Cancún, Mexico, is a popular tourist destination on the Yucatán Peninsula with 14 miles of high-rise hotels next to white-sand beaches. But Cancún hasn’t been a tourist draw as long as you would think. As late as the 1960s and early 70s, the area where Cancún now sits was nothing…

Walt Disney is known for creating Mickey Mouse, Disneyland, and Walt Disney World, but he also wanted to take the Disney empire into the mountains by building a ski resort in the 1960s. …

Why Blue Birds Aren’t Really Blue Although they look blue, there is really no such thing as a blue bird. Birds get the color of their feathers from the food they eat. These foods contain pigments called carotenoids, but no bird can make the color blue from these pigments. …

While you won’t see it on every elevator door, many of them have one tiny hole in one panel of the door. It is reasonable to assume that since it resembles a peephole like in a regular door, this would be what it is so that someone on the outside…

Where It’s Not Illegal to be in Organized Crime The Yakuza is a powerful organized crime syndicate in Japan that traces its roots back to the Samurai of the 17th century. The Yakuza is like the Mafia, except that members don’t hide their association in the organization. There’s a reason they don’t. …

Queen Elizabeth’s Many Dogs Queen Elizabeth II has an affinity for corgis. So much so that she has owned over 30 of the breed. Her first corgi was named Dookie, and he was brought home by her father when she was seven in 1933. When she was 18 in 1944, she received a corgi…

The Origin of a Classic Painting The famous Dogs Playing Poker paintings were designed for the Brown & Bigelow Co. in 1903 by artist C.M. Coolidge to advertise the company’s cigars. Coolidge completed 16 paintings in the series, and nine of the paintings had dogs playing poker. The other paintings had dogs participating in ballroom dancing…

The Caribbean’s Whistle The Caribbean Sea produces a strange phenomenon that scientists are just beginning to understand. It makes a whistling sound that can be picked up in space. The sound is inaudible to human ears since it is 28 octaves below the lowest note on a piano, but it can be picked…

Just in case you were wondering, you can purchase large sheets of uncut legal U.S. currency directly from the U.S. government. It’s not a complicated process to obtain uncut paper currency. Though the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is the sole producer of U.S. paper currency and the United States…