There are some herbicides that will kill kudzu. Allowing animals to overgraze land with kudzu will also kill the vine. But kudzu is so aggressive that it comes back, so you have to be certain to totally eradicate it and monitor kudzu sites for years to prevent regrowth.

There is about one quarter-pound of salt in every gallon of seawater.

The rooms of a shotgun house are lined up one behind the other, typically a living room is first, then one or two bedrooms, and finally a kitchen in back. Early shotgun houses were not built with bathrooms, but in later years a bathroom with a small hall was built before the last room of the house, or a side addition was built off of the kitchen...Read more

Finn MacCool (sometimes spelled Fionn MacCumhall) is a familiar figure in Irish folk tales, sometimes portrayed as a giant. Several tales tell how Finn burned his thumb while cooking the salmon of knowledge. He put his thumb in his mouth to ease the pain. From that day, he had only to put his thumb in his mouth when he was perplexed to discover ...Read more

The six official languages of the United Nations are English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish.

Socrates, one of the most famous Greek philosophers, never wrote down a single word of his teachings. The only knowledge we have of his thinking today comes from the notes taken by his great student, Plato.

Five times as many meteors can be seen after midnight as can seen before.

Mostly in that they're made by another company. Wise Foods, Inc. sells a popular version of the snack, Cheez Doodles. According to their website, " Wise Cheez Doodles are the honest-to-goodness originals, the genuine puffed or crunchy snacks that are a hit wherever they're served. Kids love Doodles, but you'll never outgrow that great cheesy ...Read more

The praying mantis eats nothing but live food, predominantly insects. Its prey is taken only from flowers, leaves, bark, or the ground - never while the potential victim is in flight. Surprisingly, if quick and lucky, it will also consume and eat a hummingbird.

When she was a girl, former Radio City dancer Valerie Harper lived all over the U.S. because her father was a traveling salesman. When she was 18, she left upstate New York to be a member of the "Li'l Abner" chorus in 1958. A few years later, Harper contracted hepatitis. Her doctor prescribed loads of candy, and she ballooned to 155 pounds. In ...Read more

The Peanuts were first animated in 1957 for a Ford Fairlane automobile commercial. Snoopy stood on two legs for the first time in a 1958 strip. Snoopy and Charlie Brown appeared together on the March 17th, 1967 cover of Life Magazine. The Apollo X astronauts took the duo into space in 1969. Charlie Brown hits a game-winning home run on March 30,...Read more

Medical experts warn that compulsive exercising can be just as bad for a person as no exercise at all. The human body needs 24 hours without exercise about once a week in order to cleanse itself of lactic acid and other waste products of strenuous activity.

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

Sylvan N. Goldman of Humpty Dumpty Stores and Standard Food Markets developed the shopping cart so that people could buy more in a single visit to the grocery store. He unveiled his creation in Oklahoma City on June 4, 1937.

The Taylor-Burton diamond is a dazzling 69.42-carat pear-shaped diamond. Cartier bought the diamond at auction. Screen actor Richard Burton bought the rare stone the very next day for his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, an avid collector of diamond jewelry.

Breathing for most snakes is accomplished with one lung only. The left lung is either greatly reduced in size or missing completely.

Batman is a DC Comics fictional character and superhero who first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in May 1939. He has since become, along with Superman and Spider-Man, one of the world's most recognized superheroes. Batman was co-created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. Witnessing the murder of his parents as a child led millionaire ...Read more

The letters in the acronym LED stand for light-emitting diode.

In Austria baked carp is served for the traditional Christmas dinner.

The British Broadcasting Company played the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in all its broadcasts to Europe during World War II. The familiar "dah-dah-dah-DAAAAH" opening is the same as Morse code for the letter "v" (dot-dot-dot-dash) the symbol adopted for "victory."