Natural gas has no smell. The odor is artificially added so that people will be able to identify leaks and take measures to stop them.
Nearly 60 percent of women say they receive at least eleven e-mails a day, whereas only 49 percent of men say they do.
North Carolina is the home of the Wright Brothers' National Monument and Visitor Center, near Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills. The center contains a recently refurbished replica of the original Wright Flyer as well as other "First Flight" memorabilia. The center commemorates one of America's historic moments. A nearby sand dune supports the Memorial Pylon. On the grounds, there are historical markers and a reconstructed hanger and shop. Called Chickahauk by native Indians, some believe "Kitty Hawk" is the closest English pronunciation of the Indian phrase meaning "goose hunting grounds". Once a remote area, Kitty Hawk has grown into a summer resort area and provides some of the best beach recreation on the North Carolina coast.
Not until Herbert Hoover was U.S. president, in 1929, did the U.S. chief executive have a private telephone in his office. (The telephone had been invented 53 years earlier.) The booth in a White House hallway had served as the president's private phone before one was installed in the Oval office.
On December 2, 1942, a nuclear chain reaction was achieved for the first time under the stands of the University of Chicago’s football stadium. The first reactor measured 30 feet wide, 32 feet long, and 21.5 feet high. It weighed 1,400 tons and contained 52 tons of uranium in the form of uranium metal and uranium oxide. Although the same process led to the massive energy release of the atomic bomb, the first artificially sustained nuclear reaction produced just enough energy to light a small flashlight.
Only sixteen Concordes were ever made, the last in 1980. On New Year's Eve 1994, one Concorde plane carried wealthy revelers on a 32-hour trip to nowhere. These travelers, who paid $23,000 apiece for the trip, rang in the New Year twice because they twice crossed the International Date Line.
Otto Lilienthal (1848 - 1896), a German inventor, made about 2,000 flights in gliders he had designed and built by himself. He died following a glider crash.
Penicillin causes about 300 deaths in the United States every year.
Pollen grains are so tiny and uniform they have been used to calibrate instruments that measure in thousandths of an inch. Forget-me-not pollen grains are so small that 10,000 of them can fit on the head of a pin.
Prior to the invention of lawn mowers, lawns were cut with scythes, but this operation was ineffective unless the lawn was wet. The sale of lawn mowers got a great boost when lawn tennis came into vogue in England in 1870.
Scientists can condense matter to greater densities and temperature than those at the center of the sun. Fusion-energy research at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California uses 20 laser beams to concentrate on targets so tiny that dozens can be gathered on the head of the pin.
Seating on the first scheduled intercity commuter airplane flight consisted of moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with aluminum-framed leather chairs.
Sir George Cayley (1773-1857), a British nobleman, made the first serious attempts to invent the airplane. He built the first successful gliders.
Skydivers accelerate to a terminal velocity of 120 mph (193 km/h). Earth's gravity is balanced by density of the air at this velocity, so they fall at a constant rate.
Some Chinese typewriters have 5,700 characters. The keyboard is almost 3 feet wide on some models, and the fastest one can type on these machines is 11 words per minute.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are best known as the creators of the Apple computer, but before they became P.C. technology darlings, they designed a popular arcade game for Atari called "Breakout."
Technology collections are becoming more popular. According to some experts, people today are choosing to collect old toasters and typewriters because technology is changing so fast.
Technology is not infallible. An estimated two million lab mistakes are made in the 100,000 laboratories in the U.S. every day.
The "save" icon on Microsoft Word shows a floppy disk, with the shutters on backwards.
The average 60-minute audio cassette tape has 562.5 feet of tape in it
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