Odds

Politically correct alterations of Crayola crayon names reflect the full spectrum of progressive and conservative thought. The name changes include changing the names of Flesh to Peach, because beige is not the color of all skin. of Indian Red to Chestnut, based on the misassumption that it had something to do with Native Americans when … Read more

There are three theories as to why a Ouija Board might work, when and if it does. seance The Spiritualist Theory. Forces or spirits from beyond our world are moving the planchette. Evidence for: It sure seems like the thing is moving by itself, sometimes giving completely unexpected answers. Evidence against: Try using the board … Read more

If a deer runs out in front of your car, stay calm, and try not to further endanger yourself, your passengers, other traffic, or the deer as you would in any other collision situation. But there are several preventative steps you can take to avoid running into deer in the first place. The first is … Read more

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye free” is inscribed in the lobby of the CIA building in Langley, Virginia. The quote is from the Bible. The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government that is responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior … Read more

The red carpet treatment dates back to the 1930s, when a carpet of that color led passengers to a luxurious train, the Twentieth Century Limited, which ran between New York and Chicago. The Twentieth Century was the most famous in America and was totally first class with accommodation and dining car menus that were considered … Read more

Man’s earliest surviving written records date from around 3500 B.C. By scientifically testing objects found on the site of ruins, historians have found that the oldest city on earth is probably Jericho, which is near the Dead Sea in present-day Israel. As many as 3,000 people may have lived there around the year 7800 B.C., … Read more

The word “robot” comes from the play “R.U.R.” (standing for “Rossum’s Universal Robots”), written in 1920 by Karel Capek, a Czechoslovakian writer. The word robit means “work” in the Czech language, and robata means “forced labor.” Capek coined the word robot for mechanical workers that, in the play, develop intelligence and eventually revolt against and … Read more

In 1978, the story of Three Blind Mice was brought out in a book scarcely larger than the average letter on this page! The book, the smallest bound book ever produced, was just 1/12 of an inch high, 1/12 of an inch wide, and only 1/32 of an inch thick. The largest single book ever … Read more

The city with the greatest population today is Shanghai, China, home to about 10 million people. Mexico City is second, with a population of almost 9 million, followed by Tokyo, with about 8.6 million, and New York, with more than 7 million. However, if you think in terms of metropolitan areas, the city plus its … Read more

The earliest known structure built by human-like creatures is a circle of stone blocks that was found in Africa. This “structure” may have been erected as long ago as 1,750,000 B.C. The earliest known buildings, a series of huts containing fireplaces, were recently discovered in France. However, all that remains of these buildings are their … Read more

Some creatures, mammals, for instance, have a skeleton of bones inside their body. But other creatures have that skeleton outside their body. Among such creatures are the mollusks, a group of sea creatures that includes the clam, mussel, and oyster. The shell of a mollusk is part of the creature, just as our bones are … Read more

What we call water is known by many other names to people who speak other languages. In French, “water” is eau, in Spanish it’s agua, and in German, wasser. The languages of Europe and parts of the Middle East are all thought to be offshoots of a single language, called Indo-European, that was spoken by … Read more

Most large American cities have an area of over 100 square miles, and some are larger than 400 square miles. But there’s a nation that is less than one square mile in area! It’s called Vatican City, and it’s completely surrounded by the city of Rome. Vatican City, the official home of the Pope, covers … Read more

There are now about 13,500 movie theaters in the United States. But there are other countries that have more theaters, make more films each year, and have more movie-goers in relation to their population. The Soviet Union claims to have about 150,000 movie theaters. Japan now produces the most films each year, about 1,000, with … Read more

In 1609, nine vessels left England for the newly settled American colony at Jamestown, Virginia. But a hurricane struck the fleet as it crossed the Atlantic Ocean, scattering the ships. Eight reached Virginia, but the ninth ship was feared lost. Then ten months later, the passengers from that ship arrived in Virginia aboard two boats … Read more

In 1888, Otto von Bismarck, the ruler of Germany, wanted to establish a German colony in Samoa, a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean. A German navy fleet was sent to Samoa to shell native villages. Some of these shells struck American property in Samoa, and German sailors later ripped down an American … Read more

The Man in the Iron Mask is the name of a well-known novel by French author Alexandre Dumas. Dumas invented most of his story, but the novel was based on a real incident in French history. In 1669, a masked prisoner was turned over to the warden of a French prison. The prisoner, sentenced to … Read more

The word furlong, a length of 220 yards traveled in a horse race, comes from the word furrow, which is a groove in the ground made by a plow. The 220-yard furlong was once thought to be the best length for a plow furrow. Ten furlongs were equal to one mile, which in medieval England … Read more

The question should be: Why isn’t all sugar brown? Sugar is dark colored when it is extracted from the sugar cane plant. Most sugar appears white because it is filtered in such a way as to remove the brown coloring. Brown sugar is prepared so that its crystals are allowed to retain a thin coating … Read more

The first European to visit Alaska was Danish sailor Vitus Bering, who worked for Russia in 1741. But it wasn’t until about 40 years later that the Russians set up their first settlement there. But by the 1850s, many Americans and Canadians had settled in Alaska, and Russia wanted to sell the land. The American … Read more

In Greek, Mesopotamia means “between rivers.” The land that once had that name is now mostly in the nation of Iraq. But thousands of years ago, when human civilization was just beginning, Mesopotamia was the most important part of the world. It was here that the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians founded their kingdoms. … Read more

Food spoils because of tiny organisms called bacteria that are present in food and in the air. Bacteria break down substances in food and make them useless or harmful to man. Some bacteria produce acids that spoil the food, and others produce gases that give rotting food its foul odor. The longer bacteria are allowed … Read more

Americans are easily the biggest car drivers on earth. There are now about 110 million cars on the road in this country, or about one for every two persons! And that’s not including about 30 million buses and trucks. Altogether, about 140 million Americans have driving licenses! The first traffic light in America was set … Read more

The vegetables that are grown in the largest quantities around the world are the tomato and the potato. But the most widely used vegetable is the onion. The onion appears in more dishes and in more countries than any other vegetable. In some places, the onion is used to flavor dishes, while in other countries … Read more

Atlas was a Greek god who supposedly held up the earth on his shoulders. The Greeks usually represented him supporting two huge pillars that held up the earth, and these pillars rested in the sea we call the Atlantic Ocean, named after Atlas. In later centuries, the figure of Atlas holding up the earth was … Read more

Athos is a 40-mile-long piece of land jutting out from Greece into the Aegean Sea. But Athos is really not part of Greece. It’s ruled by a group of monks who represent the 20 monasteries in Athos. Since 1045, the monks have forbidden women to set foot on their land! It isn’t only human women … Read more

In 1455, a German named Johann Gutenberg became the first person to print a book on a printing press with movable letters. He printed 200 copies of the Bible. Of these, only 21 complete copies exist today. And one of them was sold at auction in 1978 for $2,400,000, making it the most expensive book … Read more

The most common language in the nation of Yugoslavia is called Serbo-Croatian. But people in Yugoslavia use two different alphabets to write the same language. One alphabet is the Roman, the one we use; the other is called the Cyrillic, and is the same alphabet as the one used in Russia. During the 9th century, … Read more

According to a story that may or may not be true, the first potato chips were ‘invented around 1865 by a chef in Saratoga, New York. The chef made a batch of thin-sliced potatoes for the diners at a guest house, but one of the guests kept sending the potatoes back and asking for thinner … Read more

Chlorine is a deadly poison in its pure form, yet we eat it all the time! How can that be? Chlorine is an element, just like iron or oxygen, but it never occurs in nature by itself. It’s most commonly found mixed with the element sodium in a compound called sodium chloride, which is the … Read more

By following the rivers of the United States that empty into the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, a boat can travel as far west as the Rocky Mountains, but no farther. An imaginary line, called the Continental Divide, runs through the Rockies. All rivers on the east side of the Divide flow toward … Read more

In physics, the momentum, or force, that a moving object can deliver to something it strikes depends on the size of the moving object, its mass, and the speed at which it is moving (its velocity). When we drop a penny from a very high building, its velocity keeps increasing until the penny reaches terminal … Read more

Croquet is a game played outdoors on a lawn. Players use mallets to drive small wooden or rubber balls through hoops, called wickets, that are set in the ground. The winning player or team is the first to drive their balls through the wickets in a certain order. Croquet was first played in France, where … Read more

Many people would say it is. But there’s another game, popular in Scotland and Canada, that is also played on ice. It’s called curling. Players roll round pieces of granite, called stones, down an alley made of ice, toward a target drawn at the other end of the ice. The object of the game is … Read more

The art of ventriloquism, by which a person can make his voice seem to come from somewhere else, is very old, and was practiced in ancient Egypt and Greece. The Greeks called ventriloquists “belly prophets,” and the word ventriloquist comes from two Latin words that together mean “stomach speaker.” Since a ventriloquist’s mouth doesn’t move … Read more

“All the way to Timbuktu” means something like “all the way to the ends of the world.” And the name of Timbuktu might sound like a strange, romantic place invented by a writer. But there really is a place called Timbuktu! The city of Timbuktu is in Africa, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. … Read more

Martinique is an island in the Caribbean Sea. There are a number of volcanoes on the island, including one called Mount Pelee. In 1902, the volcano began to pour ash over St. Pierre, then the largest city on Martinique. Then, on May 8 of that year, the volcano erupted, destroying St. Pierre in three minutes … Read more

In the 15th century, two English families, or houses, sought to place one of their own members on the throne of England. One of the houses, Lancaster, had a red rose on its coat of arms. The other house, York, had a white rose. So the 30-year war that followed between them became known as … Read more

Do you think that SOS, the distress signal used on ships all over the world, stands for “Save Our Ship”? Actually, it doesn’t stand for anything. In the kind of telegraph code used to transmit messages to and from ships, the letter S is three dots, and the letter 0 is three dashes. So in … Read more

The first thing you should know about rust is that it is an aesthetic problem. Lack of protection for bare steel, unprotected steel, of protection, and salt exposure are some of the most common causes for rusting. We’ll go over some of the most frequent causes and solutions in this article. If you have a … Read more

Every television program receives a Nielsen rating, numbers in percentage form that show how many people watched that show. The ratings are provided by a firm called the A.C. Nielsen Company. The company puts electronic boxes on about 1,170 TV sets around the country. These boxes register what channel each set was tuned to when … Read more

The King Arthur described in the collection of stories and poems called the Arthurian Legend never really lived. During the 6th century, after the Romans had left Britain, a man named Arthur was the general who led the people of Britain against the Saxon invaders from Germany in the early 500s. Arthur achieved a number … Read more

The average American now watches an amazing four hours of television each day! That doesn’t mean that every person in this country watches four hours of TV. Some people may watch one hour, some may watch seven hours, but on the average, Americans stare at a TV screen for about four hours a day. If … Read more

Siamese twins are twins whose bodies are joined together at birth. Sometimes they are joined only by the skin and can be easily separated. But other times, they share a vital organ, and then they must spend their entire lives joined together. Siamese twins can be born anywhere. They are called Siamese twins because the … Read more

There really is no such fruit as the prune. A prune is a kind of sweet plum that can be dried out without removing its pit. These plums make good dried fruits because they’re high in iron and vitamins. Most of the plums that are to become prunes are grown in California and other western … Read more

One of the most famous paintings in history, now called Night Watch, was painted in 1642 by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. But Rembrandt never called the painting by that name. It was originally known as The Shooting Company of Captain Frans Banning Cock, and showed 29 civic guards leaving a building in bright sunlight. But … Read more

Eggplants are neither oval-shaped like an egg, nor white. So how did it happen that these vegetables were given a name with the word egg in it? Eggplants came from Asia, and were popular in the Near East long before they reached Europe. Then, in the Middle Ages, traders brought a certain kind of eggplant … Read more

Gems are valuable, but some are much more valuable than others. Such gems as topaz, aquamarine, and garnet are called semi-precious, and cost much less than precious gems. There are only four minerals that are considered precious gems today: diamond, emerald, and two forms of corundum, ruby and sapphire. Pearl, which is not a mineral … Read more

The largest raw gem ever taken out of the ground is a topaz that weighed 596 pounds, that’s 1,380,000 carats! This huge gem was found in Brazil, but is now in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Although it’s the largest gem, it’s also a poor quality topaz, so it’s rather … Read more

The weight of a gem, such as a diamond, is always given in carats, instead of ounces, grams, or grains. In former times, gem traders weighed a gem by putting it on a balance scale and then putting a number of small carob beans on the other side of the scale. Carob beans come from … Read more

Of all the men elected to the American presidency, William H. Harrison had the shortest reign. Harrison was elected the ninth president in 1840, and inaugurated on March 4, 1841. Although there was a driving rainstorm in Washington, D.C., that day, Harrison rode through the streets for the inaugural parade, and caught a cold. The … Read more

That may sound like a foolish question. But the Canary Islands, which are located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, were not named after the yellow finches called canaries, they were named after dogs! When the ancient Romans first reached these islands, they found many wild dogs running loose. So, they called … Read more

George Washington never set foot in the White House as the President of the United States. Construction of the executive mansion in Washington, D.C., did not begin until 1792, three years after Washington took office. It was finished in 1800, and John Adams, America’s second president, moved in towards the end of his term. The … Read more

Rabies is caused by a virus. The rabies virus is present in the saliva glands of infected animals, and if an infected animal bites a person or another animal, the rabies virus will be passed on through the saliva. Many people associate rabies with dogs. But any warm-blooded animal can get rabies, including foxes, skunks, … Read more

Not really. Chinese uses a writing system called logographic that is very different from our writing system. Each symbol, or letter, in our writing stands for a sound; one or more symbols put together form a word, and we can form any word in our language using just our 26 letters. But in Chinese, each … Read more

The five English words that are used more than any others in the language are, in order: the, of, and, to, a. The second five most common words are: in, that, is, I, and it. But the most common word in conversation is, I, of course! The letter e is the most common in our … Read more

Our alphabet, called the Roman alphabet, was based on the older Greek alphabet. In Greek, the letter z is the sixth letter. But when the Romans borrowed the Greek letters to form their own alphabet, they didn’t need the z, because they didn’t have a z sound in their language. Later, many Greek words came … Read more

The alphabet we use today, the Roman, had only capital letters for many centuries after it came into use in ancient Rome. But those big, angular letters were not good for writing quickly with a pen. So by the 4th century, scribes had developed another set of letters, called uncials, that were smaller and more … Read more

Orchestras vary in size, according to the piece of music they’re playing. But in general, a modern orchestra has about 100 instruments, divided into four sections. The string section includes 34 violins, 12 violas, ten cellos, eight double basses, and two harps, for a total of 66 instruments. The woodwind section includes three flutes, three … Read more

When American Indians were showing European settlers how to smoke from a calumet, or peace pipe, they handed the white men the calumet and said, “Tobacco, tobacco!” This was the Indian word for the “tube of the pipe,” which the Indians wanted the strangers to put into their mouths. The Europeans thought that the Indians … Read more

A few centuries ago, many people who used tobacco didn’t smoke it in a pipe or a cigarette. Instead, they took snuff, a powdered tobacco that was inhaled through the nose. The nicotine in the tobacco was absorbed by membranes inside the nose, and then entered the blood stream. Snuff was first used in England … Read more

During the 16th century, silver coins made in St. Joachimsthal, a town in Bohemia, a part of Czechoslovakia, were thought to contain the purest silver. This prized coin became known as the Joachimsthaler, a word that was shortened to thaler. In some places in Europe, the word became daler. This was the name of certain … Read more

During the Middle Ages, most people in Europe used silver coins. The English used silver pennies; each weighed 1/240 of a pound, and was called a sterling. The basic unit of money in England became the pound of silver, which was equal to 240 sterlings. So this unit was and still is called the pound … Read more

In the early days of our country, there were many different kinds of coins in use. In the southwestern parts of the United, States close to Mexico, the Mexican peso was common, and so was a small Mexican coin called the real, which was worth 12.5 cents. When the 25-cent piece, or quarter, came into … Read more

The so-called copper penny is not pure copper, and the nickel is not pure nickel! A United States penny is 95 percent copper and five percent zinc. A nickel is three- quarters copper and only one- quarter nickel. The dime, quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coins that are minted today do not contain silver. They are … Read more

No one knows for sure, but one explanation traces this superstition back to World War I. During that war, soldiers spent a lot of time in trenches, watching for an enemy attack and for enemy snipers. Soldiers believed that by lighting a match at night and using it to light three cigarettes, they were giving … Read more

If you’ve ever tried to swat a fly with your hand or with a book, you’ve probably found that the pesty insect takes off before you can strike it. Flies have sensory hairs over their bodies, and these hairs can feel slight changes in air pressure. A moving hand pushes the air down on the … Read more

Delos is a small Greek island in the Aegean Sea. According to Greek myth, the island floated through the sea until the god Zeus secured it as a birthplace for the gods Apollo and Artemis. Therefore, Delos became a holy island to the Greeks, and a religious festival was held there every few years. During … Read more

In French, a sabot is a wooden shoe. Many people believe that the word sabotage originated in the 1800s, when French workers threw their wooden shoes into machinery in order to shut down factories. But sabot was also used for the attachments that hold railroad rails to the wooden cross ties. During a railroad strike … Read more

Sometimes food that’s been in your refrigerator for a long time may become covered with a colored fuzzy substance. This fuzzy stuff is actually made up of tiny fungi called molds, which grow on most foods. Certain types of molds are also responsible for the blue parts of the cheese we call blue cheese. Blue … Read more

Right here in the United States! The tomato, which is so common in this country today, didn’t become a popular food here until just about a century ago. Before that, many people believed that a raw tomato was poisonous! But in America, people were afraid to eat raw tomatoes until 1830, when a man named … Read more

Right now, there are more than 7,000 newspapers published around the world, and about a quarter of them are American papers. Each day, Americans buy some 61 million copies of their favorite papers! The largest-selling paper in the United States is the New York Daily News, which sells about two million copies each day. The … Read more

The United States is not the only country with stars on its flag. In fact, about 50 other countries have at least one star on their flag, making the star the most common symbol on the flags of the world. The second most popular symbol is the crescent, which appears on nine flags.

In this country, the most common last name is Smith. About 2,400,000 people in the United States are Smiths, or about one in every 100 persons! There are another 800,000 Smiths in England, and many more in other English-speaking nations. But the most common last name in the world is Chang. About ten percent of … Read more

The real name of the Wild West showman named “Buffalo Bill” was William Cody. When Cody was 21 years old, he was hired by a company that was building a railroad. His job was to kill buffalo to provide food for the men working on the railroad. In a period of 17 months, Cody earned … Read more

Christopher Columbus was looking for a faster route to the East Indies when he set out on the trip that would end in the discovery of America. One of the main reasons he wanted to find a fast way to the Indies was to bring back spices cheaply. Did you ever wonder why anyone would … Read more

Though Americans often call a sweet potato a yam, the two vegetables are not the same. Sweet potatoes are grown in the United States and in many other countries. But a real yam grows only in the tropical regions of Africa, and is almost never seen in America. So the next time you enjoy “candied … Read more

To ostracize someone means to exclude him from a group, or to send him away as a punishment. Amazingly enough, this word comes from the word oyster! The ancient Greeks often ate oysters. They also used oyster shells for casting certain votes. In an election, voters scratched the name of their favored candidate on the … Read more

There are many stories about the men who carried mail across America by the Pony Express, but the Pony Express really didn’t last very long. It began in 1860, carrying mail between Missouri and California by horseback. Stations were set up along the route, about 15 miles apart, where fresh horses were kept for the … Read more

Ebony is a hard black wood that is often used for furniture and for the black keys of a piano. It comes from a tree that grows in the tropical regions of Asia and Africa. Ebony wood is usually brown, with black stripes, but most ebony comes only from the center of the tree, where … Read more

There’s really no such fish named “sardine”! This word is used for any small, thin-boned fish that is packed in oil inside tins. Most of the fish found inside tins of “sardines” are herrings or pilchards. A single tin of sardines may even contain more than one kind of fish!

Most paperback dictionaries contain about 50,000 words, and the average home dictionary has about 100,000 words. The biggest dictionary in America, Webster’s Third International, contains over 400,000 words. But the biggest dictionary in the world is the Oxford English Dictionary, a 12-volume work that contains more than 415,000 words, with not only their meaning, but … Read more

It may sound impossible for a country to move from one continent to another, but it did happen once, at least on maps. In 1821, when the Central American country of Colombia won its independence from Spain, the country we now call Panama was part of Colombia. Since Colombia is in South America, Panama was … Read more

So many different terms are used today for the place most of us call England that it can get downright confusing! The British Isles are a group of islands off the coast of Europe. The two biggest islands are called Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom is the name of the country that includes … Read more

Late in the 16th century, an architect building an underground water main in southern Italy came upon the buried ruins of an old city under 30 to 50 feet of ashes, stones, and mud as hard as concrete. The city was Pompeii, a flourishing town during the days of the ancient Romans that had “disappeared” … Read more

Amber is a hard yellow substance that is usually considered a semi-precious gem. But amber is not a mineral; it’s the remains of trees that lived millions of years ago! In prehistoric times, sap leaked to the ground from pine trees. Some of this sap, or resin, became buried under the ground or under water, … Read more

The expensive delicacy called caviar is made from the roe, or eggs, of a big fish called the sturgeon. These fish live mostly in salt-water lakes in certain parts of Europe and Asia. Sturgeon leave their lakes to lay their eggs in river beds, and when they do, fishermen catch the fish and put them … Read more

That may sound like a foolish question. But the people who are known as the Pennsylvania Dutch aren’t Dutch at all. They came to America from Germany, and at first were called Pennsylvania Deutsch, the German word for Germany is Deutschland, and German people are Deutsch. Since that word sounded to most Americans like Dutch, … Read more

A chamois (pronounced sham-ee) is a kind of very soft cloth often used to polish automobiles, furniture, and other smooth surfaces, because it never scratches them. Originally, this cloth was made from the skin of a goatlike antelope, the chamois, that lives in Europe. The chamois is now rare, and lives only in the Alps … Read more

Natural mineral water comes from springs deep in the ground, and contains large amounts of mineral salts or gases. Some mineral water looks like ordinary tap water, but some has bubbles in it just like club soda. This is called carbonated water, for these bubbles are bubbles of carbon dioxide gas. These bubbles form when … Read more