1. The fax machine was invented the same year people were traveling on the Oregon Trail . . . 1843.
2. Carrots were originally several colors, and the most common one was purple. But Dutch farmers in the 16th century bred red and yellow carrots to make orange ones, since it was their royal color . . . and those became the standard.
3. It takes 248 years for Pluto to orbit the sun. That means between the time Pluto was discovered in 1930, named a planet, and then eventually declassified and demoted to a "dwarf planet" in 2006, it didn't even make it halfway through one orbit.
4. Sour Patch Kids are called "Very Bad Kids" in France.
5. There were more than 61 million people using pagers in 1994. That number is down to about two million today, mostly in hospitals.
