But a single one - The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.



To clean tarnished copper bottoms of pots and pans, spread a little ketchup onto the bottom. Let it sit for about one minute. Wipe it clean and rinse.



An earl is a British nobleman of a rank below that of a marquis and above that of a viscount. An earl was called a count for a time after the Norman Conquest. The wife of an earl is a countess.



"I have often thought that if a rational Fascist dictatorship were to exist, then it would choose the American system." 6:16 AM 12/7/2005



Leonardo da Vinci 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.



Boasting nearly 30 brewery locations, Nigeria has emerged as the largest beer-producing country in Africa. The continent's 8,000-year brewing history began with ancient Egyptian commercial brewing dynasties and still includes handmade tribal beers.6:22 AM 12/7/2005



"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why." [james thurber]



"Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority."



"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
Between 20,000 and 60,000 bees live in a single hive. The queen bee lays nearly 1,500 eggs a day and lives for up to 2 years. The drone, whose only job it is to mate with the queen bee, has a lifespan of around 24 days and has no stinger. Worker bees all sterile females usually work themselves to death within 40 days, collecting pollen and nectar. Worker bees will fly up to 9 miles (14 km) to find pollen and nectar, flying at speeds as fast as 15 mph (24 km/h).





Residents of Hawaii outlive residents of all other states, while Louisianans are the most prone in the U.S. to die an early death.

The most carnivorous of all bears is the polar bear. Its diet consists almost entirely of seals and fish.



A King Cobra is the biggest of all poisonous snakes and can grow to over 13 feet long. A bite from a King Cobra can kill an elephant in 4 hours.

Galileo became totally blind shortly before his death, probably because of the damage done to his eyes during his many years of looking at the Sun through a telescope.



On Dec. 12, 2000, a divided U.S. Supreme Court halted the presidential recount in Florida, effectively making Republican George W. Bush the winner.

-- 1946: A United Nations committee voted to accept a six-block tract of Manhattan real estate offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to be the site of U.N. headquarters.



-- 1999: U.S. and German negotiators agreed to establish a $5.2 billion fund for Nazi-era slaves and forced laborers.

Medical experts warn that compulsive exercising can be just as bad for a person as no exercise at all. The human body needs 24 hours without exercise about once a week in order to cleanse itself of lactic acid and other waste products of strenuous activity
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It's malleable. A single ounce of gold can be stretched into a thin wire five miles long or hammered into a hundred-square-foot sheet. Because it's soft, gold is easy to work with. That means that ancient cultures without sophisticated tools could fashion elaborate works of art.

"If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."



A female mouse may spawn as many as ten litters of eight to ten young during her lifetime which is generally less than a year. The gestation period is three weeks, and the young mice reach maturity in only ten weeks.

If an object has no molecules, the concept of temperature is meaningless. That's why it's technically incorrect to speak of the "cold of outer space" space has no temperature, and is known as a "temperature sink," meaning it drains heat out of things.

The North Atlantic Deep Water Current is an oceanic "river" that carries twenty times more water than all the rivers of the world put together.



-- 1991: The U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a 111-25 vote.

Key West, Florida, is the top-ranking American city for warmth, with an annual average temperature of 77.7 degrees F; International Falls, Minnesota, is the coldest, with an annual average of 36.4 degrees F.

On Dec. 18, 1865, slavery ended in the United States as the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was declared in effect.


At least 100,000 different chemical reactions occur in the normal human brain every second.



-- 1996: The school board of Oakland, Calif., voted to recognize Black English, also known as "ebonics."



-- 1978: Police in Des Plaines, Ill., arrested John W. Gacy Jr. and began unearthing the remains of 33 men and boys that Gacy was later convicted of murdering.

The world's tallest grass, which has sometimes grown 130 feet or more, is bamboo.



Kittens can clock an amazing 31 mph at full speed and cover about 3 times their body length per leap.

Because its eyeball is fixed, the whale must move its huge body to shift its line of sight.

On Dec. 22, 1989, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, the last of Eastern Europe's hard-line Communist rulers, was toppled from power in a popular uprising.

The highest man-made temperature 70 million degrees Celsius wa generated at Princeton University in a fusion power experiment in 1978.

The sun contains over 99.8 percent of the total mass in our solar system, while Jupiter contains most of the rest. The fractional percentage that is left is made up of our Earth and moon and the remaining planets and asteroids.

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



Flies prefer to breed in the center of a room. This is why experts advise placing flypaper away from corners.



A neutron star is the strongest magnet in the universe. The magnetic field of a neutron star is a million million times stronger than Earth's magnetism.

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



The average human has about 10,000 taste buds however, they're not all on the tongue. Some are under the tongue; some are on the inside of the cheeks; some are on the roof of the mouth. Some can even be found on the lips these are especially sensitive to salt.



While awake, hummingbirds must eat at least every 30 minutes or they will starve to death. They need to eat 2.5 times their body weight every day this takes hundreds of flowers everyday.

Quasars are amazingly bright objects. A quasar generates 100 times as much light as the whole of our galaxy in a space not much larger than our solar system.

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.