Ponder, if you will

What happens to your Social Security number when you die?
Why are peanuts listed as an ingredient in plain M&Ms?
Why is Barbie's hair made out of nylon, but Ken's hair is plastic?
What makes up the ever-mysterious "new-car smell"?

Pop-culture guru David Feldman demystifies these topics and so much more in Do Penguins Have Knees? -- the unchallenged source of answers to civilization's most perplexing questions.

Part of the Imponderables(R) series, Do Penguins Have Knees? arms readers with the knowledge about everyday...

Beyond Coincidence recounts and analyzes more than two hundred amazing stories of synchronicity, the likes of:

Laura Buxton, age ten, releases a balloon from her backyard. It lands 140 miles away in the backyard of another Laura Buxton, also age ten.

Two sisters in Alabama decide, independently, to visit the other. En route, their identical jeeps collide and both sisters are killed.

The winning number in the evening drawing of the New York Lottery three-digit "numbers" game on September 11, 2002 is 9-1-1.

From magic and religion to subatomic particles and...

It's true For the past twenty-five years, in his books and weekly newspaper column, world-history genius Cecil Adams has been patiently explaining to the Teeming Millions how the world works. He answered questions such as how do porcupines mate, what exactly does Barney Rubble do for a living, and where is Einstein's brain? His answers changed your life. Or at least settled a bet with a loved one. But surely, you are thinking, all the salient facts of the universe have been ascertained by now. Ha Get a load of the mysteries The...

And much more!

How do you...

- How do they know how much an aircraft carrier weighs?

- How do they get music onto a CD?

- How does an electric eel generate electricity?

- How do they know how long a second is?

- How do penguins stay warm in Antarctica?

- How do they teach guide dogs to cross at a green light?

The answers to these and many other everyday wonders are explained.

Here, in simple and easy-to-understand terms, are solutions to the riddles of everyday life. How exactly does a thief break into your car and drive off with it in...

Dioramas and panoramas, freaks and magicians, waxworks and menageries, obscure relics and stuffed animals--a dazzling assortment of curiosities attracted the gaze of the nineteenth-century spectator at the dime museum. This distinctly American phenomenon was unprecedented in both the diversity of its amusements and in its democratic appeal, with audiences traversing the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, and class. Andrea Stulman Dennett's Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America recaptures this ephemeral and scarcely documented institution of American culture from the margins...