During the great plague, the medical skills of Nostradamus saved many lives. The well-educated physician's remedies were said to be more helpful than the popular bleeding techniques of that time.
I Bet Ya Didn't Know
I bet ya' didn't know…. 978 items · page 19 of 25
Anomalops katoptron, a fish of India, lights its way through the dark depths of the sea by carrying, immediately below its eyes, a colony of luminous bacteria.
The tower of the cathedral of Antwerp, Belguim, 400 feet above the ground, provides a view of other bell towers in 124 different localities.
Ismet Bey (1842-1906), who was born on the same day as Sultan Abdul Hamid of Turkey, looked so much like him that he made public appearances for the Sultan, and to this day it is not certain which of them outlived the other.
The first admission fee for a baseball game, fifty cents per person, was charged to see the game between the New York All-Stars and the Brooklyn All-Stars at the Fashion Race Course on Long Island in 1858.
The figurehead of the M.S. Bonnard, a Norwegian ship, consists of 25,000 pieces of glass.
A huge willow tree in front of the Noyes house in Litchfield, Conn., grew from a riding stick stuck into the ground by Colonel Benjamin Talmadge of Washington's staff during the Revolution.
Money issued by Gov. John Ross from 1910 to 1913 for use in the Cocos Keeling Islands in the Pacific, was made of sheepskin.
The Ashar Mahal, most sacred structure in Bijapur, India, was built to safeguard 2 hairs from Mohammed's beard. The adjacent pool serves only to provide moisture to keep the hairs curly.
What do the following words have in common: allure cargo child details discover essence fitness glamour gourmet health home lucky money parents prevention scouting self sunset vogue wired? Each is the name of a popular magazine.
England's Stonehenge is 1500 years older than Rome's Colosseum.
The life expectancy for a child born in 2000 is a record 77 years.
What do these seven verbs have in common: bring, buy, catch, fight, seek, teach, and think? Their past tenses rhyme: brought, bought, caught, fought, sought, and thought.
According to Bayer Aspirin, over 50 billion aspirin tablets are taken worldwide each year.
Don Eastep likes chili, just not enough to bother cooking it. So at a chili cook-off in Terlingua, TX, he went from booth to booth, spooning a helping of various entries into a cup. He then submitted the mix as his own. What could make his cheating worse? He won!
Jacob and Emily are the most popular, but other baby names show that some parents are tapping a different, uh, brand of inspiration when naming their tots. Totals for the year 2000: Armani-273, Lexus-353, Stetson-103, Camry-56, Evian-10, Ikea-5, Dannon-7, Disney-5.
An isthmus is a strip of land connecting two larger land masses. The Panama Canal cuts across the Ishmus of Panama, shotening a sea voyage from New York to San Francisco by about 8,000 miles. Previously, ships had to travel around South America.
When you pass through the Panama Canal from the Caribbean to the Pacific, you travel roughly west to east. You exit 27 miles southeast of where you entered.
The safety pin, one of the most useful inventions, was created by Walter Hunt, a New York mechanic, by accident. He was idly twisting a wire while trying to think of something that would enable him to pay a debt of $15.
The fear of clocks is called chronommentrophobia.
Twenty-six percent of dog owners buy birthday presents for their pets. Twelve percent of cat owners do.
According to the company that makes the paper for U.S. currency, each bill contains 75% cotton--mostly dungaree scraps. The other 25% is flax, a plant used to make linen. Crane & Co. has been blending the paper since 1879 and says each bill costs about four cents to produce.
The average Broadway show carries $750,000 to $1 million in insurance against not opening; musicals carry $2 million.
The Dutch painter Rembrandt often called the master of light and shade, painted almost 100 self-portraits.
At least half of Americans are jittery about going to the dentist, and some 30 to 35 million are so fearful that they will ignore a nagging toothache or break appointments rather than sit down in the chair.
The average 17-year-old spends $638--or more than $1,200 per couple--on his or her high school prom.
Since 1912, Cracker Jack has given out over 23 billion prizes. Only 18 billion were plastic whistles.
Fifty years ago in July, Elvis Presley made his first professional recordings. By 1977, the year of his death, 150 Elvis impersonators were shaking their pelvises. Today there are at least 35,000. I guess it's good to be the Kings.
60% of teen girls brush their teeth twice a day; just 40% of boys do.
Benjamin Franklin was the only person to sign the four key documents that created the United States: The Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with France, the peace treaty with Britain, and the Constitution.
Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment of 1752 proved that lightning is electrical. Then he invented the lightning rod.
One inch of rain contains the same amount of water as a ten-inch snowstorm.
The planet Saturn is named after the Roman god of seedtime and harvest.
The first Europeans to see the Rocky Mountains were the Spaniards. In 1598 they established a colony in what is now New Mexico.
The Rocky Mountains pass through two Canadian provinces, Alberta and British Columbia, and also extend through the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
A cubic mile of fog is made up of less than a gallon of water.
In what may have been his only bad idea, Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey to the eagle as America's national symbol. He felt the eagle was a bird of bad moral character.
Benjamin Franklin's final public role was president of America's first anti-slavery society. He was elected in 1787. His last public act was to sign an appeal to Congress calling for abolition.
The following individuals started their career as newspaper delivery boys: Walt Disney, H. Ross Perot, Bob Hope, Ed Sullivan, Danny Thomas, John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Jimmy Durante, Martin Luther King Jr., Dwight D. Eisenhower, Tom Brokaw and Jackie Robinson.
One hundred and sixty cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world's widest road.