BIZARRE BODIES
ANIMAL ANTICS
OOPS! INVENTIONS
WORD ORIGINS
CURSED & CREEPY
100
Humans are believed to be the only animals that produce these as an emotional response rather than just for eye protection.
What are tears?
100
This famously slow mammal only needs to relieve itself about once a week, and does the deed on the forest floor at real risk to its life.
What is a sloth?
100
These sticky notepads exist because a scientist trying to invent an ultra-strong adhesive instead created one that barely stuck at all.
What are Post-it Notes?
100
This everyday word for workers' pay comes from the Latin word for 'salt,' since Roman soldiers were once partly paid in it. ThThis everyday word for workers' pay comes from the Latin word for 'salt,' since Roman soldiers were once partly paid in it.
What is 'salary'?
100
Popular legend claims that archaeologists who opened this Egyptian pharaoh's tomb in 1922 suffered a mysterious string of deaths soon afterward.
What is King Tutankhamun's tomb (the 'curse of the pharaohs')?
200
This organ can regenerate itself even after up to 70% of its tissue is removed.
What is the liver?
200
In this ocean creature, the males are the ones who get pregnant and give birth to the babies.
What is a seahorse?
200
This kitchen appliance was invented after an engineer noticed a candy bar melting in his pocket while standing near an active radar magnetron.
What is the microwave oven?
200
This word for sudden, overwhelming fear comes from the Greek god Pan, whose unexpected presence was believed to strike irrational terror into armies.
What is 'panic'?
200
This deep-blue diamond, now housed at the Smithsonian, is rumored to bring tragedy to its owners and has passed through the hands of several wealthy but famously unlucky collectors.
What is the Hope Diamond?
300
This is the only part of the human body with no blood supply of its own — it gets its oxygen straight from the air.
What is the cornea?
300
This flightless bird lays an egg that can weigh up to five pounds, making it the largest single cell in the entire animal kingdom.
What is an ostrich?
300
This life-saving antibiotic was discovered when a scientist noticed that mold growing in a forgotten, contaminated petri dish had killed the bacteria around it.
What is penicillin?
300
his word for a powerful, wealthy business tycoon (think the movie business)) comes from an old Mongolic and Persian word for a ruler or emperor.
What is 'mogul'?
300
This Shakespeare play is so tied to backstage bad luck and accidents that actors traditionally avoid saying its title out loud inside a theater, calling it instead 'the Scottish Play.'
What is Macbeth?
400
This U-shaped bone in your neck is the only bone in the human body that doesn't connect to any other bone.
What is the hyoid bone?
400
This Arctic shark can live for more than 200 years and doesn't even reach sexual maturity until around age 150.
What is the Greenland shark?
400
This colorful, squishable modeling compound for kids was originally invented and sold as a product for cleaning sooty wallpaper.
What is Play-Doh?
400
This word for someone who avoids the company of others combines the Greek words for 'hatred' and 'mankind.'
What is 'misanthrope'?
400
This creature from Greek mythology has the upper body of a human and the lower body of a horse, and ranged in reputation from wise teacher to wild troublemaker depending on the individual.
What is a centaur?
500
Newborn babies have roughly this many bones — far more than the 206 an adult ends up with, because many later fuse together.
What is about 300 bones?
500
This colorful crustacean can throw a punch so fast the water around its claw briefly boils from the force.
What is the mantis shrimp?
500
This super-strong synthetic fiber, now used in bulletproof vests, was accidentally created while a chemist was trying to develop a lightweight material for car tires.
What is Kevlar?
500
This word for great excitement or passion comes from a Greek term meaning 'possessed by a god.'
What is 'enthusiasm'?
500
This life-sized doll, said to be haunted by the spirit of a child, sits in a museum in Key West and is blamed by visitors for broken cameras and sudden bad luck.
What is Robert the Doll?