Is it true that horses sleep standing up?

You've probably seen those westerns where the bad guys sneak up on the good guys' camp at night and steal the horses. The horses are always just standing there, ready at a moment's notice to be stolen or stampeded or whatever it is the bad guys have in mind.

"What's the deal?" you ask. "Don't horses ever lie down?"

Actually, they do—sometimes. When they're sick, for instance. Or when a mare is giving birth (or "foaling," as they say).But not usually. Horses can go for days and sometimes even weeks without ever leaving their feet. They have the ability to lock their knees into a standing position and sleep at the same time.

If you tried the same thing, you'd fall over and brain yourself.
Not horses.Some experts say horses are more comfortable and use less energy when standing. Part of the problem with lying down is that the
great weight of the horse's body can make it difficult to breathe.
Horses aren't the only critters who sleep standing up.

So do flamingoes. What's more, they do it on one leg, with the other
leg tucked beneath them, while standing in shallow water. Why?

Mainly to impress the tourists is my guess, but being in the water also makes it pretty hard to sneak up on a sleeping flamingo.

~source used: "Know It All" by Ed Zotti

How did Nike come up with its name and logo?

IN 1972, the Blue Ribbon Shoe Company turned to the art department of nearby Portland State University for a student who could design a distinctive logo.

Carolyn Davidson was chosen, and she set about the first real job of her career.

Company founder Phil Knight asked for something both functional and stylish. He wanted what Addidas had: a distinctive logo that was also part of the support of the shoe. He wanted the logo to "reflect movement and speed"

Davidson produced a series of designs, including a broad stripe with a hole in the middle that was only briefly considered.

She suggested Knight put support in the shoe itself and leave the logo to reflect movement only.

Knight wasn't pleased, but settled on the fat check-mark design
anyway, deciding it would grow on him. Davidson billed the company $35; the logo turned out to be worth millions.

The Nike name comes from the Greek goddess of victory and was given to the shoe a few days after the logo was approved. The name was chosen from a list of possibilities largely because it was short enough to fit on the back of the shoe and still be readable.

What was the largest bank robbery in U.S. history?

It was February 10, 1997, and the Lakewood, Washington, branch of the Seafirst bank had just closed. A well-dressed man in a trench coat and FBI cap used some excuse to get the teller to open the door.

Once inside he put on sunglasses, pulled out a gun, and let in an accomplice, also wearing sunglasses and a trench coat.They were extremely polite as they ushered the three women tellers into the vault and bound their hands with plastic handcuffs. The men then began filling bags with money and taking the bags out to their car. Most of the bills they took were hundreds, fifties, and twenties. The loot probably weighed around 100 pounds because they made off with $4.5 million dollars. A few hours later the tellers managed to free themselves and call 911, but by then the men had vanished.

The two, William Kirkpatrick of Hovland, Minnesota, andRay Bowman of Kansas City, Missouri, might have gotten away with it if they had been as smart at handling money as they were at robbing banks.

Although his share was over $2 million, Bowman forgot to pay the $30 rent on his storage locker. When the manager opened up the storage space, he found guns, silencers, police radio scanners, and materials for creating disguises. He quickly called the police.

Just one month after the robbery, Kirkpatrick was stopped for speeding by a Nebraska state trooper. When the trooper searched the trunk of Kirkpatrick's car, he found guns and $1.8 million in cash.

If Bowman had paid his storage bill and Kirkpatrick had driven just a little bit slower, they might have been successful in getting away with the largest bank robbery in U.S. history.

In over 75 percent of bank robberies, no gun is shown, just a note. Even customers in the same line often don't realize the person in front of them has just robbed the bank.

Nearly 50 percent of all bank robberies take place on Friday.

Is it true turkeys are so stupid they'll look up at the sky when it rains and drown?

Turkeys are dumb, but they're not *that* dumb. Farmers think they are, though. In fact, I've had farmers swear the drowning-turkey
story is true. But when I say, "Listen, you mean to tell me you
actually stood out there in the rain and watched those poor birds
die ?"

They admit they didn't. They came out afterward, found a few dead gobblers, and jumped to conclusions.

The trouble with turkeys is that when they're very young (up to eight or nine weeks) they have down instead of feathers. The down doesn't hold their body heat in very well, and it's easy for them to become badly chilled if the weather turns cool. If they get caught in a sudden rainstorm, they can get so cold they die. It's sad. Instead of making fun of the turkeys, we should be buying them raincoats and galoshes.

Why do riders always mount their horses from the left?

The custom began centuries ago when men carried swords.Since most men are right-handed, the sword was usually carried on the left hip to make it more accessible to the right hand. With a long sword dangling from a rider's leftside, it was clearly easier for him to mount his horse by putting his left foot into the stirrup and then throwing his
right leg across the horse's back. This, of course, required that
the horse be mounted from the left.

Even after ridersno longer carried swords, mounting from the left remained the custom.

What does It mean when there is a ring around the moon?

It means rain or snow is coming soon. The old folk rhyme is accurate, because high clouds typically streak out ahead of a fall or winter storm. This veil of wispy cirrus clouds, about 20,000 feet up, is mostly ice crystals that act like prisms in the sky. They refract or bend the light coming from the moon or sun, forming a halo.

~source used:

Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa (or La Giocondd) is certainly the most-talked-about work of art in the world. And with good reason: It is full of mystery and personality; it was Leonardo da Vinci's own favorite;it is a very great painting indeed.

As if this were not enough, it has been weighed down with misinformation and spurious explanations of its greatness.One story has it that the subject is the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo, that she was young and he was old. He was also harsh, and impotent. He pawned her jewels and made her wear mourning so that their absence would not be noticed.

When Leonardo came along, he fell under her spell, for he was young, too. She became his mistress. Still she was sad, and in order to make her smile for her picture, he hired musicians and jesters.

Then he painted her portrait, and in it he expressed through her sphinxiike expression the mystery and beauty of their-romance.Most, if not all, of this tale is nonsense. At that time Leonardo was not young; he was over fifty and looked about eighty.

Furthermore, painters at this time did not paint portraits from live subjects. They made a sketch, or cartoon, from which they developed the painting in their shop. Leonardo probably made his master sketch in Florence about 1504, took it to Milan, transferred it to a panel and developed the painting (1506-1510),adding the costume, the veil, and the background landscape.

The absurd story about hiring people to crack jokes while the lady was being painted from life seems to have been made up out of whole cloth by Giorgio Vasari, the famous art historian, who in 1550 produced this episode, along with numerous details about the hair, the flesh, the nostrils, etc., although Vasari had never even seen the picture himself.

Finally, it is not at all certain that the Mona Lisa represents the third wife of Francesco del Giocondo. The reliable Cassiano dal Pozzo, writing over a hundred years after the painting was made, refers to "a life-size portrait, half length of a certain Giocondo," but we cannot be sure that this is really Francesco's third wife. The evidence is scanty. Of course the lady's expression comes in for perennial comment.

Tourist guides like to say that if you stare at her long enough, she will smile back at you, and that it requires great genius to paint this kind of a furtive smile. Leonardo had achieved this ability; therefore it is a great painting. Again, this is nonsense. This kind of ghostly smile was not at all uncommon among painters in that period: Andrea del Verocchio for instance.

The painting is one of genius, but that is not where the genius lies.Tourist guides also like to say that the eyes will follow you around the room, as if this too were an accomplishment reserved only for the greatest painters. The eyes-that-foliow-you trick is a simple one, used by innumerable artists in everything from posters to billboards.If La Gioconda could hear what people say about her she would doubtless not smile; she would laugh out loud.

Why Were Duels Always Fought at Dawn?

Or Is This Depiction in Fiction and Movies Not True?

Not true, we're afraid. Historians assured us that duels were fought at any time of the day. But dawn was definitely the preferred time; a duel fought in twilight could turn into more of a crapshoot than a gunshoot.Doesn't make much sense to us.

We might be convinced to get up at dawn to go fishing. But if we knew we had an approximately fifty-fifty chance of dying on a particular day, we'd at least want a decent night's sleep the night before and time for a doughnut or two before we fought.

Historian C. F. "Charley" Eckhardt speculates on this strange predilection of duelists to fight to the death at inconvenient hours: Just at sunrise, if the list [the technical term for a dueling ground] was oriented north-south, neither man got the sun-to-the back advantage. Also, either the local law was still abed or, if there was a regular police force in the area, the day watch and night watch were changing shifts. Fighting at dawn minimized the likelihood of interference by the law, the same reason why many burglaries occur between 3 and 4 P.M. and 11 P.M. to~ midnight. Most police departments change shifts at 3 P.M., 11 P.M., and 7 A.M.

Is it true that one of the major threats to the world environment is ... cow burps?

Aw, you've been reading ahead. Believe it or not, some scientists think cow burps are a major menace to life on earth. Cow burps contain a gas with no smell or color called methane. Methane is
basically the same stuff that's used in gas stoves. In other words, it can burn. Cows burp up between 200 and 400 quarts of this stuff per day, or 50 million tons per year No kidding.

Scientists are concerned about what happens when the methane gas
that the cows burp floats up into the atmosphere. Methane, you see, adds to the greenhouse effect. Probably you have heard of the greenhouse effect. Some scientists fear that chemicals in the
atmosphere are trapping heat that would normally escape into outer space, much as the glass walls of a greenhouse trap heat inside. As a result, the earth is becoming warmer. If it becomes too warm, crops may fail and the polar ice caps may melt, causing flooding. It'll be so hot in the summer you won't be able to go outside.

Methane isn't the only thing causing the greenhouse effect. The carbon dioxide produced by cars and factories (and by us, for that matter) plays an even bigger part. But methane is right up there.

Why do cows burp up so much methane? Mainly because of their eating habits. Cows aren't out there eat-ing mashed potatoes and gravy. They eat hay and grass. Hay and grass aren't easy to digest. In fact, the only way cows manage it is that (1) they chew their food a very long time, and (2) they have tiny creatures called bacteria in their innards that help break down hay and grass into something a cow's body can use. But the bacteria do a pretty sloppy job. What they don't take care of the cows burp up as methane.

Your next question probably is: Why are we suddenly blaming cows?
There have always been cows* True. As a matter of fact, cows aren't the only source of methane in the atmosphere. You can also blame rice paddies, swamps, oil drilling, the burning of the Amazon rain forest, even (don't laugh) termites. (One researcher thinks termites make even more methane than cows— 150 million tons a year.)But let's face it, there's not much you can do about termites. Cows make a much bigger (and therefore easier) target. Besides, there are more cows now than there used to be—1.2 billion, by one count. That's a lot of burps.So what do we do, give the cows Pepto-Bismol? Might not be such a bad idea. One scientist thinks if we fed the cows special drugs,
they'd make less methane. But it's not very clear how you'd do this for 1.2 billion cows.

That leaves only one solution. Panic. Call me if you come up with any better ideas.

- Moth-Eaten Clothes:

Moths, contrary to the popular notion, do not eat clothes. Some, as a matter of fact, don't eat anything at all during their adult lives, which are (not surprisingly) brief. It's the larvae that do the damage; by the time moths are flying out of the closet, it's too late.

When and where were the first eyeglasses made?

Although Nero used emerald-colored lenses to view the gladiator games in A.D. 60, it's questionable whether he could actually see better. The first "reading glass" was developed around A.D. 1000 but was more of a magnifying glass than an eyeglass. Most historians believe the first eyeglasses were invented in 1284 or 1285. No one knows if the inventor was a monk, a scientist, or a craftsman, but all agree that the inventor was Italian.

In the 1300s eyeglasses were a luxury used by the rich as a symbol of their wealth and power. However, when Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1456, the history of eyeglasses changed forever. Because of the widespread availability of books, the use of reading glasses gradually filtered down to the common people and became an important part of everyday life.

However, eyeglasses still had a long way to go. Finding a pair that helped the wearer see better was a time-consuming process of trying on one pair after another until sight improved.

In the seventeenth century the Spanish invented the first graded lenses, which solved the problem of the trial-and-error fitting of
eyeglasses.Until the eighteenth century, eyeglasses either balanced
precariously on the nose or were held by the rim with one hand.

Finally, an optician in Paris added short arms that extended to
the temples, and an optician in England carried the idea further
by extending the arms to the ears. This became the world standard
for eyeglass frames.

Useless Fact - Triskaidekaphobia:

Triskaidekaphobia is the morbid fear of the number 13. This superstition leads many people to avoid anything which involves number.

The fear of the number 13 has its roots in Christian and papan cultures. In Christian countries the number 13 was considered unlucky because there were 13 persons at the Last Supper of Jesus Christ. Fridays are unlucky because the
Crucifixion was on a Friday. Hence, when a Friday falls on the thirteenth, it is regarded as especially unlucky.

In Norse mythology the number 13 can be traced back to being unlucky when Loki, the most evil of Norse gods, went univited to a party of twelve at Valhalla. What resulted was the death of Balder, the god of joy, light and reconciliation.

During the Middle Ages, the superstition against Friday the Thirteenth grew.

As you know, many high-rise hotels omit the number 13 floor.

Probably one of the most famous modern stories involving the number 13 is the Apollo 13 Mission. It was launched on April 11, 1970, from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time and was struck by an explosion on April 13.

Some famous Triskaidekaphobias include Napoleon, Mark Twain, Herbert Hoover, Richard Wagner and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The opposite of Triskaidekaphobia is Triskaidekamania, the excessive enthusiasm for the number 13.

(For those out there who want to do a little research on their own, look up the 18th century launching of the ship-- HMS Friday)

Where did the idea for underwear come from?

Underwear is one of the earliest known types of clothing; its use was recorded as far back as 3000 B.C.

It started as a narrow band around the waist from which both decorative and magical pendants were hung.

The Egyptians wore woven material wrapped around the body several times and then tied in front. Loincloths were worn in Crete around 2000 B.C. They were usually decorated, often with intricate patterns.

Even today, loincloths are worn in many tropical and semitropical regions of the world. Between 2105 B.C. and 1240 B.C., men in Babylonia and Mesopotamia wore loincloths as undergarments and women wore short skirts as undergarments.

Around A.D. 200 the Romans wore undergarments. Both men and women wore a loincloth similar to our modern briefs. The women also wore a breast band called a "mammillare."

In 1850 Amelia Jenks Bloomer advocated a costume for women made up of a short jacket, a skirt extending below the knee, and loose "Turkish" trousers, which were later referred to as "bloomers."

This fashion never caught on, but the term "bloomers" stuck and eventually became the name for loose, baggy underwear worn by women.

The term "underwear" did not come into use until 1879.

Most people, if asked what the world's oldest city is, would
probably answer "Rome."

Rome, the Eternal City, was traditionally founded in 753 B.C., making it more than 2,700 years old.

Damascus, Syria, on the other hand, was in existence before the
time of Abraham (Gen. 14:15, 15:2). It is undoubtedly the oldest
continuously inhabited city in existence and probably was
flourishing a couple of thousand years before Rome was founded.

- GODZILLA:

Japanese producer Tomoyuki Tanaka came up with the idea for Godzilla while flying over the Bikini Islands which were the site of American H-Bomb testing.

The Japanese name for Godzilla is Gojira, a combination of two words 'gorira' (gorilla--a tribute to King Kong) and 'kujira' (whale).

Godzilla is the Americanized version of this name.(Other spelling Gozilla)

Originally, Godzilla was conceived as a giant mutated octopus. But this idea was changed to an amphibious bipedal phenotype. Such a creature would be much more menacing to human society on land.

The home of Godzilla was the remote island of Lagos near the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The giant dinosaur was exposed to an atomic bomb. His offensive abilities were his atomic ray, brute strength and regeneration powers.

The original Godzilla stood 164 feet tall (50 meters) and weighed 22,000 tons.

The Godzilla screenplay was co-authored by Takeo Maurata and Ishiro Honda. Eiji Tsuburaya was the creator of Godzilla.

The first Godzilla film was released in 1954.

Two years later American actor Raymond Burr, playing American journalist, Steve Martin, filmed scenes here in the United States, which were spliced into the U.S. version. In the United States the film was released as "Godzilla-King of the Monsters".

Since its original release there have been over 20 Godzilla films. And if there is one thing everyone will recognize and remember about this giant dinosaur it is his ROAR!