Zippy Facts

For the entire duration of the American Revolution, or until March of 1782, the first lord of the British admiralty was John Montague, 4th Earl of Sandwich. He was exceedingly unpopular, and the period of his tenure of office was notorious for graft, bribery, and general mismanagement. The personal life of the Earl was also…

The expression “to steer between Scylla and Charybdis” means to steer a mid-course between perils. Scylla, according to Homer’s Odyssey, was a fearful monster that dwelt in a cavern on the face of a high cliff that overlooked a narrow channel of the sea. She had six heads, each on a long neck, and from…

On the whole, Cuban exiles did very well in the United States, better than any other Hispanic American group. They were helped by the U.S. government, which welcomed them as refugees from a communist regime, and therefore allies. Cuban exiles easily received permanent residency status. They got free temporary housing, medical care, financial aid, and…

Ordinary light seems white as it shines, but it is actually a combination of colors, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Any time the light gets broken up, as in a soap bubble, an oil puddle, a piece of cut glass, or a diamond, we see all or most of these colors. In…

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is a marble bell tower at Pisa, Italy. Even though the tower has been leaning since it was under construction, it has stood for hundreds of years, despite the fact that it looks as if it might fall any minute. The tower was begun over 800 years ago, in 1173,…

There came a time, in the city of Paris; when the walls of the city were no longer useful. The ramparts were broad, but when gunpowder came into military operations they were of little value for defense. So the ramparts fell into disrepair, until some engineer, seeing that they encircled the city and were broad…

Summertime conditions in the Rockies constitute a recipe for thunderstorms. The ingredients are strong sunshine coming at a direct angle to warm the land below, sharp differences in temperature between air warmed by the mountains and cooler air over adjacent plains, and enough water in the air. Thunderstorms owe their existence to thermals, or localized…

Like Mercury, Venus is relatively close to the Sun. It is often called the evening or morning star because it is so bright at sunset and sunrise. Venus is the brightest planet in the sky, even brighter than the stars; therefore, it is a pretty easy object to find in the night sky. As a…

My first reaction was no, not if there isn’t a slow leak somewhere in the bottle’s seal. But after extensive research, which consisted of dialing the 800 Consumer Information number on a Coca-Cola label, I find that it is not only possible, it’s quite common. After prompting the nice woman who answered the phone to…

Sunspots are strange shadows on the Sun’s surface and vary in size and groupings. About 75 percent of sunspots come in groups of two or more, with one leading umbra, or center dark patch, that is usually the first to appear and the last to vanish. The largest recorded group of sunspots was measured on…

Sharks are fish that date from more than 420 million years ago, before the time of the dinosaurs. There are over 440 species of Shark and some like the whale shark, which can reach 39 feet, feed only on plankton and small squid. Sharks were called “sea dogs” by sailors until the 16th century. After…

Pyromania is, according to the DSM-IV-TR (2000), “deliberate and purposeful fire setting on more than one occasion.” Prior to the act of fire setting, there is an increase in tension, and there is a long-held fascination with fire. Once the fire is set, there is a sense of relief or joy. Fires set by people…

It was golfers themselves who discovered that golf balls with nicks, dents, and scrapes flew farther than the round, smooth balls that were originally used in the modern game of golf. The effects were so dramatic that they began aging their new balls as quickly as possible by pounding and scraping them. Eventually, the manufacturers…

More than half the forests that covered the earth 8,000 years ago are gone today. They’ve disappeared mostly because of human activities. For many hundreds of years, people have used wood for fuel and for building material. Millions of trees were also cut down and cleared away to create farmland. Some scientists estimate that the…

Union General Ambrose Burnside’s fuzzy and odd-looking whiskers inspired people to call that kind of facial hair “burnsides.” As time passed, wits whimsically reversed the name into “sideburns,” which sort of makes sense because they’re on the side of the face. The name stuck.

Tree kangaroos are macropods that live in trees in the mountainous rainforests of New Guinea, northeastern Queensland Australia, and a few islands nearby. Tree-kangaroos evolved from animals similar to modern kangaroos, and have strong hind legs and very long tails for balance, and stronger forelimbs with longer claws for climbing. On the ground, tree-kangaroos are…

Yes, there were two survivors of the 1902 volcanic eruption of Mount Pelee on the island of Martinque. The other 29,000 inhabitants were wiped out. Similar catastrophic volcanic eruptions that have occurred in history include the famous incident at Pompei which wiped out the entire city.

The original spelling of clue was C-L-E-W, and its forgotten meaning is a “ball of yam or string.” A clew of string was unraveled as a guide out after entering an unfamiliar maze or a cave. If you became lost, all you had to do was follow the string back to the point of origin….

Pulitzer prizes are awarded annually for distinguished work in twenty-two categories of journalism, arts and letters, and music. The fourteen prizes in journalism are meritorious public service, spot news reporting, beat reporting, national reporting, international reporting, investigative reporting, explanatory journalism, editorials, editorial cartoons, spot news photography, feature photography, commentary, criticism, and feature writing. The six…

The Squid is a much faster swimmer than an Octopus. Octopi are smooth swimmers, gliding along on their tentacles like an eight-legged Fred Astaire, but they’re no match for the squid. Squid shoot water backward with a siphon in its mantle cavity via jet propulsion, pushing them forward in great bursts of speed. Both of…

During the 16th century, in Germany, there was a library that had no books. Instead of books, it had shelf after shelf of boxes. Each box was of book size. The binding of each box was made of the wood of one tree, and the name of the tree was marked on the side of…

The literal sense of the word “hidebound” related first to cattle which, under conditions of extreme emaciation resulting from disease, lost the fatty tissue normally lying under the skin. After death, then, the hide of any such animal cannot be loosened from the ribs or backbone. The condition, using this term, was first described in…

That famous “hole in the ground” is the subway. England is the home of the subway. The first system, called the London Transport Executive, began to operate in 1863, while the United States was deeply involved in the Civil War. The Longest Subway System In The World is the The London Tube, with 408 km…

The Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775 took place on nearby Breed’s Hill, just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, during the Siege of Boston early in the American Revolutionary War. The Americans were running out of ammunition when Colonel William Prescott ordered, “You men are all marksmen, now don’t shoot until you can see the…

Oil is a good lubricant, obviously, because it’s so slippery. But what makes a substance slippery? All liquids are slippery to some degree. A wet floor or highway, wet with water, is a well-recognized hazard that keeps many lawyers in expensive clothing. But water isn’t much use as a lubricant in our engines and other…

For the longest time, scientists thought there were only two different species of elephants, the African and the Asian. They believed that the African elephant had two subspecies, the savannah elephant and the forest elephant. However, some scientists began to doubt that classification. For one thing, forest elephants are smaller than savannah elephants. Furthermore, their…

The windchill index is an interesting thing, an attempt to take a scientific certainty—, temperature and wind speed—, and quantify its effect on the perceptions of humans. In other words, it calculates perceived temperature. Scientists working in Antarctica developed the first formula to determine when the wind will turn a frigid temperature into a deadly…

The Boeing 747 was the biggest jetliner in the world in 1969, when it first flew. This huge passenger jet was a little more than 231 feet long, with a distance of 195 feet from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other. The 747 could carry 500 passengers, more than any…

Hippos eat mostly grass, and are classified as herbivores. A hippo’s specialized eyes and nose, located on the top of its head, help it stay almost entirely submerged for large portions of the day. Young hippos actually have a specialized tongue that lets them dive down and nurse while under water. That said, during the…

No one knows for sure if Robin Hood and his Merry Men really existed, but there isn’t much evidence that he did. All we know is that he should have existed as a heroic outlaw, archer and swordsman in English folklore, along with his Merry Men. Whether fact or fiction, the first mention of him…

Paintings discovered on the walls of the Baths of Titus, excavated by archaeologists in the sixteenth century, gave us our word “antic” through the Italian antica, “antique.” But, though the learned world thus attributed the paintings to the ancients, the general public was more impressed by the finding of them in the excavated chambers, or…

First, some background. The tip of the mammalian penis is called the glans. Although “glans” sounds a lot like “glands,” it actually has nothing to do with the production of hormones. Glans comes from the Latin word meaning “acorn.” It’s an odd sort of shape, isn’t it? One many of us have wondered about—, biologists…

The electromagnetic spectrum is the scientific name for all of the types of known radiation in the universe. From shortest (highest frequency) to longest (lowest frequency) wavelengths, they are: Gamma rays, X rays, ultraviolet rays, visible light rays, infrared rays, and radio waves, which include microwaves, television and FM radio waves, shortwaves, and AM radio…

Boiling water will kill most bacteria and viruses, including those that want to do you harm. However, if you’re looking for complete sterility, boiling temperatures won’t kill every type of microorganism. For example, heat-loving bacteria have been found swimming in superheated volcanic vents bubbling up from the ocean’s floor, in the hot springs of Yellowstone…

Magnets are attracted only to other magnets. A piece of iron contains billions of tiny magnets, but copper and aluminum don’t. The only thing that the pole of a magnet will attract is the opposite pole of another magnet. It’s exactly the same as with electric charges: The only thing that a positive electric charge…

The narwhal is a toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic. The narwhal is the rarest of all species of whale, and scientists know very little about them. They do know that there are about 20,000 to 30,000 of them and that they cruise the waters of the Arctic Ocean far from shipping lanes…

When New York City was only a town, its growth was restricted by the shape of Manhattan Island. The word uptown first appeared in about 1830 and was used to describe the residential area growing up the Island away from the southern business centre. Within a few years, downtown appeared to describe the opposite of…

Do you hear a lot of griping and complaining around you? Are your friends always saying this is wrong, that is terrible, and that other thing ought to be changed? Well, if you hear a lot of that here in the US, you ought to hear what’s going on in Italy and Japan. More people…

All new inventions, including medicines, require a patent; that is, their components must be revealed. The word patent means an “open letter” and is a grant made by a government that confers upon the creator of an invention the sole right to make, use, and sell that invention for a set period of time. During…

Costa Rica’s government has been working to promote the country as a prime ecotourism destination. It has more than 850 species of birds, 1,400 species of trees, 9,000 flowering plants, at least 4,500 different types of moths, and many other exotic forms of wildlife. Almost one-third of the country’s land is protected by the government….

Navigation requires that you know where you are relative to your destination, and how to negotiate the route. To do this in space, knowing your attitude is as crucial as knowing your position, so the first thing to do is find and track the sun and a known, conspicuous, distant star. Sirius is a good…

Charles Drew (1904-1950), a physician, was an expert on blood. His breakthrough research in plasma and blood preservation led to the establishment in New York City of the first successful blood bank. Great Britain called upon him to create donor banks for soldiers during World War II, and he did the same for the American…

History begins around 3500 B.C., the date of the oldest surviving written records. But long before written history began, man was leaving his mark on earth in other ways. We know, for instance, that a group of prehistoric men lived in a village in France some 120,000 years ago! In 1965, the remains of this…

“John Doe” is the name used to describe someone within legal circumstances when the real name is either unknown or protected by privacy laws. The practice dates back to British courts in the early nineteenth century, when John and Jane Doe were used as names for unknown or unclear defendants in real estate eviction disputes….

King Midas was ruler of Phrygia, a land covered with roses. One day, King Midas’s servants discovered the satyr Silenus, a creature that was half man, half goat, in a drunken slumber in the king’s favorite flower bed. Instead of punishing Silenus, Midas entertained him with food and wine for ten days. The god Dionysus,…

The countries of western Europe borrowed divan from Turkey, which in turn borrowed it from Arabic or Persian. In early times it signified a collection of written leaves, such as a compilation of poems or even a register of persons. It thus came to denote an account book or an office where accounts, especially accounts…

The 1976 novel The Kiss of the Spider Woman is the story of two men sharing a prison cell in a politically repressive South American country. It was written by an Argentine named Manuel Puig who knew political repression firsthand: he fled his troubled country in 1973 to live in Mexico and New York City….

Since the United States Postal Service introduced the system of zip codes, mail has been getting delivered more quickly and more efficiently. Here’s how zip codes work. The United States and its possessions are divided up into 10 large areas. Each area has a number between 0 and 9. Suppose, for example, the zip code…

No, kidney stone jewelry is not made from kidney stones, but it can be pretty confusing. What’s called a kidney stone in the jewelry business is really nephrite or hematite. The stones have been historically used by crystal healers and others in “treating” problems with the kidney, hence the name kidney stone. That doesn’t mean,…

At their most prosperous, the Maya’s cities featured more than 400 ball courts. These playing fields were the site of spirited and often violent games. Like basketball, a team scored when one of its players made a rubber ball fall through a hoop. Like soccer, though, players could not throw the ball with their hands,…

The toadfish is never happier than when it is living among the things man throws out, such as an old shoe or a broken bottle. They often hide in rock crevices from which they ambush their prey. It will come out of its home to cruise along the sandy bottom looking for small shellfish, little…

Friday the thirteenth is considered unlucky, but the superstition also applies to apartments. 80 percent of apartments don’t have a thirteenth floor. Airplanes have no thirteenth aisle, and hospitals and hotels have no room number thirteen. The most bizarre superstition is called the Devil’s luck, for those with thirteen letters in their names, including Jack…

The word “tip” is not an acronym for “To Insure Promptness.” In the 1800s a tip was understood to be a bribe. As insider information, tip first appeared in the seventeenth century and derives from the Low German word tippen, which means “to touch discreetly.” A tip is something confidential, whether given or received, either…

Some Northwest Native Americans hunted deer and elk or gathered wild fruits and berries. But by far, most of their food came from the ocean and rivers, which were brimming with fish and other sea life. Native Americans to the south, such as the Chinook, could make an excellent meal merely by walking along the…

The Shanghai Metro is the longest metro system in the world. It opened in 1995, and has become one of the newest and fastest-growing rapid transit systems in the world. The Shanghai Metro has twelve metro lines, 268 stations, and over 420 kilometers of tracks in operation. The London Underground, nicknamed the Tube, is the…

Some familiar Yiddish words are: chutzpah, “audacity or boldness”; schmuck, “a jerk or a foolish idiot” (literally meaning schmok, “penis” or “family jewels”); klutz, “a clumsy person”; putz, “an unclean, stupid person”; mensch, “a good and decent human being”; l’chaim, “joyful toast to life”; schlemiel, “an inept or incompetent person”; goy, “a Gentile, a person…

Erik the Red was running out of places to run to. He had been exiled from Iceland for murder, so he decided to see what was out there beyond the icy horizon. Erik Thorvaldson, called “the Red” because of the color of his hair, was born in Norway, but when he was about 10 years…

The gates in the old walled city of London were known by the names of those who had constructed them. Thus the one below London Bridge has been known as Billingsgate since time immemorial, probably so called from a man named Billings, although a map of 1658 ascribes it to “Belen, ye 23th Brittish Kinge.”…

The expression “to quarrel with one’s bread and butter” means: to complain about one’s means of livelihood; to act against one’s best interests. And many’s the time you’ve seen a child do that, throw his buttered bread or his piece of cake or even the ice-cream cone he’s been whimpering for on the ground in…

When the Normans conquered England, they introduced the open hearth for cooking and heating. At each corner of the hearth was a large container for heating liquids. It was called a “hob.” Near the fire was a table where the hob was placed for convenient serving. They called this table a “nob.” When friends gathered…