The Java programming language, invented by Canadian James Gosling of Sun Microsystems of California, increased interactivity and brought complex graphics and animation to the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s. Gosling graduated from the University of Calgary, earned a Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University and joined Sun in 1984.

More than 150 major-league baseball players are using the Sam Bat. Before Ottawa’s Sam Holman came along, hitters were breaking an average of 72 bats each a year. Holman’s bats are made of hard maple rather than ash, cutting the break rate to as little as 24 for some players.

Céline Dion is part way through a three-year gig at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, performing in a $95 million (U.S.) arena specially built just for her. It’s not just songs but a multimedia spectacular with a cast of 59 on stage and on the largest LED screen in North America.

The University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art in Taos has an entire section devoted to the work of Saskatchewan-born Agnes Martin, one of the greats of 20th-century painting. Martin, who moved to Taos in the 1950s, paints pastel abstractions, which have sold for as much as $2.6 million (U.S.).

The Jarnac Comet Survey, which scans the heavens for comets that could threaten to crash into Earth, operates outside Vail, Ariz., under the direction of Canadian astronomer David H. Levy. He named the operation after Jarnac Pond, near Ripon, Que., where, as a young man living in Montréal, he first fell in love with the stars.

The Newfoundland Club of Southern California, founded by expat Austin Elliott, meets once a month for the screech-in, a ritual that involves kissing a cod and drinking screech - a potent dark rum. Members remain true to tradition, although cod are so scarce, they have to pucker up for other fish instead.

Born on a farm near Fort Erie, Ont., in 1874, J. L. Kraft, founder of Kraft Foods Inc., became involved in Chicago's cheese industry in 1903 and quickly realized the product needed a longer shelf life. His sterilization method for processing cheese, patented in 1916, made cheese safer and kept it fresher longer.

Ferguson Jenkins, born in Chatham, Ont., in 1943, is the only Canadian in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. But Larry Walker of Maple Ridge, B.C., could be the next. Walker has won the National League's Most Valuable Player award, and led the league in batting three times.

Teams from Alberta North, Alaska, the Yukon, Nunavut and Greenland are permanent particpants in the Arctic Winter Games every two years in dog mushing, snowshoeing, the knuckle-hop, the one-foot high kick, and traditional Dene games - among a raft of other sports. Alberta North finished first, ahead of Alaska and the Yukon in 2004.