One in ten Dalmatians is born deaf, and the breed lacks the ability to process urine completely, so they need a special diet low in flesh protein.

Seedless oranges were not grown in the United States until 1871. The first ones came from Brazil and were planted in California.

Everyone knows about vitamins A, B, C, D, and E. Few are aware that there are also vitamins K, T, H, and U. These vitamins are helpful in proper liver function, treating anemia, and the healing of ulcers.

Sarah Josepha Hale, an American magazine editor, persuaded Abraham Lincoln to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday. She is also the author of the popular nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Lincoln issued a 'Thanksgiving Proclamation' on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for ...Read more

Mars wanted a candy coating to prevent the chocolate from melting.

That depends on the denomination of the note. A $1 bill lasts 18 months; $5 bill, two years; $10 bill, three years; $20 bill, four years; and $50 and $100 bills, nine years. Bills that get worn out from everyday use are taken out of circulation and replaced.

The burrowing boodie of Australia is the only kangaroo in the world that lives underground.

Joan Crawford was born Billie Cassin, but her name was changed to Lucille LeSueur when she was young and her mother remarried. When she embarked on a film career as a teenager, film studio executives didn't like her last name as it suggested a sewer. So, her screen name became Joan Crawford as a result of a promotional "name contest" which was ...Read more

The P.T.A., or the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, was founded in the United States in 1897. It was originally called the "National Congress of Mothers," but was expanded to include fathers, teachers, and other citizens.

On the average, more animals are killed by motorists than by hunters with guns.

It has been estimated that at least a million meteors have hit the Earth's land surface, which is only 25 percent of the planet. Every last trace of more than 99 percent of the craters thus formed has vanished, erased by wind, water, and living things.

Some priests in Australia advise you to say "Happy Christmas", not "Merry Christmas", because Merry has connotations of getting drunk - which brings its own problems. One should say "Happy" instead.

The song of Humpback Whales was a significant plot element of the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The purpose of whale song was the main plot device in the book Fluke, or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore. Whale song is also a factor in the worldview of uplifted dolphins in David Brin's Uplift and Uplift Storm trilogies...Read more

The "Yongle dadian," an encyclopedia of the Chinese Ming dynasty, had 22,937 chapters in 10,000 volumes. Over 2,000 Chinese scholars worked on the book for 5 years before it was finished.

In India it is perfectly proper for men to wear pajamas in public. Pajamas are accepted as standard daytime wearing apparel.

While Theodore Roosevelt was campaigning in Milwaukee in 1912, a would-be assassin fired a bullet into the right side of his chest. Much of the force of the slug was absorbed by the President's eyeglasses case and by the 50 page speech he was carrying double-folded in his breast pocket. Nevertheless, the bullet lodged itself just short of his ...Read more

The Louisville Slugger logo doesn't always appear just on baseball bats. One of the more recent adaptations of the familiar oval was on the first cruise missile fired in the Persian Gulf war. The missile was painted by sailors on the U.S.S. Louisville nuclear attack submarine which fired the opening shot of the conflict. Each of the sailors on ...Read more

Hold it over your head. The British call a large umbrella, especially one that is bulky or awkwardly wrapped, a "gamp." It is in allusion to the umbrella of Mrs. Gamp in Charles Dickens' work Martin Chuzzlewit.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century, men's shoes had a square tip, like a duck's beak, a fashion launched by Charles VIII of France to hide the imperfection of one of his feet, which had six toes.

Comets speed up as they approach the Sun a " sometimes reaching speeds of over a million miles per hour. Far away from the Sun, speeds drop, perhaps down to as little as 700 miles per hour.