organic matter found on a forest floor.

"Fickleheaded" and "fiddledeedee" are the longest words consisting only of letters in the first half of the alphabet.

"Flushable" toilets were in use in ancient Rome.

"Fortnight" is a contraction of "fourteen nights." In the US "two weeks" is more commonly used.

"Forty" is the only number which has its letters in alphabetical order. "One" is the only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order.

"Four" is the only number whose number of letters in the name equals the number.

"Hang on Sloopy" is the official rock song of Ohio.

"Happy Birthday" was the first song to be performed in outer space, sung by the Apollo IX astronauts on March 8, 1969.

""Kemo Sabe, meaning an all knowing one, is actually a mispronunciation by Native American of the Spanish phrase, Quien lo Sabe, meaning one who knows."

The lunula is the half-moon shaped pale area at the bottom of finger nails.

"Ma is as selfless as I am" can be read the same way backwards. If you take away all the spaces you can see that all the letters can be spelled out both ways.

"Mad About You" star Paul Reiser plays the piano on the show's theme song.

"One thousand" contains the letter A, but none of the words from one to nine hundred ninety-nine has an A.

"Ough" can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully.

"Rhythms" is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u.

"Second string," meaning "replacement or backup," comes from the middle ages. An archer always carried a second string in case the one on his bow broke.

"Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention. That's why when you're talking about someone and they show up people say "Speak of the Devil."

"Stewardesses" is the longest word that can be typed with only the left hand.

"Tautonyms" are scientific names for which the genus and species are the same.

"Taxi" is spelled exactly the same in English, French, German, Swedish, Portuguese, and Dutch.

"Teh" means "cool" in Thai. (Pronounced "tay").

"The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in English.

"THEREIN" is a seven-letter word that contains thirteen words spelled using consecutive letters: the, he, her, er, here, I, there, ere, rein, re, in, therein, and herein.

"Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."

$203,000,000 is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.

1 and 2 are the only numbers where they are values of the numbers of the factors they have.

1 in 5,000 north Atlantic lobsters are born bright blue.

1 kg (2.2 pounds) of lemons contain more sugar than 1 kg of strawberries.

1,525,000,000 miles of telephone wire are strung across the Unites States.

1.7 litres of saliva is produced each day. In Discovery Channel, its a quart.

10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.

10% of human dry weight comes from bacteria

11% of the world is left-handed.

111, 111, 111 X 111, 111, 111 = 12, 345, 678, 987, 654, 321

1200 equals 1 pound (72 rupees).

123,000,000 cars are being driven on highways in the United States.

166,875,000,000 pieces of mail are delivered each year in the United States.

1959's A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.

2 and 5 are the only prime numbers that end in 2 or 5.

203 million dollars is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.

22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next hour.

23% of all photocopier faults worldwide are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their buttocks.

25% of a human's bones are in its feet.

259200 people die every day.

27% of U.S. male college students believe life is "a meaningless existential hell."

3% of all mammals are monogamous

315 entries in Webster's 1996 dictionary were misspelled.

315 words in the 1996 Webster's dictionary were mispelled.

4 tablespoons of ketchup has about the same amount of nutrition as a ripe tomato.

40% of all people who come to a party snoop in your medicine cabinet.

40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

43.7% of all statistics are made up right on the spot

48% of astronauts experience motion sickness.

52% of Americans drink coffee.

55.1% of all US prisoners are in prison for drug offenses.

56,000,000 people go to Major League baseball games each year

67 million pounds of pesticides and about 3 million tons of fertilizer are used annually on lawns in the US.

78 rpm albums, used prior to 1948, were only capable of recording for four minutes. It wasn’t until later that year that Columbia Records introduced 33 rpm albums capable of playing 23 minutes per side.

80% of animals on earth are insects.

80% of arrested criminals are male.

In Disney's Fantasia, the Sorcerer to whom Mickey played an apprentice was named Yensid, which is Disney spelled backward.

By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

One in ten people live on an island.

84% of a raw apple is water.

It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

85% of men who die of heartattacks during intercourse, are found to have been cheating on their wives.

85,000,000 tons of paper are used in the United States each year.

28% of Africa is classified as wilderness. In North America, its 38%.

Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson", Humphrey Bogart NEVER said "Play it again, Sam" in Casablanca, and they NEVER said "Beam me up, Scotty" on Star Trek.

90% of bird species are monogamous; only 3% of animals are.

90% of New York City cab drivers are recently arrived immigrants.

98% of all murders and rapes are by a close family member or friend of the victim.

98% of the weight of water is made up from oxygen.

99% of the pumpkins sold in the US end up as jack-o-lanterns.