StRanGe Laws from around the WoRlD:

Theaters in Glendale, California can show horror films only on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

You can't plow a cotton field with an elephant in North Carolina.

In Lehigh, Nebraska it's against the law to sell donut holes.

Under the law of Mississippi, there’s no such thing as a female Peeping Tom.

Anti-modem laws restrict Internet access in the country of Burma. Illegal possession of a modem can lead to a prison term.

Lawn darts are illegal in Canada.

In Idaho a citizen is forbidden by law to give another citizen a box of candy that weighs more than 50 pounds.

Every citizen of Kentucky is required by law to take a bath at least once a year.

It is against the law to whale hunt in Oklahoma. (Think about it...)

A Venetian law decrees that all gondolas must be painted black. The only exceptions are gondolas belonging to high public officials.

In the state of Queensland, Australia, it is still constitutional law that all pubs (hotel/bar) must have a railing outside for patrons to tie up their horse.

According to law, no store is allowed to sell a toothbrush on the Sabbath in Providence, Rhode Island. Yet these same stores are allowed to sell toothpaste and mouthwash on Sundays.

Before the enactment of the 1978 law that made it mandatory for dog owners in New York City to clean up after their pets, approximately 40 million pounds of dog excrement were deposited on the streets every year.

Chewing gum is outlawed in Singapore because it is a means of "tainting an environment free of dirt."

The handkerchief had been used by the Romans, who ordinarily wore two handkerchiefs: one on the left wrist and one tucked in at the waist or around the neck. In the fifteenth century, the handkerchief was for a time allowed only to the nobility; special laws were made to enforce this. The classical heritage was rediscovered during the Renaissance.

For hundreds of years, the Chinese zealously guarded the secret of sericulture; imperial law decreed death by torture to those who disclosed how to make silk.

An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

By law, information collected in a U.S. census must remain confidential for 72 years.

Candy made from pieces of barrel cactus was outlawed in the U.S. in 1952 to protect the species.

A slander case in Thailand was once settled by a witness who said nothing at all. According to the memoirs of Justice Gerald Sparrow, a 20th century British barrister who served as a judge in Bangkok, the case involved two rival Chinese merchants. Pu Lin and Swee Ho. Pu Lin had stated sneeringly at a party that Swee Ho's new wife, Li Bua, was merely a decoration to show how rich her husband was. Swee Ho, he said, could no longer "please the ladies." Swee Ho sued for slander, claiming Li Bua was his wife in every sense - and he won his case, along with substantial damages, without a word of evidence being taken. Swee Ho's lawyer simply put the blushing bride in the witness box. She had decorative, gold-painted fingernails, to be sure, but she was also quite obviously pregnant.

In Breton, Alabama, there is a law on the town's books against riding down the street in a motorboat.

Connecticut and Rhode Island never ratified the 18th Amendment: Prohibition.

A few years back, a Chinese soap hit it big with consumers in Asia. It was claimed in ads that users would lose weight with Seaweed Defat Scented Soap simply by washing with it. The soap was sold in violation to the Japanese Pharmaceutical Affairs Law and was banned. Reportedly, the craze for the soap was so great that Japanese tourists from China and Hong Kong brought back large quantities. The product was also in violation of customs regulations. In June and July 1999 alone, over 10,000 bars were seized.

In most American states, a wedding ring is exempt by law from inclusion among the assets in a bankruptcy estate. This means that a wedding ring cannot be seized by creditors, no matter how much the bankrupt person owes.

In New York State, it is still illegal to shoot a rabbit from a moving trolley car.

Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine are the four states in the U.S. that do not allow billboards.

Wetaskiwin, Alberta from 1917: "It's against the law to tie a male horse next to a female horse on Main Street."

Women were banned by royal decree from using hotel swimming pools in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in 1979.

In Riverside, California, there is an old law on the city's books which makes it illegal to kiss unless both people wipe their lips with rose water.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman reportedly may divorce her husband if he does not keep her supplied with coffee.

In San Salvador, drunk drivers can be punished by death before a firing squad.

In Pennsylvania, Ministers are forbidden from performing marriages when either the bride or groom is drunk.

In seventeenth-century Japan, no citizen was allowed to leave the country on penalty of death. Anyone caught coming or going without permission was executed on the spot.

In Somalia, Africa, it's been decreed illegal to carry old chewing gum stuck on the tip of your nose.

In some smaller towns in the state of Arizona, it is illegal to wear suspenders.

In South America, it would be rude not to ask a man about his wife and children. In most Arab countries, it would be rude to do so.

Being rude to a telephone operator in Prussia was once a crime. In 1908, a respected citizen was reprimanded by the government after becoming exasperated with an operator and saying "My dear girl!"

In Thailand, the left hand is considered unclean, so you should not eat with it. Also, pointing with one finger is considered rude and is only done when pointing to objects or animals, never humans.

In Pakistan, it is rude to show the soles of your feet or point a foot when you are sitting on the floor.

It was once against the law to slam your car door in a city in Switzerland.

During the reign of Catherine I of Russia, the rules for parties stipulated that no man was to get drunk before 9 o'clock and ladies weren't to get drunk at any hour.

In 1845 Boston had an ordinance banning bathing unless you had a doctor's prescription.

Hypnotism is banned by public schools in San Diego.

Texas is the only state that permits residents to cast absentee ballots from space. The first to exercise this right to vote while in orbit was astronaut David Wolf, who cast his vote for Houston mayor via e-mail from the Russian space station Mir in November 1997.

No building in DC may be taller than 13 floors. This is so that no matter where in the city you are, you can see the monument to our first president, Washington.

In Michigan it's illegal to place a skunk inside your bosses desk.

In Kentucky, it is illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket.

During the time that the atomic bomb was being hatched by the United States at Alamogordo, New Mexico, applicants for routine jobs like janitors, were disqualified if they could read. Illiteracy was a job requirement. The reason: the authorities did not want their trash or other papers read.

It's illegal in Alabama to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church.

In parts of Alaska, it's illegal to feed alcohol to a moose.

You're subject to fines and/or imprisonment for making "ugly faces" at dogs in Oklahoma.

In Utah, birds have the right of way on all highways.

Christmas was once illegal in England.

In Turkey, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, anyone caught drinking coffee was put to death.

It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

In Italy, it is illegal to make coffins out of anything except nutshells or wood.

"To prevent violence," it was at one time customary at certain phases of the moon to chain and flog inmates of England's notorious Bedlam Hospital.

In Milan, Italy, when an operator dialed a wrong number, the phone company fined the operator.

In Hartford Connecticut, it is illegal for a husband to kiss his wife on Sundays.

In December 1997, the state of Nevada (USA) became the first state to pass legislation categorizing Y2K data disasters as "acts of God"— protecting the state from lawsuits that may potentially be brought against it by residents in the year 2000.

A local ordinance in Atwoodville, Connecticut prohibits people from playing Scrabble while waiting for a politician to speak.

The state legislature in North Dakota has rejected a proposal to erect signs specifically warning motorists not to throw human waste onto the road side. Maintenance workers report at least 20 incidents of road crews being "sprayed with urine after rupturing urine-filled plastic bottles that became swollen in the hot sun." Opponents of the measure say they're afraid the signs would discourage tourism.

Found on Axius Sno-Off Automobile Windshield cover: "Caution: Never drive with the cover on your windshield."

Found a box of Tampax Tampons: "Remove used tampon before inserting a new one."

Found on a box of Kellogg's Pop-Tarts: "Warning: Pastry Filling May Be Hot When Heated"

Found on the instruction sheet of a Conair Pro Style 1600 hair dryer: "WARNING: Do not use in shower. Never use while sleeping."

Found on Bat Man The Animated Series Armor Set Halloween costume box: "PARENT: Please exercise caution, mask and chest plate are not protective; cape does not enable wearer to fly."

Found in a television set's owner's manual: "Do not pour liquids into your television set."

Found on the handle of a hammer: "Caution: Do not use this hammer to strike any solid object."

Found on a butane lighter: "Warning: Flame may cause fire."

In most places, when a drawbridge is open, the only land vehicle that can claim priority over boats is a truck hauling the US mail. This option is seldom if ever exercised, of course.

In 1388, English Parliament banned waste disposal in public waterways and ditches.

In 1996, Christmas caroling was banned at two major malls in Pensacola, Florida. Apparently, shoppers and merchants complained the carolers were too loud and took up too much space.

In Atlanta, Georgia, it is illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp.

The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen.

Quebec and Newfoundland are the only two provinces which do not allow personalized license plates.

A Chilean man who has been stopped from voting in three elections because officials keep insisting he is dead said he was tired of arguing and would never try to vote again. "I'm tired of complaining without any success. I think this is the last time I am going to bother," said Ernesto Alvear, 74. For the third time in an election, Alvear was told by officials in the port city of Valparaiso that he could not vote because, officially, he had been dead for almost 10 years. The mix-up was due to the death of another man with the same name, forcing Alvear to provide skeptical officials with documents proving he is alive.

During World War I, the punishment for homosexuality in the French army was execution.

During World War II, bakers in the United States were ordered to stop selling sliced bread for the duration of the war on January 18, 1943. Only whole loaves were made available to the public. It was never explained how this action helped the war effort.

In Sweden, when leaving someone's home, wait until you get to the doorway to step outside before putting on your coat. To do so earlier suggests you are eager to leave. When entering or departing a Russian home, it is considered very bad form to shake hands across the threshold.

In Germany, shaking hands with the other hand in a pocket is considered impolite. In Mali, men shake hands with women only if women offer their hand first. The handshake is often done with the left hand touching the other person's elbow as well.

During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who wore a beard was required to pay a special tax.

At the first professional baseball game, the umpire was fined 6 cents for swearing.

To pass U.S. Army basic training young female recruits must do 17 pushups in two minutes. Males must do 40 pushups in two minutes.

In Hartford, Connecticut, you may not, under any circumstances, cross the street walking on your hands.

Mailing an entire building has been illegal in the U.S. since 1916 when a man mailed a 40,000-ton brick house across Utah to avoid high freight rates.

Snoring is prohibited in Massachusetts unless all bedroom windows are closed and securely locked. It is also illegal to go to bed without first having a full bath.

Women in Florida may be fined for falling asleep under a hair dryer, as can the salon owner.

It is legal in North Dakota to shoot an Indian on horseback, provided you are in a covered wagon.

The mummified hand of a notary public, chopped off for falsely certifying a document, has been on display in the city hall of Munster, Germany, as a warning to other notaries for 400 years.

The curtain or veil used by some Hindus and Moslems to seclude or hide their women from strangers is called a "purdah."

Margaret Sanger was jailed for a month, in 1917, in a workhouse for founding a clinic that dispensed contraceptives.

In the Middle Ages, the highest court in France ordered the execution of a cow for injuring a human.

A girl, in the Vacococha tribe of Peru, to prepare her for marriage at the age of 12, is placed in a basket in the hut of her prospective in-laws and must remain suspened over an open fire night and day for 3 months.

The Spanish Inquisition once condemned the entire Netherlands to death for heresy.

During the eighteenth century, books that were considered offensive were sometimes punished by being whipped.

In the marriage ceremony of the ancient Inca Indians of Peru, the couple was considered officially wed when they took off their sandals and handed them to each other.

In 1968, a convention of beggars in Dacca, India, passed a resolution demanding that the minimum amount of alms be fixed at 15 paisa (three cents).

Because of heavy traffic congestion, Julius Caesar banned all wheeled vehicles from Rome during daylight hours.

Talking on a cellular phone while driving is against the law in Israel.

In Milan, Italy, there is a law on the books that requires a smile on the face of all citizens at all times. Exemptions include time spent visiting patients in hospitals or attending funerals. Otherwise, the fine is $100 if they are seen in public without a smile on their face.

The minimum age set in the U.S. Constitution for the President of the United States is 35.

In Athens, Greece, a driver's license can be taken away by law if the driver is deemed either "unbathed" or "poorly dressed".

Impotence is grounds for divorce in 24 U.S. states.

The murder rate in the Unted States is 200 times greater than in Japan. In Japan no private citizen can buy a handgun legally.

The movie 'Cleopatra', starring Elizabeth Taylor, was banned from Egypt in 1963 because she was a Jewish convert.

Golf was banned in England in 1457 because it was considered a distraction from the serious pursuit of archery.

It is illegal to marry the spouse of a grandparent in Maine, Maryland, South Carolina, and Washington, DC.

The son of a lowly bookie, Peter O'Toole attended a Catholic school where the nuns beat him to correct his left-handedness.

More Interesting facts about Medical this time, which are considered UseLesS:

Medical researchers contend that no disease ever identified has been completely eradicated.

The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.

No one seems to know why people blush.

In 1972, a group of scientists reported that you could cure the common cold by freezing the big toe.

The number one cause of blindness in the United States is diabetes.

The adult human heart weighs about ten ounces.

People who laugh a lot are much healthier than those who don't. Dr. Lee Berk at the Loma Linda School of Public Health in California found that laughing lowers levels of stress hormones, and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds have it best - they laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

People who have a tough time handling the stress of money woes are twice as likely to develop severe gum disease, a new study finds.

Between 25% to 33% of the population sneeze when they are exposed to light.

Of the 206 bones in the average human adult's body, 106 are in the hands and feet. (54 in the hands and 52 in the feet)

In 1815 French chemist Michael Eugene Chevreul realized the first link between diabetes and sugar metabolism when he discovered that the urine of a diabetic was identical to grape sugar.

Approximately 16 Canadians have their appendices removed, when not required, every day.

Sumerians (from 5000 BC) thought that the liver made blood and the heart was the center of thought.

Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons for men versus 0.875 gallons for women.

The first Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages were three inches wide and eighteen inches long. You made your own bandage by cutting off as much as you needed.

The human brain stops growing at the age of 18.

In 1977, a 13 year old child found a tooth growing out of his left foot.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 18 million courses of antibiotics are prescribed for the common cold in the United States per year. Research shows that colds are caused by viruses. 50 million unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed for viral respiratory infections.

It takes an interaction of 72 different muscles to produce human speech.

The first known heart medicine was discovered in an English garden. In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action. Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of blood pumped per heartbeat.

Blood is red only in the arteries after it has left the heart and is full of oxygen. Blood is a purplish, blue color in the veins as it returns to the heart, thanks to having picked up carbon dioxide and other wastes from the body's cells. In fact, your blood is red throughout only half your body. When cut, of course, the blood always appears red because it is instantly exposed to oxygen outside the body.

Contrary to popular belief, hemophiliacs do NOT bleed to death from minor cuts. This rare disease, which affects only males (it is carried by females, but they don't exhibit symptoms), involves an impairment in blood clotting—not an absolute inability to clot. Hemophiliacs today may take clotting serums and often lead fairly normal lives.

During his or her lifetime, the average human will grow 590 miles of hair.

The average Human bladder can hold 13 ounces of liquid.

You lose enough dead skin cells in your lifetime to fill eight five-pound flour bags.

Your thumb is the same length as your nose.

The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terrabytes.

The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was a symbolic character for the hat makers in towns of the late 1800's. The large felt hats of the day had supports made out of lead. The lead caused an organic form of psychosis (brain damage) to develop in the hat makers causing them to be declared crazy.

Although your system cannot digest gum like other foods, it won't be stuck inside of you forever. It comes out with other waste your body can't use.

The substance that human blood resembles most closely in terms of chemical composition is sea water.

The right lung takes in more air than the left lung.

A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.

The brain requires 25 percent of all oxygen used by the body.

There are 10 trillion living cells in the human body.

Females have 500 more genes than males, and because of this are protected from things like color blindness and hemophilia.

Homo sapiens shouldn't feel too high and mighty, even though they currently dominate the Earth. After all, they are covered with flesh that medical scientists have determined bears an important resemblance to Silly Putty. The specific gravity of your skin and the gooey stuff is close enough that doctors have actually used Silly Putty to align and test CAT scan machines.

The short-term memory capacity for most people is between five and nine items or digits. This is one reason that phone numbers were kept to seven digits for so long.

Studies shown by the Psychology Department of DePaul University show that the principal reason to lie is to avoid punishment.

People who have never been married are seven and a half times more likely than married people to be admitted to a psychiatric facility.

Cephalacaudal recapitulation is the reason our extremities develop faster than the rest of us.

"Soldiers disease" is a term for morphine addiction. The Civil War produced over 400,000 morphine addicts.

Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.

A study by researcher Frank Hu and the Harvard School of Public Health found that women who snore are at an increased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman is considered to be the godfather of the modern vaccine era. Having created nearly three dozen vaccines - more than any other scientist, Hilleman is also credited with saving more lives than any other scientist. Probably best known for his preventive vaccine for mumps, Hilleman has also developed vaccines for measles, rubella, chicken pox, bacterial meningitis, flu and hepatitis B.

If you combined all the muscles in an average human in to one muscle, the force it would be capable of producing is about 2,000 tonnes.

Fluoridated toothpaste came about as the result of a discovery made in Naples, Italy in 1802, when local dentists noticed yellowish-brown spots on their patient's teeth - but no cavities. Subsequent examination revealed that high levels of fluoride in the water caused the spots and prevented tooth decay, and that less fluoride protected teeth without causing the spots. It took a while for the discovery to be implemented; the first U.S. fluoridated water tests didn't take place until 1915, and Crest, the firth toothpaste with fluoride in it didn't hit stores until 1956.

According to the Journal of American Medical Association, as of 1998, more than 100,000 Americans die annually from adverse reactions to prescription drugs.

You can see a candle flame from 50 Kilometers on a clear, dark night. You can hear the tick of a watch from 6 meters in very quiet conditions. You can taste one gram of salt in 500 liters of water (.0001M). You can detect one drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-room apartment. You can detect the wing of a bee falling on your cheek from a height of one centimeter.

Gold salts are sometimes injected into the muscles to relieve arthritis.

Undertakers report that human bodies do not deteriorate as quickly as they used to. The reason, they believe, is that the modern diet contains so many preservatives that these chemicals tend to prevent the body from decomposition too rapidly after death.

Captain Cook lost 41 of his 98 crew to scurvy (a lack of vitamin C) on his first voyage to the South Pacific in 1768. By 1795 the importance of eating citrus was realized, and lemon juice was issued on all British Navy ships.

During a kiss as many as 278 bacteria colonies are exchanged.

A passionate kiss uses up 6.4 calories per minute.

Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

Hailed as a wonder drug in the late nineteenth century, cocaine was outlawed in the United States in 1914.

The lens of the eye continues to grow throughout a person's life.

The little lump of flesh just forward of your ear canal, right next to your temple, is called a tragus.

The first drug that was offered as a water-soluble tablet, was aspirin in 1900.

There have been cases of people dying from paper cuts. The paper cut gets infected, and without proper treatment you can die from the infection

Over 25% of Zaire is infected with a form of the Ebola virus that does not kill.

There are more than one form of the Ebola virus. Different strains are named after the area they were discovered in.

It only takes 7 lbs of pressure to rip off your ears.

Brain surgery is done with the patient still awake. The brain has no nerves therefore it has no sensation. The person is put to sleep to open the skull but after that the person wakes up to see the operation be completed.

A new born baby breathes five times faster than an adult man.

Smoking makes it almost impossible for a male to have a natural erection and it shrinks the penis. It also reduces the mobility of sperm.

A follicle that is more oval in shape will produce curlier hair, which, when viewed under a microscope, is more "flat" in appearance than a straight hair, which is "round".

Although it's only 2% of our body weight, the brain uses 20% of all oxygen we breathe, 20% of the calories we take in, and 15% of the body's blood supply.

Did you know that you can actually die from a broken heart? Studies have shown that people who had experienced great loss or sadness can develop cracks in their heart which could lead to death.

Every person has a unique tongue print.

Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.

In 1990, a 64-year old Hartsville, Tennessee, woman entered a hospital for surgery for what doctors diagnosed as a tumor on her buttocks. What surgeons found, however, was a four-inch pork chop bone, which they removed. They estimated that it had been in place for five to ten years. The woman could not remember sitting on it, or eating it for that matter.

In Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in the late 50's thru early 70's, there was a dentist named Dunat Yelle.

Americans spend an estimated $500 million each year on allergy treatments.

Sarin, the nerve gas believed to have been used in a Tokyo subway attack, can be made by anyone with an undergraduate degree in chemistry using easily obtainable chemicals and a formula readily available on the Internet. The agent, a type of organophosphate pesticide, causes paralysis by interfering with the breakdown of acetylcholine at nerve junctions. (If you do this, don't blame me when you get put on death row.)

Blonde beards grow faster than darker beards.

By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds.

One group, the Hunza in Northwest Kashmir, reportedly have not experienced cancer. The group is also said to have unusual longevity.

In 1918 and 1919, a world epidemic of simple influenza killed 20 million people in the United States and Europe.

If you lock your knees while standing long enough, you will pass out.

During a lifetime, one person generates more than 1,000 pounds of red blood cells.

An itch is a stimulus affecting the nerve endings between the dermis and epidermis; scientists liken it to a form of pain. But that's neither here nor there. It's usually caused by histamine released in the epidermis. Scratching stops it, either by interfering with the nerve impulses or by temporarily damaging the nerves themselves.

Scientists have identified more than 300 viruses capable of bringing fatal diseases to insects. The organisms are believed to be entirely different than those that cause disease in humans, and are thus harmless to man.

Devoid of its cells and proteins, human blood has the same general makeup as sea water.

From the age of thirty, humans gradually begin to shrink in size.

Despite accounting for just one-fiftieth of body weight, the brain burns as much as one-fifth of our daily caloric intake.

Your jaw muscle is the most powerful muscle in your body.

Hay fever is the sixth most prevalent chronic condition in the United States.

Human blood travels 60,000 miles per day on its journey through the arteries, arterioles and capillaries and back through the venules and veins.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter had an operation for hemorrhoids while he was in office.

Lead poisoning is known as plumbism.

Lacrimal fluid lubricates the eyes.

The iris membrane controls the amount of light that enters your eye.

The hardest bone in the human body is the jawbone.

The most common non-contagious disease in the world is tooth decay.

Mouth ulcers are the most common human affliction.

Corpses don't decompose as fast as they used to because of all of the chemicals and additives we eat now.

The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

Skin is the largest organ of the human body.

Between the ages of 30 and 70, you nose may lengthen and widen by as much as half an inch.

The sense of touch: electrical impulses travel from the skin toward the spinal cord at a rate of up to 425 feet per second.

You blink every 2-10 seconds. As you focus on each word in this sentence, your eyes swing back and forth 100 times a second, and every second; the retina performs 10 billion computer-like calculations.

Each red blood cell lives an average of 4 months and travels between the lungs and other tissues 75,000 times before returning to the bone marrow to die.

The average square inch of skin holds 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, 60,000 melanocytes, and during the summer months, six or seven mosquito bites.

The lens of the human eye continues to go throughout a person's life.

If you squeezed out all of the bacteria from your intestines, you could almost fill up a coffee mug.

Several well documented instances have been reported of extremely obese people flushing aircraft toilets whilst still sitting on them. The vacuum action of these toilets sucked the rectum inside out.

When honey is swallowed, it enters the blood stream within a period of 20 minutes.

Pain travels through the body at 350 feet per second.

The hardest substance in the human body is enamel.

Sometimes when you belch, a little bit of your stomach acids comes along. This makes for a very disgusting and burning burp.

Your hearing is less sharp if you eat too much.

The human kidney consists of over 1 million little tubes with a total length of about 40 miles in both kidneys.

Urine was once used as a detergent for washing.

Electrical stimulation in certain areas of the brain can revive long lost memories.

Ever wonder how a mortician keeps a dead person's mouth shut? Undertakers pass a suture through he nasal septum and tie it to the lower lip. Or the use an injector needle gun to place wires into the lower and upper jaws; these are then twisted together to close the mouth.

The average person can go as many as eleven days without water. That's assuming a mean temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Human lungs are 100 times easier to blow up than a standard toy balloon. But they tend to make lousy party favors.

Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by Bayer.

The kidneys filter about 500 gallons of blood each day

A person breathes 7 quarts of air every minute.

Spontaneous human combustion is the process of the body's temperature becoming heated to the point that the body simply bursts into flame and incinerates. No one knows the actual cause of why this happens. Some blame a chemical reaction within the body, others blame supernatural causes

Some new Interesting facts about HisTorY:

The first man to distill bourbon whiskey in the United States was a Baptist preacher, in 1789.

The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed turquoise would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used these green and blue stones to decorate their battle shields.

More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years, the Chinese kept this discovery a secret. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky. Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality.

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten gold. Some fabrics had up to 500 gold threads per one inch of cloth.

The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death.

The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery.

"Scientific America" carried the first magazine automobile ad in 1898. The Winton Motor Car Company of Cleveland, OH, invited readers to "dispense with a horse".

In France - Captain Sarret made the first parachute jump from an airplane in 1918.

The first paperback book was printed - by Penguin Publishing in 1935.

In 1956 the phrase, "In God We Trust", was adopted as the U.S. national motto.

Henry Ford flatly stated that history is "bunk."

The first Eskimo Bible was printed in Copenhagen in 1744.

The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."

Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas was the eight-year-old girl who, in 1897, asked the staff of The New York Sun whether Santa Claus existed. In the now-famous editorial, Francis Church assured Virginia that yes, indeed, "there is a Santa Claus."

The first dictionary of American English was published on April 14th, 1828, by - who else? - Noah Webster.

No automobile made after 1924 should be designated as antique.

John Hancock was the only one of fifty signers of the Declaration of Independence who actually signed it on July 4.

The first United States coast to coast airplane flight occurred in 1911 and took 49 days.

Escape maps, compasses, and files were inserted into Monopoly game boards and smuggled into POW camps inside Germany during W.W.II; real money for escapees was slipped into the packs of Monopoly money.

Values on the Monopoly gameboard are the same today as they were in 1935.

Incan soldiers invented the process of freeze-drying food. The process was primitive but effective — potatoes would be left outside to freeze overnight, then thawed and stomped on to remove excess water.

The first wooden shoe comes from the Netherlands. The Netherlands have many seas so people wanted a shoe that kept their feet dry while working outside. The shoes were called klompen and they had been cut of one single piece of wood. Today the klompen are the favorite souvenir for people who visit the Netherlands.

When airplanes were still a novel invention, seat belts for pilots were installed only after the consequence of their absence was observed to be fatal - several pilots fell to their deaths while flying upside down.

Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.

False eyelashes were invented by the American film director D.W. Griffith while he was making his 1916 epic, "Intolerance". Griffith wanted actress Seena Owen to have lashes that brushed her cheeks, to make her eyes shine larger than life. A wigmaker wove human hair through fine gauze, which was then gummed to Owen's eyelids. "Intolerance" was critically acclaimed but flopped financially, leaving Griffith with huge debts that he might have been able to settle easily - had he only thought to patent the eyelashes.

On November 29, 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: "It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs." Today you can visit the site—now a shrine—where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.

Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

During the California Gold Rush of 1849 miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years it was deemed more feasible to send the shirts to Hawaii for servicing.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Egyptian men never became bald. The reason for this, Herodotus claimed, was that as children Egyptian males had their heads shaved, and their scalps were continually exposed to the health-giving rays of the sun.

In 1893, Chicago hired its first police woman. Her name was Marie Owens. While the city was progressive in its hiring practices, Chicago's female police officers were not allowed to wear uniforms until 1956.

In ancient times, any Japanese who tried to leave his homeland was summarily put to death. In the 1630's, a decree in Japan forbade the building of any large ocean-worthy ships to deter defection.

The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharaoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.

England's first great industry was wool. Its export had become the nation's largest source of income by the late Middle Ages.

The British once went to war over a sailor’s ear. It happened in 1739, when Britain launched hostilities against Spain because a Spanish officer had supposedly sliced off the ear of a ship’s captain named Robert Jenkins.

Alexander Hamilton and his son, Philip, both died on the same spot, and both during duels. Philip went first, 3 years before his father would be killed in that same field by Aaron Burr.

Florence Nightingale served only two years of her life as a nurse. She contracted fever during her service in the Crimean War, and spent the last 50 years of her life as an invalid.

Emir Beysari (1233-1293), an Egyptian of great wealth, drank wine from gold and silver cups, yet he never in all his life used the same cup twice.

The first European to visit the Mississippi River was DeSoto.

Human skulls had been used as drinking cups for hundreds of years. The muscles and flesh were scraped away, the bottom was hacked off and then they were suitable to hold any beverage.

The first Bowie knife was forged at Washington, Arkansas.

All the dirt from the foundation to build the World Trade Center in NYC was dumped into the Hudson River to form the community now known as Battery City Park.

Louis XV was the first person to use an elevator: in 1743 his "flying chair" carried him between the floors of the Versailles palace.

The last words spoken from the moon were from Eugene Cernan, Commander of the Apollo 17 Mission on 11 December 1972. "As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne; and Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

The best working light-bulb a LONG time ago was a thread of sheep's wool coated with carbon.

Salim (1569-1627, heir to the throne of India, had 4 wives when he was only 8 years of age.

Spiral staircases in medieval castles are running clockwise. This is because all knights used to be right-handed. When the intruding army would climb the stairs they would not be able to use their right hand which was holding the sword because of the difficulties of climbing the stairs. Left-handed knights would have had no troubles, except left-handed people could never become knights because it was assumed that they were descendants of the devil.

Charles de Gaulle's final words were, "It hurts."

Alexander the Great was an epileptic.

Shakespeare spelled his OWN name several different ways.

Historians report that the Roman Emperor Gaius (Caligula) (AD 37-41) was so proud of his horse that he gave him a place as a senate consul before he died.

Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.

Daniel Boone detested coonskin caps.

The Tower of London, for which construction was begun in 1078 by William the Conqueror, once housed a zoo. It also has served as an observatory, a mint, a prison, a royal palace, and (at present) the home of the Crown Jewels.

In the original architectural design, the French Cathedral of Chartes had six spires (It was built with two spires).

Vincent Van Gogh painted a picture a day in the last 70 days of his life.

It took 20,000 men 22 years to build the Taj Mahal.

It took 214 crates to transport the Statue of Liberty from France to New York in 1885.

Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.

George Washington, who was nearly toothless himself, was meticulous with the teeth of the six white horses that pulled his presidential coach. He had their teeth picked and cleaned daily to improve their appearance.

Once upon a time, in the little state of Rhode Island, they were electing a state legislature. There was a thrifty Federalist farmer who started for the polls late in the afternoon and, on the way, heard the squealing of a pig. He looked around to see the pig with its head caught in the mesh of an old wire fence. Hogs often will kill and eat a trapped pig. So the farmer stopped to rescue the porker and was too late at the polls. Now, wait a minute. The Federalist farmer was too late to vote, and, the election was decided by a one-vote margin in favor of the Democrats.
If the farmer had been at the voting place in time, the Democrat would not have been elected. One vote.
At the following session of the legislature (these were the days when the legislatures elected our Senators) a Democrat was sent to the Senate from Rhode Island by a one-vote margin in the legislature. Try to keep up with this. The legislator was elected by one vote and his one vote elected a Senator. And in the United States Senate the vote that we should go to war with England was carried by the one Democrat margin. So the Revolutionary War was fought because, a Rhode Island pig got caught in a fence. One vote.
A vote was taken on which would be the national language - English or German. English by one vote.
Dr. George Benson of Harding College traced this sequence: One morning in 1844 a grain miller in De Kalb County, Indiana, was walking toward his mill. It was election day, but he had work to do and did not intend to vote. Before he reached the mill, however, he was stopped by friends who persuaded him to go to the polls. As it happened the candidate for whom he voted won a seat in the state legislature, by a margin of one vote. When the Indiana Legislature convened, the man elected from De Kalb cast the deciding vote that sent Edward Allen Hannegan to the United States Senate. Then, in the United States Senate the question of statehood for the great state of Texas came up, the result was a tie vote. But Senator Hannegan, presiding as President pro tempore, cast the deciding vote from the chair. So the Lone Star state of Texas was admitted to the Union because a miller in De Kalb County, Indiana, went ten minutes out of his way to cast his one vote, just one vote.
Thomas Jefferson was elected President by one vote in the Electoral College. So was John Quincy Adams. And so was Rutherford B. Hayes, elected President, by one vote. One vote gave statehood to California, Idaho, Oregon, Texas, and Washington. All those people in all those states are Americans because of somebody's one vote.
Kentucky came into the Union as a slave state, by the casting of one majority vote in the Constitutional Convention. Had it not been for the one vote, Kentucky would have entered the Union a free state. If it had, Missouri, largely settled by Kentuckians, would have done likewise. In that event there probably never would have been a war between the states.
And closer to home the Draft Act of World War II, passed in the House of Representatives, by just one vote. One vote.
In St. Johns, Michigan, the race for City Council (two seats, four candidates) was a one-vote wonder. The top three candidates were separated by one vote each. Election results showed Bates with 27%, Hanover with 27% and Huard with 27%. Mark Bates had one more vote than Heather Hanover, who had one more vote than Roland Huard.

The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.

Civil War General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson has two separate burial sites. His left arm, which was amputated after the battle of Chancellorsville was buried on a nearby farm. A week later, Jackson died and was buried in Lexington, Virginia.

The first advertisement printed in English in 1477 offered a prayer book. The ad was published by William Caxton on his press in Westminster Abbey. No price was mentioned, only that the book was "good chepe."

Czar Paul 1 banished soldiers to Siberia for marching out of step.

Time magazine's "Man of the Year" for 1938 was Adolf Hitler.

Louis XIV had forty personal wigmakers and almost 1000 wigs.

Before 1863, postal service in the United States was free.

The practice of exchanging presents at Christmas originated with the Romans.

New York was the first state to require the licensing of motor vehicles. The law was adopted in 1901.

Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.

Seating on the first scheduled inter-city commuter airplane flight consisted of moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with aluminum framed leather chairs.

President George Washington oversaw construction of the White House, but he never lived there. It was our second President, John Adams, elected in 1796, who first lived in the White House. His term was almost over by the time he moved in, and only six rooms had been finished.

Queen Supayalat of Burma ordered about 100 of her husband's relatives clubbed to death. She did this to ensure the throne to her husband.

Suspension of the construction of the Washington Monument, at the 153 foot level, was forced by the anti-Catholic Know-Nothing movement, which was offended by Pope Pius IX's gift of a block of marble from Rome's Temple of Concord. The suspension lasted 26 years. Work resumed in 1880 and the monument was completed in 1888.

The 1,340-foot-long wall that gave New York's Wall Street its name was only 12 feet tall and erected in 1653 by Dutch colonists to protect against their enemies.

Pope Paul IV, who was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that he ordered Michelangelo to paint on to them.

American astronomer, mathematician, clock-maker, surveyor and almanac editor Benjamin Banneker has been called the "first black man of science." Banneker took part in the original survey of Washington, DC. His almanac was published 1792 to 1797.

The Aztec Indians in Central America used animal blood mixed with cement as a mortar for their buildings, many of which still remain standing today.

While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.

The Coliseum received its name not for its size, but for a colossal statue of Nero that stood close by, placed there after the destruction of his palace.

In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.

In Northern parts of China it was once a common practice to shave pigs. When the evenings got cold the Chinese would take a pig to bed with them for warmth and found it more comfortable if the pig was clean-shaven.

Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it's known as Tennessee.

The traditional symbol of the pawnbroker—three golden balls—is thought to be derived from the coat of the arms of the Medici family, who ruled Italian city of Florence between the 15th and 16th centuries. The symbol was spread by the Lombards—Italian bankers, goldsmiths, and moneylenders who set up businesses in medieval London.

When the U.S. War Department was established in 1789, there were 840 soldiers in the regular army. Their job was to supervise public lands and guard the indian frontier.

In 1907 the first taxicab took to the streets of New York City.

WWI flying ace Jean Navarre attacked a zeppelin armed with only a kitchen knife.

Catherine the Great relaxed by being tickled.

Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo Da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.

Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic "Little Women," hated kids. She only wrote the book because her publisher asked her to.

Soldiers arrived to fight the Battle of Marne in World War I - not on foot or by military airplane or military vehicle - but by taxi cabs. France took over all the taxi cabs in Paris to get soldiers to the front.

The U.S. Automobile Association was formed in 1905 for the purpose or providing "scouts" who could warn motorists of hidden police traps.

On June 8, 1959, in a move a postal official heralded as "of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world," the Navy submarine U.S.S. Barbero fired a guided missile carrying 3,000 letters at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida. "Before man reaches the moon," the official was quoted as saying, "mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles." History proved differently, but this experiment with missile mail exemplifies the pioneering spirit of the Post Office Department when it came to developing faster, better ways of moving the mail.... however, they don't mention if the 3,000 letters were ever delivered.

Chrysler built B-29's that bombed Japan, Mitsubishi built Zeros that tried to shoot them down. Both companies now build cars in a joint plant called Diamond Star.

New Zealand was the first place in the world to allow women to vote. The state of South Australia was next, in 1894, and it was also the first place to allow women to stand for parliament.

The Taj Mahal complex in India was built between 1631 and 1634 at a cost of about 40-million rupees.

The first telephone exchange opened on January 28, 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut.

In the late 30's, a man named Abe Pickens of Cleveland, Ohio, attempted to promote world peace by placing personal calls to various country leaders. He managed to contact Mussolini, Hirohito, Franco and Hitler (Hitler, who didn't understand English, transferred him to an aide). He spent$10,000 to "give peace a chance."

A female pharaoh was unknown in Egypt before Hatshepsut, who had herself portrayed in male costume, with a beard and without breasts.

After being forced to state in public that the earth does not rotate, Galileo is said to have muttered under his breath, "But it does move."

History's first recorded toothpaste was an Egyptian mixture of ground pumice and strong wine. But the early Romans brushed their teeth with human urine, and also used it as a mouthwash. Actually, urine was an active component in toothpaste and mouthwashes until well into the 18th century - the ammonia it contains gave them strong cleansing power.

The 16th century astronomer Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a duel with one of his students over a mathematical computation. He wore a silver replacement nose for the rest of his life.

"Hot cockles" was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.

Civil War General Stonewall Jackson died when he was accidentally hit by fire from his own troop.

When Napoleon wore black silk handkerchiefs around his neck during a battle, he always won. At Waterloo, he wore a white cravat and lost the battle and his kingdom.

Original 'Indian Yellow' was obtained at Monghyr, a town in Benghal, from the urine of cows which had been fed on mango leaves. It was found in the bazaars of Panjab in the form of large balls, having an offensive urinous odor. True Indian yellow has been absent from the market for some time; its production is said to have been prohibited in 1908. Present day Indian yellow colors are made of synthetic pigments, alternatives that are less fugitive and less offensive to the nose.

The steel industry, in 1943, introduced the 5-day, 40 hour work week. Henry Ford adopted it in 1926.

1892 By Presidential Proclamation 1.8 million acres of Crow Indian reservation in Montana were opened to White settlers. The U.S. government had induced the Crow to give up a sizable portion of their land in the mountainous western area of Montana. The Crow received 50 cents per acre for their land.

DaVinci is best remembered as the painter of the Mona Lisa (1504?)and The Last Supper (1495). But he's almost equally famous for his astonishing multiplicity of talents: he dabbled in architecture, sculpture, engineering, geology, hydraulics and the military arts, all with success, and in his spare time doodled parachutes and flying machines that resembled inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries.

DaVinci made detailed drawings of human anatomy, which are still highly regarded today.

DaVinci wrote notebook entries in mirror (backwards) script, a trick that kept many of his observations from being widely known until decades after his death. It is believed that he was hiding his scientific ideas from the powerful Roman Catholic Church, whose teachings sometimes disagreed with what Leonardo observed.

When Gaius Caesar was a boy, Roman soldiers affectionately nicknamed him "little boots" for the boy-sized military footwear he sported

Although most people think that Napoleon was short, he was actually five feet six inches tall (1.676 meters), an average height for a Frenchman in those days.

The German Kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword, or by holding gloves.

Napoleon took 14,000 French decrees and simplified them into a unified set of 7 laws. This was the first time in modern history that a nation's laws applied equally to all citizens. Napoleon's 7 laws are so impressive that by 1960 more than 70 governments had patterned their own laws after them or used them verbatim.

More than 5,600 men died while building the Panama Canal. Today, it takes more than 8,000 workers to run and maintain the canal. It takes a ship an average of 33 hours to travel the length of the canal.

Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the first American to have plumbing installed in his house, in 1840.

While the world was busy welcoming the arrival of the twentieth century on December 31, 1900, a forceful gale on England's Salisbury Plain blew over one of the ancient monumental stones at Stonehenge.

In 1555, Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. He was so thrilled with the work done by the two architects that he had them blinded so they could never be able to build anything else more beautiful.

The ancient Etruscans painted women white and men red in the wall paintings they used to decorate tombs.

When Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into England in the early 1600's, King James I wrote a booklet against it. I guess that makes King James the founding father of the "Just Say No" campaign.

The dirt road that General Washington and his soldiers took to fight off General Clinton during the Battle of Monmouth was called the Burlington Path.

All of the officers in the Confederate army were given copies of Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.

Marco Polo was born on the Croatian island of Korcula (pronounced Kor-Chu-La).

Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.

The right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty crossed the Atlantic Ocean three times. It first crossed for display at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and in New York, where money was raised for the foundation and pedestal. It was returned to Paris in 1882 to be reunited with the rest of the statue, which was then shipped back to the U.S.

In 1878 Wanamaker's of Philadelphia was the first U.S. department store to install electric lighting.

Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.

The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names. It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company in February, 1878.

The first time an enormous amount of clothing was needed all at once was during the Civil War, when the Union needed hundreds of thousands of uniforms for its troops. Out of this need came the ready-made clothing industry.

Traffic engineering was not developed in London, New York or Paris, but rather in ancient Rome. The Romans, of course, were noted road builders. The Appian Way, for example, stretched 350 miles from the Eternal City to Brundisium. In Rome itself there were actually stop signs and even alternate-side-of-the-street parking.

Until the 19th century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.

"John has a long mustache" was the coded-signal used by the French Resistance in WWII to mobilize their forces once the Allies had landed on the Normandy beaches.

The State of Nevada first legalized gambling in 1931. At that same time, the Hoover Dam was being built and the federal government did not want its workers (who earned 50 cents an hour) to be involved with such diversions, so they built the town of Boulder City to house the dam workers. To this day, Boulder City is the only city in Nevada where gambling is illegal. Hoover Dam is 726 feet tall and 660 feet thick at its base. Enough rock was excavated in its construction to build the Great Wall of China. Contrary to old wives' tales, no workers were buried in the dam's cement.

Unfortunately Gaius grew up and became emperor, incongruously retaining his boyhood diminutive. "Little boots" in Latin is "Caligula." As you may know, he was a bloodthirsty, sadistic fiend.

Before winning the election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.

Houses were first numbered in Paris in 1463. In Britain, numbering did not appear until 1708, on a street in London's Whitechapel area.

In ancient Greece, courtesans wore sandals with nails studded into the sole so that their footprints would leave the message "Follow me".

In 1937 the emergency 999 telephone service was established in London. More than 13,000 genuine calls were made in the first month.

In 1974 there were 90 tornadoes in the U.S. in one day.

Satirist Jonathan Swift suggested in his essay "A Modest Proposal" that the children of the poor be sold as food to feed the rich. This shocking essay is one of the best examples of satire you'll find.

Akhbar the Great Mughal routed the Hindus under Hemu by turning their elephants against them at the battle of Panipat in the Hindu revolt.

When the first U.S. Congress set the president's pay at $25,000 per year they established the vice president's salary of $5,000.

At the outbreak of World War I, the American air force consisted of only fifty men.

Before all-porcelain false teeth were perfected in the mid-19th century, dentures were commonly made with teeth pulled from the mouths of dead soldiers following a battle. Teeth extracted from U.S. Civil War soldier cadavers were shipped to England by the barrel to dentists.

King Charles VII, who was assassinated in 1167, was the first Swedish king with the name of Charles. Charles I, II, III, IV, V, never existed. No one knows why. To add to the mystery, almost 300 years went by before there was a Charles VIII (1448-57).

Lafayette was a major general in the United States at the age of 19. Lafayette's whole name takes up an entire line on a page: Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

Many hundreds of years ago when the well-known style of Irish dancing began in the country side of Ireland, most houses of the poor - and that means most houses - only had a dirt floor which was not a lot of use for dancing on if you were holding a ceildh (pronounced kay-lee and meaning party - more or less). So in order to make the dancing easier the owners of the house which was holding the party would take the doors off their hinges and lay them on the floor. There was just enough room on each door for two people to dance, providing they did not fling their arms about - hence the original name for Irish dancing - Door Dancing.

In a tradition dating to the beginning of the Westminster system of government, the bench in the middle of a Westminster parliament is two and a half sword lengths long. This was so the government and opposition couldn't have a go at each other if it all got a bit heated.

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the first minimum wage in the United States. The new law, considered controversial at the time, established at.25 cents per hour minimum wage and a maximum 44 hour work week for minors.

In Britain, the law was changed in 1789 to make the method of execution hanging. Prior to that, burning was the modus operandi. The last female to be executed by burning in England was Christian Bowman. Her crime was making counterfeit coins.

A painting of the Madonna in Fiorano Castle, Italy, escaped without even being scorched when invading soldiers set the castle afire, yet all the rest of the building was destroyed.

U.S. Army doctor D.W. Bliss had the unique role of attending to two U.S. presidents after they were shot by assassins. In 1865 he was one of 16 doctors who tried to save Abraham Lincoln, and in 1881 he supervised the care of James Garfield.

King Tut's tomb contained FOUR coffins. The third coffin was made from 2,500 pounds of gold. And in today's market is worth approximately $13,000,000.

The very first enclosed shopping mall was and is Valley Faire in Appleton, Wisconsin. Not in Minnesota as most people believe. Appleton is also famous for being the birth place of Harry Houdini and the first city in America to use Hydro-electric power in homes.

It is a well known trivial fact that Neil Armstrong was the first man to step onto the moon. However, many do not know that he stepped onto the moon with his left foot.

Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.

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 lung, and, dripping in blood, Roosevelt pulled himself up to the podium. He asked the crowd to please "...be very quiet and excuse me from making a long speech. I'll do the best I can, but there's a bullet in my body... I have a message to deliver, and I will deliver it as long as there is life in my body." He spoke for 90 minutes, but was unable to refer to his text due to the gaping hole which the bullet had torn through it.

In the 15th century, scholars in China compiled a set of encyclopedia that contained 11,095 volumes.

New York's Central Park opened in 1876.

Minna Braun, a nurse in Berlin, Germany, was pronounced dead from an overdose of sleeping pills and, as was customary in suicides, was buried in an open grave (The next day the coffin's nailed lid was opened to permit identification of the body), and the girl was found to be alive. She recovered and returned to her nursing duties. (Oct. 28, 1919)

What would eventually become one of the world's most prestigious museums, the Louvre Museum opened in Paris in 1793. Until the French Revolution, the King's art collection had been strictly for the private pleasure of the Court, but revolutionary leaders decided to open the collection to the public. Among some of its most famous art pieces, the Louvre houses, the Joconde (Mona Lisa), Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the Liberty Leading the People.

Ishi had made it very clear before he died that he did not want to be autopsied. However, his wishes were ignored and his body was autopsied and the brain removed and sent to the Smithsonian, where scientists were collecting brains for a study of brain size and race. After 83 years, the Smithsonian is finally returning the brain of Ishi to his closest relatives so they can bury his remains.

Ishi's remains will be given to representative of the Redding Rancheria and the Pit River Tribe, two Native American groups from Northern California. Ishi was actually a Yahi-Yana Indian. Smithsonian officials decided that the two tribes were the closest living relatives and truly represented the Yana descendants.

While the world was busy welcoming the arrival of the twentieth century on December 31, 1900, a forceful gale on England's Salisbury Plain blew over one of the ancient monumental stones at Stonehenge.

Spartacus led the revolt of the Roman slaves and gladiators in 73 A.D.

Seat belts became mandatory on U.S. cars on March 1, 1968.

There were 57 countries involved in World War II.

Socrates committed suicide by drinking poison hemlock.

The Korean War began on June 25, 1950.

A B-25 bomber airplane crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.

India tested its first nuclear bomb in 1974.

After the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64, the emperor Nero ostensibly decided to lay the blame on Christians residing in the city of Rome. These he gathered together, crucified, covered in pitch (tar), and burnt alive. He walked around his gardens admiring the view.

Most people know that the reign of Czar Nicholas II of Russia ended in tragedy, but few know that's how it started as well. At his coronation, presents were given to all the people who attended. As the gifts were being handed out, a rumor started that there weren't enough to go around and a stampede started. Hundreds of women and children were killed.

The first known item made from aluminum was a rattle—made for Napoleon III in the 1850s. Napoleon also provided his most honored guests with knives and forks made of pure aluminum. At the time the newly discovered metal was so rare, it was considered more valuable than gold.

General Henry Heth (1825-1888) leading a confederate division in the Battle of Gettysburg, was hit in the head by a Union bullet, but his life was saved because he was wearing a hat two sizes too large, with newspaper folded inside the sweatband. The paper deflected the bullet, and the general, unconscious for 30 hours, recovered and lived another 25 years.

During the American revolution, more inhabitants of the American colonies fought for the British than for the Continental Army.

During the Crimean War, the British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds.

During the Renaissance blond hair became so much de rigueur in Venice that a brunette was not to be seen except among the working classes. Venetian women spent hours dyeing and burnishing their hair until they achieved the harsh metallic glitter that was considered a necessity.

During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.

During the Spanish American War in 1898 there were 45 stars on the American flag.

During World War II the original copies of the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence was taken from the Library of Congress and kept at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate - on the basis of positional probability - where enemy submarines might surface.

On June 13th 1944, a single Tiger tank headed by Captain Michael Wittman stopped the advance of the entire British 7th armored division (the famous 'desert rats') in the town of Villers Bocage, Normandy. This has been the deadliest single action in the entire war and stopped the British offensive, planned by Montgomery, to break through German lines. Wittman died later in August fighting against 12 Canadian Sherman tanks.

Five members of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's family were killed at the Battle of little Big Horn. They were Tom and Boston, two half-brothers, Harry Armstrong Reed, a nephew and a brother-in-law, James Calhoun.

In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.

The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Coliseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.

High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.

John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.

There was a "pony express" in Persia many centuries before Christ. Riders on this ancient circuit, wearing special colored headbands, delivered the mails across the vast stretch of Asia Minor, sometimes riding for hundreds of miles without a break.

It was only after 440 A.D. that December 25 was celebrated as the birth date of Jesus Christ.

The first aerial photograph was taken from a balloon during the U.S. civil war.

Olive oil was used for washing the body in the ancient Mediterranean world.

In 1801, 20 percent of the people in the U.S. were slaves.

Slaves under the last emperors of China wore pigtails so they could be picked out quickly.

Dinner guests during the medieval times in England were expected to bring their own knives to the table.

It is estimated that a few years after Columbus discovered the New World, the Spaniards killed off 1.5 million Indians.

The Fish Bowl was invented by Countess Dubarry, Mistress of King Louis XV (Born 1710 Died 1774)

Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa on a piece of pinewood, 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) in the year 1506.

Today the painting hangs in the Musee du Louvre, Paris, France.

DaVinci's name for the painting was La Gioconda. Named for the wife of Francesco del Giocondo; 1503-06

Who posed for the painting? Dr. Lillian Schwartz of Bell Labs suggests that Leonardo painted himself, and was able to support her theory by analyzing the facial features of Leonardo's face and that of the famous painting, She digitized both the self-portrait of the artist and the Mona Lisa. She flipped the self-portrait and merged the two images together using a computer. She noticed the features of the face aligned perfectly.

When Elizabeth I of Russia died in 1762, 15,000 dresses were found in her closets. She used to change what she was wearing two and even three times an evening.

Napoleon, the famous French general, was not born in France. He was born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica of Italian parents.

When he resigned in 1923 because of illegal behavior in the Teapot Dome Affair, Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by President Harding. In 1931, Fall was tried and found guilty of conspiracy to defraud.

Jahangir, a 17th-century Indian Mughal ruler, had 5,000 women in his harem and 1,000 young boys. He also owned 12,000 elephants.

China was the first country to introduce paper money (in 812), but it wasn't until 1661 that a bank (Banco-Sedlar of Sweden) issued banknotes.

If the arm of King Henry I of England had been 42 inches long, the unit of measure of a "foot" today would be fourteen inches. But his arm happened to be 36 inches long and he decreed that the "standard" foot should be one-third that length: 12 inches.

Napoleon's nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, was an accomplished yo-yo player. At that time, the yo-yo was known as a "bandalore."

When Thomas Jefferson became U.S. President in 1801, 20 percent of all people in the young nation were slaves.

Early Egyptians wore sandals made from woven papyrus leaves.

The Marquis de Lafayette, America's Revolutionary War ally, named his only son George Washington Lafayette.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the fathers of communism, wrote 500 articles for the "New York Tribune" from 1851 to 1862.

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 lung, and, dripping in blood, Roosevelt pulled himself up to the podium. He asked the crowd to please "...be very quiet and excuse me from making a long speech. I'll do the best I can, but there's a bullet in my body... I have a message to deliver, and I will deliver it as long as there is life in my body." He spoke for 90 minutes, but was unable to refer to his text due to the gaping hole which the bullet had torn through it.

Karl Marx was targeted for assassination when he met with two Prussian officers in his house in Cologne in 1848. Marx had friends among the German labor unions, and he was considered a threat to the autocrats. Dressed in his bathrobe, he forced the officers out at the point of a revolver, which, it turned out, was not loaded.

Ishi was believed to be the last of the Yahi, a tribe of Native Americans living in California that were wiped out by disease and massacres. In the early part of the twentieth century (1911), he became a sensation when he wandered out of the woods near Oroville. Ishi was taken to the University of California at San Francisco where he lived and worked (as a janitor) in the anthropology museum, helping researchers to document the Yahi language, until his death from tuberculosis in 1916. His name, Ishi, was given to him by the anthropologists. Linguists believe it was his tribe's word for "man."

Below are some interesting facts about animals, that you might find interesting! Read on below:

Ostriches are often not taken seriously. They can run faster than horses, and the males can roar like lions.

Seals used for their fur get extremely sick when taken aboard ships.

Sloths take two weeks to digest their food.

Guinea pigs and rabbits can't sweat.

The pet food company Ralston Purina recently introduced, from its subsidiary Purina Philippines, power chicken feed designed to help roosters build muscles for cockfighting, which is popular in many areas of the world.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the cockfighting market is huge: The Philippines has five million roosters used for exactly that.

Sharks and rays are the only animals known to man that don't get cancer. Scientists believe this has something to do with the fact that they don't have bones, but cartilage.

The porpoise is second to man as the most intelligent animal on the planet.

Young beavers stay with their parents for the first two years of their lives before going out on their own.

Skunks can accurately spray their smelly fluid as far as ten feet.

Deer can't eat hay.

Gopher snakes in Arizona are not poisonous, but when frightened they may hiss and shake their tails like rattlesnakes.

On average, dogs have better eyesight than humans, although not as colorful.

The duckbill platypus can store as many as six hundred worms in the pouches of its cheeks.

The lifespan of a squirrel is about nine years.

North American oysters do not make pearls of any value.

Human birth control pills work on gorillas.

Many sharks lay eggs, but hammerheads give birth to live babies that look like very small duplicates of their parents. Young hammerheads are usually born headfirst, with the tip of their hammer-shaped head folded backward to make them more streamlined for birth.

Gorillas sleep as much as fourteen hours per day.

A biological reserve has been made for golden toads because they are so rare.

There are more than fifty different kinds of kangaroos.

Jellyfish like salt water. A rainy season often reduces the jellyfish population by putting more fresh water into normally salty waters where they live.

The female lion does ninety percent of the hunting.

The odds of seeing three albino deer at once are one in seventy-nine billion, yet one man in Boulder Junction, Wisconsin, took a picture of three albino deer in the woods.

A group of twelve or more cows is called a flink.

Cats often rub up against people and furniture to lay their scent and mark their territory. They do it this way, as opposed to the way dogs do it, because they have scent glands in their faces.

Cats sleep up to eighteen hours a day, but never quite as deep as humans. Instead, they fall asleep quickly and wake up intermittently to check to see if their environment is still safe.

Catnip, or Nepeta cataria, is an herb with nepetalactone in it. Many think that when cats inhale nepetalactone, it affects hormones that arouse sexual feelings, or at least alter their brain functioning to make them feel "high." Catnip was originally made, using nepetalactone as a natural bug repellant, but roaming cats would rip up the plants before they could be put to their intended task.

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans ages the equivalent of five human years for every day they live, so they usually die after about fourteen days. When stressed, though, the worm goes into a comatose state that can last for two or more months. The human equivalent would be to sleep for about two hundred years.

You can tell the sex of a horse by its teeth. Most males have 40, females have 36

Tuatara lizards, from New Zealand, have two eyes in the center of their heads and a third one on top of their heads.

A British medical journal called The Practitioner has determined that bird watching can be hazardous to one's health. They have officially designated bird watching a hazardous activity, using the example of the death of a bird watcher who became so wrapped up in watching a particular bird that he failed to notice his potentially dangerous surroundings and was eaten by a crocodile.

Because porcupines have hollow quills, they are great swimmers.

Mediterranean divers, before the Middle Ages, used to gather the golden strands of the pen shell, using them to weave a very fine cloth for the purpose of making womens' gloves. The cloth was so fine, in fact, that a pair of these gloves could be packed into an empty walnut shell, or anything of comparable volume.

Snakes who have the genetic mutation of having been born with two heads have a hard time eating, because the two heads generally fight over which gets the food.

Baby songbirds seem to learn how to sing from the adult birds of their species, and if they are raised by other species, they don't sing the same as their ancestors. They often make strange warbling noises, but may also learn the songs of other species. In the latter case, they can pass these songs on to their offspring.

Giraffes can't cough.

Elephants can smell water from as far away as three miles.

The Japanese quail has many values to the people who live in the areas it habitates. They are used for their song, their eggs, their uses as fighting cocks, for their meat, and are carried around in cold weather in South china to keep one's hands warm.

All shrimp are born male, but slowly grow into females as they mature.

The stomach acids in a snake's stomach can digest bones and teeth but not fur or hair.

The March Hare from Alice In Wonderland portrays the actual antics of real hares during springtime, when they jump around and hit their large hind feet on the ground.

Some species of dinosaur were the size of chickens.

Birds cannot go into outer space, because they use gravity to assist them in swallowing, so they'd quickly choke and die in a non-gravity environment.

The Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion lived in Memphis, Tennessee.

Humans have three color receptors in their eyes, while goldfish have four, and mantis shrimp have ten.

Studies have shown that pigs are one of the more intelligent animals, surprisingly. They come a close second only to primates. They are so smart, in fact, that they can be trained to do tricks like a dog.

Birds do not sleep in their nests, although they may rest in them from time to time.

The average giraffe has a blood pressure two or three times that of the average human.

Some birds from the rain forests of South America actually breed in Canada in the summer, before returning south for the winter.

The giant Pacific octopus can squeeze its entire body through a hole the size of its beak.

More types of fish live in one Amazon River tributary than in all the rivers in North America combined.

Penguins generally mate once and produce one egg per year.

The mako shark and great white shark are two of the few species of shark that are warm blooded.

You can house break an armadillo.

Cows are the only mammals that pee backwards.

Greyhound dogs can see better than any other breed of dog.

The opossum is a North American mammal about the size of a cat. It looks much like an over sized rat. In fact, one type of opossum is actually called the rat opossum. What's most interesting about opossums is how it reacts to predators: if it can't escape and hissing and showing its teeth do not scare off the predator, they pretend to die. The thing is, it's not doing this because it wants to; it can't really control it. Its muscles tighten up in fear and it faints.

The giant tortoise can live longer in captivity than any other animal.

The pekingese is the royal dog of China

Snakes don’t bite in rivers or swamps because they would drown if they did.

St. Bernard dogs do not carry kegs of brandy, and never have.

Baby robins eat 14 feet of earthworms per day.

Ostriches stick their heads in the sand to look for water.

The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can't fly. It lives in a hole in the ground, is almost blind and lays only one egg each year. Despite this, it has survived for more than 10 thousand years.

The oyster is usually ambisexual. Through its life it will change from male to female and back again numerous times.

In regions of India where the soil is red - elephants take on a permanent pink tinge because they regularly spray dust over their bodies to protect themselves against insects.

The most venomous of all snakes, known as the Inland Taipan has enough venom in one bite to kill over 200,000 mice.

Finches love thistle seeds. But only goldfinches can eat upside-down. Goldfinch feeders have openings underneath perches so other birds can't elbow their way into that particular chow line.

It takes seven years for a lobster to grow 1 pound.

A crocodile really does produce tears, but they're not due to sadness. The tears are glandular secretions that work to expel excess salt from the eyes. Hence, "crocodile tears" are false tears.

Ergonomic waterbeds are the latest must-have on the bovine circuit. The beds, listing at $175, are said to enhance cattle health by reducing joint damage.

A dog's mucus membrane is the size of fifty postage stamps.

The longest recorded life span of a camel was 35 years, 5 months.

78% of cats never travel with their owner.

To a human, one giant octopus looks virtually the same as any other of the same size and species. This explains why divers claim to have seen the same octopus occupy a den for ten or more years. But an octopus seldom lives longer than four years.

September 16-21 is Farm Animal Awareness Week.

The world camel population is 19,627,000.

Giraffes are the only animals born with horns. Both males and females are born with bony knobs on the forehead.

The giant crab of Japan can be as large as 12 feet across.

The snapping turtle eats carrion and is used by police to find dead bodies in lakes, ponds and swamps.

The Alaskan blackfish is found in Arctic region. When the cold Arctic winter comes, the waters the blackfish calls home freeze. And so does the blackfish! It's not dead, but only in a state of suspended animation. Months later when spring arrives, and ice melts, the blackfish comes back to "life" and goes off swimming on its merry way as if nothing ever happened.

Sharks never stop moving, even when they sleep or rest.

The woolly mammoth, extinct since the Ice Age, had tusks almost 16 feet high.

The king crab walks diagonally.

The East Alligator River in Australia's Northern Territory, was misnamed. It contains crocodiles not alligators.

The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by Egyptians in 2000 B.C.

The kinkajou's tail is twice as long as its body. Every night, it wraps itself up in its tail and uses it as a pillow.

The average minimal speed of birds in order to remain aloft in flight is reported to be about 16½ feet per second, or about 11 miles per hour.

Young birds such as ducks, geese, and shore birds are born with their eyes open.

A few species of monkeys and apes see the full spectrum of color, as well as some birds and possibly fish. Most animals, however, perceive the world in shades of gray, including the bull. A bull who charges a bright red cape is charging because of the movement of the cape, not the color.

A large kangaroo would make a great long-distance jumper, covering more than thirty feet with a single jump.

In Budapest, they control the pigeon population by mixing birth control chemicals with the birdseed.

Lobsters are scared of octopuses. The sight of one makes a lobster freeze.

A cat's jaw cannot move sideways.

Dogs have about 100 different facial expressions, most of them made with the ears.

In 1992 five cows were killed in drive by shootings in Clay County, Missouri.

When reflected from bright lights (head lights) deer's eyes are orange, whereas cats and dogs are green. Rabbits eyes remain black.

The heaviest dog on record is an Old English Mastiff named Zorba, who weighed 343 pounds and measured 8 feet and 3 in. from nose to tail.

In Vermont, the ratio of cows to people is 10:1.

In a test performed by Canadian scientists, using various different styles of music, it was determined that chickens lay the most eggs when pop music was played.

Koala is Aboriginal for "no drink".

The average adult male ostrich, the world's largest living bird, weighs up to 345 pounds.

The average elephant produces 50 pounds of dung each day.

Relative to their weight and size, birds are stronger than people. Luckily, they don't tend to throw their weight around.

The Platypus can eat its weight in worms every day.

A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.

If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.

Pigs can become alcoholics.

A blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant.

A top freestyle swimmer achieves a speed of only 4 miles per hour. Fish, in contrast, have been clocked at 68 mph.

Did you know that at Disneyland they have hundreds of wild domesticated cats running around the park? They never come out during the day because there's too many people, but the reason they're there is to catch the mice.

The world's fastest reptile (measured on land) is the spiny-tailed iguana of Costa Rica. It has been clocked at 21.7 miles per hour.

Minnows have teeth in their throat.

Rattlesnakes gather in groups to sleep through the winter. Sometimes up to 1,000 of them will coil up together to keep warm.

In the air, puffins are powerful flyers, beating their wings 300 to 400 times a minute to achieve speeds up to 40 miles per hour.

There are 1,600 known species of starfishes in the world.

The Bateleur eagle of Africa hunts over a territory of 250 square miles a day.

More than one million stray dogs and over 500,000 stray cats live in the New York City metropolitan area.

There are 40,000 muscles and tendons in an elephant's trunk. This makes it very strong and flexible, allowing an elephant to pluck a delicate flower or lift a huge log. The trunk is used for touching, grasping, sucking, spraying, smelling, and striking.

Penguins can jump as high as 6 feet in the air.

No other animal gives us more by-products than the hog. These by-products include pig suede, buttons, glass, paint brushes, crayons, chalk, and insulation to name a few.

A bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed every animal in the Berlin Zoo except the elephant, which escaped and roamed the city. When a Russian commander saw hungry Germans chasing the elephant and trying to kill it, he ordered his troops to protect it and shoot anyone who tried to kill it.

Armadillos are the only animal besides humans that can get leprosy.

To escape the grip of a crocodile's jaws, push your thumbs into its eyeballs-it will let you go instantly.

The "snood" is the fleshy projection just above the bill on a turkey.

The hairless area of roughened skin at the tip of a bear's snout is called the rhinarium.

The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.

The ostrich egg yolk is the biggest single cell in the world.

The bottle-nosed whale can dive to a depth of 3,000 feet in two minutes.

Male monkeys lose the hair on their heads in the same way men do.

Contrary to popular belief, dogs do not sweat by salivating, they sweat through the pads of their feet.

Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time.

The leg bones of a bat are so thin that no bat can walk.

While drug-sniffing dogs are trained to bark like crazy, go "aggressive" at the first whiff of the right powder... Bomb-sniffing dogs are trained to go "passive" lest they set off a motion sensor or a noise sensor or any number of other things that might go "kablooie."

During WWII, Americans tried to train bats to drop bombs.

The pupil of an octopus' eye is rectangular.

The Javan rhinoceros - a solitary, single-horned species - is the world's rarest large mammal. Only an estimated 50 to 70 of the animals remain in the wild. There are none in captivity.

Marcel Prousthave had a swordfish at home.

The first chimpanzee to travel in space was named Ham. The name came from the lab that he was raised in - the Holloman AeroMedical lab in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Ham's flight in a Mercury space capsule in 1961 helped to prove that space travel could be safe for humans.

The oldest know breed of domesticated dog is the saluki. Carvings of animals resembling the saluki have been found in excavations of the Sumerian Empire believed to date from between 6000 and 7000 B.C.

The beluga whale is often referred to as the "sea canary" because of the birdlike chirping sounds it makes.

More turkeys are raised in California than in any other state in the United States.

One species of antelope, the Sitatunga, can sleep underwater.

Most cows give more milk when they listen to music.

The largest order of mammals, with about 1,700 species, is rodents. Bats are second with about 950 species.

The bite of a leech is painless due to its own anesthetic.

The black bear is not always black. It can be brown, cinnamon, yellow, and sometimes a bluish color.

Most tropical marine fish could survive in a tank filled with human blood.

Most varieties of snake can go an entire year without eating a single morsel of food.

To provide their young with all the comforts of home while growing up, ichneumon wasps lay their eggs in or on the bodies of host grubs. But there's a catch. The grubs are sometimes those of wood-boring insects hidden deep within tree trunks. How to reach them? Ichneumons' abdomens come equipped with an egg laying structure, or ovipositor harden with ionized manganese or zinc. "Some can drill as much as three inches into solid wood," says Donald Quicke of Britain’s Imperial College. When the wasps hatch, they chew their way out with mouth-parts also hardened with minerals from the grubs they ate.

Shock treatment for epilepsy was once administered by electric catfish.

Each year, Americans spend more on cat food than on baby food.

The flamingoes of East Africa have few natural enemies. In general, the only predators an adult flamingo need fear are the fish eagle and the marabou stork.

Rabbits never walk or trot, but always hop or leap.

Gorillas and cats sleep about fourteen hours a day.

The flying snake of Java and Malaysia is able to flatten itself out like a ribbon and sail like a glider from tree to tree.

Rats can swim for a 1/2 mile without resting, and they can tread water for 3 days straight.

The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.

An iguana can stay under water for twenty-eight minutes.

Dogs mature very fast in their early years. However, most of their growth occurs during the first two years. After that, development slows down. A one-year-old dog is like a teenage human and a two-year-old dog is like an adult in his mid-twenties. Only when the dog is older—more than ten—does a single dog year equal about seven human years.

Elephants have been found swimming miles from shore in the Indian Ocean.

Out of all the animals a circus animal trainer works with, none are deadlier than the elephant. More deaths are caused by the elephants than the large cats circus tamers train with.

Belize is the only country in the world with a jaguar preserve.

A quarter of the horses in the U.S. died of a vast virus epidemic in 1872.

All elephants walk on tip-toe, because the back portion of their foot is made up of all fat and no bone.

A baby eel is called an elver, a baby oyster is called a spat.

A robin's egg is blue, but if you put it in vinegar for thirty days it turns yellow.

Elephants often communicate at sound levels as low as 5Hz. This means that if you flap your hands back and forth faster than five times a second, an elephant can actually hear the tone produced.

The world's largest rodent is the Capybara. An Amazon water hog that looks like a guinea pig, it can weigh more than 100 pounds.

Mongooses were brought to Hawaii to kill rats. This plan failed because rats are nocturnal while the mongoose hunts during the day.

Frogs never drink. They absorb water from their surroundings by osmosis.

Seagulls are heavy in the front and light in the back. They experience less wind resistance when they face into the wind. When you see them at the beach on a windy day facing the same direction, they are trying to minimize the wind's resistance by facing into the wind.

Parthenogenesis is the term used to describe the process by which certain animals are able to reproduce themselves in successive female generations without intervention of a male of the species. At least one species of lizard is known to do so.

The only continent without reptiles or snakes is Antarctica.

A trout swims at about 4 miles per hour which is faster than you or me.

Lobsters can move up to 25 feet per second underwater.

A winkle is an edible sea snail.

A jynx is a woodpecker, also know as the wryneck because of its peculiar habit of twisting its neck.

In Wales, there are more sheep than people. (In 1996 the population for Wales was 2,921,000 with approximately 5,000,000 sheep)

The crocodile is a cannibal; it will occasionally eat other crocodiles.

Octopi and squid have three hearts. Their main systemic heart pumps blood throughout the circulatory system, and two branchial hearts provide some additional push at each of the paired gills.

February is the mating month for gray whales.

The crocodile is surprisingly fast on land. If pursued by a crocodile, a person should run in a zigzag motion, for the crocodile has little or no ability to make sudden changes of direction.

Of all known forms of animals life ever to inhabit the earth, only about 10 percent still exist today.

Fish travel in schools, whales travel in pods or gams.

Of the 250-plus known species of shark in the world, only about 18 are known to be dangerous to man.

Flamingoes feel safest when they are crowded together, hundreds in a group.

Flamingoes live remarkably long lives: up to 80 years.

Rhinos are in the same family as horses, and are thought to have inspired the myth of the unicorn.

Snakes continue to grow until the day they die.

Weighing approximately 13 pounds at birth, a baby caribou will double its weight in just 10 days.

The oyster is usually ambisexual. It begins life as a male, then becomes a female, then changes back to being a male, then back to being female; it may go back and forth many times.

The Pastern is the part of a horse located on the foot between the fetlock and the hoof.

The digestive juices of crocodiles contain so much hydrochloric acid that they have dissolved iron spearheads and six-inch steel hooks that the crocodiles have swallowed.

The penculine titmouse of Africa builds its home in such a sturdy manner that Masai tribesman use their nests for purses and carrying cases.

The domestic cat is the only species able to hold its tail vertically while walking. Wild cats hold their tail horizontally, or tucked between their legs while walking.

When a hippopotamus exerts itself, gets angry, or stays out of the water for too long, it exudes red sweatlike mucus through its skin.

The Penguin is the only bird that can swim, but not fly. It is also the only bird that walks upright.

A kind of tortoise in the Galapagos Islands has an upturned shell at its neck so it can reach its head up to eat cactus branches.

When two zebras stand side by side, they usually face in opposite directions. They say this is so they can keep an eye out for predators.

A typical day for a gorilla is to get up early and eat. It eats until it gets hot, then it will nap. When it gets up from its nap, they resume eating until the sun goes down.

There are more than 300 references to sheep and lambs, more than any other animal, in the Bible's Old Testament, one of the earliest records of sheep.

The underside of a horse's hoof is called a frog. The frog peels off several times a year with new growth.

The cells which make up the antlers of a moose are the fastest growing animal cells in nature.

The Dalmatian dog is named for the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, where it is believed to have been originally bred.

A pelican consumes about 33 and 1/3 percent of its body weight in a single meal.

Chocolate effects a dogs heart and nervous system, a few ounces enough to kill a small sized dog.

Dachshunds are the smallest breed of dog used for hunting. They are low to the ground, which allows them to enter and maneuver through tunnels easily.

The golden tree frog has a croak that sounds like a mallet chipping rock, but in summer it sounds like a tinkling bell.

City squirrels will eat just about anything, and often, it's the junk food that people offer them that they prefer, like Cracker Jack peanuts. Many naturalists have concluded that a peanut diet is harmful to squirrels: it seems to result in a weakening of eyesight and a thinning of the animal's pelt.

A skunk will not bite and throw its scent at the same time.

The Mola Mola, or Ocean Sunfish, lays up to 5,000,000 eggs at one time.

Mother prairie dogs will nurse their young only while underground in the safety of the burrow. If an infant tries to suckle above ground, the mother will slap it.

The more that is learned about the ecological benefits of bats, the more home gardeners are going out of their way to entice these amazing winged mammals into their neighborhoods. Bats are voracious insect eaters, devouring as many as 600 bugs per hour for 4 to 6 hours a night. They can eat from one-half to three-quarters their weight per evening. Bats are also important plant pollinators, particularly in the southwestern U.S.

The chameleon has a tongue that is 1.5 times the length of its body.

Mother-of pearl is not always white. It can be pink, blue, purple, gray, or even green. Nor is it produced only by the pearl oyster. The abalone and the pearl mussel both have shells that are lined with fine-quality mother-of-pearl.

Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

Boredom can lead to madness in parrots. When caged by themselves and neglected for long periods of time, these intelligent, sociable birds can easily become mentally ill. Many inflict wounds upon themselves, develop strange tics, and rip out their own feathers. The birds need constant interaction, affection, and mental stimulation; some bird authorities have determined that some parrot breeds have the mental abilities of a 5-year-old human child. Should a neglected parrot go mad, there is little that can be done to restore it to normalcy. In England, there are "mental institutions" for such unfortunate creatures.

The smallest of American owls, the elf owl, often nests in the Gila woodpecker’s cactus hole after the woodpecker leaves. The owl measures barely 6 inches tall. It specializes in catching scorpions, seizing each by the tail and nipping off its stinger. It then swallows the scorpion’s body, pincers and all.

As much as 40-percent of the entire world's varieties of freshwater fish are to be found in the Amazon River basin. There are about 8,600 species of birds in the entire world, and more than half of them are also represented in this area.

The Portuguese jellyfish tentacles have been known to grow a mile in length, catching anything in it's path by stinging it's prey.

The African lungfish can live out of water for up to four years.

Cats can run slightly more than 30 miles per hour.

Male birds actually do most of the singing, primarily to stake out their territory and to invite females of their species over to mate. Females tend to select as mates those male birds who sing the most. It is believed they do this not because they like the quality of the singing, but because they have learned the males who sing the most have the most food in their territory. Since the male doesn't have to spend much time hunting for food, it has more time to sing.

At birth a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about four ounces.

The flying gurnard, a fish, swims in water, walks on land, and flies through the air.

Contrary to popular belief, elephants are not afraid of mice, and they do not have any better memory than any other animal.

Despite being a nine-inch-tall bird, the roadrunner can run as fast as a human sprinter.

While there are hundreds of species of sharks, only about seven are marketed and eaten with any regularity in the United States.

The largest species of seahorse measures 8 inches.

A camel can lose up to 30 percent of its body weight in perspiration and continue to cross the desert. A human would die of heat shock after sweating away only 12 percent of body weight.

There are about 500 different kinds of cone snails around the world. All have a sharp, modified tooth that stabs prey with venom like a harpoon. Most cone snails hunt worms and other snails, but some eat fish. These are the ones most dangerous to people. The nerve toxin that stops a fish is powerful enough to also kill a human.

The leech has 32 brains, 32 more than most humans.

The blow of a whale has a strong, foul odor. It apparently smells like a combination of spoiled fish and old oil. Because whales have such terrible breath, sailors believed at one time that a whiff of it could cause brain disorders.

The last of a cat's senses to develop is sight.

Mussels can thrive in polluted water because of an inborn ability to purify bacteria, fungi, and viruses.

Because birds carrying messages were often killed in flight by hawks, medieval Arabs made a habit of sending important messages twice.

Since housecats are clean and their coats are dry and glossy, their fur easily becomes charged with electricity. Sparks can be seen if their fur is rubbed in the dark.

The jackrabbit is not a rabbit; it is a hare.

A house cat has 18 claws.

A castrated rooster is called a capon.

A skark's skeleton is made up of cartilage.

The only venomous British snake is the adder.

To see at night as well as an owl, you would need eyeballs as big as a grapefruit.

The venom of the king cobra is so deadly that one gram of it can kill 150 people. Just to handle the substance can put one in a coma.

Cats purr at 26 cycles per second, the same as an idling diesel engine.

The sea lion can swim 6,000 miles, stopping only to sleep.

While many people believe that a camel's humps are used for water storage, they are actually made up of fat. The hump of a well-rested, well-fed camel can weigh up to eighty pounds.

Birds do not have sweat glands, so their bodies cannot cool down through perspiration. Their bodies cool by flight or, when at rest, panting.

Giant squids have eyes as big as watermelons.

Males lions can sleep for up to 20 hours a day.

The male howler monkey of Central and South America is the noisiest animal which can be heard clearly for distances of up to 3 miles.

Sharks can sense a drop of blood from 2.5 miles away.

The dumbest domesticated animal is the turkey.

The only place in Europe where monkeys live free is Gibraltar.

Beavers do not eat fish.

Australia has the largest sheep population.

Penguins only have sex once a year.

You can cut up a starfish into pieces and each piece will grow into a completely new starfish.

The blue whale can go up to 6 months without eating.

Fish can be susceptible to seasickness.

The female pigeon cannot lay eggs if she is alone. She must be able to see another pigeon in order for her ovaries to function. Her own reflection will work if no other pigeon is available.

Dolphins can kills sharks by ramming them with their snout.

A woodchuck breathes 2,100 times an hour, but it only breathes ten times an hour while it is hibernating.

The greyhound dog can reach speeds of up to 42 miles per hour.

The electric eel has an average discharge of 400 volts.

A parrots beak can close with a force close to 350 pounds per square inch.

Lemon sharks grow a new set of teeth every two weeks. That means one shark will go through more than 24,000 new teeth in a year.

Apus Australiensis, a shrimp-like crustacean of arid central Australia, survives where other water animals would perish because its eggs hatch only after they have been dried out in the sun

Elephant tusks grow throughout an elephant's life and can weigh more than 200 pounds. Among Asian elephants, only the males have tusks. Both sexes of African elephants have tusks.

Reindeer like to eat bananas.

The average life expectancy of a leopard in captivity is 12 years.

Mice, whales, elephants, giraffes, and humans all have seven neck vertebra.

Elephants and short-tailed shrews get by on only two hours of sleep a day.

Elephants are covered with hair. Although it is not apparent from a distance, at close range, one can discern a thin coat of light hairs covering practically every part of an elephant's body.

The turkey was wrongly named after what was thought to be it's country of origin.

Elephants communicate in sound waves below the frequency that humans can hear.

Wolf packs could be found in all the forests of Europe, and in 1420 and 1438, wolves roamed the streets of Paris.

The whistling swan has more than 25,000 feathers on its body.

You can identify a grizzly bear's mark by the sign of five claws. A black bear will lacerate a tree trunk with four claws.

The white elephant is the sacred animal of Thailand.

The kakapo is a nocturnal burrowing parrot of New Zealand that has a green body with brown and yellow markings. Its name is from Maori and means "night parrot."

Gorillas beat their chests when they get nervous.

A cow's sweat glands are in the nose.

City squirrels will eat just about anything, and often, it's the junk food that people offer them that they prefer, like Cracker Jack peanuts. Many naturalists have concluded that a peanut diet is harmful to squirrels: it seems to result in a weakening of eyesight and a thinning of the animal's pelt.

A skunk will not bite and throw its scent at the same time.

The Mola Mola, or Ocean Sunfish, lays up to 5,000,000 eggs at one time.

Mother prairie dogs will nurse their young only while underground in the safety of the burrow. If an infant tries to suckle above ground, the mother will slap it.

The more that is learned about the ecological benefits of bats, the more home gardeners are going out of their way to entice these amazing winged mammals into their neighborhoods. Bats are voracious insect eaters, devouring as many as 600 bugs per hour for 4 to 6 hours a night. They can eat from one-half to three-quarters their weight per evening. Bats are also important plant pollinators, particularly in the southwestern U.S.

The chameleon has a tongue that is 1.5 times the length of its body.

Mother-of pearl is not always white. It can be pink, blue, purple, gray, or even green. Nor is it produced only by the pearl oyster. The abalone and the pearl mussel both have shells that are lined with fine-quality mother-of-pearl.

Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

Boredom can lead to madness in parrots. When caged by themselves and neglected for long periods of time, these intelligent, sociable birds can easily become mentally ill. Many inflict wounds upon themselves, develop strange tics, and rip out their own feathers. The birds need constant interaction, affection, and mental stimulation; some bird authorities have determined that some parrot breeds have the mental abilities of a 5-year-old human child. Should a neglected parrot go mad, there is little that can be done to restore it to normalcy. In England, there are "mental institutions" for such unfortunate creatures.

The smallest of American owls, the elf owl, often nests in the Gila woodpecker’s cactus hole after the woodpecker leaves. The owl measures barely 6 inches tall. It specializes in catching scorpions, seizing each by the tail and nipping off its stinger. It then swallows the scorpion’s body, pincers and all.

As much as 40-percent of the entire world's varieties of freshwater fish are to be found in the Amazon River basin. There are about 8,600 species of birds in the entire world, and more than half of them are also represented in this area.

The Portuguese jellyfish tentacles have been known to grow a mile in length, catching anything in it's path by stinging it's prey.

The African lungfish can live out of water for up to four years.

Cats can run slightly more than 30 miles per hour.

Male birds actually do most of the singing, primarily to stake out their territory and to invite females of their species over to mate. Females tend to select as mates those male birds who sing the most. It is believed they do this not because they like the quality of the singing, but because they have learned the males who sing the most have the most food in their territory. Since the male doesn't have to spend much time hunting for food, it has more time to sing.

At birth a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about four ounces.

The flying gurnard, a fish, swims in water, walks on land, and flies through the air.

Contrary to popular belief, elephants are not afraid of mice, and they do not have any better memory than any other animal.

Despite being a nine-inch-tall bird, the roadrunner can run as fast as a human sprinter.

While there are hundreds of species of sharks, only about seven are marketed and eaten with any regularity in the United States.

A female swine, or a sow, will always have a even number of teats or nipples, usually twelve.

Unlike most cats, tigers love the water and can easily swim three or four miles.

The owl parrot can't fly, and builds its nest under tree roots.

Gorillas do not know how to swim.

A 4-inch-long abalone can grip a rock with a force of 400 pounds. Two grown men are incapable of prying it up.

A bird "chews" with its stomach. Since most birds do not have teeth, a bird routinely swallows small pebbles and gravel. These grits become vigorously agitated in the bird's stomach and serve to grind food as it passes through the digestive system.

A bird sees everything at once in total focus. Whereas the human eye is globular and must adjust to varying distances, the bird's eye is flat and can take in everything at once in a single glance.

There are about 40 different muscles in a birds wing.

A bison can jump 6 feet.

There are about 5,000 species of coral known. Only about half of them build reefs.

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