The periodic table is shaped from how electrons spin.

More than once, ships would wreck and sailors would drown in the Great Lakes shipping Christmas trees.

Glues have been used that take over a year to cure.

Nigh and night were once near to each other in meaning.

When kiwi vines propogate, it’s never sexual.

Diners were once made in factories.

The Grimms were not genetically brothers.

Companies (a la Sears Roebuck) were named after the free companies of unemployed soldiers who sold protection after the Hundred Years’ war.

A logo was originally a mechanical device while a brand originally was not.

Modern whales no longer show the remainders of hips.

For all the tricks he pulled, Harry Houdini died of old age.

Elephants in Thailand cooperate to mug the sugarcane trucks.

What counts as a kilogram has already changed through time.

Moby Dick was published to rave reviews.

Jainists begat Hindus begat Sikhs.

Rust is iron slowly catching on fire.

Wasn’t calculus first invented by the Persians?

Yaks were domesticated before cows.

Eunuchs never almost took over China.

Connoisseurs of vinegar do exist.

Oil was first drilled for the kerosene.

Rosin is what you rub on bows.

One and two and three have the same meaning in every language.

Checkmate used to mean regicide.

Historically, punctuation has been optional.

Modems were invented for the Air Force.

Assuming you know what you’re doing, you can steer a motorcycle through midair.

Lions can twitch to death after they catch canine distemper.

Penitentiaries were originally run by nuns.

An ancient army once won a war because it was the side that was issued footwear.

One hundred years isn’t enough time for a copyright to end.

Hasn’t black always been a color?

The birthplace of cabbage was the Americas.

Every color of light is radiation.

The country of France was named after an axe.

The ink sprayed by some squids is a toxic substance.

Surnames are not universal.

All the world’s tonal languages came into being in Asia.

Aspirin is still trademarked in parts of the world.

Adjectives are not of importance in every language.

There has been a time when it was legal to execute architects.

Buda and Pest lie on two sides of a river, like Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Sea urchins are always vegetarian.

The palace of Versailles was once absent any bathrooms.

Wasps are kindred to ants.

Moments can refer to movements over angles.

Limestone is the ancient grave of coral.

Depending on where you live, the number four can make an ominous figure.

In some countries, you can watch the railroad ties flash underneath the toilet.

Fish exist which bury their dead.

Butterflies are identified by their sexual organs.

Cacti have been grown without spines.

Fish are sometimes used for navigation.

Some Italians want “senatress” to be a word.

Cherokee comes with its own alphabet.

It only takes one sheep to make a sweater.

Gentle hasn’t meant distinguished for hundreds of years.

“Pinball” is derived from the French.

The Habers, Fritz and Clara, together invented mustard gas.

Crapper manufactured loos.

As far as numerals go, zero is the johnny-come-lately.

Gunpowder predates guns just like buttons predate buttonholes.

Why hasn’t anyone ever woven anything from spider silk?

Hannibal was an admiral before crossing the Alps.

Once upon a time, people wanted to invent the nuclear-powered artificial heart.

Nobody in the world makes portmanteaus anymore.

Charles Darwin was always a believer in God.

Frets on a sitar can move.

As a treatment for rheumatism, in some countries you were to suspend the eating of meat.

Sheet metal screws in the past had to be fashioned by hand.

In addition to poisoning rats, arsenic has been made into recreational drugs.

Purple once made a cipher.

Monkey can be a food.

The alphabet was born from accounting.

Coral was once native to what is now Tibet.

Balsa makes the word for raft.

Smert, the Russian word for death, once also meant death in English.

At least one person is so allergic to food the only meat they can eat is lions.

English poetry did not originally come with rhyme.

Honey will act as an antiseptic.

In Africa, tennis is sometimes played on courts made from animal dung.

Westerlies blow either west or out of the west, depending on the country you’re in.

Homer wasn’t Greek.

Algebra was named after a man.

The most valuable tulips used to be diseased.

Infinity can only come in one of five different magnitudes.

Before the Renaissance, the only pigment colored blue was cerulean.

Every language has two words that mean left and right.

Bonnie and Clyde were secretly married before they were killed.

Beavers once grew to over two hundred pounds.

The northern lights are never yellow.

Cataracts are only an affliction of the modern human condition.

The only sugar available was once always brown.

Ovens make an older appliance than stoves.

Once upon a time, ten thousand was the largest number conceived.

“Hearsay” is like words in Chinese.

As far as Native American languages go, Choctaw was the first to be used as a military code.

Kecak, the opera of the Balinese, was the brainstorm of a German tourist.

Cattails are never poison.

There is such a thing as collectors of radioactive objects.

Birch can make the word for store.

Back in the day, bananas still evolved.

Wasn’t the invention of plastic just accidental?

Frankincense used to be used to cover the smell of the burning dead.

Nictology is the study of human winking.

Hiccups are medically well-understood.

Seashells always screw in the same direction.

Should you find yourself adrift without any flotation, you can inflate your long pants.

Lime juice can counteract the venom of a spitting cobra.

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