In 1882, Richard Higham of Troy, New York, former manager and National League baseball player, was banished from the league for advising gamblers how to bet on baseball games he umpired, thus earning the infamous distinction of being the only umpire ever judged guilty of dishonesty on the field.

SPAM has earned a place in pop culture history partially thanks to the Brits. The canned creation made its television debut on "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" in 1970. A collector’s edition Spam -- Stinky French Garlic -- was introduced to celebrate the opening of "Spamalot" in London. Not shockingly, the stinky Spam tasted far better than ...Read more

The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words. More than 2 billion pencils are manufactured in the U.S. annually. If these were laid end to end, they would circle the earth nine times.

Every person has nearly 400,000 radioactive atoms disintegrating into other atoms in his or her body each second. But there's no need to worry about falling apart. Each body cell contains an average of 90 trillion atoms — 225 million times that 400,000.

The ball used in hurling is also known as a sliotar or sliothar. The ball usually has a cork center and is covered with horsehide. Hurling for women is called camogie.

While the term gargoyle is most often applied to medieval work, buildings have always required a means of throwing the water off roofs, at least when not conveyed in gutters. In Egypt gargoyles ejected the water used in the washing of the sacred vessels. In Greek temples, the water from roofs passed through the mouths of lions. At Pompeii many ...Read more

Ornithologists often use Scotch tape to cover cracks in the soft shells of fertilized pigeon eggs, allowing the eggs to hatch. Scotch tape has also been used as an anti-corrosive shield on the Goodyear Blimp.

Emerson Moser, who was Crayola's senior crayon maker, revealed upon his retirement that he was blue-green colorblind and couldn't see all the colors. He molded over 1.4 billion crayons in his 37-year career.

Soldiers arrived to fight the Battle of Marne in World War I -- not on foot or by military airplane or military vehicle -- but by taxi cabs. France took over all the taxi cabs in Paris to get soldiers to the front.

By 1982 G.I. Joe was back on store shelves, albeit in a downsized version produced at the size of the wildly popular Star Wars action figures. The "Adventure Team" idea was modified and combined with the original military theme of the early action figures. This was the beginning of the 1980s G.I. Joe frenzy that led to the production of posters,...Read more

A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. People also tend to have common themes in dreams, which are situations relating to school, being chased, running slowly/in place, sexual experiences, falling, arriving too late, a person now alive being dead, teeth falling out, flying, ...Read more

Many curious items have been preserved in Irish bogs, even complete human bodies. Recently (2009) another unusual item was found by workers for a peat company - a 3,000 year old wooden barrel of butter! The butter is not actually butter any longer, it has been transformed into 'adipocere,' a wax-

Charles Lindbergh was not the first man to fly the Atlantic. He was the sixty-seventh. The first sixty-six made the crossing in dirigibles and twin-engine mail planes. Lindbergh was the first to make the dangerous flight alone.

Eric Arthur Blair (June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. Noted as a political and cultural commentator, as well as an accomplished novelist, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the 20th century. He is best known for two novels ...Read more

A squirrel has no color vision, it sees only in black and white. Every part of its field of vision, however, is in perfect focus, not just straight ahead, as with humans.

Lafayette was a major general in the United States at the age of 19. Lafayette's whole name takes up an entire line on a page: Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

Bad weather on the way to the wedding is thought to be an omen of an unhappy marriage; some cultures, however, consider rain is considered a good omen. Cloudy skies and wind are believed to cause stormy marriages. Snow, on the other hand, is associated with fertility and wealth.

The Great Lakes have a combined area of 94,230 square miles — larger than the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Vermont combined.

Ferdinand Porsche, who later went on to build sports cars bearing his own name, designed the original 1936 Volkswagen.

More than 14 million BIC pens are sold daily in 150 countries. "BIC" is actually a shortened version of founder Marcel Bich's name.