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Children's pedestrian deaths are four times higher on Halloween than on any other night of the year.
The Gaelic year began at Samhain, which is now celebrated as Hallowe'en.
Wildfires move 16 times faster uphill than downhill.
Macao, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China (Hong Kong being the other), recently overtook Las Vegas as the world's No. 1 gambling market.
The Louisiana Purchase cost about four cents per acre.
Hank Aaron's best single season home run tally is not among the top 50 in major league baseball history. Not even close.
About a nickel a loaf is earned by the farmers who grew the wheat used to bake your bread.
You can't sweat like a pig because pigs can't sweat. They have no sweat glands, so they roll around in mud to cool off.
White tigers are not albinos.
U2's the Edge is David Howell Evans.
Physically-attached twins are called "Siamese twins" because the first famous pair, brothers Chang and Eng, were from Siam.
In 1925, Mrs. Nellie Taylor Ross of Wyoming became the first woman elected governor.
Hall of Fame NFL and college football coach John McKay still holds several rushing records at the University of Oregon.
The movie Animal House was filmed at the University of Oregon. The Administration Building served as Dean Wormer's office.
The Oregon Ducks won the first ever NCAA basketball tournament in 1939.
The moon's orbit is elliptical, and at times, it can be 30,000 miles closer than at others. At the moment, it is near its closest point, so if you thought the full moon appeared 14% larger and 30% brighter than other full moons this year, you weren't imagining things.
On October 26, 1977, Ali Maow Maalin, a hospital cook in Somalia, became the last person to contract smallpox through natural transmission when he chose to tend an infected child. The child died but Maalin survived.
The average Japanese man is shorter than the average man of any other nation. Holland is where you will find the tallest average man.
The only sequel to a sequel to win the Best Picture Oscar was The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).
Yellowstone National Park's Steamboat Geyser, the world's tallest active geyser in , has a major eruption every 4 days to 50 years. Steamboat was dormant from 1911-1961. It last erupted in May 2005.
The college that has the most presidents as alumni (six in total) is Harvard: J. Adams, J. Q. Adams, T. Roosevelt, F. Roosevelt, Kennedy, and G. W. Bush (business school). Yale is a close second, with five presidents as alumni: Taft, Ford (law school), G.H.W. Bush, Clinton (law school), and G. W. Bush.
Abe Lincoln's mother died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and Mrs. Lincoln drank the milk.
The West Pacific is in the Eastern Hemisphere; the East Pacific is in the Western Hemisphere.
The Black Sea is actually an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, connected to the Mediterranean by the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara.
Rogers, Arkansas, not Bentonville, was home to the first Wal-Mart.
The Great Salt Lake still is the world's fourth largest "terminal lake," where water flows in but doesn't flow out.
Mobster Frank Rosenthal earned the nickname "Lefty" during a court hearing in which he pleaded the Fifth Amendment 37 times, not even answering the question of whether or not he was left-handed.
The name Illinois is derived from a French translation of the Algonquin word illini, which means "men." The "Fighting Illini" of the University of Illinois is not named for any actual Indian tribe. They are simply named for fighting men.
The first McDonald's, opened in Des Plaines, Illinois in 1955, is now a museum dedicated to McDonald's restaurants.
The tallest man in medical history was Robert Pershing Waldlow, of Illinois, who was 8 feet 11 inches and died in 1940 at the age of 22.
The New Bulldog in Rock Island, Illinois, features a bar that is 684 feet long, the longest bar in the world.
The first Ferris wheel made its debut at the World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago.
The cardinal has been adopted as the state bird by seven states: Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. The next most popular bird is the western meadowlark, favored by six states.
In 1931, after beating Notre Dame in the first football game played at Notre Dame Stadium, USC came home to Los Angeles and saw its team greeted by 300,000 fans.
Charlie Weis and Joe Montana were college roommates.
Before becoming the greatest college basketball coach of all-time, John Wooden coached high school basketball in South Bend, Indiana.
Though he gain just 927 career rushing yards in four seasons, the Bears retired running back Brian Piccolo's No. 41 jersey.
The IATA abbreviation "ORD" for Chicago's O'Hare airport comes from its original name, Orchard Field.
The Bulls called heads; it came up tails. With that, the Lakers drafted Magic Johnson, and the Bulls settled for UCLA's David Greenwood.
If Mount Everest was about 20% higher, its summit could not be reached without a pressurized space suit. Climbers would get the bends.
Winnie-the-Pooh, like virtually all the characters in the famous Winnie-the-Pooh children's books, is a boy. Only Kanga, the mother kangaroo, is female.
Male Emperor penguins incubate the eggs.
The first Home Depot was opened in Atlanta Georgia after its founders were fired by Handy Dan.
The Pacific Ocean is currently shrinking due to plate tectonics, while the Atlantic Ocean is increasing in size.
A score of zero in tennis is called love because "l'oeuf" is the French word for egg.
Among schools the used to play Division I-AA football, but don't any longer, three (ETSU, Morris Brown and Boston University) had at least 500 games played.
Miyoshi Umeki, who won a Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in Sayonara, was the first Asian to win an Academy Award.
The largest pyramid at Giza is made out of 2.3 million stones.
Mr. Pepperdine, after whom the university was named, sold car parts for a living.
In each of the first nine years of the BCS, at least one of the title-game participants has been the team ranked number 1 or number 2 in the preseason rankings.
On the New Madrid fault, seismic waves travel up to twenty times as far as they would from the San Andreas Fault in California.
Do you like hard rock? Diamonds are hardest, followed by corundu, topaz, feldspar, apatite, flourite, calcite and gypsum. Talc is the softest.
Niagara's "American" falls and "Canadian" falls are divided by a large island in the river. That island, called Goat Island, is part of New York.
Developing countries received $167 billion last year from emigrants sending back money home. That is about double what they receive in foreign aid.
In the past 20 years, only Florida State and USC have won college football championships after being ranked number one in preseason polls. In the last 50 years, Alabama and Oklahoma did it, too.
Over the 57 years the NCAA has kept track of total attendance for all teams, Michigan has led the nation in football attendance 36 times.
The ten winningest college football programs include three teams from the Big Ten, three from the Big XII, two from the SEC, one from the Pac 10 and one independent.
King John of England lost his crown jewels in The Wash, near Fosdyke, a few days before he died in 1216. The replacement set lasted until Oliver Cromwell melted them down.
On this day in 1492, Christopher Columbus's expedition landed in the Bahamas, which they mistook for East Asia.
George Carlin was the first guest host of Saturday Night Live. Janis Ian and Billy Preston were the first musical guests.
Basic dynamite is nothing more than absorbent material soaked in nitroglycerin. In the U.S., standard dynamite sticks include not only nitroglycerin, but also ammonium nitrate and sodium nitrate, absorbed in wood pulp with a trace of calcium carbonate to neutralize acids that might accumulate during storage.
Peanuts aren't really nuts but are actually a type of bean.
After even a brief period of use, your kitchen sponge will contain far more bacteria than your toilet bowl.
The name Amy means beloved.
Oscar-winning actors Yul Brynner and Orson Welles died on the same day in 1985.
Double Ten Day was the national day of the Republic of China, now seated in Taiwan, to observe the start of the Wuchang Uprising of October 10, 1911, that brought down the Qing Dynasty.
Before John Henry retired as highest money-earning thoroughbred in history with $6,597,947 in winnings, he was sold several times -- first for $1,100, then $2,200 and eventually, $25,000.
Those who enjoy the taste of moose noses report that it tastes best jellied.
The Chicago Blackhawks' 2,415 losses are the most in NHL history.
Among America's 20 largest cities, none has a murder rate close to Detroit's 48 per 100,000. In 2006, a violent crime was committed against almost one in every 40 Detroit residents.
Milk became the drink of champions after Louis Meyer, the winner of the 1936 Indianapolis 500, was photographed gulping down a bottle of buttermilk, his favorite drink.
Ozzy's real name is John Michael Osbourne.
In ancient Babylon, the bride's father would give his son-in-law a month's worth of mead, a fermented honey beverage, after the wedding. The first month of the marriage was referred to as the "honey month," or "honeymoon."
Honey is also one of the traditional gifts for a 13th wedding anniversary.
A poem written to celebrate a wedding is called an epithalamium.
Stanford has no official mascot, but the Stanford Tree (a Stanford Band member in a homemade tree suit) fills the roll. The Tree is a reference to "El Palo Alto," the particular tree depicted in the official Stanford seal and logo.
For thirteen straight years, despite having the lowest enrollment of any Pac-10 school, Stanford has won the NACDA Director's Cup for Division I, awarded annually to the college or university in the nation with the most success in collegiate athletics. North Carolina is the only other school to have won the award for Division I competition.
If the University of Southern California was a sovereign nation, it would rank tied for 11th in the world in total Olympic gold medals. In the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, Trojans won more gold medals and more overall medals than Mexico and Canada combined.
There was no October 5 in 1582 in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, which adopted the Gregorian calendar that year and skipped straight from October 4 to October 15.
No American-born hockey player has more career points than Phil Housley, who retired with 1,301. By this time next month, however, Dallas Stars center Mike Modano could be ahead of him. Modano is already the goals leader among American-born players with 507.
A Sumatran Orangutan named Fu Man Chu once learned how to use a wire to pick the locks at Omaha's Hentry Doorly Zoo.
A three-month-old fetus already has fingerprints.
A molecule of alcohol consists of a just few atoms of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
Among the things actors David McLean and Wayne McLaren had in common were that they both portrayed the Marlboro Man and they both died of lung cancer.
Connecticut once called itself The Arsenal of the Nation.
Three Mile Island is so named because it is located 3 miles downriver from Middletown, Pennsylvania.
Lord William Thomson Kelvin, president of the British Royal Society, said in 1895 that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” They began flying eight years later.
The busiest airports in the U.S. are Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, O'Hare (Chicago), Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles, and McCarran (Las Vegas). No New York area airport is in the top ten.
The Dodgers have played in Dodger Stadium for more years than they played in Ebbets Field.
It took more than 13 years after the Declaration of Independence for the Bill of Rights to be proposed.
Identical twins always have the same father. Fraternal twins sometimes have different fathers.
Virgin oil is the result of a single pressing. Extra virgin is the highest quality virgin olive oil.
You know former spouses Demetria Gene Guynes and Walter Willison as Demi Moore & Bruce Willis.
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