This was originally posted by bb bastian on the community forum.

A plot of land in Amazonia the size of a suburban lawn supports 300 species of trees.

The waste produced by one chicken in its lifetime can supply enough electricity to run a 100 watt bulb for five hours.

This was originally posted by not_a_freud on the community forum.

A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time. (how convenient for 'bird watchin' ;) )

A chameleon's tongue is twice the length of its body. (SWEEeeeeet!) :eek: :D

This was originally posted by not_a_freud on the community forum.

LMAO...hmmm...well...I think I read that Angelina confessed purposely getting pregnant while Brad was still married.... real life soap opera...sometimes it's true...truth IS stranger than fiction....anyone have any true stories that would compete with Hollywood fiction or otherwise? :)

This was originally posted by Bev and Susan on the community forum.

Here is a piece of useless trivia that I announced to Bev this morning: "Today is Shiloh Jolie-Pitt's first birthday." She said it's scary that I knew that. Haha... reading too much People magazine, I think! :) Susan

This was originally posted by not_a_freud on the community forum.

On June 8, 1869, Ives W. McGaffey of Chicago, gave us the vacuum cleaner (shoulda slapped him silly ;) )

In a vacuum, all objects fall at exactly the same speed no matter what their shape or weight might be. (clearly that doesn't apply in the vacuum referred to above....as anyone can atest who has run over a coin! :eek: )

A perfect vacuum is achievable only in space.
(is that part of NASA training? :D )

This was originally posted by not_a_freud on the community forum.

Often a duck swims while sleeping. (hmm... all that treading water would wear me out too!)

Ducks and geese can fly at a speed of seventy miles per hour in level flight.
(I wonder what they can do downhill? :D )

At least ten countries use the eagle as the symbol of supremacy. (hmmm..they can't all be right :rolleyes: )

Eagles occupy one dwelling place generation after generation. (the Waltons of the bird world so to speak)

Washing eggs will cause them to spoil quicker. (especially in the maytag :eek: )

Some hens will lay more than two hundred eggs in a season if they are promptly taken away as soon as they are laid. (How's THAT for optimism and determination! egads!)

This was originally posted by brewmax on the community forum.

Mother's Day: The Forgotten History

It began with the ancient Greeks, became a voice for peace, and now receives near-universal recognition (by Craig Weatherby)

The idea behind Mother's Day has roots among the ancient Greeks, who kept a festival dedicated to Cybele, a great mother of gods, around the vernal equinox, observed today on March 31.

The Greek tradition was adopted by ancient Romans, who moved the celebration to the Ides of March (March 15 to March 18). Ancient Romans also honored their mothers on the feast day of Matronalia, which was dedicated to Juno, the goddess of childbirth.

The predecessor to today's holiday was first envisioned after the American Civil War by English social activist Julia Ward Howe, with the purpose of uniting women against war.

But it was the efforts of Philadelphia woman Anna Jarvis -- never a mother herself -- that led directly to broad celebration of Mother's Day.

Ms. Jarvis came up with the concept on the first anniversary of her mother's death in May, 1907, and actually trademarked "Mother's Day" in an attempt to defend, unsuccessfully, against rampant commercialization.

In 1914, President Wilson issued a National proclamation establishing the holiday: a watershed moment that made flower stores, candy makers, restaurants, card makers -- and, one hopes, many mothers -- quite happy. Everyone that is, but the modern holiday's creator!

This was originally posted by not_a_freud on the community forum.

There is no scientific distinction between pigeons and doves. (not quite as obvious as the poe-tay-toe poe-taaaah-toe similarity to be sure)

The speed of a homing pegeon in still air is thirty to forty miles an hour. (if the ticket price is right and the in-flight snacks good...do they fly to Maryland? )

The longest recorded flight ever made by a pigeon was fifty-four hundred miles. It was made in fifty-five days in 1854. (OMG..that sounds like a grandfather story..."back in MY day...we flew 5400 miles to school...uphill [or would that be with a headwind?]...BOTH WAYS!!!")

This was originally posted by not_a_freud on the community forum.

Trees and plants receive about 90 percent of their nutrition from the atmosphere and only 10 percent from the soil. (hmm..i get about 90 % of mine from a coffee cup and 10% from a beer bottle ;) )

Sick plants run temperatures from one-tenth of one to two degrees centigrade higher than healthy ones. (ok..I'll bite...how the HELL do u take a plant's temperature...ummm...turn ur pistil and cough :eek: )

This was originally posted by deja2004 on the community forum.

Myrmecophobia is the fear of Ants.

This was originally posted by brewmax on the community forum.

HAYS, Kansas (April 27) - When 95-year-old Nola Ochs graduates next month, she will be the world's oldest college graduate.

YOU GO, GIRL!!!! :)

This was originally posted by brewmax on the community forum.

Vinton G. Cerf is currently vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google.

Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet.

He and his colleague, Robert Kahn, were presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology by Pres. Clinton for founding and developing the Internet, named the recipients of the ACM Alan M. Turing award (sometimes called the "Nobel Prize of Computer Science,") and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Pres. Bush for their work. The medal is the highest civilian award given by the United States to its citizens.

In addition to founding and developing the internet (isn't that enough???), as vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet. (I was fortunate to be among those developing and testing this and other new products at MCI during this exciting period, and into the mid 1990's, and recall the flurry of activity that took place as other companies began to realize the value and importance email could play in the success of their business units.) Very few businesses today, 25 years later, can imagine life without email and the internet. We owe a debt to Vint Cerf.

This was originally posted by brewmax on the community forum.

Grace Hopper, a remarkable and fascinating woman I had the honor of meeting on more than one occasion before her death, was a computer pioneer and Commodore in the United States Navy.

Grace found a moth trapped between points at Relay # 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator while it was being tested at Harvard University, 9 September 1945. She and the operators affixed the moth to the computer log, with the entry: "First actual case of bug being found". They put out the word that they had "debugged" the machine, thus introducing the term "debugging a computer program".

In 1988, the log, with the moth still taped by the entry, was in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Computer Museum at Dahlgren, Virginia.

This was originally posted by deja2004 on the community forum.

I was going to post this quotation by Mark Twain on the Quotations thread, but it seemed to be so much more appropriate to post it here:

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

This was originally posted by brewmax on the community forum.

In Little Rock, if a man and a woman flirt with each other in the streets, they could be jailed for 30 days. (However, this obscure law does not seem to prohibit women from flirting with each other in the streets, so. . . go for it!) :)