The paddlefish, a living fossil, has existed virtually unchanged in the Mississippi River for 230 million years, although it now weighs no more than one-third of its ancient weight. The only other part of the world in which the paddlefish is found is China.

The modern dinner plate is a fairly recent development. Until the 15th century, it was customary to eat on a thick slice of stale bread, called a "trencher," that soaked up the juice.

A cat uses its whiskers to determine if a space is too small to squeeze through. The whiskers act as feelers or antennae, helping the animal to judge the precise width of any passage.

Nolan Bushnell and Atari engineer Al Alcorn placed a prototype of their game in Andy Capp's Tavern, a Sunnyvale, California bar. Alcorn began work a home version of Pong. His project was code named "Darlene" after a female coworker who worked with Alcorn at the time. In the fall of 1974, Alcorn began developing the "Darlene" system. Several ...Read more

The first product to have a UPC bar code on its packaging was Wrigley's gum.

According to acupuncturists, there is a point on the head that you can press to control your appetite. It is located in the hollow just in front of the flap of the ear.

There actually isn't a single type of fish known as the sardine. So technically you can't go fishing for sardines. "Sardine" is a nickname or generic term for any kind of small, saltwater fish that comes packaged in a flat can. There are more than twenty different small fish sold as sardines - everything from small herring to pilchards and ...Read more

Fish travel in schools for protection (a large school of fish may be ignored by predators looking for a lone straggler) and also for feeding (mackerel, for instance, hunt together). All the fish in a school of fish are not related to one another but are often (but not always) the same species. Fish in a school may be of different species, but ...Read more

In 1882, Richard Higham of Troy, New York, former manager and National League baseball player, was banished from the league for advising gamblers how to bet on baseball games he umpired, thus earning the infamous distinction of being the only umpire ever judged guilty of dishonesty on the field.

SPAM has earned a place in pop culture history partially thanks to the Brits. The canned creation made its television debut on "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" in 1970. A collector’s edition Spam -- Stinky French Garlic -- was introduced to celebrate the opening of "Spamalot" in London. Not shockingly, the stinky Spam tasted far better than ...Read more

The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words. More than 2 billion pencils are manufactured in the U.S. annually. If these were laid end to end, they would circle the earth nine times.

Every person has nearly 400,000 radioactive atoms disintegrating into other atoms in his or her body each second. But there's no need to worry about falling apart. Each body cell contains an average of 90 trillion atoms — 225 million times that 400,000.

The ball used in hurling is also known as a sliotar or sliothar. The ball usually has a cork center and is covered with horsehide. Hurling for women is called camogie.

While the term gargoyle is most often applied to medieval work, buildings have always required a means of throwing the water off roofs, at least when not conveyed in gutters. In Egypt gargoyles ejected the water used in the washing of the sacred vessels. In Greek temples, the water from roofs passed through the mouths of lions. At Pompeii many ...Read more

Ornithologists often use Scotch tape to cover cracks in the soft shells of fertilized pigeon eggs, allowing the eggs to hatch. Scotch tape has also been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp.

Emerson Moser, who was Crayola's senior crayon maker, revealed upon his retirement that he was blue-green colorblind and couldn't see all the colors. He molded over 1.4 billion crayons in his 37-year career.

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.

By 1982 G.I. Joe was back on store shelves, albeit in a downsized version produced at the size of the wildly popular Star Wars action figures. The "Adventure Team" idea was modified and combined with the original military theme of the early action figures. This was the beginning of the 1980s G.I. Joe frenzy that led to the production of posters,...Read more

A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. People also tend to have common themes in dreams, which are situations relating to school, being chased, running slowly/in place, sexual experiences, falling, arriving too late, a person now alive being dead, teeth falling out, flying, ...Read more

Many curious items have been preserved in Irish bogs, even complete human bodies. Recently (2009) another unusual item was found by workers for a peat company - a 3,000 year old wooden barrel of butter! The butter is not actually butter any longer, it has been transformed into 'adipocere,' a wax-