Today's second archival tidbit comes from volume 3, issue 4 (Sept/Oct 2004): Who says males don't have PMS? About once a year beginning at the age of 15, male elephants experience periods of "musth" (pronounced "must"), during which testosterone levels are 50 times higher than normal. Derived from the Hindi word meaning "intoxicated," this phenomenon causes intense periods of heightened aggression and sexual activity. Often, males in musth pick fights... READ ON
Today's first archival tidbit comes from Scatterbrained: At 48 minutes, Andy Warhol's experimental film "Kiss" is easily the longest picture about kissing: It consists of one static shot, 12 real-life couples, four minutes each. We're still waiting for his sequel, "Second... READ ON
Today's archival tidbit comes from volume 5, issue 3 (May/June 2006): A "haboob" is a moist, hot wind in the Sahara Desert that often accompanies thunderstorms. Haboobs stir up huge quantities of sand and move across the desert in the form of a dense wall that can reach heights up to 3,000 feet. You'd probably learn this kind of stuff in school if anyone could say "haboob" without... READ ON
Today's first archival tidbit comes from What's the Difference? After the commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, several northwestern Virginia counties went ahead and seceded from the seceders, choosing instead to stay in the Union. Those counties formed the state of West Virginia, feeling no compunction to keep the commonwealth... READ ON
Today's second archival tidbit comes from our world famous Swimsuit Issue (volume 2, issue 5): Picasso sometimes painted in the nude and left his door open so that the women in his boarding house could admire... READ ON
We've been enjoying this "archival tidbit" thing a lot. (Less work for us! More facts for you! It's a win-win.) So this week, and this week only, you'll be getting not one but TWO factlets drawn from our books and back issues. Today's first archival tidbit comes from What's the Difference? The split-fingered Vulcan salute from Star Trek is actually derived from an Orthodox Jewish ritual, the Blessing Hands used to anoint congregations on holy days. Star Trek icon Leonard Nimoy, who was... READ ON
Oh, God bless the Grenada Chocolate Company, makers of the world's best organic dark chocolate (the Guardian agrees with me on this). I learned one particularly interesting factlet on the tour of the darling factory, which claims to be the world's smallest -- a fact so surprising that I almost hated to check it, lest it turn out to be untrue. But Yahoo backed it up: Because of the ingredients, many people (including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration) don't consider "white chocolate" to be chocolate at... READ ON
Still having trouble finding the perfect holiday gifts? Well, I already told you what I want, but I'm sure anyone on your list would be happy to have these goodies from Perpetual... READ ON
Today's archival tidbit comes from Condensed Knowledge: Scientist Peter Fong decided to dope up his research subjects "“ fingernail clams "“ by putting them on Prozac, which decreases the uptake of serotonin. In the bivalves' case, this led to an overwhelming urge for synchronous spawning, a boon for clam farmers and gawky teenage clams... READ ON
I can't seem to find much information about black-bellied sheep on the internet, but from what I do know, these guys originally come from Barbados -- and they're all over that island, as well as Carriacou. They roam freely on the roads eating grass, they baa constantly, and they're absolutely adorable. (I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.) I think I've spotted some on Grenada proper as well, although it's easy to mistake them for goats because, unlike regular sheep, the black-bellied ones don't... READ ON
5 Questions: Boys Behaving Badly
Lesser-Known Founding Fathers
Lincoln Logs were invented by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son.
