A "duffer" is Australian slang for a cattle thief.

A kelpie (or kelpy) was a water spirit of Scottish folklore reputed to cause drownings.

The sci-fi flick Gog (1954), in which a nuclear "brain" takes over a secret laboratory, was the first film to have a computer appear as a main character in a movie.

At any given time, there are 1,800 thunderstorms in progress over the Earth's atmosphere. Lightning strikes the Earth 100 times every second.

The Dead Sea is not a sea, but a landlocked salt lake, 45 miles long by 9 miles wide.

In a traditional French restaurant kitchen, a "garde-manger" is responsible for salads.

Recycled glass uses only two-thirds the energy needed to manufacture glass from scratch. That means for every soft drink bottle that is recycled, enough energy is saved to run a television set for an hour and a half.

Mao Zedong, like many Chinese of his time, refused to brush his teeth. Instead, he rinsed his mouth with tea and chewed the leaves. Why brush? "Does a tiger brush his teeth?" argued Mao. Chairman Mao also loved to chain-smoke English cigarettes. When his doctor asked him to cut down, he explained, "Smoking is also a form of deep-breathing ...Read more

The NBC daytime drama, The Doctors, was the first soap opera to win an Emmy series award in 1972. Although the Emmy Awards were launched in 1948 to honor accomplishments in the television industry, the genre of daytime drama was largely ignored. It was finally recognized with its own category 24

In the old school primer "Now We Read," the name of the cat featured with Dick, Jane, Sally, and their dog Spot, was Puff.

Old firehouses have circular staircases because, in the days when horses pulled fire engines and were stabled on the ground floor of fire houses, they figured out how to walk up straight staircases.

In 1960, M&M's added the colors: red, green and yellow to the mix. Then in 1976, the color orange was added to the peanut version. Later that year, red was pulled out of the lineup due to a controversy surrounding a specific red food coloring, however the type of red was not used in M&M's but

Breathing for most snakes is accomplished with one lung only. The left lung is either greatly reduced in size or missing completely.

In one year, Americans generate enough hazardous waste to fill the New Orleans Superdome 1,500 times over.

Tuberculosis is one of the world's oldest diseases. Some ancient mummies found in Egypt and Peru had tuberculosis.

The "Top Ten Preppiest Student Bodies" according to the 2006 edition of the Insider's Guide to Colleges published by Yale Daily News: Babson College, Colgate University, Middlebury College, Princeton University, Rollins College, Trinity College (Connecticut), University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, Villanova University, Wake Forest ...Read more

By the end of the Civil War, between one-third and one-half of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. This served as the catalyst behind the creation of the U.S. Secret Service. On July 5, 1865, the Secret Service was created under the U.S. Treasury Department. In less than a

A Twinkie is a "Golden Sponge Cake with Creamy Filling" created by Hostess, and baked by Continental Baking Co., which is owned by Kansas City-based Interstate Bakeries Corporation. Twinkies measure 4" x 1" and are usually sold in packages of two. They have a shelf life of 25 days which is very

According to the General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, the typical American spends an average of one year of his or her life speaking on the telephone.

Lost cats really can find their way home. Various experts point to sunlight angles, the earth's magnetic fields and another capability referred to as PSI Traveling. Whatever the case, recorded facts about cats confirm their often long and arduous journeys to reach home and a favored human