08 May 1: Heartache

Days of ‘heartache leave’ that employees of one Japanese cosmetics company are allowed to take each year: 3

08 April 30: Chickens

Chickens dream.

08 April 29: ‘1’

Amount a businessman in the UAE paid this year for the nation's license-plate number ‘1’: $14,000,000

08 April 28: Miles

Beijing's new airport terminal is two miles long.

08 April 27: Southdale

The Southdale shopping centre in Minnesota is the world's first true shopping mall, making it a landmark as important to architectural history as the Louvre or New York's Woolworth Tower.

08 April 26: Livestock

Livestock generate 18 percent of greenhouse gases.

08 April 25: Inter@ctive

In 1998, Research in Motion (RIM) released the Inter@ctive Two-Way Pager. A year later, RIM introduced the BlackBerry to the world.

08 April 24: Kitchen

According to a 27-country survey for IKEA by IsoPublic, a polling firm, less than 20% of Chinese families eat in the kitchen compared with 64% of Canadian and over 50% of American ones.

08 April 23: Poiret

Paul Poiret, King of Fashion, liberated women from the ‘stifling, tight-waisted, hoop-skirted monstrosities’ of the 19th century. ‘Poiret effected a concomitant revolution in dressmaking, one that shifted the emphasis away from the skills of tailoring to ... the skills of draping.’

08 April 22: Power

In 2006, American data centres consumed more power than American televisions.

08 April 21: LSD

LSD was first synthesized by Swiss scientists in 1938.

08 April 20: Apartment

The average two-bedroom apartment in New York City now costs $1.2 million.

08 April 19: Scenting

A dog's extraordinary scenting ability can distinguish people with both early and late stage lung and breast cancer.

08 April 18: 6,000,000,000

Americans spend $6,000,000,000 on yoga each year.

08 April 17: Economy

Chances that an American believes the economy is in a recession: 3 in 5

08 April 16: Concrete

In less than 12 years, a Mediterranean weed has adjusted its reproductive strategy to deal with the challenge of concrete.

08 April 14: Taste

Taste is about 75% smell.

08 April 13: DPs

Estimates for the number of displaced persons during World War II varies from 11 million to as many as 20 million.

08 April 12: Wine

The brain experiences expensive wine as being more pleasurable than cheap wine even if it recognizes that both wines taste the same.

08 April 11: Skylab

During the skylab missions of the 1970s it was discovered that chicken eggs cannot be fertilized in space.

08 April 10: Acuity

Smell acuity peaks in women at ovulation.

08 April 9: Cognition

Scents of coffee and chocolate have a significant effect on enhancing cognition and clerical office work.

08 April 8: Aztecs

The ancient Aztecs believed we are born without a face and that we must win our faces bit by bit as we grow.

08 April 7: Signs

In both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, loss of olfactory sensitivity is thought to be among the earliest signs of the disease.

08 April 6: Google

One third of Americans Google themselves.

08 April 5: Mozart

Mozart loved chocolate so much he referenced it in the opera Cosi Fan Tutte.

08 April 4: Factor

For heterosexual women, smell is the number one physical factor in sexual attraction, as well as the most important social factor, aside from pleasantness. Men also tune in to the important scent messages given off by a woman, but they tend to rely more on their eyes than their noses.

08 April 3: Malaria

Malaria is not a contagious disease.

08 April 2: Olfactory

The 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Richard Axel (Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York, NY) and Linda Buck (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA) for a series of studies that led to their groundbreaking discovery of the gene family responsible for odorant receptors and clarified how the olfactory system works.

08 April 1: Jubes

In the United States, Jujubes is the brand name of a particular type of candy, whereas in Canada the word is generic, and describes any of many similar confections.

08 March 31: PR

Edward L. Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, is widely recognized as the father of public relations.

08 March 30: Insured

A U.S. study found that most free prescription-drug samples go to wealthy, insured patients, a different study found that black and Hispanic emergency-room patients are less likely than whites to receive narcotic pain medication, and a third study found that blacks receive poorer nursing-home care than whites.

08 March 29: Taught

Scientists taught dolphins to sing the theme song from Batman.

08 March 28: Robot

Japanese scientists unveiled a robot that plays the violin, a robot that solves Rubik's Cubes, a robot that recognizes itself in a mirror, a robot snowplow that eats snow and excretes ice bricks, a robot exoskeleton that can be worn by elderly farmers, and a robot that walks at the command of a monkey on a treadmill in North Carolina.