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He didn't wear an iron mask, he wore one of cloth.

For 35 years, this man was kept a prisoner. To this day, nobody knows who the man was. He was put in prison by the king of France, who absolutely refused to answer any questions about why the prisoner was there or who he was.

When the famous author Alexander Dumas heard about the prisoner, he used him as the basis for his famous book The Man in the Iron Mask. Instead of the cloth mask the prisoner actually wore, Dumas changed it to an iron mask because it made his story much scarier. Read more »

In the nation of Malaysia.

The people of Malaysia have always been fascinated by tops, and not long ago they decided to celebrate with the "Festival of the Tops." All sorts of top contests are played.

In one, there is a fighter top, and it has to knock over all the others. The winner is the man with the best fighting top. Another contest consists of seeing who can keep his top spinning the longest.

The current record is one hour, forty-seven minutes. At the same festival, there is a contest to see who can get his kite to fly directly over his head. Read more »

The most famous case is that of Sgt. Roger Reynolds of the U. S. Army's crack parachute team, the Golden Knights.

On April 24,1974, he fell 2,000 feet when both of his parachutes failed to open during an army exhibition at Charlottesville, Virginia. He hit the ground at 85 miles an hour, broke many bones, suffered a concussion, and had many other internal injuries.

He had to stay in the hospital for eighteen months and was told he would never walk again. Yet two days after his release from the hospital, he made his 964th jump. He has since jumped over 1,000 times. Read more »

Yes. It was used for escaping from fires. In 1879, when Benjamin Oppenheimer patented his invention, there were many more house fires than there are now, and when houses burned, they generally burned to the ground.

Houses caught on fire because of carelessness with fireplaces and wood- burning stoves, both of which were much more in use then than they are now. Read more »

They were a gang of Old West bank robbers and stagecoach hold-up men.

They stashed fresh horses, provisions, and ammunition at hiding places along a trail that led from where they were going to pull a hold-up to where they wanted to hide out.

This method was similar to the one used by the Pony Express that enabled its riders to travel great distances quickly. The Pony Express Bandits copied the idea, and it worked very nicely for them. They were probably the most successful gang of thieves ever to work the Wild West. Read more »

The Macaroni Club was formed in England around 1770 by a group of wealthy young Londoners. It started as a joke.

The members wanted to make fun of the stuck-up clubs that their elders all belonged to. The group of young men had just come back from a trip to Italy, so they called their club Macaroni after the Italian food.

Because they wanted to upset their elders, these young men wore silly clothes. However, many of the people who saw the clothing liked it and copied it. Soon, everyone was dressed in the ridiculous outfits worn by the Macaronis. Read more »

In 1911, nobody had ever flown across America in an airplane. A motorcycle driver named Calbraith P. Rodgers decided to try to make the trip even though he had had only 70 hours training as a pilot.

His airplane was owned by the manufacturer of a popular soft drink and was called the Vin Fizz. When Rodgers left New York in the little airplane, he was followed by a railroad train made up of three cars. Read more »

According to a recent Gallup poll, the kids who hate school the most come from that most polite of all nations, Japan.

Why do Japanese children dislike school? Psychologists reason that it is because great pressure it put on Japanese children to get high marks in school.

It is said that unless you have very good grades, you can't get a good job in Japan. On the other hand, children in Sweden and India seem to love going to school. Most of the children in those countries say they like or even love going to school. Read more »

In many parts of the world, man is losing his battle against the desert.

Iran is one place where he is winning. Iran's desert is twice the size of the state of Vermont. Parts of it are being sprayed with oil. The oil dries to a gray crust that works like a mulch, protecting the seeds of trees and shrubs buried beneath it.

The mulch holds whatever water there is in the ground. It keeps the heat of the sun from killing the young seedlings. As a result of this oil, forests of tamarisk trees now grow where there were only sand dunes a few years before. Read more »

Men can hit baseballs harder than women can. They can pick up heavier objects and run faster than women.

But are men stronger than women? Their muscles are stronger, that's all. Women are much stronger than men when it comes to pushing away disease and staying healthy.

They are stronger when it comes to living longer. You might say that a woman's body doesn't "wear out" as quickly as a man's. Not only is this true of the human female, it seems to be true for the females of most other forms of animal life. Read more »