The average male adult can bench-press 88 percent of his body weight, having 70 to 80 pounds of muscle.

The French system of canals was built for transportation. The Burgundy Canal connects Paris to the Mediterranean. This was a superb idea in the late 1600s when construction was started. But the canal system wasn't completed until the early 1800s, which unfortunately coincided with the advent of Europe's new railroads. The railroads put them out ...Read more

The modern Sudoku was designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979. Garns added a third dimension to the traditional Roman practice of Latin Squares and presented the creation as a puzzle, providing a partially-completed grid and requiring the solver to fill ...Read more

The Jif plant in Lexington, Kentucky, is reportedly the largest peanut butter factory in the world.

The single-blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone, and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.

Many cities in our country bear the names of other countries. The U.S. city of Mexico can be found in the states of Indiana, Maine, and Missouri.

St. Miles Partridge once played dice with Henry VIII for the bells of St. Paul's church. He won, and collected the bells.

In 1944, Allied security officers were disturbed by the appearance, in a series of crossword puzzles published in The Daily Telegraph, of words that happened to be secret code names for military operations. On June 2, just four days before the invasion, the puzzle included both the words "Neptune" (the naval operations plan) and "Overlord". That...Read more

Margaret Mitchell, who wrote Gone With the Wind, never wrote a book before that, and never wrote a book after that. Her original title for the book was Tomorrow Is Another Day; her publisher changed it to Gone With the Wind. The publisher also changed the heroine's name from Pansy O'Hara to

The theory of camouflage led the Special Air Service to use pink as the primary color on the desert camouflaged Land Rover Series IIA patrol vehicles, leading to the nickname The Pink Panthers.

The Associated Press reported in December 1985, in Eugene, Oregon, a 6-month-old kitten set a Christmas tree on fire while batting at the lighted bulbs. The heat of the fire cracked a nearby fishbowl, and water from the bowl doused some of the fire. Firefighters arrived within minutes of the fire starting and put out the fire, which had spread ...Read more

There is an organization in Berkeley, California, whose members gather monthly to discuss and honor the garlic plant. Called "The Lovers of the Stinky Rose," this unusual organization holds and annual garlic festival and publishes a newsletter known as "Garlic Time."

The hides of mature female blue sharks are more than twice as thick as those of males, probably as a protection against courtship bites.

A recent study found that 75 percent of headache patients felt relief when they rubbed capsaicin (the component that makes chile peppers hot) on their nose.

Anthropologists believe stones were one of man's first calculating devices, aiding in addition and subtraction throughout primitive times. In fact, the word "calculus" is derived from the Latin for "stone."

The five favorite U.S. school lunches nationwide, according to the American School Food Service Association, are, in order, pizza, chicken nuggets, tacos, burritos, and hamburgers.

John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress, wrote most of his famous book while in jail. He was imprisoned for twelve years for preaching without a license.

Sedimentary rocks are used to make cement, glass, fertilizer, baking soda, laundry bleach, and aspirin.

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

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