William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was the first U.S. president to die while in office. At 32 days, he also had the shortest term in office.

Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray or lotion blocks the mosquito's sensors; however, they will seek out unprotected areas of skin.

Nanotechnology has produced a guitar no bigger than a blood cell. The guitar, 10 micrometers long, has six strummable strings.

The age recorded on a whiskey bottle refers to the number of years it is aged prior to being bottled. Once in the bottle, whiskey does not improve.

In 1870, English critic and social theorist John Ruskin (1819-1900) was appointed Slade Professor at Oxford, the first professor of art in England.

The human foot has 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendons. The 52 bones in your feet make up about 25 percent of all the bones in your body.

The seeing-eye dog, or any dog trained to guide the blind, cannot tell a red light from a green one. When it lead its master across the street, it watches the traffic flow to tell when it is safe to cross.

The woman who has appeared most on the covers of "Time" magazine is the Virgin Mary – ten times.

More than 50 percent of adults surveyed said that children should not be paid money for getting good grades in school.

The city of San Juan used to be known as Puerto Rico (which means "rich port" in Spanish), while the island of Puerto Rico was originally named San Juan.

An article titled "The Game of Golf for Women," which ran in an 1894 issue of Ladies' Home Journal, contained this droll comment about the sexes playing the game: "A gallant gentleman will not cheat a woman, and a woman at all worthy of consideration will not cheat anyone at all."

The frigate bird can fly at a speed of 260 miles per hour.

In 1973, Dungeons & Dragons was invented by Dave Arneson and Scott Gygax. The innovative game created a whole new fantasy/adventure category of toys, which quickly became a $250-million market.

According to the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, a tennis ball is supposed to bounce between 53 and 58 inches when it is dropped on concrete from a height of 100 inches. The concrete surface should be 4 inches thick.

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.