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Think of expensive cities and your mind will naturally drift to a certain few: New York, Paris, Tokyo, Luanda. Luanda? Yes. That Angolan city is arguably the fourth most expensive city in the world.
Louis D. Brandeis, who graduated from Harvard Law School with the highest grades in the history of that institution, was the first Jew to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The oldest known cat was Puss, of Devon, England. Puss lived to be 36 years old.In 1660, the English Parliament ordered the exhumation and posthumous execution of several dead countrymen accused of treason. The following January, the remains of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton and John Bradshaw were exhumed, hanged, drawn and quartered.
Andorrans are a minority in their own nation, which is populated mostly by Spaniards.
Andrew Jackson was the first American President to face an assassin. Richard Lawrence attempted to assassinate Jackson in the United States Capitol, but his pistols misfired. Jackson then beat him down with a cane.
The character of Alice, she of the looking glass fame, was based upon a real girl who was the daughter of a college dean at Oxford University.
Almost one in five Albanian workers reports to work on foreign soil.
W.C. Fields turned down the role of the wizard in the Wizard of Oz because he thought the part too small.
The space shuttle Challenger was on its 10th mission when it exploded on this date in 1986.
Buttered popcorn is the most popular Jelly Belly flavor.
The hit TV show "Lost" films its cave scenes in a set built within a former Xerox building in Honolulu where a copier repairman murdered 7 co-workers in 1999.
Gray whales never give birth alone because the mother needs help pushing her calf to the surface for its first breath.
Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart aka Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would have turned 250 years old today, had he not died in 1791.
According to some linguists, the use of the word "guy" as a synonym for fellow began as a reference to Guy Fawkes, the Catholic Englishman who was executed for conspiring to blow up Parliament in 1605.
The largest species of penguin is the emperor penguin, which can grow to a height of four feet.
Zorro means fox.
Rebecca was the only Hitchcock film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.
Goldfish kept in a dark place for an extended period of time will turn white.
The section of the Auschwitz Nazi prison camp where the belongings of new prisoners were sent for confiscation and sorting was known as "Canada."
The Harlem Globetrotters began barnstorming in 1927, but didn't play a game in Harlem until the 1960s.
If you run out of shaving cream, with no time to dash off to the store, a dab of butter will work about as well even on tough beards.
By 1850, the population of San Francisco ballooned to twenty times its size at the beginning of 1848.
There are many cities in the world with populations in excess of one million, but none is as northerly as Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The alpha wolf is the leader of the pack. Every pack also has a wolf recognized as the lowest ranked member of the pack. That poor fellow is called the omega wolf.
Almost half of all heart patients try alternative therapies, such as herbal supplements. Fewer than half of those tell their doctors about it.
The single man is statistically much more likely to suffer from heart disease than the married man.
Q: What do Benedict IX (1044), Gregory VI (1046), Celestine V (1294) and Gregory XII (1415) have in common?
A: Each resigned from his position as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
On this date in 1984, the Apple Macintosh was introduced during Super Bowl XVIII with its famous "1984" television commercial. The ad ran once, and only once.
KMart Corp., which recently acquired Sears Roebuck & Co., filed for bankruptcy on this date just four years ago.
Since 1912, USC is the only university in the world to have a gold medal-winning athlete in every summer Olympics.
Jesse Owens wasn't the first black person to win an individual gold medal in the Olympics. DeHart Hubbard did that when he won the long jump in 1924.
Hakeem Olajuwon, Nigerian-born NBA player and Detlef Schrempf, German NBA player share the same date and year of birth.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in California registered -45° Fahrenheit on this day in 1937.
A Canadian invented basketball. The first official basketball game was played 114 years ago today in a YMCA gymnasian in Springfield, Massachusetts. The game was overseen by its sole inventor, American college professor, Dr. James Naismith, who was Canadian born.
Nicolas Copernicus was, among other things, a lawyer.
Poet Edgar Allan Poe dropped out of the University of Virginia after losing his tuition money on games of chance.
Democracy is a Greek word.
Being "shanghaied" was a fate suffered by many a sailor in a port town on the west coast of the United States. Usually, it began by consuming more alcohol or drugs than one's body could handle. Once passed out on the street, the victim could be forcibly conscripted to serve a term working on a ship, sometimes for no wages. In those days, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle were dangerous places for those who drank, but did not want to join a ship bound for Shanghai or some equally remote destinationl.
The Pilgrims came to America from Holland, where they had first settled in Leiden to escape religious persecution in England. It was more than a decade from the time they left England to the time they set sail for the New World.
The category three hurricane which struck New York in 1938 missed making a direct eye wall hit on Manhattan Island by less than 75 miles.
The booty recovered by Captain Morgan and his crew of privateers during the looting of Panama was said to exceed 100,000 pounds of loot.
No sea turtle grows as large as the leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea). They can gets to be about 8 feet long and 1,900 pounds. The largest freshwater turtle, the alligator snapping turtle (Macroclemys temmincki) is considerably smaller, weighing on average, 200 pounds at maturity.
The Wolpertinger is a mythical Bavarian animal that is part deer, part rabbit and part fowl. Though confusingly similar, it bears no relation to the American Southwestern mythical beast the Jackalope.
If you are trying to find your epithalamium, don't ask your doctor for help. Ask a poet. An epithalamium is a poem written to commemorate a wedding.
Q: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s father was named Martin Luther King, right?
A: Not always. Born and raised as "Michael King", as an adult, the southern preacher asked his congregation to call him Martin Luther, in honor of the famous Protestant reformer. Though his famous son's birth certificate says "Michael King, Jr.," he claims that this was an error, and that his son should have been called Martin Luther King, Jr. from birth.
When something is said to be "the real McCoy," the speaker is referring to black inventor Elijah McCoy, who invented and sold 57 different devices and machine parts, including the ironing board, automatic oil cup and a lawn sprinkler.
Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, was also a patented wrench inventor.
Placebo is Latin for "I shall please." Its antonym, nocebo, translates literally into "I shall harm."
One whale can keep 100,000 whale lice fat and happy.
The old "thumbs up" hand sign is considering quite offensive in many places, e.g., Nigeria.
Your latest, state of the art, spacecraft takes about three years to travel a billion miles.
The Greek god Zeus was reportedly a sixth child. He was, however, the first of his siblings not to be immediately eaten.
A mile of new freeway costs $40 million to $75 million, depending upon where you build it.
In Greece and Spain, Tuesday the 13th is considered an unlucky day. Friday is not so bad.
If you observe the Julian calendar, you can celebrate New Year's Eve tonight.
The difference between paraskevidekatriaphobia and triskaidekaphobia and is simple. The former is a fear of Friday the 13th; the latter is fear of the number thirteen in general.
Liver cancer is the fifth most common form of cancer. A patient diagnosed with liver cancer, if typical, will survive just four months after diagnosis.
Penguin egg yolks are usually red in color, due to carotenoid pigments in the penguin's crustacean-based diet.
Early Roman and Jewish critics of the followers of Jesus insisted, among other things, that Jesus was not the son of God, but instead, was a child born out of of an adulterous relationship between Mary and a Roman soldier named Panthera.
Because lemon trees bloom and produce fruit year-round, a mature tree can easily produce between 500 and 600 pounds of lemons in a year.
You've heard of the Orteig Prize, haven't you? That was the official honor Charles A. Lindbergh was awarded when he landed in Paris after completing the first ever nonstop transatlantic flight.
The world's largest mollusk is not the giant clam. Mollusks include cephalopods, such as the octopus, squid, nautilus and cuttlefish. The largest of those, by far, is the giant squid, which can grow to at least 47 feet. There are no clams, giant or otherwise, that large.
Coulrophobia is the word that describes the condition of being frightened by clowns. Those who suffer from it also frequently suffer from automatonophobia (fear of ventriloquist's dummies), pediophobia (fear of dolls) or pupaphobia (fear of puppets).
In 1903, the Rose Bowl game was a water polo match.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated at least one USC alumnus every year since the inception of the Academy Awards in 1929.
If you took two dozen brides, you still would be behind the pace of Brigham Young.
Fewer than ten entertainers have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. The most recent entertainer to win the "Grand Slam" of show business was Mel Brooks, who completed the feat when he won three Tony Awards for The Producers in 2001.
With all that sugar, most fruity martinis contain between 300 and 400 calories, which is more than a typical cheeseburger.
Pope Clement III was the uncle of Pope Innocent III.
Speaking English was not a requirement to hold the throne of England. In fact, being able to speak was not a requirement. Henry VI was only 269 days old when he was crowned King of England. His first words were spoken as king.
Major League Baseball player Rick Leach was Michigan's starting quarterback in the 1977, 1978 and 1979 Rose Bowls.
Today is Christmas Day in the Julian calendar. This is the day on which Christmas is celebrated in many Eastern Christian Churches, including the Coptic Orthodox, Macedonian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Ukrainian Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Anthiochian Orthodox and some of the Greek Orthodox Churches.
In 50 m.p.h. winds, the Statue of Liberty sways as much as three feet in any direction.
The college football defensive player of the year award is named for "Bronko" Nagurski. Bronko's real first name was Bronislau. A 3-time All-American player for the University of Minnesota, Nagurski went on to star for the NFL's Chicago Bears. In addition to being a member of the NFL Hall of Fame, he was also a three-time world heavyweight champion wrestler.
There was a time when Memphis, Tennessee was the only place where you could stay in a Holiday Inn.
A pangram is a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet. In English, one needs at least 26 letters. In Cambodian, you will need 74 letters.
On this, the 12th day of Christmas, you would traditionally give 12 drummers drumming, which is said to represent the 12 points of faith in the Apostle's Creed.
If you dressed as an Arab, the Riverside County Fair and Data Festival in Indio, California would let you in without paying the admission fee.
The earliest canonized American saint was St. John Neumann (pronounced noi-man). Neumann was not born in America. He was a Bohemian by birth. He was not educated in America. He was a Budweiser in his school days, attending classes in the German city of Budweis. But he became a priest in New York City, and is considered an American priest. His feast day is today.
The idiom "pillar of salt" means to have a stroke or to become paralyzed.
No two teammates have ever played in the same college football game after winning Heisman Trophies.
From 1947 to 2001, when the Rose Bowl featured the conference champions from the Pac-10 and Big-10 conferences (or their predecessors), the game featured the top two ranked teams just twice. In 1963, #1 USC beat #2 Wisconsin; and in 1969, #1 Ohio State defeated #2 USC.
Heisman winners are 4-4 in Rose Bowls. USC winners are 1-1. Charles White won his Rose Bowl, and OJ Simpson lost his. USC's other winners played in the Orange Bowl (Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart), Fiesta Bowl (Marcus Allen), and no bowl (Mike Garrett).
The Mt. Lowe Railway was the world's first electric mountain railway ran. It ran seven miles from Pasadena to Mt. Lowe from 1893-1936. At the top, tourists were greeted a zoo and the world's largest spotlight.
The Rose Bowl is situated in the middle of Brookside Park, Pasadena's largest municipal park.
If you love chinese food like chop suey, sweet and sour soup and peking duck, don't expect such culinary delights on your next trip to China. You will be hard pressed to find those dishes anywhere in China.
The Rose Parade never rolls on a Sunday. Many people believe that this rule is a century-old edict dating back to times when businesses all closed on Sunday for local Christians to attend church services. In fact, it is a tradition that dates back to just 1983.
The Rose Parade experienced rain nine times in the first 116 parades. However, until today, it had gone fifty dry parade years (1956-2005) between bouts of rain. The last rainy parade day was January 1, 1955. The next was this morning, January 2, 2006. The parade rout was mostly dry yesterday.
The tradition of papal name changes dates back at least as far as this date in 533, when Mercurius became Pope and took the name John II.
On New Year's Day in Japan, homes are decorated with pine branches and bamboo, to symbolize long life.
The longest hurricane track belongs to 1966 Hurricane Faith, which traveled 7,500 miles from the African coast to the Bahamas, then north to Scandanavia, where it came ashore as a mere tropical storm.
In you live in Arkansas, you might be able to travel to Moscow on foot. You won't be able to visit the Kremlin in that Moscow, however.
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