Interesting Thing of the Day

When we raise our glasses to compliment someone or wish them good fortune, what are we really doing? Strange but true: the origin of the ritual has to do with poison.

Artists are now using living grass as a medium for printing gigantic photographs. By carefully controlling the light that falls on various parts of the grass, they let photosynthesis do the work for them.

Instead of expecting someone to repay you for a good deed, you could ask them to do a good deed for someone else (and keep the chain of goodness going). It's a lovely notion, but fraught with problems.

Worried that you might accidentally be buried alive? Shell out a few extra bucks for a coffin with an alarm system. But don't think that'll make you a dead ringer.

After D-Day, some German troops still occupying France decided to take out their frustrations on a random city by destroying every building and killing all its inhabitants. The shell of the city has been preserved as a memorial to those who died.

Under some very specific conditions, humans can breathe special liquids. This technique has potential applications in medicine and diving, but it's not without serious problems.

Everyone knows that a day has 24 hours, but if you base your measurement on the position of the sun, that figure could vary by as much as 16 minutes over a year. The equation of time compensates for this irregularity.

One of the latest extreme sports combines thrills and adventure with garment maintenance. Seriously. Just grab an iron and a parachute, easy on the starch.

That fancy restaurant downtown may cost an arm and a leg, but Cleopatra once consumed a meal worth as much as several countries, just to win a bet.

You can propel a boat or submarine through the water using an innovative motor that has no moving parts. The same technology might also be used to power spaceships.

William Hearst built a magnificent estate, sometimes called Hearst Castle, in San Simeon, California. Now a tourist attraction, it gives a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the rich and famous.

This legendary beverage has been praised for producing artistic insights and blamed for causing violence and insanity. After being banned in some countries for more than a century, it's finally making a comeback.

The world's largest piece of artwork is a geoglyph created anonymously in 1998 in the Australian desert. Impressive as it is, it has upset the locals, and will apparently be left to fade into oblivion.

What's that burrowing a hole under a shrub in the middle of an arid steppe in Patagonia? A penguin, of course. The most common penguin species doesn't entirely fit the image most of us have.

Some verbs have the peculiar property that you can perform their action just by saying them, enabling you to literally do as you say.