The sea otter's dark fur is the finest and densest of any animal fur. On an adult animal, there are approximately 650,000 hairs per square inch. A sea otter relies on its fur to keep it warm — it doesn't have blubber as other marine mammals do. Natural oils in a sea otter's fur repel water.

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

Ricou Browning, a former lifeguard who earned limited fame after playing the monster in 1954's horror film Creature From the Black Lagoon, personally trained TV's first Flipper, a female dolphin named Mitzi. Browning is the one responsible for developing the show's premise, and got his inspiration from his own kids' favorite TV show at the time,...Read more

Every time it erupts, Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park spurts up to 8,000 gallons of 199-degree water about 140 feet into the air.

A Cornish game hen is really just a young Cornish chicken, usually 5 to 6 weeks of age, that weighs no more than 2 pounds.

"The Pieta" is the only sculpture on which Michelangelo is believed to have carved his name.

In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk was a demon, or the soul of a dead person that entered the body of a living person and directed the person’s conduct, exorcism being possible only by a religious ceremony.

The world's longest railway is in Peru. The Central Railway climbs to 15,694 feet in the Galera tunnel, 108 miles from Lima. Tourists take it to get to the ruins of Machu Picchu.

Mona Lisa, or La Gioconda, is a 16th-century oil painting on poplar wood by Leonardo da Vinci, and is, perhaps, the most famous painting in Western art history or even the world. Few other works of art are as romanticised, celebrated, parodied or reproduced. It is owned by the French government and hangs in the Musee du Louvre in Paris. The ...Read more

American colonists discovered that superior candles could be made from the fruit of a squat bush growing in the sand dunes along the New England seashore. The small, grayish bayberry was picked, crushed, and boiled. The mixture had to be skimmed several times before the pale, nearly transparent, green fat was sufficiently refined. Bayberry ...Read more

Not as we think of it. Humans produce sound by expelling air through the larynx. The vocal cords within the larynx open and close as necessary to separate the stream of air into discrete pockets of air. These pockets are shaped by the throat, tongue, and lips into the desired sound. Cetacean sound production differs markedly from this mechanism....Read more

The ball used in hurling is also known as a sliotar or sliothar. The ball usually has a cork center and is covered with horsehide. Hurling for women is called camogie.

A 4-inch-long abalone can grip a rock with a force of 400 pounds. Two grown men are incapable of prying it up.

A wet onion is easier to peel than a dry one, per cooking experts.

There are earthworms as short as one-twenty-fifth of an inch and earthworms as long as 11 feet. The earthworm has no lungs; it breathes through its skin. Some earthworms have as many as ten hearts.

Absolutely; Kentucky Fried Chicken's popularity can be traced back to a highly successful marketing campaign that began nearly 40 years ago. Foreigners came to eat at KFC because they couldn't find chicken anywhere else. A KFC employee saw an opportunity to cash in, and the company launched its first Christmas meal in 1974. Soon the tradition ...Read more

Kazatsky (also spelled kazatski and kazatska) is the popular, vigorous Russian folk dance performed by a man. It is characterized by a step in which, from a squatting position, each leg is alternately kicked out.

Since its first appearance in 1912, Oreo Chocolate Sandwich Cookies have reigned supreme as being the number one selling cookie in America. The basic design of the cookie has not changed for more than 50 years. Today's version is a neat 1 3/4 inches across - that's one, two or three bites,

The eighteenth-century politician and playboy John Wiles was arguing with a fellow politician, Lord Sandwich, who exclaimed: "Sir, you will die either of the pox or on the gallows." To which Wilkes reportedly replied: "Depending on whether I embrace your mistress or your principles."