1. Early 20th-century Pennsylvania Germans considered it bad luck to take a bath or change your clothing between Christmas and the New Year.
2. You could last about 15 seconds in space without a space suit and helmet before you’d go unconscious . . . but you could stay alive for up to three minutes.
3. A struggling poet named Eliza Acton wrote the very first modern cookbook in 1845 . . . introducing the concept of listing ingredients, their quantities, and cooking times for common use in home kitchens. It was called “Modern Cookery for Private Families”. And it featured the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts . . . spaghetti . . . and “Christmas pudding,” which is basically plum pudding.
4. Over half of ALL the master’s degrees people earn in the U.S. are in three fields: Business (23%) . . . education (17%) . . . and health professions (17%).
5. There are about 117 million lakes in the world, which cover about 4% of the surface of the Earth.
