Its technical name is octothorpe. The octo means “eight” and refers to its points, though reports disagree on where thorpe came from. Some claim it was named after Olympian Jim Thorpe, while others argue it was just a nonsense suffix.
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You’ll never look at avocados the same way again. Indigenous people of Mexico and Central America used the Nahuatl word āhuacatl to mean both “testicles” and “avocado.” The fruits were originally marketed as “alligator pears” in the United States...
This is a fascinating dog fact: Dogs normally start sniffing with their right nostril, then keep it there if the smell could signal danger, but they’ll shift to the left side for something pleasant, like food or a mating partner. Why? It has to...
They do have molars on top, in the back of their mouths. But where you’d expect top front teeth, cows, sheep and goats have a thick layer of tissue called a dental pad. They use that with their bottom teeth to pull out grass.
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Walt Disney might have been the first to put gloves on his characters, as seen in 1929’s The Opry House, starring Mickey Mouse. The gloves distinguished Mickey’s hands from his body and became part of his official stage costume.
But in addition...
On average, a giant Pacific octopus will lay 56,000 eggs at the end of a *******cy, over the course of about a month. At first, these new babies float through the surrounding water unattached to one another or their mother.
But then the mother...
Japan is thought to have one of the highest densities of vending machines in the world, with an estimated one for every 23 people in the country.
While most sell various types of beverages, others feature ice cream, noodles and disposable...
In school, we were taught that most (about 71%) of the planet’s surface is covered in water. While that’s true, just 0.007% of that water is usable for people, according to National Geographic.
That’s because only about 2.5% of Earth’s water is...
Our bodies are made up of some bizarre features! According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, humans can distinguish approximately 10 million colors. That’s thanks to the cone cells in your retina, the back part of your eye that senses...
If your entire circulatory system—we’re talking veins, arteries and capillaries—were laid out flat, it would stretch for more than 60,000 miles. That’s long enough to go around the Earth almost two and a half times! This is one of those...
As long as honey is sealed and stored properly, it can last an eternity. This is because the combo of honey’s low water content, high acidity, and antibacterial properties keep it from spoiling.
Maybe that’s why modern archaeologists have...