· A "claque" is a group of people hired to applaud an act or performer.

· Myrtle Beach, South Carolina has the most mini-golf courses per square mile in the US. There are 47 in a 60-mile area.

· Shambu Tamang was the youngest person ever to ascend Mount Everest. He was 17 years, 6 months, and 15 days old when he reached the summit.

· Progeria is a disease that causes the entire life cycle to be compressed into less than 20 years. By the time a sufferer is seven years old, he looks, feels and acts like an old person, and he may die of "old age" by the time he is 11 or 12 years old.

· Cyndi Lauper cleaned dog cages before her career as a pop star.

· Golfer Tiger Woods is the most searched-for sports figure on the Internet.

· The Vatican's Web site is powered by three host computers named after the archangels Raphael, Michael and Gabriel.

· Grandfather clocks with metal pendulums lose time in warm weather. The solid expands, making the pendulum bigger and thus slower-moving.

· Stevie Wonder was 11 when he signed his contract with Motown.

· Rita Moreno was the first performer to win an Oscar, Grammy, Emmy and Tony award.

· Stone Street, in New York, was the first paved street in the U.S. It was paved so that beer wagons could get to and from the breweries.

· The youngest person to win a Nobel Prize was 25-year-old William Lawrence Bragg who shared the award for physics with his father in 1915, for work done on the determination of crystal structures by X-ray diffraction.