Many cool things are learned while researching things for books. Some you can eventually work into a story, others you find yourself trying to work into conversations…
Poison is different than venom because of they way it reaches you. Poison is ingested or absorbed, while venom is injected into you.
Phobophobia is the fear of phobias
Astronauts use Velcro and magnets to stop things from floating around while weightless. Things like the food on their food trays.
The idea of nice, happy fairies, like Tinkerbell, is a modern conception. Once upon a time, fairies were mean tricksters. Many were suspected of stealing babies and replacing them with things like a log or an old, dying fairy.
Dragons, unicorns, water-people, ghosts, zombies… they appear in ancient cultures all around the world. Kind of hard to discount things that peoples who theoretically never came into contact all believed in….
The elf owl is only about 5 inches tall.
It is believed that less than 10 of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published in her lifetime, and none of those were by her permission.
Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. Sarah Winchester, heir to the Winchester rifle fortune and driving force behind the construction of the “Winchester Mystery House” was considered to be a triskaidekamanic- obsessed with the number 13.
One of the rarest PEZ dispensers sold for over $32,000 on eBay.
At one point in time, the original Star Trek series, while still in development, was called Gulliver’s Travels and the Captain was named Gulliver.
George Story, as a baby, had his photograph in the very first issue of Life magazine with the caption Life Begins. George died around the same time Life announced it would be shutting down, and the very last issue of Life magazine ran a story about his death.
Mike the Headless Chicken lived for around 18 months after his head was cut off. The enterprising owners put him on display and earned around the present day equivalent of nearly $50,000 a month.
Zhiznennia voda, the original name for vodka, means ‘water of life’