Why is 6 afraid of 7?

What does the following represent?

N N N N N N N

A A A A A A A

C C C C C C C

An evil man kidnapped someone and made them take one of two pills. One was harmless, but the other was poisonous. Whichever pill the victim took, the kidnapper took the other one. The victim took their pill with water and died. The kidnapper survived. How did the kidnapper get the harmless pill?

Its something that each of us devours,
Not just us but birds, beats, trees, and flowers,
Frets iron and nibbles steel,
Toil hard stones to meal,
Exterminates king, collapse town,
And blows the mountains down.

Why do we preferably have round manhole covers and not square ones?

Here is what you have to do. You have to throw a ball as hard as you can but it must return back to you even if it does not bounce at anything. Also, you have nothing attached to the ball. There is no one on the other end to catch that ball and throw it back at you.

How will you do it?

John went to meet his friend Jacob, but when he was about to reach the main gate, John notices that Jacob had a mighty dog who was fastened to the tree. The chain is long enough that it allows the dog to reach the main gate.

How can the John reach the main gate?

You are given a cube that is made with the help of 10x10x10 smaller cubes summing up to a total of 1000 smaller cubes. You are asked to take off one layer of the cubes.
How many remain now?

Can you think of a smallest +ve number such that if we shuffle the digits of the number, the new number becomes double the original number?

A non-stop marathon is the shared favourite sport of three brothers.

*The oldest one is fat and short and trudges slowly on.
*The middle brother's tall and slim and keeps a steady pace.
*The youngest runs just like the wind, speeding through the race.

"He is young in years, we let him run!" the other two brothers explained, "'because though he is surely number one, he is second, in a way." Why is it?