'At one time, R&B singer Michael Bolton was a candidate to sing lead for Black Sabbath.'

Equally adored and ridiculed throughout the 1980s and called a "no-talent ass clown" in the movie Office Space, singer Michael Bolton has sold more than 53 million records and has a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Before all that, he was the lead singer of the hard rock band Blackjack, which recorded two albums for Polydor in the late 1970s. At that time he was known by his real name, Michael Bolotin, and according to sources from the Hard Rock Cafe to VH1, Blackjack toured briefly with Black Sabbath and Bolton was considered as a possible lead singer for the band following the departure of Ozzy Osbourne.

'Dyslexia can make your hair turn gray. '

Our hair gets its color from stem cells in the follicles that produce melanocytes. These cells produce and store melanin -- the pigment, or color, of our hair. As we age, the stem cells start to die out; consequently, the new hairs that grow in lack the presence of the melanin. Thus, those new hairs aren't technically "gray," but are rather colorless, or transparent.

When this happens prematurely, it can be traced to everything from genes to behaviors like smoking or even a disorder like dyslexia, according to the authors of Why Do Men Have Nipples?

'The first industrial robot went to work at GM in 1961.'

Named Unimate, General Motors put it to work in the spring of 1961 without fanfare -- not because they were worried about an uproar over it one day taking the jobs away from so many people, but because they were concerned that it wouldn't work out.

It did, of course, and today robotics is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry. The original Unimate is at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.

'Counting sheep is an ineffective way to fall asleep.'

It is a very familiar cultural reference: one sheep follows another jumping over a fence, and this dull monotony gently lulls a person to sleep. Yet according to a recent study coming out of Oxford University, the classic technique is in fact not a terribly effective one.

The reason? The dull monotony is too dull for most; it is so dull that it can not keep hold of a person's attention long enough for them to relax to the point that they fall asleep. Instead, the study found that visualization -- imagining a tranquil scene -- was substantially more effective.

'In 2000, a monkey moved a robotic arm over the internet using only brain signals.'

Known as BCIs, or brain computer interfaces, researchers are not just implanting them in the brains of monkeys but also in human test subjects who are otherwise unable to move their bodies, and the results are astonishing: using only their minds, they have been able to move computer cursers, play basic video games, and even -- as profiled recently by Esquire -- create vowel sounds, ones being generated straight from their brains and audible from a set of speakers.

Only two U.S. companies currently have FDA approval to implant BCIs in human beings.

'By one estimate, around 106 billion humans have lived on earth.'

In the 1970s, a supposed "fact" made the rounds purporting that of all the humans that had ever lived on earth, three-quarters were alive at that time. In fact, that was nonsense.

Although the Population Reference Bureau asserts the extreme difficulty in making any such calculation, they made one anyway, arriving at the approximation that around 106 billion humans have lived on earth, with 6-plus billion currently alive right now.

'Pteromerhanophobia is among the 10 most common phobias in adults.'

What phobia is that? "Pteromerhano-" is Greek for "to shake your wings," thus, "fear of flying."

Others in the top 10 include cynophobia (dogs) and trypanophobia (injections). Simply having phobias is the most common psychiatric illness among women of all ages, according to the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE), and it's the second most common such illness among men age 25 or older.

'In 1939, Adolf Hitler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. '

Nobel Peace Prize nominations can't be made by just anyone, although the "right to submit proposals" for the prize is extended to a wide range of people, including government officials, members of international courts, university rectors, previous laureates, and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Consequently a lot of people could claim to be "nominees," and one is Hitler, who was nominated by Erik Brandt, a member of the Swedish parliament. Brandt withdrew the nomination a few days later.

'Almonds get their flavor from cyanide.'

Almonds are members of the Prunus genus, which includes peaches, apricots, cherries and hundreds of other species. The huge majority of these species make hydrogen cyanide, typically in leaves and seeds, but they don't make enough to prove dangerous to humans. Almonds are an exception to other Prunus species because we eat the pits of their fruits (or more accurately, drupes) as opposed to the flesh.

The connection to cyanide explains why people who have died of cyanide poisoning emit the scent of bitter almonds, detectable by only a small percentage of the public.
 

'The "G" in G-string may have originated in the Philippines.'

Beyond referring to the string on a violin, the earliest known mention of the G-string comes from Americans in the Philippines in the 1800s, who described the native loincloths as "geestrings."

By 1878, Americans were applying the term to the loincloths worn by American Indians. Since the etymology is not known with certainty, the G could also stand for "groin" or "genitals."

The origins of "thong" are far clearer; the term derives from the Old English word for a flexible piece of leather, a thwong.