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.