Trivia and Amazing Facts 29-09-08

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• If your throat tickles, scratch your ear. When you were 9, playing your armpit was a cool trick. Now, as an adult, you can still appreciate a good body-based feat, but you're more discriminating. Take that tickle in your throat; it's not worth gagging over. Here's a better way to scratch your itch: "When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm," says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. "This spasm relieves the tickle."

• The expression "three dog night" originated with the Eskimos and means a very cold night - so cold that you have to bed down with three dogs to keep warm.

• The branch of entomology dealing with ants is called "myrmecology."

• The letter "W" is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn't have just one syllable - it has three.

• The English-language alphabet originally had only 24 letters. One missing letter was "J," which was the last letter to be added to the alphabet. The other latecomer to the alphabet was "U."

Cool Quotes

Trivia and Amazing Facts 22-09-08

• Make your heart stand still! Trying to quell first-date jitters? Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing, says Ben Abo, an emergency medical-services specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. It'll get your heart rate back to normal.

• Oak Tree. In one day, a full-grown oak tree expels 7 tons of water through its leaves.

• Ancient Chinese artists would never paint pictures of women's feet.

• Kentucky Derby The first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby was Diane Crump on May 2, 1970.

• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks; otherwise it will digest itself.

Things to Think

Trivia and Amazing Facts 15-09-08

• The adjective "sesquipedalian" defines itself: it is used to describe the use of very long, or multi-syllabic, words.

• The term "hush money," meaning a bribe to keep someone form revealing scandalous or damaging information, was first used in the early 1700s.

• TIMOTHY GRASS. The perennial European grass timothy, widely grown in the United States for hay, was named after Timothy Hanson, who took the seed from New York to the Carolinas in the 1720s.

• John Alden is noted for the fact that he was a cooper by trade and was asked to join the Mayflower company for the extremely important task of caring for the Pilgrims' beer kegs while on their New World journey.

• The meaning of the Latin term ad hoc is "for this" in the sense of "for this task only."

Low Fat Recipes

Trivia and Amazing Facts 08-09-08

• The male name Dylan is Welsh in origin, and translates to "from the sea."

• The side strip of a finger in a glove is called a "fourchette."

• Stars If you attempted to count the stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second, it would take around 3,000 years to count them all.

• A honey bee must tap two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

• The term "feather in your cap" came from the American Indian tradition of obtaining feathers for headdresses. Birds were captured, some feathers plucked, and the birds were released. Each feather represented an act of bravery. The fashion of decorating hats with feathers declined in the twentieth century because too many birds were being slaughtered for their feathers.

Sweet Recipes

Trivia and Amazing Facts 01-09-08

• The word "live" spelled backward is "evil."

• The adjective "saxicolous" refers to something living or growing on or among rocks.

• Queen Elizabeth II has a silver hood ornament of St. George (the patron saint of England) slaying the dragon placed on any car in which she is traveling.

• The Romans were enamored with the smell of roses. According to historians, Nero had pipes installed under banquet plates to allow his guests to be spritzed with rose scent between dinner courses.

• Leaning Tower of Pisa. In 1931, an industrialist named Robert Ilg built a half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa outside Chicago and lived in it for several years. The tower is still there.

Cats & Kittens