At the height of this popularity, absinthe was portrayed as a dangerously addictive, psychoactive drug; the chemical thujone was blamed for most of its deleterious effects. By 1915 it was banned in a number of European countries and the United States. Even though it was vilified, there is no evidence showing it to be any more dangerous than ...Read more

A virtual underwater playground with its breathtaking coral, the Philippines draws thousands of divers from Japan, China, and Taiwan each year.

Soils require centuries, or even millennia, to form. According to the United States Soil Conservation Service, most topsoils cannot regenerate at rates of more than 5 tons per acre per year.

There are exactly 1,048576 bytes in one megabyte. Half a byte is called a "nybble."

When they're actually plantains. Banana is the common name used for herbaceous plants in the genus Musa, which because of their size and structure, are often mistaken for trees. Bananas are cultivated for their fruit (techincally berries, since the plant is a herb) which bear the same name, and to a lesser extent as ornamental plants. Globally, ...Read more

The leaves of palm trees vary greatly in size. The largest are the talipot palm with fan-shaped leaves that may be 15 feet (4.6 m) wide, and the raffia palm whose leaves may be 65 feet (20 m) long and 8 feet (2.47 m) wide.

The honey ant of the desert has an unusual method of providing food in times of scarcity. Certain members of the colony are stuffed with liquid food or water until the rear of their bodies are enlarged to the size of a pea. When a famine occurs, these ants disgorge their supplies to feed the

In 1845, the third Earl of Ross, a wealthy amateur astronomer, built the world's largest telescope on his Ireland estate. The earl's reflecting telescope had a 72-inch metal mirror, and was suspended between two ivy-covered stone walls.

Dr. John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida, invented mechanical refrigeration in 1851. He patented his device on May 6, 1851. There is a statue which honors this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

The modern Sudoku was designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979. Garns added a third dimension to the traditional Roman practice of Latin Squares and presented the creation as a puzzle, providing a partially-completed grid and requiring the solver to fill ...Read more

Cats use their whiskers to find out if a space is too small to squeeze into. They also have no collar bone which means they can fit into any space that is the size of their head.

Asimov himself believed that his Laws became the basis for a new view of robots, which moved beyond the "Frankenstein complex". His view that robots are more than "mechanical monsters" eventually spread throughout science fiction. Stories written by other authors have depicted robots as if they obeyed the Three Laws, but tradition dictates that ...Read more

In 1984, Britons ate 41 pounds of beef per person per year, according to the Meat & Livestock Commission. By 1994, the figure dropped to 35 pounds. In March 1996, "Mad Cow Disease" in Britain lowered the consumption figure even more, although many Britons continued to eat roast beef despite the

Babe Ruth was one of only two people (Reggie Jackson being the other) to ever hit three home runs in a World Series game, and is the only one to do it twice (1926 and 1928).

The short answer; yes. Since gemological and industrial uses of diamond have created a large demand some of it is met by synthetics, man-made diamonds which have similar properties to natural diamonds. This process has historically produced industrial-grade diamonds, but producers have recently begun to produce diamonds with high enough quality ...Read more

In size, materials, and human labor, the Great Wall of China is the largest construction project ever undertaken by man. Enough stone was used in the 1,700-year project to build an 8-foot wall girdling the globe at the equator. The Great Wall snakes its way over more than one-twentieth of the

Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound for Hanna Barbera, and literally dozens of characters in the Fractured Fairy Tales segments for Ward, was the original voice of The Cap'n. June Foray (Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Little Nell, Witch Hazel) played all the female characters as well as two of the kids on the Guppy's crew. Paul...Read more

A baked ham has graced traditional Easter tables in America for centuries. The tradition of ham served at Easter dates back to the 1600s. The colonists got the idea from their Native American neighbors. Every year the Native Americans welcomed spring with a planting festival that included the practice of smoking meats, especially venison. The ...Read more

Among the Danakil tribesmen of Ethiopia, when a male dies his grave is marked with a stone for every man he killed.

In December 1997, the state of Nevada (USA) became the first state to pass legislation categorizing Y2K data disasters as "acts of God" — protecting the state from lawsuits that may potentially be brought against it by residents in the year 2000.