Living in London for two plus years was a wonderful experience for my husband, Jerele, and me. Among the many pleasures for me in particular-whose very work is words-was adding some British English to my vocabulary. There were many new uses of English that I heard in the U.K.; but two new words, in particular, became a permanent part of my personal lexicon.

One of those words was whinging. To say that someone is a whinger is to take our American English word whining to a whole new level. If a person is whining, that’s one thing. But if a person is whinging…now that moves complaining to a ludicrous level!

A second word that I added to my vocabulary while living in England was gobsmacked. The word is a combination of gob, which means mouth, and smacked and means “utterly astonished, astounded.” Gobsmacked is much stronger than just being surprised. The word is used for something that leaves you speechless or, otherwise, stops you dead in your tracks. It suggests that something is as surprising as if you had been suddenly hit in the face. When you are gobsmacked, you are completely dumbfounded, shocked.

Well, this week I was completely gobsmacked. Gobsmacked by a website. A new website called WolframAlpha.

Now, we all know the amazing results we can get from a search engine like Google. Google the word spackled and you get everything from the definition of spackled to the information that Spackled is an IU Studygroup for Philosophy/Psychology of Animal Cognition to an article on spackling paste in Wikipedia to information on how to clean spackled ceilings.

But the search engine WolframAlpha is something else entirely. Called a Computational Knowledge Engine, this search engine can do amazing things.

Here are a few examples:

Enter December 25, 1865, Atlanta, Georgia.

You find out that this date was a Monday and that the date was 143 years, 4 months, and 24 days ago. You learn that sunrise was at 7:26AM on this Christmas day in 1865 in Atlanta, Georgia, and sunset was at 4:35PM.

Now check December 25, 1945.

You find that this Christmas Day was a Tuesday, that it rained from 12AM to 10AM and then from about 12:30-4PM (total rain time about 13.5 hours), and that fog rolled in around 4:30-6:30PM. Temperature ranged from 29-41 throughout the day. You will also find out there was a waning gibbous moon.

Enter population Ireland.

You find out there are 4.3 million people in Ireland, with 162 people per square mile. Population is growing 1.67% per year. Average age is 78.2 (world rank 47th); median age is 34.6 (world rank 66th).

Then enter population Ireland vs. Greenland.

You learn that Greenland has 58,137 people, compared to Ireland’s 4.3 million and that Greenland is 98.65% smaller than Ireland.

Enter compare vanilla ice cream and vanilla pudding.

1/2 cup of vanilla ice cream has 177 calories, 7.5 grams fat, 25 grams carbs, and 10% phosphorus.

1/2 cup of vanilla pudding has 164 calories, 3.5 grams fat, 30 grams carbs, and 14% phosphorus.

The mass of vanilla ice cream is 3.8 oz and the mass of vanilla pudding is 5.2 oz. The serving density (grams per cubic centimeter) for vanilla ice cream is 0.9 g/cm (to third power) and for vanilla pudding 1.24 g/cm (to third power).

Enter cholesterol 215 female 52 years old.

You will discover that 55.8% of the female population in the United States 47-57 years old had lower cholesterol than 215 and 44.2% had higher cholesterol.

Enter Gone With the Wind.

Find out that the movie was released on January 17, 1941, ran 226 minutes long and had a box office total of 185.9 million dollars.

Then ask about Gone With the Wind as a book.

Published 1937 (72 years ago), approximate sales 30 million, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Enter Roswell, New Mexico and Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee.

Find out that Roswell has 45,199 population and Soddy-Daisy, 11,985. Distance between the two locations is 1112 miles. Elevation in Soddy-Daisy is 699 feet; Roswell, 3576 feet.

And I could keep searching. (If you go to the site, click Examples at the top of the home page and you will see the many categories that are covered.)

This website aims to take all the knowledge in civilization that can be computational knowledge and make it accessible in seconds.

Exploring the possibilities of this site leaves me utterly astonished and astounded.

I am truly gobsmacked.