Austin High School in Texas has removed candy from its vending machines. Now some enterprising students are earning $200 per week dealing in black market candy.

The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

The biggest school in the world (in terms of students) is in Lucknow, India. The school was set up by the Ghandi’s in 1959 and has more than 32,000 students.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them use to burn their houses down — hence the statement “to get fired.”

Natalie Portman is fluent in 6 languages. She co-authored 2 research papers, published in scientific journals, She was also a guest lecturer at a Columbia University course.

Only 939 of the 1,400,000 high school seniors who took the SAT in 2004 got a perfect score of 1600. Two of them are twin brothers Dillon and Jesse Smith from Long Island, NY.

The world’s largest book, “Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey” is in a Chicago public library. The book measures 5 feet tall by 7 feet wide when open. It weighs 133 pounds.

A perfect SAT score is 1600 combined. Bill Gates scored 1590 on his SAT. Paul Allen, Bill’s partner in Microsoft, scored a perfect 1600. Bill Cosby scored less than 500 combined.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

The dunce cap of schoolhouse fame originates from a paper cone that was placed on the heads of accused witches during the Middle Ages. When Joan of Arc was martyred, she was wearing one of them

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

In 2002, women earned 742,000 bachelor’s degrees. Men earned only 550,000 during the same year. The difference is growing so large that many colleges now practice (quietly) affirmative action for male applicants.

The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. The only other word with the same amount of letters is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses, its plural.

The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways. The following sentence contains them all: “A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.”