You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

[Lee Stewart]

Mosquitos are attracted to the color blue twice as much as to any other color.

[Lee Stewart]

The swastika has been around for over 3,000 years and commonly symbolized goodness and luck, up until its use by the Nazis in Germany. The now reviled image was used by cultures all over the world, including early Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and even Native Americans.

[Lee Stewart]

Pink wasn’t always a girl’s color and blue a boy’s color — in fact, it was once the other way around. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.

[Lee Stewart]

Newly discovered fossils show that moths and butterflies have been on the planet for at least 200 million years whereas flowering plants came along around 130 million years ago. Butterflies survived without flowers for 70 million years.

[Lee Stewart]

The idiom “Turning a blind eye” is attributed to Admiral Horatio Nelson who, in the midst of battle and given the permission to retreat by his superior, lifted the telescope to his eye (blinded from an earlier injury) and said “I really do not see the signal” and pressed on with the attack.

[Lee Stewart]

The ancient Chinese used natural gas for lighting purposes around 500 B.C., using bamboo pipelines to transport the gas for miles.

[Lee Stewart]

Between 1798 and the Civil War, the U.S. Navy lost two-thirds as many officers to dueling as it did to more than 60 years of combat at sea.

[Lee Stewart]

1816 was called “The Year Without a Summer” after the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Crop failure forced Joseph Smith to leave Vermont, and his journeys resulted in “The Book of Mormon,” the dreary rain in Switzerland drove Mary Shelley to stay indoors, where she wrote “Frankenstein.”

[Lee Stewart]

In England until the early 20th century, a man wishing to separate from his wife could lead her to market by a halter and sell her to the highest bidder.

[Lee Stewart]

In the 1930s, parents used to keep their babies in cages on their windowsill in order to make sure they got enough air and sunshine in tall apartment buildings.