I did not know that yesterday!

Don McLean put it best when he said, "You will find many 'interpretations' of my lyrics but none of them by me. Isn't this fun?" And fun it has been for those who've attempted to demystify "American Pie." Many claim it tells the story of McLean's life in the '50s and '60s. Weaving together memories of Woodstock, the Kennedys, and rock
'n' roll, "American Pie" may immortalize a turbulent time in U.S. history.

McLean eventually acknowledged that his song was a tribute to the late Buddy Holly and the metamorphosis of music after his death. This in-depth FAQ explains -- "American Pie" refers to rock 'n' roll music, which fell apart on February 2, 1959, ("the day the music died") with the plane crash that killed Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens ("the three men I admire most"). The allusions don't stop there. Bob Dylan is supposedly the jester "who sang for the King and Queen," and "the girl who sang the blues" could be no other than soulful Janis Joplin.

McLean's lyrical flare affected more than just his casual fans. He was the inspiration behind Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly."

Most countries have their own currencies, but not all. For instance, many of the island nations of the Caribbean, such as Saint Lucia and Dominica, use the same East Caribbean dollar. Likewise, a number of African nations, including Chad and Niger, use the Communaute Financiere Africaine franc. Often the territories or dependencies of a country use the governing country's currency -- for example, the
Virgin Islands and Guam use the United States dollar.
We learned all this from the CIA World Factbook, which offers detailed fact sheets on every country in the world. This site also hosts a large list of world currencies that shows 178 different currencies in use.

Looking for confirmation of this number, we typed "world currency list" into the Yahoo! search box. The first web site returned, Currencies of the World, listed only 112 different currencies, so we moved on to the web page matches.

That's where we came across the Xe.com currency site's list of 182 currencies. This list includes one duplicate (Ireland/Eire), four precious metals, the Crude Oil Barrels Index, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Special Drawing Right.

We're tempted to leave the metals, oil, and IMF off our currency count, since they're not exactly like the cash you might find in your wallet.

So minus these exceptions, Xe.com's total of world currencies is actually 174. However, they leave off the Vatican lira, the Tuvaluan dollar, the Manx pound, and the Jersey pound (all of which are included on the CIA World Factbook list). If we take the revised Xe.com total of 174 and add the missing 4, we're back at 178,
confirming the World Factbook's listing.

Of course, by February 28, 2002, European national bank notes and coins will be withdrawn from circulation in favor of the Euro -- which will add 1 currency while eliminating 12.

Two different "eternal" flames have graced the grave of slain President John F. Kennedy. Inspired by the Flame of Remembrance that burns at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier in Paris, Jackie Kennedy decided she wanted a similar memorial for her husband. The problematic job of designing and building it was assigned to Colonel Clayton B. Lyle, an army engineer.

With very little time before the funeral, Lyle and his crew located a luau lamp in a local electrical shop, tested it, and found the flame sufficiently weather resistant. They welded metal strips into a base and searched for a propane company that could supply the fuel. The crew worked all night before the funeral to lay down a gas line to the burial site. And on November 25, 1963, as Lyle and his crew watched
anxiously, the flame glowed to life when Jackie Kennedy touched a burning taper to it during her husband's funeral.

The flame was extinguished on one noteworthy occasion, when a visiting Catholic school group doused it with holy water. A quick-thinking guard used his lighter to reignite the flame.

When Kennedy's remains were interred in a permanent grave in March of 1964, Lyle's makeshift lamp and propane canisters were replaced with a new torch and an underground line of natural gas. Designed by the Institute of Gas Technology of Chicago, the current flame burns in the center of a 5-foot circle of granite at the head of the grave. If it is ever extinguished, a flashing electric spark near the tip of the nozzle relights it instantly. And occasionally, the flame is shut off
for maintenance.

In the words of one Arlington historian, "The flame does burn 24 hours a day, but obviously it is only as 'eternal' as anything man made can be."

I visited the Yahoo! Directory and browsed through recreational boomerang sites and assorted commercial boomerang sites from manufacturers and vendors on several continents. I read about the origins and operating principles of this ancient throwing stick, used by Australian Aborigines and also found in ancient Egypt, Stone Age Europe, the southwestern United States, and the Indian subcontinent.

My search for a comprehensive answer to how boomerangs work led to the always dependable HowStuffWorks. Tom Harris' article covers returning boomerangs -- lightweight devices that fly through the air in a circular path (when crafted and thrown correctly) -- and their predecessors, non-returning boomerangs. These throwing sticks travel far and fast and are well-suited as tools for hunters.

Made of wood, metal, or plastic, a boomerang consists of two component parts (wings) joined together so that they spin around a central point. The wings are set at a slight tilt, and have an airfoil design. This means they are rounded on one side and flat on the other, like an airplane or propeller wing. Because air moves more rapidly over the rounded top of the wing, a difference in air pressure is created, and the greater pressure below causes lift. Think of the boomerang as an unattached propeller, spinning on its axis as it is thrown forward through the air.

Five forces affect the flight of a boomerang and must be balanced correctly for a boomerang to fly and return to the thrower successfully:

gravity
the force caused by propeller motion
the force of the throw
the force caused by the uneven speed of the wings (Bernoulli effect) wind
An aeronautics site for kids explains and illustrates the flight of a boomerang in terms of this list of aerodynamic principles:
"Bernoulli's relation, gyroscopic stability, gyroscopic precession,
and Newton's laws of motion."

Australian Aborigines use a non-returning boomerang, called a kylie or killer stick, as a hunting tool, and are frequently credited with inventing the boomerang. The U.S. Boomerang Association suggests that aerodynamic throwsticks have been around since the Stone Age, some 15,000 years ago.

Not surprisingly, there are a lot of opinions on which movie is the all-time lousiest. While The Master of Disguise and Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie are strong contenders for the title, we thought it best to consult the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which features a Bottom 100 movies list. According to IMDb users, the worst movie, with a rating of 1.6 out of 10, is (drumroll, please) Manos, the Hands of
Fate.
Manos was written and directed by Harold P. Warren, a fertilizer salesman from El Paso, Texas. In the 1960s, he met with Stirling Silliphant (the Oscar-winning screenwriter of In the Heat of the Night) and was inspired to produce a low-budget horror film. He cranked out a script, grabbed a few college kids and local actors, and raised $19,000 to pay for the film.

At the first showing of Manos, which took place in an El Paso theater, the audience's non-stop laughter caused the cast and crew to leave the show early. Since then, the film has become "the yardstick by which all bad movies are measured." As for Warren, he wisely denied the existence of his film until his death in 1986.

There are more than 3,000 versions of the Cinderella myth. Almost every world culture has one -- she's known as "Yeh Shen" in China, "The Burnt Face Girl" to the Mik'maq tribe, "Tattercoats" in England, and "Marouckla" to the Slavs. While the story can't claim a sole author, it does have a few notable interpreters.

Charles Perrault was a minor literary figure in 18th-century France. In 1697, he published Comte de ma Mere L'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose), which refashioned several well-known folktales such as "The Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding Hood," and "Cinderella."

Perrault cleaned up the popular peasant version of the Cinderella tale for a more refined, upscale audience. In the original, the glass slipper was filled with blood from the severed toes and bunions of the wicked stepsisters! Mother Goose was translated into English in 1729, and the Brothers Grimm produced their famous German version in 1812.

After several unprofitable starts, a search on "flea market term" turned up the goods, sort of. It proved to be one of those tricky etymology questions that's almost impossible to answer with certainty. Nevertheless, I did uncover three plausible suggestions for the origin of "flea market."

The first theory, and the one most popular on the Internet, proposes that the term is a direct translation of the French Marché aux Puces, a large, outdoor bazaar in Paris. This original market earned its name from the critter-infested goods it was rumored to sell.

The second theory alleges that the term was coined at a time when the slums and alleys of Paris were demolished and replaced by new construction. The dealers in second-hand goods who lived and worked in these old neighborhoods were forced to flee. The merchants' new gathering place was referred to as the "flee market," which later became "flea market."

The final theory associates the term with New York City's 18th century Fly Market. Apparently, the Dutch name for the market was vlie, which means valley but is pronounced "flea."

So there you have it, three flea markets for the price of one. My money's on the first explanation, but don't hold us to it.

I didn't have to dig very deep to find the answer to this one. I simply typed "deepest part of the ocean" into Google and uncovered several web pages that answered your question.
My first stop was ScienceNet, a British web site that purports to be a one-stop science site. We couldn't dispute that claim after they provided us with the facts of the matter: The Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean is 11,033 meters (36,201 feet) below sea level. If Mount Everest were placed inside of this trench, it would disappear.

At Oceanclopedia, we learned that the deepest part of the trench is named Vitjazdepth. The trench was formed when the Pacific plate collided with the Philippine plate, which also resulted in the formation of the nearby island Guam.

To find out if anything actually lives down there, we swam over to Earth & Sky, a companion site to the popular science radio series. We discovered that plants can't live at such depths because they need sunlight for photosynthesis -- light doesn't penetrate such depths.
However, recent photographs from unmanned craft show shrimp-like crustaceans, sea cucumbers, and marine worms. In addition, bacteria flourish on the muddy floors of the trenches.