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It took 35 years to build his tomb, and 700,000 workers were brought from every part of China to do the work. When he was finally buried in it, in 210 B.C., the tomb was covered with earth.

When the job was done, a small mountain fifteen stories high had been created. They called it Mount Li Soon. The fact that it was a tomb was forgotten, and farmers plowed the lands around it, and their cattle grazed on its hillsides. Read more »

His name was Big Nose George Parrott, and he was one of the Old West's
meanest outlaws.

He would just as soon murder you' as shake your hand. When Big Nose Parrott held up a stagecoach, passengers and driver were lucky to come out alive. Big Nose's luck finally ran out one day in Rawlins, Wyoming.

He was arrested and thrown in jail. The folks in town were so angry at the bandit that they broke into the jail to "string him up." It was the late 1900s, and there were plenty of telegraph poles around. Somebody threw a rope over a crossbar that topped off a nearby pole. Read more »

It angered King George of England that the pesty Americans had invented the lightning rod.

How could a country bumpkin like Benjamin Franklin have invented anything to do with something so complicated as electricity.

In the early 1770s, just before the American Revolution, England went ahead and began to install lightning rods on those buildings in which gunpowder was stored. Read more »

One of our most famous presidents was a smuggler.

He was never caught, but he only smuggled once. In 1784, congress asked Thomas Jefferson to travel to Europe to make treaties of friendship and to see if the European nations were interested in buying such American products as tobacco, whale oil, and furs. Read more »

They didn't carry guns or, at least, they weren't supposed to. But 9-year-olds served in the army during the American Revolution.

They were drummer boys. Often, the sounds of their drums were used to send signals from one part of an army to another. More often, the drummer boys beat out the rhythm of a march.

Sometimes, joined with the fife, the drum beat out music for the men to sing. There were no 9-year-old drummer boys in the British band that led the British army to surrender to General Washington at Yorktown. That day celebrated the impossible victory that had just been won. Read more »

Did a king ever give his Toenails as gifts? Yes. One king did, and he did it more than once.

King Victor Emmanuel II was the first man to rule over a united Italy and was probably also the first to give away his toenails as presents. Every year while he was king, he allowed the nail on one of his big toes to grow without being cut. Read more »

He was sure his enemies would try to kill him if they knew where he would spend the night.

To keep them guessing, he moved from palace to palace, never spending more than one night at a time in any one. They were always kept stocked with food, and each had servants ready to provide his every need.

If anyone told where the emperor was, instant death was the reward. Who was he? He was the first emperor of China, Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the man who built the Great Wall of China. He built the Great Wall because he was frightened of the "the barbarians" attacking him from the north. Read more »

The present queen of England was born on April 21, 1926, but her official birthday is in June.

In fact, whether England has a king or a queen in charge, and no matter what month they are really born, their official birthday is always celebrated in June. The reason is to give everybody a good time.

June is a lovely warm month with lots of sunshine, even in England. And, since everybody in England likes to celebrate the king or queen's birthday, they wanted to have it in nice weather.

In 1959, the British Parliament decided that the royal birthday party would always be held in June.

Reading is a very human activity. The act of reading is so complicated that even the most advanced computer can't do it as well as you can.

When you read, you take shortcuts, play hunches, figure things out in advance, and you make all these calculations almost instantly. You see letters in groups and the number of letters you see at any one time depends on how complicated the reading material is.

You might take in three letters at a time or you might stop to take in seven or even as many as twenty. Most of the time, we stop for a quarter of a second and see seven letters. Read more »

Three of America's Founding Fathers, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe, died on the Fourth of July.

Of the three, James Monroe was the only one who fought in the American Revolution. He fought in many battles and was wounded twice, once at the Battle of Harlem Heights and once at the Battle of Trenton. He was the fifth president of the United States. He died at his daughter's home in New York City on July 4, 1831. Read more »