• Penguins weren't officially recognized taxonomically as a bird until 1867. There was a strong and vocal minority that felt that they should be classified as a new genus of fish.

• When the circulation department of the Library of Congress was computerized in 1988, it was discovered that 17 Presidents (including founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson) had each not returned one or more books. A bill to forgive their debts has been submitted to one or both houses of Congress four times in the intervening years, but it has never made it out of committee.

• During World War II, with many men away from home, the automobile accident rate rose by nearly 20 percent.

• Despite Coca Cola's commercial proclaiming that "sip stealing is not a felony in all 50 states," Thomas Gomes of San Diego, California was recently convicted of it for his third strike and thus received mandatory lifetime imprisonment.

• The word "bicalendrous" has reportedly not appeared in print since the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1888 (it was dropped from later editions). The word was used to refer to a calendar or ledger that contained dates in both the Julian and Gregorian systems, but had rarely been used since most of the English-speaking world switched in 1752.