This is the “festival of festivals” in Japan, and it is celebrated for several days. Government offices, banks, museums and most businesses are closed from New Year’s Day, a national holiday, through January 3. For weeks before New Year’s, people clean house and purchase new clothes for the children. On New Year’s Day, it’s customary to pray at the household altar and to eat special foods, such as small, round, gooey rice cakes called mochi. Herring roe is eaten for fertility, black beans for health, dried chestnuts for success, and porgy and prawns are omens of happiness. Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
According to legend, Ross was visited in 1776 by George Washington, Robert Morris, and her husband’s uncle, George Ross, and asked to make a flag for the new nation based on a sketch by Washington. Although Ross made flags during the American Revolution and was the official flag maker for the Pennsylvania Navy, the long-accepted story that she designed and made the first US flag—the Stars and Stripes—is generally discredited. Who first publicized the story of Ross making the flag? 
Dowsing, also known as divining or water witching, is the practice of ascertaining the presence of underground water or minerals using a forked twig or a pendulum. Dowsing has existed in various forms for thousands of years, and while it may have originally been rooted in divination of the will of the gods, the practice was later associated with Satan. Many skeptics believe that dowsing successes result mostly from chance. What did the 1987 Munich study of more than 500 dowsers conclude?