Look Learn and Do: Home Page

Alexander Graham Bell made a talking doll which said Mama when he was a boy in Scotland.

All birds, to survive, must eat at least half its own weight in food each day. a young Robin, for example, can eat as much as fourteen feet of earthworms per day.

An odd group of musicians on Madagascar play high pitched dog whistles. Humans cannot hear a thing & don't pay attention...dogs are the only fans.

Antifreeze mixtures & the centers of golf balls contain honey.

Armadillos and Hedgehogs rely on fleas. The fleas provide necessary stimulation to the skin. Without them these spiny animals would not last long.

Boxing champion Gene Tunney lectured on Shakespeare at Yale.

Captain Robert Jenkins in, came before a parliamentary committee in London and displayed an ear pickled in brine. He identified the ear as his own, and charged that it had been cut off by a Spanish patrol when he was sailing in the West Indies. Appalled by this,the British declared war on Spain The War of Jenkins's Ear. This expanded into the War of Austrian Succession.

Charles Darwin captured his Galapagos finches & creatures by approaching them & hitting them on the head. They had never seen a man & didn't know to run away.

Difficult to imagine...but human skulls have been used throughout history as drinking cups.

Dinosaurs existed that were as small as hens.

Female pigeons can only lay eggs when there is another pigeon around. Her ovaries will not function if she is alone. If no other pigeon is available, her own reflection in a mirror will suffice.

For forty years after Queen Victoria's consort died, she ordered his evening clothes be laid freshly on his bed at Windsor Castle.

French physicist Rene Antoine De Reaumur was quite impressed by the geometrical perfection of the beehive's hexagonal cells that he proposed that they be adopted as an ideal unit of measurment.

Had Ben Franklin had his way, the U.S. national bird would have been a turkey, not an eagle. He thought the eagle was "a bird of bad moral character" because it lived by "sharping & robbing."

Hero, a greek engineer, invented a primitive steam engine about the time of the birth of Christ. It is used today as a rotating lawn sprinkler.

Humphrey O'Sullivan of Boston sat down one day and invented the rubber heel. He was tired of pounding the pavements looking for a job.

The last words of Albert Einstein will never be known. They were spoken in German & the attending nurse did not understand German.

Ambroise Pare designed an artificial hand with fingers moved by levers & cogwheels.

In the early days of his career, Picasso kept warm by burning some of his drawings.

In the graves of pre-Columbian Indians, popcorn kernels were found.

In Wellington New Zealand a member organization protests the murder of houseflies. The group stages demonstrations in front of pesticide factories and pushed for a $100 fine, plus two weeks in jail as a penalty for killing a fly. Failing in that, they are now trying to make it a misdemeanor to own a flyswatter.

It is unlikely that you will get a bellyache from eating a green apple as long as you chew it completely. The stomach cannot tell the difference between ripe & unripe apples.

The musk ox of the Arctic tundra has a dense wooly undercoat under its shaggy outer coat. It is such a good insulator that when the ox lies down its body heat does not melt the snow.

It was a long days for a frightened Ostrich in Lamu Kenya. It corkscrewed its head & neck four feet in the ground until a local construction group dug it out. Ostriches bury their heads because they think that if they can't see their predator, the predator can't see them.

King Ahelim of Syria, the proud owner of an Angora cat, had to provide fresh salmon with lemon juice in a carved golden bowl to his finicky feline friend. When the bowl disappeared, the cat wouldn't eat & it starved to death.

Napoleon suffered from Ailurophobia. This is the fear of cats.

One of the most controversial & original writers of the twentieth century, D.H. Lawrence, fancied removing his clothes & climbing Mulberry trees.

Portugal and England have never been at war with eachother. It is likely the longest unbroken peace between nations in the world.

05/15/99 Prince Zabid of Qatar has wives. There are so many that he can't remember their names, and so he makes them wear numbers on their backs. Although the Prince is celibate, he says that he so often marries because he likes to eat wedding cake.

Pygmy chimpanzees distinguish themselves among primates because of many human qualities. Because the whites of their eyes can be seen, one can tell in what direction they are looking. Also they possess the ability to put together sequences of events in order to assess a situation.

Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, speculated that monkeys and apes have the ability to speak but stay quiet to avoid being put to work.

Sergei Prokofiev, the Russian composer, composed an opera, The Giant when he was only seven years old. He did this using only the white keys of the piano.

Sharks can indeed be dangerous...even before they are born. One scientist, Stewart Springer, was bitten by the embryo of a sand shark while he was examining its pregnant mother.

The perfume trade yields technicians with the olfactory skill to distinguish, different odors.

Small flat icebergs have been rigged with sails and piloted over, miles from the Antarctic to Valparaiso, Chile, and to Cakkaiub, Peru.

Some sea urchins are so ingenious and light-shy that they will pick up pebbles to cast shadows when caught in flash-light beams.

Swooping at one hundred miles an hour, the African eagle can brake to a halt in a few feet.

The Chuckwalla, a type of Lizard, escapes predators by crawling into a crack in the rocks and inflating its body with air. It becomes tightly wedged into the crack and cannot be pulled out.

The egyptians did, indeed, train baboons to wait on tables.

The eroica symphony by Beethoven was written in honor of Napoleon, whom he admired greatly. When Napoleon proclaimed himself emporer, Beethoven, enraged, tore out the dedication to Napoleon and substituted "To the Memory of a Great Man."

December