Audie Leon Murphy (June 20, 1924-May 28, 1971) was an American soldier in World War II. In 27 months of combat action, he became the most decorated soldier in the history of the U.S. Army. Murphy received the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award for valor, along with 32 additional medals

Drosophila, the small fruit-fly, has been warmly received by the scientific community, mainly owing to the giant-sized chromosomes possessed by the cells of its salivary glands. These chromosomes, which can stretch to more than a mile long when unraveled, allow scientists to study DNA using only

The fur of the vicuna, a small member of the camel family which live in the Andes mountains of Peru, is so fine that each hair is less than two-thousandths of an inch. The animal was considered sacred by the Incas, and only royalty could wear its fleece.

Burger King's first restaurant - originally called Insta Burger King - was opened on December 4, 1954 in Miami, Florida. Co-founder James McLamore had visited the hamburger stand belonging to Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino, California; being able to sense potential in their innovative assembly line-based production system, he decided to...Read more

In Russia, dogs have been trained to sniff out ore deposits that contain iron sulfides.

The average male adult can bench-press 88 percent of his body weight, having 70 to 80 pounds of muscle.

The French system of canals was built for transportation. The Burgundy Canal connects Paris to the Mediterranean. This was a superb idea in the late 1600s when construction was started. But the canal system wasn't completed until the early 1800s, which unfortunately coincided with the advent of Europe's new railroads. The railroads put them out ...Read more

The modern Sudoku was designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979. Garns added a third dimension to the traditional Roman practice of Latin Squares and presented the creation as a puzzle, providing a partially-completed grid and requiring the solver to fill ...Read more

The Jif plant in Lexington, Kentucky, is reportedly the largest peanut butter factory in the world.

The single-blade window cleaning squeegee was invented in 1936 by Ettore Sceccone, and is still the most common form of commercial window cleaning today.

Many cities in our country bear the names of other countries. The U.S. city of Mexico can be found in the states of Indiana, Maine, and Missouri.

St. Miles Partridge once played dice with Henry VIII for the bells of St. Paul's church. He won, and collected the bells.

In 1944, Allied security officers were disturbed by the appearance, in a series of crossword puzzles published in The Daily Telegraph, of words that happened to be secret code names for military operations. On June 2, just four days before the invasion, the puzzle included both the words "Neptune" (the naval operations plan) and "Overlord". That...Read more

Margaret Mitchell, who wrote Gone With the Wind, never wrote a book before that, and never wrote a book after that. Her original title for the book was Tomorrow Is Another Day; her publisher changed it to Gone With the Wind. The publisher also changed the heroine's name from Pansy O'Hara to

The theory of camouflage led the Special Air Service to use pink as the primary color on the desert camouflaged Land Rover Series IIA patrol vehicles, leading to the nickname The Pink Panthers.

The Associated Press reported in December 1985, in Eugene, Oregon, a 6-month-old kitten set a Christmas tree on fire while batting at the lighted bulbs. The heat of the fire cracked a nearby fishbowl, and water from the bowl doused some of the fire. Firefighters arrived within minutes of the fire starting and put out the fire, which had spread ...Read more

There is an organization in Berkeley, California, whose members gather monthly to discuss and honor the garlic plant. Called "The Lovers of the Stinky Rose," this unusual organization holds and annual garlic festival and publishes a newsletter known as "Garlic Time."

The hides of mature female blue sharks are more than twice as thick as those of males, probably as a protection against courtship bites.

A recent study found that 75 percent of headache patients felt relief when they rubbed capsaicin (the component that makes chile peppers hot) on their nose.

Anthropologists believe stones were one of man's first calculating devices, aiding in addition and subtraction throughout primitive times. In fact, the word "calculus" is derived from the Latin for "stone."