According to a Japanese legend, the crane lives for a thousand years, and a sick person who folds 1,000 origami cranes will become well again. A young girl, Sadako Sasaki from Hiroshima, set out to do just that when she developed leukemia as a result of her exposure to the atomic bomb dropped on her city. She died at age 12, before her project was completed, but her classmates folded the remaining cranes for her after her death and placed them at the foot of a monument constructed in Sadako's memory in Hiroshima's National Peace Park.

Diamonds, clubs and spades are by association linked respectively with the corruption of wealth, war and death. In contrast, the heart as an organ is pure, open, undisguised -- it does not wear artifice -- hence the clean-shaven King of Hearts.

Karaoke is a word formed by putting two Japanese words together. "Kara" that comes from Karappo and means empty and "Oke", shortened from "Okesutura" meaning orchestra.

Believe it or not, a "jiffy" is an actual unit of time, defined during the late 18th century by scientist Gilbert Newton Lewis as the amount of time it takes light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum, which is about 33.4 picoseconds or one trillionth of a second.

The tradition of selecting a "Man of the Year" began in 1927 with Time editors attempting to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year of not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight.

Mist, a Holstein cow hailed as the probable matriarch of a dynasty of star milk producers, was purchased in 1985 by a group of investors for $1.3 million.

From 1725 to 1765, a Russian peasant woman, the wife of Feodor Vassilyev, gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets--a total of 69 children!

The Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) may be a small bird, but it travels each year almost from pole to pole. After breeding in the Arctic Circle, these birds migrate during the Northern Hemisphere winter to the border of the Antarctic ice pack. The roundtrip migration is almost equal to flying all the way around the earth -- totaling approximately 21,750 miles (35,000 kilometers).

At the age of 25, Tuareg men begin wearing a veil that conceals the whole face excluding their eyes. They never remove this veil, even amongst family members; it is believed to protect them from evil spirits that enter the body through the nose and mouth. The Tuareg women are not veiled, although they do wear a head-scarf over their hair after they are married to show that they are no longer available to other men. Most Tuareg are followers of Islam, and they are generally found in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

Digital diva Lara Croft is the heroine of the Tomb Raider series of video games that revolutionized computer gaming. In the original Tomb Raider, Lara recovers pieces of an ancient artifact known as Scion. In Tomb Raider II, she discovers the secret dagger of Xian. In Tomb Raider III, she searches for four mysterious artifacts fashioned from the heart of an ancient meteorite. The Tomb Raider trilogy was so popular it spawned two movies starring Angelina Jolie as the buxom archaeologist.