General George Washington had known nothing but defeat in the American Revolution until he won the famous victory at Trenton on Christmas Day, 1776. Every school boy or girl knows how he waited until the Hessian soldiers fighting for Britain were drunk from partying, and then attacked and defeated them. What is not so...

The Mayfly lives only six hours! It gets its name from the fact that it hatches in the month of May. Yet the eggs of the Mayfly do not hatch for three years! A six-hour lifetime seems mighty brief, but then fourscore years and ten seem short to the human who has reached them. If we could compare our longest life-span with...

One of the mysteries of medicine concerns the epidemic of influenza that swept around the world in 1918. Called "Spanish influenza," the disease suddenly began in March of 1918 and ended just as suddenly in November of the same year. During that time over 21 million people died. The disease struck every country on earth!...

When words from another language are translated into English we often say that something is lost in the translation. There was evidence of that in an information booklet in a Japanese hotel. Explaining the air conditioning system the booklet said, (with some creative spelling) "Cooles and Heates: If you want just condition of...

In November of 1995 newspapers reported the story of lotus seeds found in a dry lake bed in China. They were 1,288 years old! Seven of them were obtained by the University of California at Los Angeles. The seeds were germinated, sprouted, and a plant grew from them. They are thought to be the oldest seeds ever...