Man's three-pound brain is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter known in the universe.

Yachting was scheduled to be on the first modern Olympic Games program in 1896, but rough seas forced the cancellation of the event.

During his rule, Elagabalus (c. 203 – March 11, 222) showed a disregard for Roman religious traditions and sexual taboos. He was married as many as five times and is reported to have prostituted himself in the imperial palace. Elagabalus replaced Jupiter, head of the Roman pantheon, with a new god, Deus Sol Invictus, and forced leading members...Read more

Though the Las Vegas sprawl measures 15 miles wide by 15 miles long, most of the 30 million tourists each year tend to mob the 6-mile stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that includes both the Strip, home to the city's glittering, impressive major casinos, and the downtown area.

Most beer today is made by boiling grain. However, some ancient cultures had a very different take on the process. In Incan society, women would chew corn and then spit the mush into a vat of warm water where it was allowed to ferment.

On a clear day with blue skies, lightning can jump outside of its parent cloud and travel for more than five miles through clear air. This is called the "bolt from the blue" phenomenon. The study of lightning is called keraunopathology.

There are 170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways to play the ten opening moves in a game of chess.

In 1889, the first coin-operated telephone, patented by Hartford, Connecticut inventor William Gray, was installed in the Hartford Bank. Soon, "pay phones" were installed in stores, hotels, saloons, and restaurants, and their use soared. Local calls using a coin-operated phone in the U.S. cost

Australia is the smallest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent in the world. It is the only country which is also a whole continent -- 18.6 million people live here.

The pronghorn antelope is the fastest mammal to be found in North America, and second only to the cheetah as the fastest mammal on the planet.

According to "The Farmers Almanac," to test your love, you and your lover should each place an acorn in water. If they swim together, your love is true; if they drift apart, so will you.

The sun burns 9 million tons of gas a second. At this rate, it has been estimated it will burn out in another 10 billion years.

The ancient nautilus is considered the most intelligent of the invertebrates; it is said to have been as intelligent as a young cat.

It's been documented that locusts have formed swarms measuring up to one mile wide, 100 feet deep, and 50 miles long. They may travel more than 2,000 miles. A swarm this enormous has been known to contain as many as 40 billion locusts.

Glamorous sex kitten during the 1950s, starring in movies such as Trapeze and Solomon and Sheba, Gina Lollobridgida retired from films in the 1970s to become a professional photographer.

UK group The Tornadoes' hit single "Telstar" was the first UK single to reach Number 1 in the USA on December 22, 1962. This was more than a year before the Fab Four made it to Number 1 in the USA with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on February 1, 1964.

Frogs never drink. They absorb water from their surroundings by osmosis.

Robert Peary, discoverer of the North Pole, included a photograph of his nude mistress in a book about his travels.

There are more than 5,919,682 telephones in New York City, more phones than in the entire country of Spain. The cables serving the New York City area have nearly 33,072,975 miles of wire.

The name of the first airplane flown at Kitty Hawk by the Wright Brothers, on December 17, 1903, was "Flyer." The maiden flight of Flyer, however, was less than a flight the plane stayed in the air only 12 seconds. The brothers flew three more times that day, with their final flight covering 852