Odds

The assignment of a color to each sex serves the obvious purpose of distinguishing infants, who otherwise look pretty much alike. But the particular choice of blue dates back to ancient times, when evil spirits purportedly plagued young children but could be warded off with certain colors. Blue, emblematic of the heavens, had an immanent … Read more

In 1803 Thomas Jefferson secretly appropriated funds for exploration of the upper portions of the Missouri River and from there westward to the Pacific, a region not yet under the sovereignty of the United States. He asked his private secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and frontiersman William Clark to evaluate the territory for potential annexation, taking careful … Read more

James Joyce began writing Ulysses in March 1914 at the age of 32. At that time he lived in Trieste with his wife, Nora Barnacle Joyce, and their two children in a flat furnished only with replicas of antique Danish chairs, perhaps emblematic of his love of Ibsen. His scant income was derived from two … Read more

At the age of 15, William T. Grant left school to help support his mother by running messages in a New England store. The ambitious youth soon purchased an interest in the business and proceeded to buy out his partners. The ensuing years saw this small-town store swell to a massive, nationwide variety-store chain, third … Read more

Four centuries ahead of his time, Leonardo da Vinci conceived workable plans for drawbridges and armored tanks, submarines, air conditioners, and machine guns. He imagined, too, the horseless carriage, a model of which stands in the museum in Vinci, about 20 miles west of Florence. The small, compact unit, constructed of wood, has three wheels … Read more

The reasons underlying the celebration of Christmas on December 25 are not entirely Christian. For one, no one really knows when Jesus was born. No one worried much about the birthday until the 3rd century, at which time Clement of Alexandria proposed May 20, but speculation continued. In 336 the Western Church designated December 25, … Read more

It starts with the school uniform, insignia on the pocket, and persists for years thereafter, at dinners, offices, weddings, clubs, the blue blazer cropping up everywhere with the same safe respectability. Men of all ages turn to it with relief as an easy answer to what to wear on just about any occasion. Casual yet … Read more

This is “My Challenge to Death,” Houdini advertised with bravura, drawing fascinated and mystified crowds to witness his spectacle of daring. They would gather in droves along a pier on a river or canal where the preeminent magician stood handcuffed, vulnerable, right by their side. Here there was no stage, no discrete and distant world … Read more

In 1856 some workmen were digging for limestone in a cave in the valley of the Neander River near Dusseldorf. Some old bones turned up but the workers, more interested in their paychecks than paleontology, brushed them aside and many were lost. Fortunately, the owner of the quarry salvaged a skullcap, part of a pelvic … Read more

On November 8, 1884, France’s President Grevy signed a decree that “a Universal Exposition of Products of Industry shall be opened in Paris May 5, 1889.” The last decade had seen a flourishing of trade, a vigorous expansion of industry, and rapid increases in national income. The country had salved the wounds of the Franco-Prussian … Read more

The cesarean section has become so quick and safe in recent years that many doctors opt for it rather than waste precious time during a prolonged labor and risk the complications that might accompany a vaginal delivery. The operation has in fact become so popular among obstetricians that despite increasing awareness among women of natural … Read more

The Reverend Sylvester W. Graham preached that, rather than being born again, one’s life could be salvaged by vegetarianism and bran. Living in New England in the early 19th century, the former Presbyterian preacher was an early champion of the low-fat, low-salt diet, brown bread as opposed to the socially sanctioned white, and fruits and … Read more

No one has seen a dodo for three centuries. Furthermore, no one ever saw one anywhere except on the remote volcanic island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. When the Portuguese arrived on Mauritius in 1507, bountiful game was there for the plucking, and so they plucked. The dodo was among the island’s many species … Read more

We’ve all seen mug shots in post offices and police stations of shady, unshaven characters with deep, mean eyes and unkempt clothes, and most of us would prefer not to cross their paths, though apprehending them if we do is the reason for the FBI’s list. Back in the 1940s the Associated Press, the United … Read more

Although of mixed origins, the Thoroughbred breeds true to type and has held a place alongside other breeds in the General Stud Book of the English Jockey Club since the 18th century. How did they breed the Thoroughbred, a variety of horse for which people will pay millions? Horse racing has been popular in England … Read more

Women everywhere melted at the sight of the inimitable Rudolph Valentino in his silent film role of the seductive Sheik. But although thousands yearned for his affections, his bride was apparently not among them. Jean Acker and Rudolph Valentino, young and new to Hollywood, married on a sudden impulse in 1919 and realized the same … Read more

In June 1783, a horde of soldiers, still unpaid for their services in the War of Independence, stormed Philadelphia to voice their complaints to Congress. The country was then a loose union of 13 semi-independent sovereignties. There was no president, no money in the Treasury. The wise gentlemen in Philadelphia’s Old City Hall decided it … Read more

A visionary scientist made a serendipitous discovery and fought over a decade for the scientific community to accept it. When they did, the world received the lifesaving drug penicillin. In 1928 bacteriologist Dr. Alexander Fleming, a modest man, son of a Scottish farmer, was working in his laboratory at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, a … Read more

The Edsel was named after Edsel Ford, the son of Henry, of course, but only after a long, convoluted, and expensive chain of experiments, arguments, marketing research, and trial and error. And after all that, the adventuresome car for the upwardly mobile family was branded with an old-fashioned, grandfatherly name, scarcely well suited for a … Read more

In the spring of 1947 a Bedouin boy known as Muhammed the Wolf was herding his goats on the western shore of the Dead Sea near the desolate ravine the Arabs call Qumran. This may seem a strange place for the boy to have been, but he was among a group of contrabandists smuggling goats … Read more

It isn’t Muhammad Ali or Mount Everest or the world’s fattest woman who bears the distinction of inspiring the Guinness Book of World Records, it was a golden plover that started it all. In 1954 Sir Hugh Beaver was hunting in the green hills of Ireland. He shot down ducks and geese, but a flock … Read more

The massive stones on England’s Salisbury Plain have stood for over 4,000 years, witness to the wanderings of prehistoric nomads, to the rise and fall of tribes, to rites, mysteries, and ceremonies forever eclipsed. Well before the complexity of its design was revealed, the elegance and imposing size of Stonehenge inspired scores of theories about … Read more

When Marie Antoinette was wallowing in riches in her Petit Trianon and her husband, Louis XVI, was gorging himself regularly on eight-course meals, many in Paris were hungry and some were starving. They found even bread, the staple of the French diet, beyond their means. Hearing of this, the frivolous queen is alleged to have … Read more

Although Franklin Roosevelt was reelected to the presidency in 1936 by an overwhelming majority (he carried every state except Maine and Vermont), there was one very significant place where the majority opposed him: the Supreme Court. Social ills plagued the country and Roosevelt was determined to extend his New Deal, but the judicial veto threatened … Read more

The sight of cows, however emaciated, lumbering through the sultry and congested streets of Calcutta, is a peculiar one to the western eye, and many deride the ban on killing cattle in a country where millions go hungry. But what appears an arbitrary and irrational practice arose not only from religious beliefs, but from the … Read more

The next time you find an excuse to break open a bottle of bubbly, be it New Year’s, a wedding, or a whim, you might raise your effervescent glass in solemn thanks to one blind Benedictine monk who made it all possible. Three centuries ago there lived in northern France a great blender of wines, … Read more

The terrible tragedy is they didn’t put out the San Francisco fire of 1906. The fire raged for three full days, devouring all in its three-mile path, razing the city, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and helpless. At 5:13 A.M. on April 18, 1906, the San Andreas Fault shifted and heaved with enough force to … Read more

When the police ambush the infamous duo in the climactic scene of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Faye Dunaway writhes and twists beneath a deluge of fire in a slow-motion death that looks agonizingly real. While the motions are all her own, special effects don’t always preclude the necessity of good acting, some technical tricks did … Read more

When Michael Cimino’s 3-hour-and-39-minute epic was screened in New York in November 1980, United Artists’ managers blanched, the critics brandished their pens, and Cimino hastened to explain that the film had been edited with undue speed to meet a release deadline. No doubt about it, his two-year obsession, his beloved vision of the 19th-century West, … Read more

Chubby Checker may have popularized the twist, but he did not invent it. The twist step goes way back to the early black minstrel and medicine shows. At the turn of the century, Jelly Roll Morton used to sing down in New Orleans about “sis . . . out on the levee doin’ the double … Read more

The extraordinary process of salmon migration begins when an adult female salmon lays her eggs on a gravelly riverbed, forming a nest by swishing her tail from side to side. The best location is in shallow water at the head of a riffle, where fast water spills over the gravel and brings nourishing oxygen to … Read more

It won’t satisfy your curiosity about just what kind of meat you’re eating to learn that the decisions about gradations are, when it comes right down to it, quite subjective. Government inspectors, the only ones permitted to make such decisions, rate the meat right at the slaughterhouse, an entire cow at a time. The overriding … Read more

Miss America is not chosen on the basis of beauty alone, although this was the case back in 1921 when the pageant originated as a showcase for Atlantic City bathing beauties who paraded the Boardwalk on Labor Day weekend. Today the pageant has become a scholarship foundation, with such other factors as talent and poise … Read more

For centuries mankind has prized the brilliant, precious stones that were first collected in India, possibly as early as 800 B.C. Pliny the Elder called diamonds the “most highly valued human possessions,” and in recent years they have been put to multiple uses ranging far beyond the ornamentation of crowns and wedding rings. The National … Read more

When an archaeologist examines an artifact, knowledge that the object belongs to a certain period sometimes suffices. But in many cases he requires a chronometric, or absolute, date: a quantitative measurement of time with respect to a given scale. Chronometric dating techniques, of which there are a variety, are based on change in natural phenomena. … Read more

Detergents make use of the fact that water sticks to itself. Like soap, detergents are surfactants; water jams surfactant molecules between the surfaces of dirt and clothing fiber to pry the dirt particles loose and keep them from sticking again. Unlike soap, detergents can work in “hard” or mineral laden water almost as well as … Read more

At the home of the Rornanoff Caviar Company in Teaneck, New Jersey, resides a monumental stuffed and mounted Beluga sturgeon caught in 1911 which weighed over 2,000 pounds. This giant fish was the source of about 350 pounds of caviar, which at the time was sold for $10 a pound. Today the prized Beluga has … Read more

Traffic problems are severe enough without the additional hazard of zigzagging lines on city streets or unevenly spaced lanes on a superhighway. To ensure that the lines are straight and to expedite an otherwise painstaking operation, machines are used to apply the paint. Before the actual painting of a small road or city street, the … Read more

Along with an altimeter and vertical velocity indicator in the cockpit of a plane is an airspeed indicator (ASI), which registers the speed at which the aircraft is flying. The instrument has two needles, one indicating hundreds, the other tens of knots, but from where do its readings derive? Outside the plane, usually placed on … Read more

When as many as 5,000 cars, trucks, and buses may pass through a tunnel in an hour, it is essential to dilute exhaust gases, which include hazardous carbon monoxide, by means of mechanical ventilation. Approximately 150 cubic feet per minute of fresh air is required in a two lane tunnel, and twice that amount is … Read more

The firefly is a nocturnal beetle whose rhythmic flashes of light are perhaps a means of sexual attraction, perhaps a warning signal for protection. Although scientists are still uncertain about its use, they do know how the light is created. The greenish white “fire” contains little infrared or ultraviolet light and is thus known as … Read more

When Alfred Wegener, a brilliant German meteorologist working in the early part of this century, came up with a theory that until 150 million years ago there was only one continent on the earth, geologists around the world were skeptical. It took until the 1960’s for man’s knowledge about the lithosphere (the earth’s outermost crust) … Read more

When a canal or other waterway passes over rough terrain with steep inclines, a lock or series of locks is built to enable ships to travel safely. A lock is a watertight enclosure equipped with gates at both its upstream and downstream ends. Its size depends on the size of the ships using the waterway. … Read more

Polarized glasses cut out the glare from your field of view by filtering out all the horizontal light waves, which happen to be what “glare” is made of. The lens that performs this feat was invented by Edwin H. Land at the age of eighteen, working in a laboratory he set up in his rented … Read more

Most modern jet fighter planes are armed with heat seeking missiles 9 foot long rocket powered “darts” that pursue enemy aircraft as if they had wills of their own. By staying pointed toward a source of heat, such as an enemy jet’s tailpipe or wing, a missile like the American Sidewinder (named after the western … Read more

When an astronaut, dressed in an elaborate spacesuit, is in his capsule hurtling through space at a tremendous speed, and perhaps consuming one of the hydratable delicacies prepackaged for him, relieving himself is not the problem it appears to be. Toilet facilities on the spacecraft are quite simple. The astronaut attaches a plastic bag with … Read more

Police have used polygraphs extensively since 1924. The machines have no particular magic of second sight which enables them to probe the twisted emotions of a suspected criminal; rather, they measure blood pressure, pulse rate, and respiration simultaneously by means of a pneumograph tube around the subject’s chest and a pulse cuff around the arm. … Read more

It sounds like a simple question, but in many ways it’s not. How can we know how far away something is if we can’t touch it? By comparing the way it appears to us with the appearances of things whose distances we know. If we assume that the same physical laws apply everywhere, we can … Read more

The market for gasohol is still very small and its production costly, but this promising alternative to gasoline has a higher octane than the real thing and cuts down on the consumption of oil. Conservationists are particularly excited about gasohol, for in the final analysis, it is solar energy that drives your car through the … Read more

Many highly valued frescoes, such as those by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel at Padua or the Byzantine wall paintings in Greece, are in grave danger of deteriorating. Frequently, the damage is caused by dampness, which rises through the walls of the building, or penetrates from the outside, or condenses on the inner surface if, … Read more

There isn’t any limit to how hot something could be, if an infinite supply of energy were available. But cold is just the absence of heat, and there is, theoretically, a state of “no heat” or absolute zero, which is the coldest anything can be anywhere in the universe, –273 degrees Centigrade, or about –459 … Read more

You know there’s a cavity in that upper molar, your tongue keeps returning unconsciously to the unfortunate spot, but you can’t bring yourself to make an appointment with the dreaded dentist, just the sound of his drill makes your skin crawl. You continue to procrastinate. Then you bite down just the wrong way on a … Read more

Because most people refer to an IQ, or “intelligence quotient,” as a fixed score, with the power to determine one’s education, career choices, and even self respect, you’d think it must be derived from a single, standardized test. Quite the opposite is true. There are numerous tests, with varying fundamental principles and of course different … Read more

In an age of sophisticated movie effects and skillful stuntmen, we usually conclude that dangerous exploits on the screen or stage are somehow rigged, especially if the feat is as daring as sword swallowing. But the fact is that most performers of this uncanny act do not fake it or use gimmicks. Admittedly, some magicians … Read more

On June 3, 1979, a Mexican oil well, Ixtoc 1, blew out when an undersea drill hit a volatile pocket of oil and gas. The immense pressure of the gas caused the well to throw out an overwhelming 30,000 barrels per day of oil. Some of the oil burned at the surface, some was sucked … Read more

There are bright red cherries, sometimes found in pie fillings and cakes, that have nothing in them remotely resembling a real cherry. In the 1940’s a synthetic cherry was created, comprised of a sodium alginate solution, artificially flavored and colored with a red dye. Drops of the solution are allowed to fall into a bath … Read more

When a thug on TV sneaks up behind his unsuspecting victim, skillfully attaches a silencer to his revolver, and nails him with a few soundless shots, you’re watching pure fiction. First, no silencer completely eliminates the sound of a gunshot; at best, it partially suppresses the loud crack from the explosion of gases behind the … Read more

Two of the “fathers of the atomic bomb,” Albert Einstein and Max Planck, are also responsible for the development of elevator doors that reopen automatically if they start to close as a person steps into the car. The two men explained how light falling on some materials can change them from poor conductors of electricity … Read more

If you’ve ever tried to cheat a dollar bill changer by inserting a piece of notepaper, newspaper, or whatever’s on hand when your money runs low, you’ll know the machine is no fool. More than the correct size note is necessary to set off the circuits that send four quarters into a change receptacle. A … Read more

Until the twentieth century, specific dances were passed on by observation and oral tradition. Although a variety of dance notation systems have since been formulated, two in particular are widely accepted and used with increasing frequency. The first, Labanotation, invented by the movement theorist Rudolf Von Laban in 1928, uses symbols on a vertical staff … Read more

Since ancient times, disparate cultures have been fascinated with the idea of preserving the bodies of the dead. We usually associate embalming with the elaborate funeral rites of the kings and queens of ancient Egypt, but it was also practiced by the prehistoric Paraca Indians of Peru and the Guanches of the Canary Islands. Tibetans … Read more

According to Prevost’s Theory of Exchange, the colder of two bodies always absorbs heat waves until both bodies are the same temperature. By this theory, it would be natural for scalding coffee or ice cold lemonade in a thermos to lose heat or gain it, respectively. But a thermos is designed to cut down the … Read more

When dinosaur expert Dr. James Jensen of Brigham Young University unearthed the “Ultrasaurus,” the biggest creature ever to walk the earth, in an ancient Colorado riverbed, all he really found was a shoulder blade. How could he know what the rest of the animal looked like, much less that it was the biggest monster on … Read more

The election of a new Pope by traditional methods passed down through the centuries occurs in the Vatican in Rome, where the College of Cardinals gathers behind closed doors under strict vows of secrecy. This tradition of secrecy arose so that the selection process could take place without interference from powerful secular governments. Precisely what … Read more

For some, TV has assumed a reality more meaningful than the actual world; others simply delight in the technical advances that have provided, say, better color. But for whatever reason people are enamored of their television sets, a desire to make programs still more lifelike continues: interest in three dimensional TV images is widespread in … Read more

The gross national product, or GNP, is the primary indicator of the pace of economic activity within a nation. It is defined as the sum of the money values of all final goods and services that are produced in a certain period of time, usually a year. The money value of a thing is its … Read more

Astronomers know how many stars are in the universe because they are pretty certain they can tell how big it is. They know how big it is because they think they know how old it is, although there is some disagreement on that point. And estimates of the universe’s age in turn depend on estimates … Read more

It may not settle your queasy stomach to know, but an interconnected network of electronic devices makes the landing of an aircraft in “blind” weather conditions at least as safe as driving home from the airport. The key to your return to the earth from 20,000 feet in a pea soup fog is the instrument … Read more

There are two fundamental methods of tunneling underwater that have enabled engineers to overcome the problem of floods and collapsing walls. The Thames tunnel was built in the mid-nineteenth century by a system that ensured that the air pressure within the tunnel exceeded the water pressure without, thus preventing the inflow of water. First, the … Read more

Shelling peanuts may not seem like a difficult or very interesting task, but when you’re talking about cleaning, sizing, and shelling 100,000 pounds of peanuts an hour (which the Planters plant in Aulander, North Carolina, can do), the process is a major operation. To begin with, peanuts are extremely dirty, for they grow in the … Read more

The airlines seem to compete with one another to make flying at 30,000 or 40,000 feet above the earth as comfortable, homey, and as similar to life on the ground as possible. They boast good food and wine, provide magazines and pillows, and, something we take for granted wherever we are, supply us with air … Read more

As far back as the tenth century the Chinese were making fireworks, using saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. With the invention of gunpowder (which is actually composed of those same ingredients), the manufacture and display of fireworks came under military control in Europe until the eighteenth century, when the Italians, notable enthusiasts of fireworks, took the … Read more

In 1883, before fingerprint science was clearly understood as a viable means of criminal identification, Mark Twain was on to the system, a thumbprint leads to the detection of a murderer in Life on the Mississippi. And in Pudd’nhead Wilson, a novel Twain published ten years later, a dramatic court trial highlights the infallibility of … Read more

When an organist strikes the first chord of one of Bach’s majestic chorales and the very arches of the cathedral seem to tremble, it’s incredible to think all that sound is being generated by air. A pipe organ sounds when the column of air enclosed in the pipe is disturbed and set in vibration. Before … Read more

The A. C. Nielsen Company’s Nielsen Television Index (NTI) is one of the most important and powerful rating services in the country, as the entire commercial television industry relies upon the ratings to determine both its programming and its advertising rates. Nielsen, founded in 1923, originally performed surveys for manufacturers of industrial machinery and equipment. … Read more

For centuries dance, magic, invocation of the gods, the lighting of fires, and the ringing of church bells have all been used in one place or another by various cultures in attempts to produce rain. But it wasn’t until 1946 that two pioneering scientists working for General Electric evolved ways to make rain based on … Read more

Next time you’re near a particularly tall high rise building, stand at the base and look up, sighting along a corner. It will undoubtedly surprise you to see that the building really isn’t perfectly vertical; it may even jag in and out in some places. It would be entirely too time consuming and costly for … Read more

When a piano tuner arrives at your house, all he needs is a tuning fork, a crank, a damping wedge, and a finely trained ear. He sounds the fork simply by tapping it and causing it to vibrate. The sound produced is the A above middle C, the first note to be tuned in the … Read more

Charming snakes, though totally alien and perhaps horrific to Westerners, is an ancient and venerated tradition in India, dating from the third century B.C. , and in Egypt, where mention of it appears in the early Book of the Dead. The “snakers” (as they like to be called) in India regard themselves as a distinct … Read more

The controversial question of when humans evolved to a large extent remains shrouded in mystery. To start, we have no clear cut biological definition of a human being, nor do we have a precise behavioral definition. Some of us would like to forget our animal ancestry altogether; others admit the descent from apes but allow … Read more

In 1973 the National Academy of Sciences Ocean Affairs Board reported that each year 5 to 10 million metric tons of crude oil and its byproducts (fuel oil, kerosene, gasoline, and lubricants) go into the sea. Sources range from expended ocean transport fuel to the much publicized and controversial oil spills. Although big spills near … Read more

A phone bugging detection service (or, as it’s known in the trade, “intelligence sweeping”) is one of the most secretive businesses in the world, topped, perhaps, only by the phone bugging business itself. Phone bugging detection equipment is usually changed by the service every three months, and often sooner, but then, so are the phone … Read more

The motive force for cable cars is provided by a moving cable generated from a power station. The system was conceived in 1867 by the American mechanic Andrew S. Hallidie. By 1873 the first cable railroad, built by the Clay Street Hill Railroad Company, was in operation in San Francisco. This remarkable system, which aroused … Read more

When Galileo turned the first telescope toward the heavens, he recorded that the Milky Way (the galaxy in which Earth spins) is a stretch of innumerable stars grouped together in clusters. Those star clusters are, in fact, groupings of solar systems, composed of many suns, some with planets revolving around them. Webbing all the clusters … Read more

According to Dr. Michael Greenwald, one of the nation’s leading hair and skin specialists, hair transplantation was developed in the early 1950’s by New York dermatologist Dr. Norman Orentreich, and his technique remains today the only safe and permanent way to replace hair: a minor surgical office procedure in which hair plugs from normal areas … Read more

In 1879, when Ivory soap was first developed by Procter and Gamble, it sank just like any other brand. It had never entered anyone’s head to make it float. The soap’s “floatability” actually came about by accident. According to Procter and Gamble, one day, in the early days of Ivory soap manufacture, a worker went … Read more

As the company slogan says, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” and Frank Perdue prides itself on the efficiency with which it processes all those chickens, slaughters them, and prepares them for the marketplace in a matter of hours. If a chicken passes the examination for quality, it is lucky enough … Read more

Ailurophiles around the world would have protested long ago if catgut were truly from cats. Although the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and later the Greeks and Romans made the tough cords we call catgut, it is doubtful that cats were ever the source. Today, at any rate, catgut is actually sheepgut. The intestines of a sheep … Read more

The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in New York City operates twenty four hours a day to determine how people die. Twenty four percent of the 72,079 deaths in the city in 1979 were not certified by a private physician and were referred to the Medical Examiner’s Office. Most of those were caused by criminal violence, … Read more

Using strands made of 100,000 hair like glass fibers drawn into a bundle, medical scientists can see around corners and even take pictures in the darkest reaches of the human body. The technology is called fiber optic endoscopy, and with it doctors can photograph the inner surfaces of the esophagus, stomach, intestines, lungs, arteries, and … Read more