Sonic Hedgehog protein

Even though this sounds ridiculous, the gene that helps determine physical structures in people, including teeth and appendages, has been named Sonic Hedgehog (SHH). Yes, after the video game character. It is one of three hedgehog homologues in mammals.

An acre is a measurement of area equal to 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet. That is 4046.8 square meters. It was supposedly originally defined as the amount a man could plow with an ox in one day.

"Land der Berge, Land am Strome" (Land of Mountains, Land on the River") is the national anthem of Austria. The music is adapted from a work by Mozart, itself adapted from an earlier work by Johann Holzer. The lyrics were written in 1946 by Paula von Preradović.

A lepton is a fermion (a sub-atomic particle with 1/2 integer spin) that is opposed to a quark. An electron is a kind of lepton.

The Helga pictures are a series of nearly 250 studies by Andrew Wyeth of his neighbor Helga Testorf, mainly painted between 1971-85 (though the final Helga picture was made in 2002).

The clarinet is the only single reed woodwind usually found in orchestras. (The saxophone is the other single reed woodwind.)

Raccoon Lodge

The Raccoon Lodge was the fraternity Ralph and Ed belonged to on 'The Honeymooners" (Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, chapter).

Mary I of England, the daughter of Catharine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII, was known as 'Bloody Mary' Tudor for her persecution of Protestants.

St. Joseph, Missouri was the gateway to the wild west and was the beginning point for the Pony Express, which ran to Sacramento, CA from 1860 to 1861.

The Medes were an ancient Iranian people with an empire flourishing in 6th century BC. They were eventually supplanted by Cyrus and the Persian Empire.

Albert Einstein (born on this date, Pi Day, 1879), was chosen as Time magazine's Person of the Century in 2000. Let's hear it for the egghead!

Bangladeshi national anthem

Rabindranath Tagore wrote the words to the national anthems of both Bangladesh ("Amar Shonar Bangla") and India ("Jana Gana Mana").

Fauvism

Fauvism was an early 20th-century art movement that emphasized strong color and brush strokes. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and Andre Derain.

Hydrogen is the most abundant of the chemical elements, constituting roughly 75% of the universe's elemental mass, though estimates vary up to 90%.

In FIFA football, the goal is 24 feet wide and eight feet high (7.3 m by 2.44 m).