OVER A BARRELL

The Chinese used black pepper to cure cholera, Europeans used it as currency, and Attila the Hun demanded 3,000 pounds of it in exchange for discontinuing his sacking of Rome

Hackysack was invented in 1972 by John Stalberger as a game to help him rehabilitate his knee, which he injured playing football

King Louis XIV was so afraid of weapons that he ruled all pointed knives at dinner tables illegal

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

The North Pole is not considered a continent like the South Pole because the ice of the North Pole floats on the ocean, while the ice of the South Pole sits on actual ground – the continent of Antarctica

Gilbert L. Loomis of Westfield, Massachusetts, was the first American to purchase an auto insurance policy in 1897

The first person to successfully go over Niagara Falls in a barrel was 63 year old Annie Taylor, a former school teacher who needed money and thought that she would achieve fame and fortune if she was successful at the stunt - She did not become famous or receive any money, and died destitute about 20 years later

Whiskey is clear when it is first distilled - It gets it’s color and much of it’s taste from the oak barrels in which it is aged

The tune to “Happy Birthday” was written by church organist Mildred Hill as a welcome song for schoolchildren; it was originally published as “Good Morning to All”

The black pirate flag known as the “Jolly Roger” was originally a bright red French surrender or die banner known as the “Jolie Rouge”

Nearly $40 billion in U.S. coins are currently in circulation

About one in every 30 Americans births results in twins

During sleep, fluid in the body tends to pool in low-lying areas, which is why many people wake up with noticeable bags under their eyes

The first ferris wheel was built by a man named George Ferris in 1893 for the Chicago Worlds Fair or the Columbian Exposition. It was intended to upstage the Eiffel Tower which was the main attraction from the 1889 Paris Exhibition. The Ferris Wheel was 264 feet and carried 2,160 people in 36 cars

Only pharaohs were allowed to eat mushrooms in ancient Egypt

It doesn’t matter how fresh-picked they are, coffee beans are actually tasteless until they’re roasted

For years, the pharmaceutical company Bayer held the trademark for the word “heroin” and sold the drug as a cough and headache remedy

Cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith introduced their first eight Crayola crayons in 1903 - In 1962, Crayola voluntarily changed Flesh to Peach in an attempt to avoid any legal issues and encourage people to embrace seeing the world in black and peach; Introduced in 1949, Prussian Blue was unceremoniously stripped of its name in 1958, after American teachers continued to voice concerns that the crayon wasn’t Cold War–sensitive - Crayola hoped the color’s new name, Midnight Blue, would help make it less political; Introduced in 1958, Indian Red was actually named for a pigment that originated in India - Over the years, teachers began to worry that children would see the crayon as a reference to American Indians’ skin color - In 1999, the Crayola company changed the name to Chestnut

In Japan, McDonald’s gave away 10,000 MP3 players, fully loaded with 10 free songs. Problem is, many of them were also loaded with a QQPass Trojan virus that captured user info and sent it to hackers as soon as it was plugged into a computer

In 1992, Pepsi offered 1 million pesos to anyone finding a bottlecap with 349 printed on it. The problem…half a million bottlecaps got printed with 349, which would have cost 18 billion dollars. Pepsi ended up paying winners $19.00, which still cost them ten million dollars. Some bottling plants were attacked, and many Pepsi execs had to leave the country

NEWS FEED:
Competitors with nimble fingers have battled it out in a bra-removing contest at Chinese shopping mall. Participants each had to see how quickly they could unclasp eight bras, which were worn by models on a stage in Gungzhou city.  The models - who all had their hair tied up to allow easy access to their bra fastenings - stood in a line as countless men tried their luck.  The prize for the fastest time was 1,000 yuan. But the men were all put to shame by a woman who undid the eight bra clasps in just 21 seconds

Swiss clockmaker Artya announced in March the creation of a wristwatch set in fossilized dinosaur feces (with a strap made with skin from an American cane toad). Designer Yvan Arpa told the Associated Press the watch would sell for about $12,000 

A North Carolina research organization in March, picking the state's 10 worst destinations for federal stimulus grants, included two ongoing projects at Wake Forest University: long- term cocaine-addiction in monkeys and the potential benefits of yoga on menopausal hot flashes 

Child-Bearing, Explained: Virginia state legislator Bob Marshall, speaking in February in opposition to state funding for Planned Parenthood, said the organization is partly responsible for the number of disabled children in America. According to the Old Testament, he said, being forced to bear a disabled child is punishment for the mother's having earlier aborted her first-born

When stroke victims recover, they have sometimes acquired bizarre obsessions, like one by David Stopher of North Tynesdale, England, who found himself unable to say no to salespeople. According to a March Daily Mail report, the biggest beneficiary of Stopher's condition has been the wireless telephone network (known as 3), whose marketers had signed Stopher up for six different phones and plans, at the same time (and paid all on time until his brothers stepped in to persuade 3 to restructure the account) 

Intelligent Evolution: Researchers from Royal Roads University in Canada reported last year that the large, carnivorous pitcher plants of Borneo prefer to eat insects and spiders, but where those are in short supply, as in Philippines highlands, the pitchers have grown to a size accommodating an alternative source of the nitrogen
they need. The pitchers have "learned" that if they produce copious amounts of nectar, it will attract the tiny-mouse-sized tree shrew to harvest it, and the shrews, trapped inside the plant, will leave droppings directly on the spot most advantageous for the pitcher to consume them. Said Professor Charles Clarke, discovery of the arrangement "totally blew us away" 

SOMETHING FISHY

The only letter of the alphabet that does not appear in any of the U.S. territory or state’s name is “Q”

The Ford Falcon was discontinued in the US in 1971 but was redesigned and produced through 1991 in Argentina and was known as the official vehicle of the military junta

Also called the Mexican Hairless Dog, the Xoloitzcuintle breed was used by Aztecs for companionship, and occasionally for meals

The name for “piggy” banks comes from the use of family money jars in the Middle Ages made from a type of clay called pygg

Until a study published in 1905 by Carnegie scientist Nettie Stevens that identified the Y chromosome, sex was thought to be caused by environmental factors, such as passion of sexual relations, nutrition and temperature - These theories had their roots in Aristotle, over 2000 years ago

The angle the esophagus enters the stomach makes horses physically unable to vomit

Two-thirds of the world’s lawyers live in the United States

Poet and pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti loved his wife, Elizabeth and after she died of a laudanum overdose in 1862, he buried her with the only existing copy of his unpublished poems. Seven years later, however, Rosetti found himself suffering from a really bad case of writers’ block, so he dug up her body and retrieved his poems. They were published in 1870 and were well received by critics, but he never forgave himself for pilfering them from her grave and never published again

Vladimir Nabokov was a butterfly expert - In the 1940s, he became curator of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology’s butterfly collection

The distance from the eastern tip to the western tip of the state of Texas is greater than the distance from New York City to Chicago

In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller Psycho, the sound effects for the famous shower scene were actually created by repeatedly stabbing a casaba melon

The capstone atop the Washington Monument is actually made of aluminum. The 100-ounce pyramid-shaped “stone” was placed on December 6, 1884, and was the largest aluminum object cast up to that time - Aluminum was very hard to produce at the time and was worth as much as silver ($24/oz in today’s dollars)

Camels actually originated in North America

In humans the skin contains pain and temperature receptors, which are only sensitive to extreme hot or cold - The brain experiences both these sensations in the same way. Therefore, very cold and hot temperatures cause the same kind of pain and the brain has trouble distinguishing between the two

The Plague of Justinian killed as many as 10,000 people a day at its peak in 541 before eventually migrating to Europe and becoming The Black Plague

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

 The Beatles' song  “Yesterday” has the most cover versions of any song ever recorded - Its original title was “Scrambled Eggs”

Unlike a traditional toxin, viper venom functions by preventing the blood from clotting,  so that the victims bleed to death

ETAOIN SHRDLU is a combination of the 12 most-commonly used letters in English, in descending order. Linotype machine keyboards used them in columns, ETAOIN as the first column on the left, SHRDLU as the next to the right. When a typesetter made an error, he would quickly run his hand down the columns to type “ETAOIN SHRDLU”, to serve as a flag to discard that line of type. The phrase did, of course, occasionally make it into print

Immune to charges of “looking goofy,” basketball player Rick Barry shot his free throws underhanded. The technique was as successful as it was peculiar: Barry retired in 1980 with a combined ABA/NBA rate of success of 89.3% at the free-throw line—the best in history

The Kentucky Derby is also known as the Run for the Roses, while the Belmont Stakes also goes by the Run for the Carnations, and the Preakness Stakes doubles as the Run for the Black-Eyed Susans

NEWS FEED:
Fish get scared by looking at their own reflection and try to fight themselves in a mirror, biologists have discovered.  Researchers compared the behaviour and brain activity of fish during one-on-one encounters with a mirror and another male of about the same size.  The team from Stanford University found male African cichlid were scared when they saw their reflection, and that this fear increased when they realized it was making the same movements as them.

It's said this means fish are actually smarter than most people give them credit for and their brains work in much the same way as humans. "It seems like something they don't understand," said Julie Desjardins, a postdoctoral researcher in biology.  "But I think it indicates there is more going on cognitively than people have long assumed in fish. I think this stimulus is just so far outside their realm of experience that it results in this somewhat emotional response."  The discovery was made by examining the fishes' brains, which showed high activity in the amygdala, the brain region crucial to fear, in those which had encountered their reflection.  "The amygdala is a part of the brain that has been associated with fear and fear conditioning, not only in fish but across all vertebrates," added Desjardins.