Things you've always never wanted to know

Only 16 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.

There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year.

The third baseman in the Abbott and Costello "Who's On First" comedy routine was "I Don't Know."

Tennis pro Evonne Goolagong's last name means "kangaroo's nose" in one of Australia's aboriginal languages.

The average life span of London residents in the middle of the 19th century was 27 years. For members of the working class, it was 22 years.

Television horse Mr. Ed was foaled in 1949 in El Monte, Calif. Mr. Ed's original name was Bamboo Harvester. Raised as a parade and show horse, he was once owned by the president of the California Palomino Society. He died in Tahlequah, Okla., on Feb. 28, 1979, at 30 years old. Tahlequah was also the "home office" for the Top 10 List on the "Late Show with David Letterman" for several years.

Helen of Troy was queen of Sparta.

A cheetah can advance seven to eight meters in a single stride, and the animal completes four strides per second. A stride is measured as the distance between successive imprints of the same paw.

A wine cork costs about 10 cents if it is made from pressed cork scraps, and about 45 cents if it is one of the extra-long corks used to close the bottles at famous wine estates in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Italy and California.

A famous stallion will, on retirement, command an impressive stud fee for servicing approved mares. Specialist stud farms house one or more stallions, each of which is allowed to service about 40 mares per season.

English naval hero Viscount Horatio Nelson chose to be buried in St. Paul's Church in London rather than in the national shrine of Westminster Abbey because he had heard that Westminster was sinking into the Thames River.