PLANT OR ANIMAL?

Although fungi are “rooted” like plants, they stiffen their cell walls with chitin, the same material that lobsters and beetles use to form their shells.

Worldwide, only about 1 in 90 births results in twins. Triplets are even more rare (1 in 9,000). But those figures don’t apply in America. U.S. women typically wait longer to have children, which makes multiple births more likely. In 1993, American women had twins at the rate of 1 in 43, while triplets arrived once in every 1,341 births.

By the end of the first millennium A.D., the world’s most cultured city was Cordoba in southern Spain. It had parks, palaces, paved roads, lighted streets, 700 mosques, 300 public baths and an extensive sewage system. But the city’s crown jewel was a library — the world’s largest — with close to half a million books, more volumes than could be found in most European nations of the time. But wait, there’s more. This particular library didn’t stand alone. It just happened to be the largest of about 70 such institutions in the city.

People who live alone don’t live as long. In fact, experts claim that people who live in community survive an average of four years longer than their peers.