Discovering Something New -- ongoing learning

Human beings are unique in their use of language. Only humans have the innate, hardwired ability to employ a large vocabulary of words wi...

When designing vehicles for Earth orbit, the most important force to take into account is gravity, which causes both linear acceleration ...

Not surprisingly, the name refers to a part of the lion. In England, before the sixteenth century, the weed was called lion's tooth ...

Abdu’l-Aziz (1830-1876), was the 32nd sultan of the Ottoman Empire and 2nd sultan of the Tanzimat period of Ottoman reforms (1839-1876). Th...

The roots of astronomy extend to before written records, but it is clear that humans have always observed the sky. The earliest known rec...

The moon does occasionally appear blue because of dust conditions in the atmosphere. The most famous widely observed blue moon of recent ...

Radioactive fallout, containing the isotope cesium 137, and nuclear contamination covered an enormous area including Byelorussia, Latvia,...

Charles Darwin, the son of a wealthy British doctor, was sent as a young man to study medicine in Edinburgh, then to Cambridge to study f...

Today, heart disease is the number one killer of Americans. [American Heart Association, Heart Attack and Angina Statistics, 1999] More ...

Two designers can claim to have invented the modern wristwatch: Louis Cartier (France), who in 1904 made one for the aviator Santos-Dumont;...

Some 2,300 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle collected animals, dissected them, and wrote extensive descriptions of their anatom...

The first "clock,” the gnomon, was invented in the 3rd millennium B.C. and has been attributed to both the Chinese and the Chaldeans. ...

Odd-numbered highways move north and south, while those with even numbers move east and west. Highways with one- or two-digit numbers a...

It was created in 1958 as a nuclear disarmament symbol by the Direct Action Committee, and it was first shown that year at peace marche...

The male mandrill beats even the king vulture in the colorful face category. The mandrill, a kind of baboon, is an endangered species fou...

Modern living puts a strain on family harmony, but there are things we can do to keep the home fires burning brightly. Experts point to at ...

('Boost Your Brain Power', by Ellen Michaud, Russell Wild and the editors of Prevention Magazine)

If you need another reason to eat right and exercise, remember this one: These habits will not only keep your body in shape but may also ...

T hough wise in so many ways, America's Founding Fathers were perhaps poor judges when it came to birds. By an act of Congress in 1782,...

Archeological findings of ancient instruments demonstrate that humans have made music from the earliest times. While we don't know how ...

The 1960s were a time of dramatic political and cultural upheaval both in the United States and around the globe. Many date the decade...

No, it is orange. Inside the box, a stainless-steel tape contains information on the airspeed, altitude, and vertical acceleration. A sec...

English is the wordiest language, with approximately 455,000 active words and 700,000 dead words. (The Book of Answers, by Barbara Berlin...

Garlic is an herb. It is best known as a flavoring for food. But over the years, garlic has been used as a medicine to prevent or treat a...

When it comes to heart disease, the evidence against animal products has today become so convincing and so thorough that even many in the...

The practice grew out of British common law. Before the Norman invasion, thirteen or fourteen was considered the age of adulthood, at lea...

While fiction has been a part of Western culture since the time of Homer and the ancient Greeks, the modem European novel did not emerge un...

Another important risk factor in determining your risk of heart disease is the ratio of your total cholesterol to your HDL (highdensity l...

Radon is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, radioactive gaseous element produced by the radioactive decay of radium. Its three naturally o...

Cholesterol is the complex alcohol constituent of all animal fats and oils. It can be activated to form vitamin D. Cholesterol is one of ...

Exposure to asbestos has long been known to cause asbestosis. This is a chronic, restrictive lung disease caused by the inhalation of tin...

It’s the form of visible electric discharge between rain clouds or between a rain cloud and the earth. The discharge is seen in the form of...

The Romans called the second day of the week dies lunae, or day of the moon. Modern languages that come from Latin have similar names- lundi...

On the surface, the armadillo hardly seems like celebrity material. Its body looks like a conglomeration of some of nature's most bizar...

A mesocyclone (or supercell) is a highly developed and dangerous thunderstorm. As its central updraft spirals skyward at 60 miles per hou...

Probiotics are beneficial bacteria in your intestinal tract that can improve health. And probiotics can also help improve immune system fun...

The most powerful protection that you can give your immune system is to eat a well-balanced diet containing a variety of fruits, vegetables...

These Gypsy children were sent to Auschwitz In addition to Jews and the mentally and physically handicapped, the Nazis targeted sev...

One reason is because salt was once valuable and difficult to obtain. According to an old Norwegian superstition, a person is doomed to s...

"[It's a] myth [that] people who eat vegetarian diets are healthier than people who eat meat." (National Cattlemen's Beef...

Before it became the Nazi symbol of Aryan superiority, the swastika had several meanings, all positive. In Sanskrit, the word swastika me...

The answer isn't as simple as it may seem. The US government awards wings to astronauts who have flown in a powered vehicle to a heig...

When the steam engine was invented at the beginning of the 18 th century, most sources of fuel worldwide were the same as they had been ...