Tennis pro Evonne Goolagong's last name means "kangaroo's nose" in one of Australia's aboriginal languages.

The brass family of instruments include the trumpet, trombone, tuba, cornet, flügelhorn, French horn, saxhorn, and sousaphone. While they are usually made of brass today, in the past they were made of wood, horn, and glass.

The modern Christmas custom of displaying a wreath on the front door of one's house, is borrowed from ancient Rome's New Year's celebrations. Romans wished each other "good health" by exchanging branches of evergreens. They called these gifts strenae after Strenia, the goddess of health. It became the custom to bend these branches into a ring ...Read more

One of Napoleon's drinking cups was made from the skull of the famous Italian adventurer Cagliostro.

The hum of a hummingbird comes from the super-fast beat of the wings. The smallest ones beat their wings the fastest - up to 80 times per second. Even the slower beat of bigger hummingbirds (20 times per second) is so fast you can only see a blur.

The most common proposal is a tether, usually in the form of a cable or ribbon, that spans from the surface to a point beyond geosynchronous orbit. As the planet rotates, the inertia at the end of the tether counteracts gravity and keeps the tether taut. Vehicles can then climb the tether and escape the planet's gravity without the use of ...Read more

California is the second-largest cheesemaking state after Wisconsin. It is the leader in producing Hispanic-style cheeses such as Monterey Jack.

The famous Burger King "Bun Halves" logo made its debut in 1969 and endured, more or less unchanged, ever since. The logo, meant to resemble a hamburger, features the restaurant's name in red lettering on two lines, sandwiched between two yellow bun halves. The Bun Halves logo is Burger King's

In Thailand, the left hand is considered unclean, so you should not eat with it. Also, pointing with one finger is considered rude and is only done when pointing to objects or animals, never humans.

The Wawelberg Group was a Polish special-forces unit which began the 1921 Third Silesian Uprising by blowing up seven rail bridges linking Upper Silesia with the rest of Germany.

In 1904, a Georgist Quaker, Lizzie Magie, patented a game called The Landlord's Game with the object of showing how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if the rent problem and the Georgist solution ...Read more

Yes. Today, a silver medal represents second place, but when the modern Olympics began in 1896, silver medals were awarded to first place winners. Gold at that time was considered an inferior medal to silver. In 1904, gold medals replaced silver as the prize for first-place winners. The medals given out are not pure gold, though. They're ...Read more

Haggis, a traditional Scottish dish, is made from the lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep, chopped with onions, seasonings, suet, and oatmeal, and then broiled in a bag made from the sheep's stomach.

While in Fraunces Tavern in New York City, George Washington bid farewell to his officers in 1783.

Men over the age of 24 shave an average of six times a week.

The red, yellow, and dark blue Renaissance uniform worn by the Swiss Guard at the Vatican was designed by Michaelangelo. It is one of several costumes worn by the Gendarmeria Pontifica.

Sedimentary rocks are used to make cement, glass, fertilizer, baking soda, laundry bleach, and aspirin.

The Sun provides our planet with 126,000,000,000,000 horsepower of energy every day. This means that 54,000 horsepower is delivered to every man, woman, and child on Earth in each 24-hour period.

Russian submarine designers are building military submarines out of concrete. Because concrete becomes stronger under high pressure, "C-subs" could settle down to the bottom in very deep water and wait for enemy ships to pass overhead. Concrete would not show up on sonar displays (it looks just like sand or rocks), so the passing ships would not...Read more

The sport with the largest expenses (medical, legal, and others) due to injuries treated in U.S. emergency rooms in 1995 was bicycling, with costs exceeding $4 billion. More than half a million bicycling injuries were documented. A huge percentage of those injuries were head injuries, which could have been prevented had riders worn protective ...Read more