10 things I didn't know until last week

1. Isaac Asimov is the only author to be published in nine out of ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System of library classification.
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2. The opening line of Karl Marx’s ‘The communist Manifesto’ reads “A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism.”
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3. Before being renamed, Melbourne used to be known as Batmania - after one, John Batman who settled there in 1835.
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4. Ponds and lakes are not differentiated based on size but on depth - or more precisely, the presence or absence of a photic zone. A pond will be able to have plant life in all parts of it as the water depth allows enough sunlight to entire area of bottom. A lake in contrast will have enough depth to have areas where plant life will not exist due to lack of sunlight. Ponds may be much larger than lakes and can be natural or man made.
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5. The mother of Buzz Aldrin - the second man to set foot on the moon - had the birth name Marion Moon.
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6. Geometry started historically in problems of land measurement - geo = “earth” + metry = “measurement.”
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7. Similar to fingerprints, everyone also has a unique tongue print.
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8. Yoda was based on Albert Einstein.
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9. Tea bags are an accidental invention. Thomas Sullivan, a tea and coffee merchant in New York, tried to cut sampling costs by sending loose tea in small silk sacks instead of costly tins. Potential clients, confused by this new packaging, threw the tea in hot water - bag and all - and discovered their convenience. Thomas soon started getting many requests for these “teabags” and realized that he had struck gold.
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10. Paul McCartney’s Beatles’ classic Blackbird is a homage to the black civil rights movement - “bird”, in this case, being a colloquial term for “woman”.
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