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1081/ Auroras (such as the
'Northern Lights') typically form between 80-120km (50-75
miles) above ground, but they can be up to 1000km high (over
600 miles).
1082/ Artificial
Hips were first developed in the early years of the 20th
century; although hip replacement operations didn't become
routine until the 1970s.
1083/ According to scientific
tests on cricketers the batsmen who are most likely to hit
a cricket ball for six are those who watch it for the shortest
period of time.
1084/ The special fur on a
Polar Bear makes them invisible to night vision goggles, infrared
camera and ultraviolet protection; and is three times more
efficient at trapping the rays from the Sun then man made
solar panels.
1085/ To cure hiccups...Put
your fingers in your ears, and get a friend to slowly feed
you a glass of water. Try it. It works.
1086/ In the wake of the Wall
Street Crash in October 1929, by 1932 more then 2000 US
banks had collapsed, foreign trade had fallen by 50%, unemployment
had reached 25%, and investors had lost the equivalent in
todays money of $250 billion dollars.
1087/ Over 940,000 depleted
uranium missiles were fired by the Allies during the Gulf
War.
1088/ The biggest Nuclear
Bomb admitted to at the height of the Cold War was a 100-megaton
super hydrogen device Nikita Khrushchev announced in East
Berlin in 1963. This could have produced a crater 1.8 miles
wide and an 8.6 mile wide fireball.
1089/ Average lifespan globally
has gone from 36.2 in 1900 to 65.4 in 1995 and is expected
on current trends to reach 72.5 by 2025. (In the UK average
lifespan for men in 2000 was 74.6 years; 80 for women)
1090/ Astronomer Royal, Sir
Harold Spencer Jones, dismissed the idea of space flight
as 'bunk' in 1957 - a fortnight before the Soviet Union launched
Sputnik 1.
1091/ During the 'Boston Tea
Party' of 1773 - 342 chests of tea were thrown into Boston
Harbour.
1092/ Scientists can track
the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere by comparing
modern air with that trapped in air bubbles in Greenland's
ice. These measurements seem to show that there are 360 parts
per million today, as against 315 parts per million in 1958
and 270 parts per million in the time of the dinosaurs.
1093/ In Scandinavia, 16,000
out of 85,000 Swedish lakes are said to have become acidified
due to acid rain.
1094/ Todays world
population stands at about 6 billion, and is expected
to reach 10 billion by 2050.
1095/ The United States recycles
25 percent of its annual 180 million tons of household rubbish.
1096/ Livestock excrete 130
times as much waste as people.
1097/ Sir
Isaac Newton is not only credited with the laws of gravity
but is also credited with inventing the cat flap.
1098/ Frankenstein eat your
heart out!...Robert J White, Professor of Neurosurgery at
Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio wrote in
a 1999 Scientific American article that his colleagues have
already taken the first steps towards human
head transplantation by developing pumps which would lower
the temperature of blood in the to-be transplanted head to
10 centigrade (50F). This cooling would help the head shut
down for the necessary hour or so while it was being reconnected.
1099/ Bill
Gates house on the shores of Lake Washington, Seattle
took seven years to build and was inspired by the Space Station
in the film 2001. It is run by 100 computers in a five room
'brain centre'. It cost over $50 million to build, and is
estimated to be worth $100 million.
1100/ The British
Office for National Statistics reported in 1999 that for
the first time, households were spending more on leisure than
on housing, food or transport.
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
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