Illustration by Arnie Bermudez

· It is possible to drown and not die. Technically the term "drowning" refers to the process of taking water into the lungs, not to death caused by that process.

· Chop suey was invented in the United States. Its creator was a Chinese dignitary visiting America in the nineteenth century. Requested by American friends to prepare an authentic Chinese meal and not having the proper ingredients, the Chinese gentleman ordered his cook to collect all available foods, pour them into a large pot, and flavor the whole thing with soya sauce, which was still relatively new and exotic to the western palate. Asked the name of this delicious concoction, the dignitary, spotting a pair of chopsticks lying near the bottle of soya sauce, replied, "Chop-soya." Through his heavy Chinese accent this became "chop suey," and so it has remained ever since.

· Slapstick comedy is named after an actual slapping stick. The stick, which came to be associated with broad farce in the sixteenth century as part of the Italian commedia dell'arte, was used by the comic hero Harlequin to whack the rumps of artless stooges. It was made of two pieces of wood joined together to make a slapping sound when it hit.

· When the Apollo 12 astronauts landed on the moon, the impact caused the moon's surface to vibrate for 55 minutes. The vibrations were picked up by laboratory instruments, leading geologists to theorize that the moon's surface is composed of many fragile layers of rock.

· Sea worms mate in the following way: At mating time, males and females swarm together. Suddenly the females turn on the males and bite their tales off. The tails contain the males' testes and sperm. When they are swallowed and acted upon by the females' digestive juices, they fertilize her eggs.

· The smell of a skunk can be detected by a human a mile away.