Frankincense acts as an antidepressant and anti-anxiety drug.

According to author Stephen King, the road to hell is paved with adverbs.

The world pornography industry made about $97 billion in 2006 – more than Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, and Apple combined.

National Talk Like a Pirate Day is Sept. 19. One of the people most responsible for “pirate talk” is Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island, which included phrases like “Shiver me timbers” and “Avast there.” The 1934 and 1950 movie versions of the book, which starred Wallace Beery and Robert Newton, respectively, made pirate talk more a part of the “vernacul-arr.”

Groucho Marx was shown his obituary while visiting the offices of The New York Times. When he read it, he didn’t like it. He offered to punch it up for them, but they turned him down.

This article appears in August 22 • 2008.

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