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Nobody is born with kneecaps. Like teeth, they grow in later.
The Archipel des Tuamotu, the largest chain of atolls on the planet, consist of less than 350 square miles of island land spread across an area of ocean nearly as large as Western Europe. The Tuamotus were the destination of explorer Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition.
The U.S. bought its Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million.
The Celtic people were also known as the Gaels.
The television game show Jeopardy has been on the air since 1964, though not continuously. Its current run with host Alex Trebek began in 1984. In its first airings, correct questions to the given nswers were worth as little as $10.
Flintstones cartoons were once used to market Winston cigarettes.
When the Union army defeated the confederates at Vicksburg, they imposed several years of martial law, under which permits were required for almost every activity imaginable, including church services and visits to cemetaries.
In Adolf Hitler's final election, he received approximately 99% of the vote.
Until 1961, the president's Washington, D.C. neighbors were not permitted to vote in presidential elections because they were not considered citizens of any state.
Though Angora is now called Ankara, but that soft sweater is still referred to exclusively as an angora.
When the French first began to use a device to efficiently and humanely separate a condemned citizen's head from his or her body, the device was referred to as a louison or louisette. Eventually, the device came to be known by the last name of its inventor, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.
During brief truces during Civil War battles, usually for the purpose of letting each side gather their dead and wounded, brothers and other close relatives and friends from the Union and Confederate armies would meet in the woods to socialize before the fighting resumed.
Cat urine will glow under black light.
Ben Franklin first gained notoriety by authoring a series of popular letters to the editor of Boston's "The Courant" newspaper, using the false identity of a middle-aged widow named "Mrs. Silence Dogood." When the editor of the paper, Franklin's older brother James Franklin, discovered Mrs. Dogood's true identity, he was not pleased.
The Kinsey Scale measures homosexual tendencies. A score of zero means that a man is purely heterosexual. A score of six means that he is absolutely gay.
Cartoonist Elzie Crisler (E.C.) Segar had no ties to Crystal City, Texas. It was a grateful group of local spinach growers who decided to erect a statue of his most famous creation -- Popeye -- in that town.
It takes 713 million years for half of the isotope Uranium-235 to decay into the isotope Lead-207.
Uniting the kingdoms of Scotland and England had been proposed for a hundred years before it actually happened 299 years ago today.
Adolf Hitler ordered his commanders to burn Paris to the ground on August 23, 1944. Two days later, before the orders had been carried out, the city was liberated by Allied forces.
The Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, was signed in a room known as the "Room of Mirrors" (Galerie des Glaces).
Many arrested German civilians were assigned by the Gestapo to concentration camps for "Sonderbehandlung," a German word meaning "Special Treatment." At first, most of those to be given Sonderbehandlung did not know that the term was a euphemism for executions.
The typical person with a typical lifestyle and a typical lifespan can look forward to walking 80,000 miles in his or her lifetime.
The five major sports of the ancient Olympics were the sprint, the long jump, the discus throw, the javelin throw and wrestling.
Punter Steve O’Neal of the New York Jets once blasted a 98-yard punt in an NFL game. From his team's own 1-yard line, he blasted the ball over the returner's head, whereupon it bounced and rolled to a spot unside the Denver Broncos 1-yard line.
Caterpillars have mouths, but they only keep them until they become butterflies.
A cooper is a woodcarver who makes and repairs barrels, tubs, casks and similar containers.
The Italian expression "politica del carciofo" (literally, "politics of the artichoke") means to deal with one's opponents one at a time.
The chance that your airline will misplace a piece of your luggage on your next flight is about one in 100. Once that happens, the chance that you will never see it again is about one in 150.
The U.S. Virgin Islands are the only places in the United States or its territories where driving is done on the left side of the road.
From the time Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, it took less than two months before the Nazis opened Dachau, their first concentration camp. Dachau was initially built to host 5,000 communist prisoners considered too devious to house in ordinary prisons.
On this day in 1970, skier Vinko Bogataj crashed during a skiing competition in Germany. Video footage of his fall became famous as the symbol for the "agony of defeat" on ABC's Wide World of Sports.
Equinox literally means "equal night." This year, it occurred on 2:26 a.m. GMT, yesterday.
In 1654, in his Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world"), Irish Archbishop James Ussher announced his calculations determining that the Earth was created on October 23, 4,004 B.C. This determination was based upon his academic analysis of the Book of Genesis. His calculations were not challenged by science until well after Ussher's death 350 years ago.
No one died in Boston's great fire on this day in 1760, but the loss of property made this arguably the greatest disaster in colonial New England. Some historians believe that England's indifference to Boston's suffering after the Great Fire of 1760 was the first significant root cause of the American independence movement.
The USS Langley was the first commissioned aircraft carrier.
Though almost half of its acreage lies within the Sahara Desert, the rest of the north African nation of Tunisia is extremely fertile. Home to the great city of Carthage, was known as the bread basket of Rome, and was repeatedly invaded an occupied by foreign interests until it gained its independence from France fifty years ago today.
Olive oil can be used in place of shaving cream when one runs out unexpectedly.
Baseball's earliest origins are said to have been based upon an old Dutch game known as "tripbal," played by immigrants arriving in America from the Netherlands.
The Mayans built many more pyramids than the Egyptians. Most Mayan pyramids were built during Europe's dark ages.
Panophobia is the fear of everything.
Hugh Beaumont, the father from "Leave it to Beaver," was an ordained minister with a degree from the University of Southern California.
Chinese gooseberries are native to New Zealand. You might also know them as "kiwi fruits."
In addition to St. Patrick, this was the final day in the lives of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, King Lulach I of Scotland and at least two Nobel prize winners
Julius Caesar, Muhammad and George Washington all enjoyed significant military victories on March 17.
The traditional St. Patrick's Day meal in Ireland was bacon and cabbage. The corned beef tradition began in Irish communities in and around Boston in the 19th century.
People from Utah call themselves Utahns.
Pigeons are a delicacy in places like Egypt. Some pigeon consumers even believe their meat to be an aphrodisiac.
A disinterested person is neutral, but could be fascinated. The uninterested person is simply bored.
Author Victor Hugo's corpse was transported to his final resting place in the Pantheon via a pauper's hearst, in accordance with his final wishes.
Though 24 time zones should theoretically converge there, all of Antarctica observes Greenwich Mean Time.
On the Lake Mead side of the Hoover Dam, the water is over 500 feet deep.
Sesame Street's Oscar the Grouch got his name from a grumpy waiter at a restaurant called Oscar's in New York City. Contrary to popular belief, Bert and Ernie were not named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra's "Its A Wonderful Life". Their names were chosen randomly.
Philadelphia claims Benjamin Franklin as one of its finest native sons. Franklin actually grew up in Boston.
Can you name two bearded presidents who appear on American currency? Most people can quickly identify Lincoln. The other is the whiskered Ulysses S. Grant.
It is unreliable to use radiocarbon dating to determine the age of objects much more than 45,840 years old.
The Union Jack contains elements of the old flags of England and Scotland, and includes the red cross of St. Patrick of Ireland.
Cartoon character Olive Oyl had a brother named Castor.
The little plastic thing on the end of your shoelace is called an aglet. Its name is derived from Middle French word that means "a little needle."
If you think you've suffered a heart attack, take no solace if your doctor says you've had a myocardial infarction. That's just his way of saying, "Yes, you've had a heart attack."
The city of Venice is built upon more than 100 individual islands.
Poland and Lithuania were a single nation state for more than two centuries.
The musical artists known as ZZ Top are well known for their lengthy beards. The one beardless band member is named Frank Beard.
The Hershey plant in Pennsylvania can produce 33 million chocolate kisses each day.
No land beast, extinct or alive, known to man, grew larger than the dinosaurs known as sauropods, the largest of which (as far as science currently knows) was the Argentinasaurus. It grew to 120 feet in length and weighed in at 100 tons.
"Kanata," an Indian word meaning "Big Village," is the linguistic origin of the name of that certain nation situated immediately to the north of the United States.
The word 'durst' is the past-tense of 'dare'.
California calls Sacramento its capitol, but when the Spanish and Mexicans ran the place, Monterey was the seat of government.
Ambergris, the vomit of a sperm whale, smells like fresh moss after rainfall, and its aroma is said to fade very slowly. For this reason, it is extremely valuable. Unfortunately, it looks like an ordinary stone when it washes ashore. How can you tell whether your stone is a valuable chunk of whale vomit? Apply a red hot needle to the surface. If you have ambergris, the surface will melt immediately into an oily black residue that emits a small puff of musky smoke.
Like snakes, crabs shed their skins.
There are 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions in the Torah
The stream along which the rape scene in Deliverance was filmed is now called Sodomy Creek.
Jackie Robinson was a UCLA college dropout. He left the school in 1941 to play semi-pro football for the Honolulu Bears.
Viagra was originally developed to treat angina. The effect on impotence was a mere side effect.
Potato chips were invented by Chef George Crum in response to a customer complaint that he had sliced the french fries too thick.
Ancient Egyptians mummified cats and cows, too.
The raspy voice of mob boss Frank Costello inspired Marlon Brando's portrayal of Vito Corleone The Godfather. Costello was the Genovese family boss who stepped aside after a botched assassination attempt by eventual mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante.
A teaspoon of ordinary tap water contains approximately 140 bacteria. A teaspoon of hot tub water often contains more than 2 million bacteria.
Former California governor Pete Wilson was a graduate of UC Berkeley's elite Boalt Hall School of Law. Unlike most of his classmates, he did not pass the bar exam on his first try. Or his second. Or the third. But the fourth time was a charm.
Annually, about 25 million mice are used in medical experiments.
In 1973, when the USC Trojan marching band marched right behind a convertible carrying First Lady Pat Nixon, the first row of "band members" were actually Secret Servicemen in disguise.
The building in which Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride is housed was inspired by a Caribbean fortress called the Castillo del Morro.
Titanic's anchor weighed 7 tons. Each link on the anchor chain weighed 150 pounds.
Tyrannosaurus rex has the reputation, but Spinosaurus was the largest and most ferocious therapod (two-legged carnivorous dinosaur) among those currently known to science. Discovered in 1915 by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer, the original Spinosaurus bones were destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944. A former resident of what is now North Africa and Argentina, Spinosaurus grew to as much as 55 feet long and eight tons. T-rex, in contrast, was a mere 50 feet and six tons.
Mexicans do not call gringos "gringos." Only gringos call gringos gringos. Mexicans actually call gringos "gabachos."
Killer whales are closely related to dolphins; they are not closely related to true whales.
Cruise is actually the middle name of famous actor and Scientologist Thomas Mapother IV.
Every basketball fan knows that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was known as Lew Alcindor before he changed his name to reflect his conversion to Islam, but did you know that Lew Alcindor's real name was Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr.?
If you are not British, not Royal and not dead, you are not permitted to appear on Scottish currency. Golfer Jack Nicklaus is the only exception to that rule.
The black slug can grow to lengths of more than 20 cm.
Earth's orbit does not follow the equatorial line of the sun.
Happy Birthday to Yellowstone National Park. The first national park in the world was created on this date in 1872.
Ash Wednesday falls 46 days before Easter. The forty days of Lent consist of the days, not counting Sundays, from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday.
Traditionally, the ashes for Ash Wednesday celebrations are made by burning palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday.
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