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In the country villages of remote areas of India, this has been going on for hundreds or thousands of years.

Here it is the custom for girls to marry when they are 12 or 13. Recently, however, a law has been passed that forbids them from living with their husbands as a family until they are 18.

Some of the village families obey this law, but many do not. When it is time for a young wife to move in with her husband, she goes to a house her husband shares with his mother, father, sisters, brothers, and other relatives. Read more »

President Theodore Roosevelt and his family had the most pets.

Many were kept at the White House, but most lived at the "Summer White House" in Long Island, New York. If you made a trip to the summer place, you might see a lion, hyena, wildcat, coyote, five bears, an eagle, an owl, a zebra, and many, many cats and dogs.

Nearly all the time Theodore Roosevelt was president, five or six dogs lived at the White House. The President's favorite was a little mixed-breed called Skip. Read more »

The Queen of England has the tiny stove, and she has a working refrigerator six inches high, a one inch-high kitchen scale that actually weighs things, a five-inch vacuum cleaner that sucks up dust, and a golden, carved piano eight inches from front to back on which every black and white key plays its own note.

She also has a six-and-three-quarter-inch motorcycle with side car that has a gasoline engine that really runs. Why does the queen have all these fine items? Read more »

Shortly before he became king of France in 1830, Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, spent some time traveling in the United States.

He and his two younger brothers stopped one night at an inn in Winchester, Virginia. The innkeeper, Mr. Bush, was delighted to have such an important guests, and he gave them the best room he had.

Later that evening, the king-to-be asked that the evening meal for himself and his brothers be served to them in their room. It was clear to Mr. Bush that the royal Frenchmen thought they were too good to eat with his other guests in the dining room. Read more »

It doesn't get very cold in the winter in the Indian city of Calcutta.

Even had they heard of ice in 1833, most of the city's people had never seen it. So, when Frederick Tudor's ship arrived in Calcutta harbor with a shipment of ice from the ponds of New England, it caused a great deal of excitement.

The ice sold as fast as it could be unloaded from the ship. People thought Tudor was crazy when he first began sending ice to different parts of the world, but he was actually very smart. The first place he sent ice was the West Indies. That was in 1805. Read more »

Early American pioneers found that living in separate cabins did not offer them protection from Indians.

So all the settlers who lived near one another would get together and build a fort. They would construct cabins inside the fort along one wall. Like the rooms in modern motels, these cabins were in a straight line, one next to the other, with no space between.

The wall of one cabin was also the wall of the one next door. A single big roof covered all the cabins. The pioneers would move into the cabins when the Indians went on the warpath. Read more »

She was the wife of George III, king of England during the American Revolution.

Queen Charlotte was so fond of sniffing the powdered tobacco called snuff, that "Snuffy Charlotte" became her nickname.

Colombus discovered natives of the New World smoking tobacco during his first voyage, but it wasn't until 1532, forty years later, that the Spanish explorer Pizarro found the Incas of Peru sniffing the powdered leaf. Read more »

No, but those who wanted William Henry Harrison to become president did.

During the campaign of 1840, Harrison's friends made a large paper ball and rolled it all the way from Kentucky to Baltimore, Maryland, where the convention was to be held.

They carried a sign that read, "Keep the Ball Rolling." All this might have helped, as Harrison was elected, although he served only 33 days before he died from pneumonia. President Harrison was the only president ever to have studied medicine, although he quit before he became a doctor. Read more »

In 1823, Captain John Cleves Symmes, a war hero, went to talk to the members of the U. S. Congress.

He asked them to give him a ship and a few brave scientists for a journey to the center of the earth. He planned to sail there by going down a hole he believed existed at the North Pole.

He was convinced that the earth was hollow beneath its solid surface, and he wanted to reach "the warm, rich land stocked with leafy vegetables and animals, if not man." Read more »

The man who sells more big diamonds than any other dealer in the world is forbidden to have a picture taken of his face.

His name is Harry Winston, and because the police and insurance companies are afraid he will be kidnapped or robbed, what he looks like remains a mystery.

In a picture, his face is always in shadow so he can't be recognized. Some of the diamonds Harry Winston sells are worth more than $4 million each. Did you know that in order to have value as a gem, a diamond must be cut? Read more »