| 1181/
Sixty Five million years ago, a ten-kilometre rock from space
hit the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America. The resulting
pall of dust, which drowned out the sunlight for nearly a
year - not to mention vicious forest fires and huge tidal
waves - wiped out most of the animal species on Earth, including
the dinosaurs.
1182/ In 1973 Bhutan
issued a stamp that looked like a record. Put it on a record
player and it would actually play the Bhutanese national anthem!
1183/ Thomas Edison invented
the talking doll in 1888.
1184/ In 2000, across
the global economy, travel and tourism accounted for around
11 per cent of world exports, goods and services, surpassing
trade in food, textiles, and chemicals.
1185/ Nearly 80 per cent
of international tourists come from Europe and the Americas,
while only 15 per cent come from East Asia and the Pacific,
and five per cent from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.
1186/ Around 3.5 per
cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from air travel, a share
that is expected to increase as air travel does.
1187/ The secret to balsa wood's lightness can only be seen
with a microscope. The cells are big and very thinned walled,
so that the ratio of solid matter to open space is as small
as possible. Most woods have gobs of heavy, plastic-like cement,
called lignin, holding the cells together. In balsa, lignin
is at a minimum. Only about 40% of the volume of a piece of
balsa is solid substance. Balsa is third or fourth lightest
wood in the world.
1188/ In 1870 Thomas
Adams introduced Black Jack, the first manufactured flavoured
gum, and one that is still sold today.
1189/ Patagonia, in the
south of Argentina and Chile, became so popular for reclusive
celebrities (including George Soros, Sylvester Stallone and
Ted Turner) in the 1990s that at one stage, a sixth of the
region was said to be owned by 350 foreigners.
1190/ A poll of 1,004
Americans for TIME and CNN in 1996 found that 82 percent believed
in the healing power of prayer, and 64 per cent that doctors
should pray with their patients.
1191/ Contributing to
about 300,000 deaths per year, obesity is only exceeded by
smoking as a cause of death. These two health issues are connected
for some children. A Harvard University study found that children
as young as nine were trying to control their weight by smoking
cigarettes. Researchers found that 17% of girls and 15% of
boys, between the ages of nine and fourteen, had experimented
with smoking or were considering smoking because of their
concern for weight control.
1192/ 60.8 million Americans
have some form of cardiovascular disease, ranging from congenital
heart defects to high blood pressure and hardening of the
arteries.
1193/ Grapefruit was
discovered in the West Indies in the early 1700s and first
introduced to Florida in the 1820s. In the United States today,
most grapefruit is still grown in Florida.
1194/ Walter Diemer,
an accountant for Fleer, invented modern bubble gum, in 1928.
Pink was the only coloring nearby when he made the first batch
and so the trend was set. The gum was named Dubble Bubble.
1195/ 22% of all the
plant species on the planet are in Brazil. Brazil also has
the most species of mammals (524), fresh water fish, insects
and parrots of anywhere.
1196/ The UK National
Lottery says that 27% of female winners keep the winning ticket
in their bra.
1197/ Kenneth Grahame,
the author of the children's classic, The Wind in the Willows,
was the Secretary of the Bank of England 1898 - 1908. The
book was published in 1908, the year in which he retired from
the Bank. It is possible that some of the characters in the
book were based on those people he knew and worked with.
1198/ Although platinum was used by the South American Indians
before the fifteenth century. They could not melt it, but
developed a technique for sintering it with gold on charcoal,
to produce artefacts. A pre-Columbian platinum ingot was found
which contained 85% pure platinum.
1199/ "Coffee" comes from the Latin form of the
genus Coffea, a member of the Rubiaceae family which includes
more than 500 genera and 6,000 species of tropical trees and
shrubs.
1200/ The average adult male Polar Bear weighs between 850
and 900 pounds, but one was killed in 1960 that weighed 2,210
pounds. That is the weight of a small family car!
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