There are 318,979,564,000 possible ways of playing just the
first four moves on each side in a game of chess.

In the 1970 Census, the U.S. had 2,983 men who were already
widowers at the age of fourteen and 289 women, also at four-
teen, who had already been widowed or divorced.

Mollusks, soft bodied animals with hard shells, are the sec-
ond largest population of living things.

The total population of the Earth at the time of Julius Cae-
sar was 150 million. The total population increase in two
years on Earth today is 150 million.

People who have never married are 7.5 times more likely to
be hospitalized in a state or community psychiatric facility
than those who married.

Barnum's Fiji Mermaid, an ugly, dried-up, black object about
three-feet (one-meter) long, was promoted as being half-
monkey and half-fish. It was eventually found to be a hoax.

Poet Edgar Allan Poe ran a long-running hoax promotion of a
manned balloon flight across the Atlantic.

Tourists flocked to Palisade, Nevada when the city boasted
its regular gunfights and street brawls. However, what the
visitors didn't know was that all the fights were staged.

A report in The Illustrated London News of February 9, 1856
claimed that a living pterodactyl (an extinct flying rep-
tile) had been discovered in France.

A hotel operator hoaxed tourists to visit his city by crea-
ting a "Silver Lake Serpent" that lured many people to the
area.

Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger bought the first Hummer manufac-
tured for civilian use in 1992. The vehicle weighed in at
6,300 lbs and was 7 feet wide.

Americans consume 42 tons of aspirin per day.

Bayer was advertising cough medicine containing heroin in
1898.

Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and las-
er printers were all invented by women.

Cocaine was sold to cure sore throat, neuralgia, nervous-
ness, headache, colds and sleeplessness in the 1880s.

For two years, during the 1970s, Mattel marketed a doll
called "Growing Up Skipper." Her breasts grew when her arm
was turned.