The more you know…

The flashlight fish projects light that’s created by luminescent bacteria that live in the pockets below its eyes. 

Male seahorses carry the eggs and birth the babies. 

Also called the Mexican Hairless Dog, the Xoloitzcuintli breed was used by Aztecs for companionship, and occasionally for lunch.  Prized for their body heat (hence the lack of fur), Xolos are still used in Mexico as nature’s hot water bottles. 

Why do angelfish feel safe inside the mouths of hammerhead sharks?  They share a symbiotic relationship as natural toothpicks, picking out parasites from between the shark’s teeth. 

There are 4 chambers in a dog’s heart. 

Art

Claude Monet is the painter started the impressionist movement. 

Food and Beverage

“K” is an important letter to pronounce correctly when chatting with a Russian bartender.  Voda is water, while Vodka is a beverage that’s just a little bit stronger. 

If you pour beer foam on the brown patches of grass in your yard, the lawn will drink up the fermented sugars and return to its normal shade of green.  But then you’ve just intentionally spilled beer.. so there’s that..
Brown-shelled chicken eggs are identical to white-shelled chicken eggs in both content and nutrition. 

Lifehacks

To remove chewing gum that’s gotten stuck to your clothes, put the item of clothing in the freezer.  Once frozen, you’ll be able to remove the gum in one piece. 

Spear the cream in your Oreo cookie with a utensil for easier dunking. 

A Macbook or iPad’s charger can do double-duty as a bottle opener. 

Music

The only father-daughter collaboration to hit number one on the Billboard pop chart was “Something Stupid” by Frank & Nancy Sinatra in 1967. 

Jimi Hendrix actually opened for the Monkees. 

Actor/comedian Chevy Chase occasionally played pick-up drums for one of the original lineups of Steely Dan, known as The Leather Canary. 

Beethoven, Schubert, Dvorak, and Mahler all died before completing a tenth symphony. 

Carl Perkins is the American singer-songwriter wrote and first recorded the song “Blue Suede Shoes” in 1955. 

Brian May played lead guitar for the British rock band Queen. 

Science! 

Light from the sun takes approximately 8 minutes to reach the Earth. 

The flashes of colored light you see when you rub your eyes are called “phosphenes.” 

Marie Curie’s notebooks are still radioactive. 

Diamonds are actually unstable at surface temperature and pressure.  Every diamond above ground is very, very slowly altering into graphite, another form of pure carbon. 
Holograms are images made using lasers.  That said, if you make a hologram of a magnifying glass, the resulting image would also function as a magnifying glass. 

Engineers have created a pulse sensor thinner than a dollar bill and the size of a postage stamp that may soon allow doctors to externally monitor the health of newborns. 

In the late 1890s, Bayer marketed a cough, cold & pain remedy that contained Heroin. 

Sport and Games

In the 1940s, Eleanor Abbott invented the board game Candy Land as a diversion for children recovering from polio. 

Churchill Downs, Yankee Stadium, the Rose Bowl, the Roman Colosseum, and Vatican City could all fit inside Indianapolis Motor Speedway – at the same time! 

Milton Bradley introduced the memory game Simon at Studio 54 in 1978. 

Television, Film, Theater

Charlie Brown’s dad is a barber. 

In the Peanuts comic strip, Peppermint Patty’s real name is Patricia Reichardt. 
Before changing the name to Fraggle Rock, Jim Henson had originally called the series Woozle World. 

In 1991 Wayne Allwine, the voice of Mickey Mouse, married Russi Taylor—the voice of Minnie. 

A sculpture of Darth Vader’s head appears on the outside of the Washington National Cathedral as a grotesque (similar to a gargoyle). 

World

Gureng-gureng, Gabi-Gabi, Waga-Waga, Wemba-Wemba, and Yitha-Yitha are all names of native Australian languages. 

The Arctic gets its name from the Greek word for “bear” (arctos) because of its proximity to the constellation “Ursa Major” (“great bear” in Latin). 

Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world. 

Robert Smalls was a slave who was sent off to learn trade by his slave-owner who also happened to be his father.  While he worked as a deck hand, he stole a boat from the Confederacy and gave it to Union.  He ended up being a congressman and bought the house he was owned as a slave in. 

Potpourri

In 2009, Josh Muszynski used his Visa to buy cigarettes.  Due to a Visa “glitch,” he was charged over over 23 quadrillion dollars.  To be exact: $23,148,855,308,184,500

The Jaws of Life were invented by George Hurst, who was a mechanical engineer and auto racing enthusiast.  He conceived the idea after witnessing an accident at the Indy 500 where the driver died because he couldn’t be extracted from his car in time. 

After Doyle killed off the popular Sherlock Holmes in the mid 1890’s, over 20,000 readers of The Strand (the magazine the stories were published in) cancelled their subscriptions.  Later, a reluctant Doyle brought the character back to life for a series of further adventures. 

The Republic of Ireland has the busiest Supreme Court in the world, handling more than double the number of cases of the Supreme Court of the United States per year. 

Duct tape was invented in 1942 for use by the U.S. Army as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition boxes. 

Don’t let the name fool you: Joyce Hall, who made millions developing the Hallmark brand name, was a man. 
Fathers were not allowed in the delivery room until Jay and Marjie Hathaway found a doctor that allowed Jay to be present for the birth of their son James in 1965.  The couple went on to found the American Academy of Husband-Coached Childbirth. 

Francis Galton, the inventor of modern fingerprinting methods, had many other notable ideas: the weather map, the phrase “nature vs. nurture,” and the silent dog whistle. 

Also called the Mexican Hairless Dog, the Xoloitzcuintli breed was used by Aztecs for companionship, and occasionally for lunch.  Prized for their body heat (hence the lack of fur), Xolos are still used in Mexico as nature’s hot water bottles. 

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