Beyda and Associates

What would life be like today if dinosaurs still existed? Humans would most likely be the minority species, and we would most likely live in fear every day. Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about dinosaurs and can continue our normal routine activities relatively peacefully.

Around 65 million years ago, an asteroid six miles wide crashed into the Earth in what is today Chicxulub, Mexico, causing a crater 120 miles in diameter. The impact caused fires, climate change, and widespread extinctions. The dinosaurs, which had so far managed to survive 180 million years, died out. 70 percent of the species living on Earth at the time became extinct!

So what if the asteroid managed to just miss Earth, continuing along to crash into some other planet millions of miles away? Well, consider this for a moment: sixty-five million years ago, some of the animals and plants we see today were just beginning to emerge. For example, insects that rely on flowers—such as bees—were relatively new on Earth. Many of these life forms thrived after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Without the extinction, these species managed to fill ecological niches they may not have been able to fill otherwise.

Some scientists believe that even if the asteroid hadn’t hit, dinosaurs might have become extinct anyway. They believe that some dinosaur species had started to die off long before the asteroid’s impact, and the asteroid was just one ocurrence in an extremely complex sequence of events. Volcanic eruptions and a continuously changing landscape also aided in the extinction of dinosaurs.

Be thankful for the asteroid that hit Mexico, because instead of playing with a miniature T-Rex, you could be running away from the real thing! Like learning fun facts? Beyda and Associates has an online store dedicated to fun, educational learning! Call our educational book store today at (407)438-6700.

Remember that movie, Napoleon Dynamite, where the main character drew a seemingly imagined creature that he appropriately called a liger? Well, that character is actually far from imaginary—ligers really do exist!

A liger is a hybrid cross between a male lion and a tigress. This hybridization is possible due to parents of the same genus, but of a different species. The liger is actually the largest of all known felines. These animals typically enjoy swimming (a characteristic of tigers) and are quite sociable like lions, making them the best of both worlds! There are legends of ligers existing in the wild, but these legends are likely false due to the fact that the habitats of the lion and tiger do not overlap in the wild.

The liger actually has a counterpart, called the tiglon. You guessed it: this creature is a hybrid cross between a male tiger and a lioness, making it the exact opposite of the liger. The tiglon can exhibit characteristics of both parents. They can have spots from the mother and stripes from the father. A male tiglon may also have a mane, but it is not as prominent as those on a lion. The tiglon is not as common as the liger, but in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was reported that this creature was much more common than its counterpart.

Hercules is a famous hybrid feline. Known for being featured in movies and television shows, this famous liger even had a cameo as a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Interestingly, other hybridizations can allegedly exist in captivity: a leopon, which is a combination of a lion and a leopard, and a lepjag, which is a hybridization of a leopard and a jaguar. If you are interested in learning more fun and educational facts, then our online educational bookstore is perfect for you! We have a wide array of Lions, Tigers & Wild Cats books at a discount price. Give Beyda & Associates a call today at (407)438-6700.

Thomas Edison held 1,093 different patents for all of his many inventions. Many of them, like the light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera, were amazing inventions that still have a huge impact on how we live our lives today. However, not everything Edison created was a success; he also had a few failures along the way.

Thomas Edison’s greatest failure came from not being able to create a practical way to mine iron ore. He worked on mining methods in the late 1800s in hopes of being able to provide iron ore to the Pennsylvania steel mills. However, he was never able to create a separator that could extract iron from low-grade ores. Eventually, Edison gave up on the idea, but by then he had lost all the money he had invested in the project.

However, after this Thomas Edison went on to invent the motion picture camera. He called this invention a “Kinetoscope,” using the Greek words “kineto” meaning “movement” and “scopos”, which means “to watch.” He even built a motion picture production studio in New Jersey that was constructed so that it could be moved to stay in direct daylight at all hours of the day.

So, the lesson is – in order to invent something spectacular, it’s ok to fail along the way because these failures will teach you lessons that will help you to achieve even greater things in the future. If you want to learn more about the greatest inventors of all time, check out our Online Educational Book Store. We have many interesting books including the “100 Scientists Book”, “Seven Ideas That Shook the Universe”, “Thomas Edison: A Brilliant Inventor Book”, “Henry Ford, Young Man With Ideas Book”, “The Ben Franklin Book of Easy & Incredible Experiments Book”, and more! Give our educational book store a call today at 407-438-6700 to order your books.

“Look! he said graciously as he jumped into his convertible pocketbook and drove off with his sticky wife. The apprehensive sky started raining gorillas and water bottles as the two happily headed toward their furry hotel.”

Don’t worry – the above paragraph isn’t going to make sense no matter how many times you read it. But it’s not supposed to make sense, and that’s the beauty of Mad Libs!

Mad Libs was invented in 1953 by Leonard Stern and Roger Price, who published the first Mad Libs children’s book in 1958. Mad Libs is a phrasal template word game book based on spontaneous improvisation. One player asks the other for a list of words (adverbs, nouns, adjectives, exclamations, parts of the body, etc.) to substitute for blanks in the story. The result is a hilarious and unrealistic story (that is read aloud) that gets the whole group laughing.

At our online educational book store, we sell many different types of Mad Libs books including Mad Libs From Outer Space, Pirates Mad Libs, and Under the Sea Mad Libs Junior Book. Our Mad Libs books are only $3.99! Order your children’s books today by calling 407-438-6700 today!

At 9PM on Oct. 15, 1951, I Love Lucy went on the air for the first time, and hasn’t been off since. I Love Lucy, the classic American sitcom, is considered by many to be one of the best TV shows of all time. This popular television show was one of the first to be filmed in black and white and in front of a studio audience.

I Love Lucy, staring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, mastered the art of turning reasonable, everyday situations into complete nonsense – a feat familiar to even the best of us. In one episode, Lucy decides to try her hand at working and therefore gets a job at a candy factory. However, later in the episode, you’ll see Lucy stuffing chocolates down her clothes due to a speedy conveyor belt.

At Beyda & Associates, we carry a wide selection of quality Hollywood Classic books, CDs & DVDs at discounted prices. We sell every DVD in the I Love Lucy television series including each individual season and a 50th Anniversary Special DVD of the show. At our online book store, we even sell I Love Lucy books such as “Laughing With Lucy”, “Love Lucy”, and “The I Love Lucy Guide to Life”. Enter coupon code “public” at checkout for 30% off listed prices!

The Simpsons, the longest-running scripted television show in history, is a television show about the satiric adventures of a working class family in the misfit city of Springfield. The Simpsons is meant to portray the typical middle class American family and to parody the American lifestyle and human behavior in general.

The Simpson family is dysfunctional is more ways than can be described. However, the show’s use of situational comedy is quite entertaining, and that is all that matters to American viewers. “D’oh!” – the phrase Homer uses when something bad happens or is about to happen to him – has even become an official word in both the Merriam Webster Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary.

At our educational and entertainment-based online book store, you can find many Simpsons books, CDs, and DVDs. Right now we are even offering a special! Enter the coupon code “public” at checkout for 30% off listed prices on all Simpsons books, CDs, and DVDs!

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island sparked a great interest in pirates. It started slowly, with the genre of pirate novels, but then these books were made into movies. With the help of Johnny Depp, these movies became a phenomenon that resulted in pirate action figures, pirate themed parties, fan clubs, Halloween costumes, and even pirate jargon.

However, Hollywood portrays pirates a bit differently than history tells us. For example, pirates preferred another, much more RUTHLESS form of punishment to “walking the plank”. The punishment they preferred, called keel-hauling, entails tying their victims to a long rope and dragging them underneath the ship. Also, pirates did have a particular way they spoke, but the idioms such as “arrrr matey!”, came directly from Hollywood.

Distinguish the myths from the facts with our educational Pirate Books, available on our website or by calling 407-438-6700.

If you’ve ever seen the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, you know that Bert Lahr’s heartwarming performance as the Cowardly Lion does not help the reputation of the lion as being a powerfully ferocious creature. In the film, the cowardice of the Lion was considered so strange that Dorothy was convinced that he could only be cured by the magic of The Wizard.

So, are real lions actually brave? Out on the plains of Africa, some lions courageously protect their territory as well as their family. However, others are heroic only some of the time. Yet researchers have found that still other lions are cowardly enough to always steer clear of the most dangerous risk – fighting with other lions! Therefore, lions are not all brave, despite the public perception that has even put the word “lionhearted” into the Merriam Webster dictionary.

Beyda & Associates carries a wide selection of quality Lions, Tigers & Wild Cats Educational Books at a discount price. Right now we are offering our Fall Special: Enter the coupon code “fall” at checkout for 40% off listed prices! Visit our website for a full list of books!

Birds are such interesting creatures because there are so many special characteristics that make them different from any other animal in the world. Here are 10 interesting bird facts:

1. For birds like Blue Jays and Red Cardinals, you can tell the difference between a male and female based on how colorful they are
2. There are over 10,000 known species of birds in the world
3. 400 of those species are endangered
4. The smallest fully grown bird is the Bee Hummingbird at just 2.75 inches tall and 0.056 ounces
5. The largest fully grown bird is the North African Ostrich at 345 pounds and 9 feet tall
6. Over half of all bird species lives in a tropical forest
7. There is only one species of wingless bird – it’s called the Kiwi and lives in New Zealand
8. Birds fly in a “V” pattern because it saves them energy while pushing themselves through the air by flapping their wings. They air that’s already in motion from the bird in front of them.
9. The only bird that does not benefit from flying in the “V” pattern is the front bird.
10. The fastest bird by foot is the ostrich that can run up to 45 mph.

Beyda and Associates has an entire section on birds that include interesting facts and stories. You can read about eagles, wild hawks, pelicans, and more! To learn more about our feathery friends, view the bird selection of Beyda and Associates or call 866-702-3932.