The Chicago river, which is west bound these days, used to flow east into Lake Michigan. Engineers, figuring to use the river for drainage purposes, turned it around and made it run out of the lake.

Strange to relate, the Irish potato is not a potato and it didn't even come from Ireland. Strictly speakin', it's a tuber, and the first ones were grown in Peru in South America.

Note for folks who go to circuses--a peanut is not a nut. It's a bean.

Water is the only liquid that takes up more space the colder it gets, and that's the only reason fish stay alive over the winter. Just a few degrees above the point where it turns to ice, water is at its biggest volume. So it pushes any ice that's formed to the top, letting the fish live down below.

Catgut comes from sheep--not cats.

Nearly twice as many people have been killed in the United States since 1920 in automobile accidents than soldiers were killed in all the wars in American history.

All evergreens are not pine trees. The pines are only one part of the evergreen family including larch, spruce, hemlock, cedar and others.

The puff adder isn't poisonous and it isn't an adder. All it is is a lizard that puffs itself up to scare you when you come near.

Even though they smell a lot different, onions and lilies belong to the same plant family.

Banana oil isn't made out of ba­nanas. It's made out of the same stuff used to make celluloid.

T.N.T., one of the highest power ex­plosives used in the war, won't explode if you drop it, and you can burn it without damage.

Glass is more elastic than rubber. A sheet of glass, weighted down so that it bends in the middle, will come, back to its normal shape no matter how long you let the weights remain in place. Rubber, on the other hand, will snap back into shape only for a very short time, after which it starts losing its elasticity and eventually breaks down altogether.

Two inventions that have probably changed the world more than any others were not invented by the white races: Movable type and gunpowder, both of which bave changed our whole existence, were invented by the Chinese.