Coney Island

In the heyday of Coney Island, sideshow stars included Indestructible Indio, Koko the Killer Clown, Zenobia the Bearded Lady, Ula the Painproof Rubber Girl and Helen Melon: "She needs four men to hug her and a boxcar to lug her."

Hitler's Watercolors

A bidder paid $80,000 in 1998 for two landscape watercolors and a line drawing by Adolf Hitler. The works, however, had been valued at almost $150,000.

Lewis Howard Latimer

Lewis Howard Latimer, the only African-American man working in Thomas Edison's lab, earned patents for an electric lamp in 1881 and a carbon light bulb filament in 1882.

Sinbad

Sinbad the Sailor, a character whose story is told in "The Thousand and One Nights," is widely believed by readers to be an Arabian. But the merchant had set sail from Basra, which is now known as Iraq, making Sinbad an Iraqi.

Jumping Flea

The name of the ukulele comes from the Hawaiian words "uku" (flea) and "lele" (jumping), but the instrument isn't Hawaiian. The instrument, which evolved from a small guitar called a machete, was called a cavanquinho when it was first brought to the islands by Portuguese sailors.

Oreo

The world's best-selling cookie, the Oreo, was first sold in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1912. Nabisco now makes and sells about 6 billion Oreos each year, which means that sales of the cookie account for about $1 in every $10 spent on groceries in the United States.

Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi claimed that his technique of passive or peaceful resistance was inspired by the New Testament, the Bhagavad Gita and Leo Tolstoy's 1899 novel "Resurrection."

Talk Show

A recent British study found that watching a talk show each day raises a person's intelligence quotient or IQ by an average of five points. Drinking coffee adds another two points. Drinking orange juice and listening to classical music, however, produces no significant improvement.

Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway may have been a great writer, but editors hold that he wasn't much for spelling. For instance, Hemingway often included such words as "professessional" and "archiologist" in his finished manuscripts.

Postal System

The Continental Congress set up a postal system in 1775 and appointed Benjamin Franklin as postmaster general. But the U.S. government didn't start issuing stamps until 1847, 22 years after setting up a national dead letter department.

Nuclear Security

During the Cold War, the U.S. spent an average of $3.7 billion per year on its nuclear arms program. The Department of Energy now spends more than $10 billion per year on "nuclear security."

Wright Crash

Orville Wright made the first sustained flight at Kitty Hawk, remaining in the air for 12 seconds. Orville also was involved in the first major aircraft accident. A few minutes into a 1908 flight, a split propeller downed Orville's plane. His passenger, Army lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, was killed. Orville survived with a broken leg and four fractured ribs.

Vocabulary

English contains more words than any of the world's other active languages. It has about 455,000 active words and 700,000 that are considered dead. The typical adult American knows about 20,000 word families, each containing an average of seven closely-related words.

Continent Crossing

American explorers Lewis and Clark come in third for the continent-crossing record book. Vasco de Balboa was the first non-native person to cross North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Second place goes to William Mackenzie, who crossed Canada and then went up to the Arctic at least a decade before Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to make their journey.

SPF

SPF 15 rated sunscreen absorbs 93 percent of the sun's UV radiation. SPF 30 absorbs 97 percent. Water-resistant sun protection products must maintain their SPF level after the wearer has been in the water for 40 minutes. Waterproof products maintain their SPF level for up to 80 minutes in the water.

Bartlett's

"Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" quotes 2,200 people. Of these, only 164 are women. But experts claim this is a huge improvement. The first edition, released in 1855, quoted only four women.

Adulthood

Experts claim that until the creation of the printing press, adulthood was often equated with mastery of spoken language. This means that infancy ended at age 7 and adulthood started immediately after.

Hoover Dam

Hoover Dam, located near Las Vegas, sends most of its power to Arizona and Southern California. Only about 24 percent of the electricity generated at the dam goes to the state of Nevada, and Nevada Power, the company that supplies electricity for Las Vegas, purchases only 4 percent of its energy from Hoover Dam.

Tourists

The year 1989 was the first year in the history of the United States in which visitors to the country spent more money ($43 billion) than did American travelers outside U.S. borders ($42.6 billion).

Divorce

Dr. Michael Svarer's study of 7,000 Western marriages found that the most likely time for divorce is about two years into a marriage. The good news is that after 14 years together, only one in 100 couples seeks a split.

Sundials

Because ancient cultures used sundials to tell the time, many have wondered how they kept track of the hours after dark. The answer is that before the creation of mechanical clocks, many of these cultures used water clocks, similar in operation to sandglasses.

Prime Minister

Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world's first woman prime minister when she was appointed the prime minister of Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) in 1960. The first woman democratically elected as head of state was Vigdis Finnbogadottir, elected president of Iceland in 1980.

Ping Pong

Table tennis, invented by James Gibb in the late 1880s, originally was played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles constructed from cigar-box lids.

Atlas

Atlas doesn't hold the world on his shoulders. Instead, the Greek poet Hesiud writes that Zeus condemned the Titan to bear "the great pillar that holds apart the earth and the heaven, a load not easy to be borne."

Wilt Chamberlain

The Philadelphia Warriors Wilt Chamberlain was the first NBA player to score more than 3,000 points in a single season with 3,033 points in the 1960-1961 season. But Wilt the Stilt wasn't satisfied with his record. In the next season, Chamberlain topped the 4,000 point mark with a total of 4,029 points in the 1961-1962 season.

William Tell

Many remember the legend of William Tell, the great hero of Switzerland, who obeyed the command of a cruel governor and shot an apple off his son's head with his crossbow. Tell later shot the governor as well. His son's name was Walter.

Blood

The Red Cross reports the following as the most common reasons people give for not donating blood: I don't like needles; I'm afraid to give blood; I'm too busy; No one every asked me; I'm afraid I'll get AIDS; My blood isn't the right type; I don't have any blood to spare; I don't want to feel week afterward; and They won't want my blood.

Super Bowl

Football beats out politics every time. Take the 1996 presidential election, for instance. Nearly 43 million more people watched the Super Bowl than voted in that year's election.

Xmas

The X in Xmas wasn't put there by secular humanists. Instead, experts hold that the practice most likely was started by the Church in 16th-century religious publications. That's because the Greek letter "x" or "chi" is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ.

Towels

Studies find that half of all male hotel guests steal items from their rooms. But the experts claim that at least two-thirds of female guests do the same. The Holiday Inn chain alone reports that it loses more than 1,500 towels a day.

Shell Oil

Shell Oil got its start in the mid-1800s as a novelty shop run by Marcus Samuel. The London retailer found success selling boxes of seashells, many of which were imported. But the business really grew when Samuel found he could profitably export kerosene.

Poet Laureate

No U.S. poet laureate served longer than Joseph Auslander, who filled the honorary position from 1937 to 1941. The second-longest serving poet laureate, Robert Pinsky, filled the post from 1997 to 2000.

Mmm

On television's "The Simpsons," Homer Simpson's favorite phrase, "Mmm," has been used in response to the following: doughnuts, money, the Land of Chocolate, invisible Cola, free goo, caramel, organized crime, unprocessed fish sticks, a foot long chili dog and hog fat.

The Id

Sigmund Freud first referred to the unconscious mind as "es," the indefinite pronoun "it" in German. But translators believed the English word "it" was too vague, which made Freud's idea sound unscientific, so they changed it to "id."

Tupperware

The first piece of Tupperware, a bathroom cup, was created by Earl D. Tupper in 1942. It was introduced to department stores in 1945. Tupper later created the home party in order to increase sales of his popular plastic products.

Cutting

Although the fine diner might carve a roast, other meats require other cutting terms. For instance, the true gourmet would thigh a pigeon, chine a salmon, culpon a trout, tranch a sturgeon, tame a crab, barb a lobster, wing a partridge, frusche a chicken, rear a goose or break a deer.

Panama Hats

Panama hats are so named because the popular headgear was frequently shipped from Panama during the 19th century. But the hats, woven from the leaves of the Carludovica palmate tree, are actually made in Ecuador.

Other

In the 1990 U.S. Census, almost 10 million respondents reported their race as "other." In follow-up questionnaires, 59 percent of those same respondents reported being white.

Washington's Birthday

For the first 19 years of his life, George Washington celebrated his birthday on February 11. But when the British Parliament replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar in 1752, Washington moved the annual observation of his birthday 11 days later to February 22.

Edith Roosevelt

A lifelong Republican, Edith Roosevelt, who hated making public statements, broke her ban on public speaking in order to speak out against her cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and in support of his opponent, Herbert Hoover.

Play It Again

Humphry Bogart is widely believed to have said, "Play it again, Sam," or something like it in the movie "Casablanca." The truth, however, is that he didn't. Ingrid Bergman comes the closest with her own line in the film: "Play it, Sam."

Groundhogs

Researchers found that over a 60-year period in which groundhogs were used to predict the weather, the North American mammals were right only 28 percent of the time.

Evolution

The first comprehensive theory of evolution couldn't possibly have been created by Charles Darwin. Why not? Because he'd only just been born. French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck formulated his theory on evolution in 1809, roughly 50 years before Darwin published his own book "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection."

Family Photos

In America's family photos, Mom is in the picture more than three times as often as is Dad. On a weekly radio quiz program, one contestant suggested this may be because Dad is usually the family member taking the picture. If true, this would explain why even the family dog is featured 25 percent more often than is Dad.

Souvenirs

First Lady Caroline Harrison (1832-1892) occupied herself while living in the White House by producing souvenir china for tourists. She even designed a line of china for the Harrison administration that was used for serving food at state functions.

Badger Forecast

German immigrants to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, brought with them to America an old tradition in which badgers predict the weather. As it turns out, however, in Punxsutawney, groundhogs are easier to find.

Paparazzi

Paparazzi are the hordes of aggressive photographers that closely follow every celebrity move. But the Italian word used to describe these journalists actually means mosquitoes.

Mayan Calendar

The Mayans had a civil calendar or Haab that used 18 months of 20 days with a 5-day period at the end of each year, called Uayeb. The South American culture also had a divinatory calendar or Tzolkin, which had days numbered 1 to 13 and also named days in a cycle of 20 names. The sequence started over every 260 days and synchronized with the Haab every 52 Haab years, a time at which the Mayans believed the world might end. The master Mayan calendar, which purportedly counts down from the beginning of the world, is set to finally reach zero in December 2012.

The Commandments

As usual, Hollywood didn't get it quite right. In "The Ten Commandments," starring Charlton Heston, Moses goes up Mount Sinai twice. In the biblical book of Exodus, however, Moses climbs Mount Sinai at least seven times.

Tourism

France remains the world's most popular tourist destination with a little more than 10 percent of the world's travelers each year. The country of Spain is the second most popular travel spot.

Queen Victoria

A total of eight geographic locations have been named for Queen Victoria: Victoria, Australia; Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River at the borders of Zambia and Zimbabwe; Victoria Island (off northern Canada); Lake Victoria in Africa; Victoria Land, a row of mountains in Antarctica; Victoria Nile in Uganda; and Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada.

Istanbul

Istanbul was once Constantinople, but that wasn't its original name. The largest city in Turkey was originally called Byzantium but was renamed in 330 C.E. when Roman emperor Constantine I made it the capital of his empire. The Ottoman Turks renamed it again in 1453.

Pasta

Contrary to popular belief, Marco Polo couldn't have brought pasta to Italy from China. Why not? Probably, experts say, because Italy already had pasta. In fact, Marco Polo wrote in his journal that the people of China ate vermicelli and lasagna noodles, indicating that Italians had plenty of experience with pastas.

Carrots

A serving of 2-1/2 ounces of carrots contains the entire recommended daily intake of Vitamin A. For the recommended daily intake of Vitamin C, 2-1/2 ounces of green peppers will do the trick.

Asia

Asia most likely gets its name from the Assyrian word "asu," meaning "sunrise" or "east." The word originally applied to the east coast of the Aegean Sea and gradually came to stand for the entire continent.

Wimbledon

Lily de Alvarez may not be well remembered in the sport of tennis, but she owns an important first at Wimbledon. In 1931, Lily became the first woman to wear shorts while competing in the tennis tournament.

Snow

Some have claimed that the Inuit language has at least 40 words for snow. Here are just a few: aniugaviniq (hard, frozen snow), apigiannagaut (the first snowfall of the fall), katakartanaq (snow with a crust that gives way under the feet), kinirtaq (compact, damp snow), mannguq (melting snow), masak (wet, falling snow) and matsaaq (half-melted snow).

Quoted

The most-quoted book is the Bible, and Shakespeare's works take second place. According to the Smithsonian, a group of stories published by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is the third most-quoted piece of literature. The book, "Alice's Adventures Under Ground," was published with a pseudonym; Dodgson wrote under the name Lewis Carroll.

Greenland

Greenland isn't green. Instead, an ice sheet that measures an average of 1,000 feet thick covers 84 percent of the world's largest island. (Australia is bigger, but geographers generally categorize it as a continent rather than as an island.) Norse explorer Eric the Red reputedly gave Greenland its name in order to make it sound more appealing to would-be settlers. Besides, it's not often called Greenland any more, at least not by its residents. After being granted home rule by Denmark in 1979, residents took on the name Kalaallit Nunaat.

Blood Bank

American surgeon Richard Charles Drew (1904-1950) designed and operated the world's first blood bank. The blood bank, however, which opened in 1940 in New York City, never allowed Drew to donate any of his own blood because he was black.

Stanley Cup

Lord Stanley, the Canadian governor-general, donated the Stanley Cup, the oldest trophy in professional sports. But Stanley was recalled to England before the 1893 series, making it so that he never actually got to see a Stanley Cup game.

Pretzel Logs

In a 1995 Snack Food Association poll, 37 percent of Americans identified Abraham Lincoln as the president who "best personified pretzel logs," and 25 percent of Americans picked Ronald Reagan as the president "who best personified cool ranch tortilla chips."

X-ray

What does the "X" in X-rays stand for? Actually, it doesn't stand for anything. When Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the mysterious rays that could pass through flesh, he didn't know for sure what he'd found or what to call it. Just to be on the safe side, the New Jersey legislature briefly considered a bill forbidding X-rays in opera glasses.

Woodstock

The famous Woodstock concert didn't take place in Woodstock, New York. Instead, the three-day festival, held in 1969, was hosted more than 45 miles southwest of Woodstock on Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York. So why was it called Woodstock? The concert was organized by Woodstock Ventures, a name that came from the event's originally-planned site.

Babies

When does a human embryo become a fetus? At the eighth week of pregnancy. When does it stop being a fetus? At birth, a point at which most couples prefer to think of the fetus as a baby.

Ligament? Tendon?

A sprain is an injury to a ligament while a strain affects a tendon or muscle. What's the difference between a ligament and a tendon? A ligament connects bone to bone while a tendon connects bone to muscle.

Electric Chair

Most people know that Thomas Edison supplied the first electric chair to be used as an instrument of capital punishment. But who was its first victim? Convicted axe-murderer William Kemmler was executed by electrocution on August 6, 1890, at Auburn State Prison in New York. Because of technical difficulties, the procedure had to be repeated in order to kill Kemmler, a process which took 8 minutes.

Motion Sickness

Andre-Jacques Garnerin made history with the world's first parachute descent in 1797. But he also made a mess. As Garnerin floated down from a hot air balloon, his parachute oscillated so wildly that Garnerin suffered from motion sickness and vomited on the cheering crowd below.

Spelling Bee

The national spelling bee contest was started by a coalition of newspapers in 1925 in order to encourage children to learn how to spell. But the national contest isn't always won by a resident of the United States. In 1998, for instance, Jody-Anne Maxwell took first place with the correct spelling of chiaroscurist. Maxwell was from Jamaica.

Stamps

America's first First Lady also became the first woman to be commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp. But not until long after her death. In 1901, Martha Washington appeared on the 8-cent stamp. She was pictured on the 2-cent prepaid postcard in 1918, on the 4-cent stamp in 1920 and on the 1-1/2-cent stamp in 1938.

Preexisting Conditions

In the United States, about four people die each year from roller-coaster related injuries. Almost half of these deaths affect people who had preexisting medical conditions that were made worse by the rough ride, and slightly more than 1 in 4 victims are employees.

Hiram Revels

Hiram Revels (1822-1901) of Mississippi entered Congress as the nation's first black senator on February 25, 1870. Jefferson Davis had resigned from the Senate in order to become president of the Confederacy. Revels finished out Davis's term. In 1875, Blanche K. Bruce, also of Mississippi, was the nation's second black senator. Who was the third? Edward Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts. He took office in 1966.

Football Voodoo

The New Orleans Saints may be the only NFL team to have hired a voodoo priestess. The Superdome stadium had been built on the site of the old Girod Street Cemetery, and the team's consecutive miserable seasons called for desperate measures. Ava Kay Jones performed a pregame ritual, making offerings to the spirits with a boa constrictor wrapped around her neck. The Saints won the game, the team's first playoff win in 33 years.

Popular Wisdom

British scientist Francis Galton discovered the wisdom of the masses in 1906 while at a country fair. A contest there challenged people to guess the weight of an ox after it had been slaughtered and dressed. About 800 people tried their luck. Galton took all the guesses and found their average, expecting it to be wildly inaccurate. But it wasn't. The slaughtered ox weighed 1,198 pounds. The crowd had collectively guessed a weight of 1,197 pounds.

High School

A series of recent studies found that adults and children have different expectations for public high schools. For instance, 33 percent of professors of college freshmen and sophomores believed a diploma from a public high school guarantees basic skills in math and reading, and 32 percent of parents held this belief. But only 22 percent of public high school students believed a diploma guarantees these skills.

Capital Punishment

The ancient Romans favored capital punishment for serious crimes, creating a number of different methods for dealing with criminals: crucifixion, death by animal mutilation and burning being the most popular forms of punishment. But, as is the case today, white-collar criminals generally faced a more humane death. Decapitation was the execution of choice for nobility because it was quick.

Ben Franklin's Inventions

Benjamin Franklin never patented a single one of his inventions. The American statesman and inventor claimed that he already had plenty of wealth and that his inventions were for the benefit of the American people.

Liechtenstein's Flag

Liechtenstein added a yellow coronet to the top corner, hoist side, of its national flag after the 1936 Olympic Games, where it had been discovered that Haiti's flag was practically identical to that of the small European nation.

Dunce Caps

The dunce cap originated with John Duns Scotus, a 13th-century philosopher who believed that large, conical hats aided brainpower by funneling knowledge to the wearer.

Tattoo Removal

The number-one reason cited by people who want to remove their tattoos is that they've fallen out of love with the person whose name has been memorialized in ink on their body.

Tulips

Tulips are native to central Asia, and the tulips that eventually made their way to the Netherlands now grow in parts of Russia, around the Black Sea and the Crimea.

Luck to the Drinker

Mescal, better known as the alcoholic drink tequila, contains an agave worm at the bottom of the bottle when made in the traditional way. The worm, which is actually a butterfly larva, is found on the plant from which mescal is made. Traditionalists claim that the worm adds to the drink's flavor and color. But that's not all. It's also believed to bring good luck to the drinker.

Palindromos

A palindrome - a word or group of words spelled the same forward and backward - comes from the Greek word "palindromos," which means "running back again." Some examples of palindromes include the following: Do geese see God? Eva, can I stab bats in a cave? Was it a rat I saw? We panic in a pew.

Whistler's Mother

The painting known as "Whistler's Mother" is indeed a portrayal of the mother of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. But that's not the painting's real name. Whistler titled the piece "Arrangement in Gray and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother."

Kittenball

Kittenball was the name chosen by the Farragut Boat Club of Chicago in 1887 for a game that club members developed as a friendly version of baseball. The game officially became known as softball in 1926.

Cynical People

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw had this to say about cynical people: "Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it."

Homage to New York

Experts often cite "Homage to New York" as the most famous auto-destructive work of art. Unfortunately, Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely's work, designed to blow itself up, didn't actually work. Instead, the sculpture, which was intended to make fun of modern technological civilization, started a fire at the Museum of Modern Art.

The Greater Accomplishment

Although a Russian cosmonaut was the first man in space, many have said that feat failed to beat an even greater accomplishment by Russian flyers. On May 13, 1913, the world's first airplane toilet was tested on a Russian Vitiaz.