I did not know that yesterday!

Not many pieces of clothing can draw as strong a reaction, either positive or negative, as the bra. But then this particular undergarment has always been something of a special case. It's been ogled by fans and burned by detractors. And through it all, bras evolved from mere "supporting" players into full-fledged stars of the fashion world.

A French woman named Herminie Cadolle was the genius behind the cups and straps. Cadolle came up with the concept in 1889, originally dubbing it the "corselet gorge." Her creation premiered at the Great Exposition in Paris and was a smash with the ladies, propelling the budding entrepreneur into a life-long career in lingerie.

Madame Cadolle led a pretty amazing life. She was a very successful businesswoman in a time women rarely worked outside the house. Cadolle set up shops in Argentina and brought over the best French seamstresses to train her staff. She traveled the world, outfitting the rich and famous, while watching her business grow into a bust-ling enterprise. The company still exists today as Cadolle Lingerie.

I bet that's one secret Victoria didn't know...

I had always assumed that it was simply a Spanish word meaning "a pesky European settler," but once I looked into the matter, it turned out that things weren't quite so cut and dried.

After entering the phrase "gringo origin" into the Google search box and clicking on some of the web page matches, I uncovered a controversy over the word's history.

It seems that many amateur etymologists believe the term comes from a song sung by American frontiersmen ("Green Grow the Rushes" or possibly "Green Grow the Lilacs") during the Mexican-American War.

A second theory postulates that American troops, during that same war, wore green uniforms and were taunted with cries of "Green go!" Frankly, I found that one hard to swallow. Thankfully, most of the sites I consulted viewed this idea with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The Word Detective, offers a more compelling explanation of "gringo" and its origin. The detective says, "The most likely source of 'gringo' is the Spanish word 'gringo' itself, which means 'foreigner' or 'unintelligible gibberish.' The root of 'gringo,' in turn, is thought to have been 'griego,' Spanish for 'Greek,' often applied as slang to any foreigner."

Further research led me to conclude that this last theory is the most likely. The Word Wizard concurs wholeheartedly with the Word Detective, offering "griego" as the immediate root of "gringo."

Finally, I located a comprehensive article from Honduras This Week that outlines the long history of the term predating the Mexican-Amercian conflict. As far as I am concerned, it firmly places the far-fetched theories of overheard singing and anti-American sloganeering into the category of "urban myth," where they surely belong.

The Online Etymology Dictionary says "bull's-eye" was first used to describe "center for target" in 1833. While Wordsmith.org speculates that's due to the "earlier agro-economy and the importance of bovine animals," I am inclined to believe the origin described by The Word Detective. They claim the popular use of the term for pretty much anything small and round began in the 17th century. Often, it included a protruding lump in the center, but not always. Why a bull instead of a cow, chicken, or goat? Unfortunately, nobody knows.

Certainly nobody questions the term's versatility. It can describe the center circle of a target, a lens of short focal distance, a circular window, a piece of glass inserted in a ship's deck, and a round piece of hard candy. Considering my luck with the dartboard, maybe I'll just take the candy.

The chef's hat, or toque blanche (French for "white hat"), has been around for more than 400 years. Back in the 16th century, artisans (including chefs) were among the "free thinkers" who were often persecuted, imprisoned, or executed because of their views. To escape this treatment, some chefs hid in monasteries and wore the same type of clothing as the priests, including tall hats. However, chefs wore gray, while priests wore black.

But there are other theories regarding the hat's history. One source states the hat may have evolved from the stocking cap (casque a meche) worn by French chefs throughout the years. The color of the casque a meche indicated the chef's rank.

Sometime in the mid-1800s, chef Marie-Antoine Careme decided white was a more appropriate color for toques as it indicated cleanliness in the kitchen. Careme also believed the hats should be of different heights to indicate rank. Cooks wore shorter hats than chefs. Reportedly Careme's hat was 18 inches tall.

Interestingly, the number of pleats in a chef's hat is also a status symbol. Many toques have exactly 100 pleats, supposedly the number of ways a chef can prepare an egg.

I started with a Google search on "tennis scoring." After some digging around, I found two possible answers.

The first mention of tennis scoring was on the Lawn Tennis Association web site. On the Origins of Scoring page, we learned that the unusual scoring system has medieval and French roots.

The site goes on to state that the system may be based on the presence of a clock face at the end of the tennis court. A quarter move of the appropriate hand was made after each rest, with the score being called as 15, 30, or 45. As the hand was moved to 60, this was the game. This didn't explain a score of 40, however, so I continued on.

I then found another possible explanation on The Straight Dope.

Tennis scoring has its origin in medieval numerology. The number 60 was considered to be a "good" or "complete" number back then, in about the same way you'd consider 100 to be a nice round figure today. The medieval version of tennis, therefore, was based on 60 -- the four points when 15, 30, 45 (which we abbreviate to 40) and 60, or game.

Although neither of these answers is definitive, it was the closest I could come to acing the question.

You can find a Big Mac on every continent but one -- Antarctica. You can get a Maharaja Mac in India, a Croque McDo in France, a McFiesta in Guatemala, and Kosher beef in Israel. While it seems like the golden arches are everywhere, 98 countries aren't "lovin' it."

According to the corporate web site, Mickey D's has restaurants in 119 countries. But Ronald and pals don't name each country. Wikipedia lists 97 countries with franchises and notes that McDonald's may count "many non-sovereign territories" as different countries.

So where can't you get a Happy Meal? As this map shows, most of Africa and Central Asia is short on super-sized fries. We compared the countries that have McD franchises to the U.S. State Department's list of independent states to compile this list of places that don't currently have a McDonald's:

Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Dominica, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Federated States of Micronesia, Gabon, Gambia, the Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, the Holy See, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, the Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Tossed around like a green salad, metrosexual has become the phrase of the moment, replacing the overused Snoop-inspired "izzles" and the Arnold-inspired "governator" phenomenon. To get to the heart of what it means to be a metrosexual, I went straight to the slang-o-rific Urban Dictionary for some edification.

There I found over 70 user-provided definitions. While some were completely worthless and even vulgar, the collection gave us a sense for the meaning of the word. Culling what we learned, we assume a metrosexual is a straight guy fastidious in appearance, in touch with his feminine side, and living in an urban area.

We learned that writer Mark Simpson introduced the word into our everyday vocabulary. In a Salon.com article on David Beckham from 2002 titled "Meet the Metrosexual ," Simpson provides the true meaning of his coinage:

"The typical metrosexual is a young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis -- because that's where all the best shops, clubs, gyms and hairdressers are. ... he has clearly taken himself as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference."

Boiled down to its essence, the term refers to a single man who loves to indulge and pamper himself -- going against the stereotype of men as boorish slobs with questionable grooming habits.

At Mark Simpson's personal site, we clicked a WordSpy link . It traced the word's origin to an article by Simpson from 1994. WordSpy's handy definition varies only slightly from Simpson's original:

"An urban male with a strong aesthetic sense who spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle."

If you'd like to gauge your own metrosexuality, I found short quizzes from ESPN, Good Morning America, and Liquid Generation. So fellas, don't be afraid to zhuzh up your sleeves and put a little product in your hair, 'cause there's absolutely nothing wrong with metrosexuality.

Ever since Elvis died in 1977, tribute artists have been filling the void. These men, women, and children walk the walk, talk the talk, and swivel their hips just like the King. But with so many performers, is there any way to track down the original imitator?

I broke in our blue suede shoes with a walk to Elvis' official site. Here I learned Elvis' estate is generally supportive of tribute artists, but mum when it comes to naming the first hound dog to impersonate the late, great king of rock and roll.

Moving on to less "authorised" sources, Cybercloud claims a Canadian teen by the name of Jim Smith might have been the first pretender to the throne. Like all good Elvis impersonators, Mr. Smith bore a striking resemblance to the King. According to the site, young Jim was "discovered" in 1956, and made his debut on a local DJ's television show soon thereafter. This 1957 article from the Victoria Daily Times notes Jim didn't sing or play the guitar. Apparently, his looks and attitude were enough.

These days, there are thousands of Elvis tribute artists. Some are serious. Some are Swedish. And some are just plain weird (pictured).

Well, short answer = It's a cheesy movie cliché. A FightingArts.com article answers this directly, calling the assertion "one of the oldest American martial arts legends," even though "there is absolutely no basis (for) or reality in it."

According to FightingArts, this myth's roots can be traced both to the post-World War II period in Japan, when traditional martial arts were made illegal, and to the bygone days of professional boxing, when a "common publicity stunt was to have police on hand during a press conference to 'register' the boxer as a deadly weapon."

The AFU & Urban Legends Archive also debunks the claim, writing, "research has failed to reveal any statutory, regulatory or other requirement that boxers -- or anyone skilled in martial arts -- 'register' their hands or any other body part as 'lethal weapons' in the U.S., UK, Canada, or any other common law nation." What the Archive did find, however, is that some U.S. courts have "concluded that a criminal defendant's boxing or martial arts experience should be considered when deciding whether s/he possessed a required intent to cause harm."

More answers to and opinions on this question can be found on message boards at KarateForums.com and FiringLine, where the just-about-unanimous consensus is that there is no foundation to this oft-cited fiction. So go ahead, everybody, get to Kung Fu Fighting. It's perfectly legal.