Did you know?

Sleeping through the winter is called hibernation, while sleeping through hot and dry periods like summer is called estivation.

The Canary Islands are actually not named for canaries, but dogs. This is because they found a large population of dogs on the island, and it comes from the Latin root canaria.

Johnny Carson’s first guest when he took over The Tonight Show was legendary film comic Groucho Marx.

80’s pop singer Madonna’s last name is Ciccone.

The bonnets and caps of city fire hydrants are painted certain colors to alert firefighters to the amount of water pressure available from that hydrant.

There really was a Captain Morgan. He was a Welsh pirate who later became the lieutenant governor of Jamaica.

When business was slow in the early days of the Boeing Company they had their woodworkers make furniture.

As a rule, European carousels rotate clockwise, while American merry-go-rounds spin counterclockwise.

At age 35, Harrison Ford was fitting a door for Francis Ford Coppola when a studio executive asked the handyman to take a break and read lines with actresses who were testing for a new film. The film was Star Wars.

The average piano has about 230 strings, and each string averages about 165 pounds of tension, with the combined pull of all strings equaling over eighteen tons.

Amerigo Vespucci, for whom many historians believe America was named, was an Italian pickle merchant.