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

Bulgaria’s national anthem was written by Tzvetan Radoslavov (1863-1931). The original words and music were composed by Radoslavov while he was still a student in 1885 and on his way to fight in the Serbo-Bulgarian War. The song quickly became popular. It was arranged as the National Anthem, replacing the previous Republican Anthem in 1964. ...Read more

Usually Bushmen hunt with poison arrows. The poison is extracted from the pupae of beetles found in the soil beneath infested marula trees. A few drops of the poison squeezed onto an arrow are enough to kill an antelope; one drop of it can kill a human if it enters the bloodstream. For safety, arrowhead tips are not treated – the poisonous ...Read more

“Toboggan” is derived from the Algonquin language and loosely meant “instrument with which to drag a cord.”

Sexual freedom and the elimination of sexual jealousy are a major theme of Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), in which the straitlaced nurse Jill acts as a dramatic foil for the less parochial characters Jubal Harshaw and Mike. Two negative references to homosexuality have been interpreted by some readers as being homophobic, but both deal with ...Read more

Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French mathematician, said that if Cleopatra's nose had been differently shaped – aquiline, for instance – or if Cromwell's bladder had not been obstructed and he had lived longer, the history of the world would have been altered.

The human body consists of about 60 trillion cells, and each cell has about 10,000 times as many molecules as the Milky Way has stars.

In 1894, A. G. Spalding & Bros. in Chicopee, Massachusetts invented the first official basketball. The first balls were made of panels of leather that were stitched together over a rubber bladder.

Japanese children start out by memorizing 80 brush-stroke characters by second grade, going all the way to 2,000 characters to allow them to read a newspaper in high school. Still, only 16.3 percent of test takers pass a national kanji (writing Chinese characters) exam that requires mastering about 2,000 characters. These days, more Japanese ...Read more

Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons as compared to 0.875 gallons for women.

Thirteen popes were named Leo, including Leo the Great, who prevented the Huns from sacking Rome. Six emperors of Constantinople were also called Leo. The continuing popularity of the name probably stems for it association with the lion, long considered the king of beasts.

More than half of school-age children in the U.S. have no cavities in their permanent teeth, compared with only 26 percent who were cavity-free in the early '70s, the American Dental Association has reported.

The frigate bird can fly at a speed of 260 miles per hour.

Silly Putty started as a mistake in a New Haven laboratory, and turned into a consumer hit in the 1960s by sheer chance. According to engineers, Silly Putty is a self-contradiction. Chemically, it is a liquid, but it resembles a solid. The molecular structure will stretch if the structure is slowly pulled. But if tugged, it snaps apart. The toy ...Read more

Gold salts are sometimes injected into the muscles to relieve arthritis.

A dripping hot water faucet wastes an average of 40 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. This is the equivalent of running a color television 8 hours a day for about 31 days.

The phrase "guinea pig" originated when a tax was imposed on powder for Whigs in England to help pay for the war with Napoleon. The list of those who had paid the guinea (one pound, one shilling) was posted on their parish church door. As they were the wealthy of the day, they became known as the

A new study found that male monkeys will give up their juice rewards in order to ogle pictures of female monkey's bottoms. The way the experiment was set up, the act is akin to paying for the images, the researchers say.

Cashew nuts are expensive, and never have shells because the shell and skin of the cashew nut contains extremely caustic oil that can painfully blister the skin. This dangerous oil must be completely removed before the nut can be touched or eaten.

On August 12, 1895, Minnie Dean became the first woman to be hanged in New Zealand. Her crime was "baby farming." She would adopt unwanted babies for a certain fee and then dispose of them, a "service" she began in 1889. The police caught on to Minnie after six years and found her to be most certainly guilty when they dug up three bodies of ...Read more