There are seven distinctive types of combs on chickens: rose, strawberry, single, cushion, buttercup, pea, and V-shaped.

The Egyptian vulture, a white bird about the size of a raven, throws stones with its beak to open ostrich eggs to eat. This bird is one of the very few animals that, like man, manipulates objects as tools.

The last words of famed ballerina Anna Pavlova were "Get my swan costume ready."

The first log cabins in North America were built in 1683 by Swedish immigrants in Delaware.

In a review for Rolling Stone writer Matthew Perpetua described the vocals as having "a peculiar tonality that inadvertently highlights the absurdity of boilerplate pop lyrics," adding that the tone in the refrain "sounds unlike anything else in pop music." He noted the sound as being not entirely agreeable to listen to, but states that Black ...Read more

The cubit is the oldest known measurement, appearing in the Bible when God gives Noah instructions for the ark. Described as a Royal Cubit, it was measured from the elbow to the thumb knuckle. It was a means of insuring that the nobility got a larger share at the market place.

Whistler professed to be perplexed and annoyed by the insistence of others upon viewing his work as a "portrait." In his 1890 book, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, he writes: "Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal Academy as an 'Arrangement in Grey and Black.' Now that is what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my ...Read more

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.