Trivia and Amazing Facts
- The term "Ivy League" wasn't coined by the colleges involved, but by the sports pages of the New York Herald Tribune in the 1930s
- If your throat tickles, scratch your ear. When you were 9, playing your armpit was a cool trick. Now, as an adult, you can still appreciate a good body-based feat, but you're more discriminating. Take that tickle in your throat; it's not worth gagging over. Here's a better way to scratch your itch: "When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm," says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. "This spasm relieves the tickle"
- The expression "three dog night" originated with the Eskimos and means a very cold night - so cold that you have to bed down with three dogs to keep warm
- The branch of entomology dealing with ants is called "myrmecology"
- The letter "W" is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn't have just one syllable - it has three
