The first safety feature for an automobile was invented in 1908 by John O'Leary. He patented a large net, to be installed on the front fender, to scoop pedestrians out of the way before they could be run over.

The 'y' in signs reading 'ye olde..' is properly pronounced with a 'th' sound, not 'y'. The 'th' sound does not exist in Latin, so ancient Roman occupied (present day) England used the rune 'thorn' to represent 'th' sounds. With the advent of the printing press the character from the Roman alphabet which closest resembled thorn was the lower case 'y'.

The phrase 'a red letter day' dates back to 1704, when holy days were marked in red letters in church calendars

There are 142,000 recognized species of moths.

Nabisco's 'Oreo's' are the world's best-selling brand of cookie at a rate of 6 billion sold each year. The first Oreo was sold in 1912.

The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the 'American Pie'

The Earth weighs 6,600 billion billion tons

In 1771 the kingdom of Poland was larger in are than any other European country except Russia and had a bigger population than any other European country except France.

Devon is the only county in Great Britain to have two coasts.

The Church of Scientology was founded in 1953, at Washington DC, by US science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.