Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
By Mr. Smarty Pants, Fri., Sept. 16, 2016
The Chicago River is the world's only river that flows backward. Instead of flowing into Lake Michigan, it flows upstream toward the Mississippi River.
According to CityLab.com, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, is the 10th most income-segregated metro area in America.
The Nazis' Theresienstadt concentration camp gave prisoners a modest degree of freedom that included the ability to buy instruments and form bands. One such group was the Ghetto Swingers, a band of Czech Jews who conceived the jazz version of "Someday My Prince Will Come."
Victor Hugo once asked his publisher how his novel Les Miserables was doing with a telegram consisting only of "?". The publisher's response was "!".
According to Slate, the word "jumbo" may derive from the Swahili word "jambo" for hello or "jumbe" for chief or boss. That's why the Barnum & Bailey Circus named one of its star attractions "Jumbo the Elephant." After that, the word was associated with giant things. Jumbo, who was born in 1861 in the Sudan, was accidentally hit by a freight train and killed on Sept. 15, 1885.
