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The Mafra National Palace (pictured) was built during the reign of King John V of Portugal, in consequence of a vow he made, promising to build a convent if his wife, the Queen Mary Anne of Austria, gave him descendants. 
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| Ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year. |
| One-fourth of the world's population lives on less than $200 a year. |
| It costs more to buy a new car today in the United States than it cost Christopher Columbus to equip and undertake three voyages to and from the New World. |
| The original game of "Monopoly" was circular. |
| Bees die when they after they sting. |
| The Chinese, in olden days, used marijuana only as a remedy for dysentery. |
| The ancient Egyptians recommended mixing half an onion with beer foam as a way of warding off death. |
| The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten gold. Some fabrics had up to 500 gold threads per one inch of cloth. |
| More than 5,000 years ago, the Chinese discovered how to make silk from silkworm cocoons. For about 3,000 years, the Chinese kept this discovery a secret. Because poor people could not afford real silk, they tried to make other cloth look silky. Women would beat on cotton with sticks to soften the fibers. Then they rubbed it against a big stone to make it shiny. The shiny cotton was called "chintz." Because chintz was a cheaper copy of silk, calling something "chintzy" means it is cheap and not of good quality. |
| The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed turquoise would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used these green and blue stones to decorate their battle shields. |
| The first man to distill bourbon whiskey in the United States was a Baptist preacher, in 1789. |
| The enigma machine cipher could not encipher a letter as itself. |
| $644 million was mislaid by the accounting firm Arthur Andersen during their 1999 audit of NASA. |
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