Answer: Earthworms breath air, just like humans. So when they're underground, they make sure to have air holes. When it rains, the rain often clogs up the earthworms' air holes, forcing them to come out on the sidewalk.
Answer: The spices in most of the hot foods that we eat are oily, and, like your elementary school science teacher taught you, oil and water don't mix. In this case, the water just rolls over the oily spices. So what can you do to calm your aching tongue? Try one of these three methods. Eat bread. The bread will absorb the oily spices. A second solution is to drink milk. Milk contains a substance called "casein" which will bind to the spices and carry them away. Finally, you could drink something alcoholic. Alcohol will dissolve the oily spices.
Answer: When they wanted their sled dogs to go forward, early French-Canadians used to say "marchons," which meant "go" in French. When English-speaking drivers tried to copy the expression, they mispronounced it and said "mushon." Later, they abbreviated this mispronunciation and simply said "mush."
Answer: In eighteenth century America, the Spanish dollar was a popular coin. It was made out of silver and was so large that people often cut it into smaller pieces, or "bits." Each bit was one-eighth of the original coin and was therefore worth 12.5 cents. Later, when the American quarter came into use, it was said to be worth "two bits."
Answer: It's true, the French fry wasn't invented in France. (It's origin is probably British.) But the "French" in French fries doesn't refer to its country of origin. It refers to the way in which this side dish is prepared. Food that is cut into strips is said to be "Frenched." Since French fries are strips of potato that have been fried, they became known as French fried potatoes, or "French fries."
Answer: New York's nickname "The Big Apple" was coined by jazz musicians, who used to say "There are many apples on the tree, but to play in New York City is to play The Big Time . . . The Big Apple!" Later, the New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau popularized the nickname because the Bureau thought it gave the city a "bright and shining image."
Answer: At first glance, it seems that the word "hamburger" is a combination of the words "ham" and "burger." Therefore, one naturally assumes that a hamburger is a burger that contains ham. But the word "hamburger" actually traces its roots back to Hamburg Germany, where people used to eat a similar food called the "Hamburg steak." Eventually, the Hamburg steak made its way to the United States, where people shortened its name to "hamburger."
Answer: Anyone who has ever tried to learn how to touch-type must have wondered about this. Why, for example, does the word "the," which is one of the most used words in the English language, require the use of three different fingers and both hands? The answer is that the keyboard was arranged awkwardly on purpose. As you know, before the advent of computers, keyboards were used on typewriters. If a series of keys were pressed too quickly, on the old typewriters, the keys would jam. So engineers got together and "conspired" to make it harder for typists to press the keys too quickly, and thus the modern keyboard was born.
Answer: Believe it or not, S O S, the international distress signal, doesn't stand for anything. Some people think that it stands for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls," but it's just not true. Those famous three letters don't stand for a thing. In fact, they were only chosen to indicate distress because they're easy to communicate in Morse code: three dots, three dashes, three dots.
Answer:This one's pretty simple. Drive-through automated teller machines (ATMs) have Braille on them because manufacturers create the same machine for indoor and outdoor (drive- through) use. Therefore, since the indoor ATM gets to have Braille on it, so does the outdoor ATM. Incidentally, Braille is named for its founder, Louis Braille, who lost his sight when he was three years old.
Answer: It's because of the way gas gauges are built. The gas tank-- much like the tank on your toilet--contains a little hollow ball, called the "float." As the amount of gas in your tank increases or decreases, the float rises and falls. As the float moves, it communicates its position to your dashboard. Often, when you fill your tank with gas, the float gets submerged. As long as the float is submerged, your gauge will read "full." In these cases, you need to use quite a bit of gas to get the float to float.
Answer: You see it in movies all the time. A plane has some technical trouble and starts to nosedive, so the pilot grabs the radio and shouts "Mayday! Mayday!" leaving the audience wondering what the month of May has to do with the plane's predicament. Actually, the word "mayday" has nothing to do with the month of May. Instead, it comes from the French word "m'aidez," which means "help me," an appropriate thing to say when your plane nosedives.
Answer: Seems like an easy question doesn't it? After all, most of us learned that George Washington was the first president of the United States of America. Technically though, John Hanson--not Washington--was the first president. (Don't believe me? Well read on.) Although in 1789 Washington became the first president of the U.S. under the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. existed since 1776--thirteen years before Washington became president. For eight of those years, the U.S. was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which were adopted by Congress in 1777 and ratified by the states in 1781. When the Congress met in 1781, it elected John Hanson its "President of the U.S. in Congress assembled." After the election, George Washington wrote Hanson to congratulate him on his "appointment to fill the most important Seat in the United States." Today, Hanson is rarely remembered because his position carried little power and because the system of government that elected him was quickly replaced.
Don't believe this answer? If you have a copy of "The World Almanac and Book of Facts", look up "The Continental Congress: Meetings, Presidents." In that section you'll find a reference to John Hanson. Look at the footnote and you'll see that he really was America's first president.
Answer: It seems impossible for Kraft to get 5 ounces of milk into every 3/4-ounce slice of cheese, but there really isn't anything special about it. All cheese is made in about the same way. Milk contains approximately 87% water. In the process of turning milk into cheese, the water and other substances are removed. What remains is called "curd." For every 5 ounces of milk, 1/2-ounce of curd is extracted. Kraft takes this 1/2-pound of curd and adds 1/4-ounce of other ingredients (preservatives, color, etc.) to it, and that's how it gets 5 ounces of milk into every 3/4-ounce slice.
Answer: What's with tennis? In just about any other sport, before I earn a point, my score is zero. In tennis it's "love." And what comes after love, one? No, it's fifteen. What's with the odd scoring? According to trivia columnist Cecil Adams, the weird numbering goes back to medieval numerology, in which 60 was considered a "complete" number (much like 100 is considered a nice round number today). Back in medieval times, tennis's four points were 15, 30, 45 (later abbreviate to 40), and 60, or game. As for calling zero "love," many people believe that since zero looks like an egg, the French called it "l'oeuf," which is French for "egg," but Adams says that's a misconception. According to him, love comes from the idea that anyone who consistently scores zero must be playing tennis for the LOVE of the game (as opposed to money, for example).
Answer: They're not there just to make the ball look pretty. The dimples on a golf ball actually enable the ball to travel faster and further than a smooth ball of the same size. They allow air to travel around the ball in a way that makes it fly as it would if it were smaller and smooth. So why don't air planes have dimples on them? Because the dimple phenomenon is unique to small round objects traveling at certain speeds. In fact, when the dimpled golf ball travels at high speeds, the dimples don't create any advantage, and when it travels at slow speeds the dimples are disadvantageous to flight.
Answer: When I moved into my current place, it had a few dead roaches on the floor--all of them on their backs with their legs up in the air. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how they got that way.It turns out that when a roach ingests a neurotoxin (such as the bug poison the previous tenants must have used), it causes the roach to twitch. In the course of twitching, the roach will flip onto its back, where it will flail helplessly until it dies.
Answer: Today, we cover a yawn out of politeness, but that's not why the custom got started. It began out of fear. In ancient times, it is believed, people thought that a yawn was the soul's attempt to leave the body. Covering a yawn with one's hand was the way people kept their souls from escaping. It seems that this belief began when ancient man observed that babies yawn soon after birth. With infant mortality being inexplicably high, people blamed yawning for their babies' deaths. In fact, Roman physicians actually instructed mothers to make sure that their baby's mouth was always covered during a yawn in order to protect its life.
Answer: You'd figure that water would be the last drink to have an expiration date on it. After all, if earth's most natural drink could expire, we'd all be in trouble. But the bottled water industry has several reasons for putting expiration dates on its bottles. First there is perception. Consumers intuitively associate a distant expiration date with freshness. Then there is container "break down." The deterioration of the bottle, especially a plastic bottle, gives water a bad taste. Lastly, the industry has legal regulations to comply with. In the US for example, at least one state--New Jersey-- requires that bottled waters have expiration dates. Since it's cheaper for bottlers to put expiration dates on all their bottles than to make separate bottles for the states that require them, every bottle of water sold in the US has an expiration date.