| 1601/
A mole can dig 60 feet of tunnel or more per day. This is
equivalent to a five-foot woman burrowing the length of two
football fields, while pushing two-ton objects out of her
way.
1602/ One fifth of a
mole's body weight is lungs, to be able to cope with air that
is laden with carbon dioxide. They have twice the blood of
any mammal their size, with twice the amount of oxygen-bearing
hemoglobin. Moles consume half their weight daily, but use
only five times as much energy digging as when they are at
rest.
1603/ Possibly the largest
bird of all times is Dromornis stirtoni, known from 15 million
year old sites in Central Australia. Some estimates suggest
it weighed as much as 450kg!
1604/ The deepest mine
is a gold mine in South Africa; in 1977 the Western Deep Levels
Mine reached a depth of 3,581 metres. Most mines descend to
about 1,000 metres.
1605/ The worlds largest
fake pineapple can be found in Nambour, Queensland, Australia.
1606/ Statistically, for a coin to fall heads 50 consecutive
times it would take a million men tossing coins 10 times a
minute and 40 hours a week - and then it would only happen
once every 9 centuries!
1607/ The Lazy Rule was
discovered during the Renaissance period in Europe. It was
used for multiplying two numbers larger than 5. For example:
9 x 6 = 54 can be solved by first taking each number from
10 to obtain their complements, 4 and 1. 4 is taken from 9
( or 1 from 6 ), and the result multiplied by 10. This is
then added to the complements’ product ( 4 x 1 ), obtaining
54. This method was then improved and became what is now known
as "complementary multiplication". Suppose you want
to multiply 95 and 97 together. Notice that the difference
between 95 and 100 is 5, and the difference between 97 and
100 is 3. As 95 - 3 = 97 - 5 = 92 and 3 x 5 = 15, thus the
answer is 9215. If the numbers are larger than 100, you add
the difference instead of subtracting. Simple!
1608/ A whip does not
make a cracking sound because it hits something... it does
because the tip of the whip is travelling faster than the
speed of sound (760 miles per hour).
1609/ It was reported
in 1999 that one panel of Gaetano Previati's 1912 triptych
"Fall of the Angels" hung upside down for three
months in Rome's leading modern art museum, until a group
of students spotted the blunder.
1610/ The $100 dollar
bill accounts for approximately 80% of U.S. currency in circulation
abroad.
1611/ A 'jiffy' is an
actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
1612/ One of the reasons
J.S. Bach chose to write the Coffee Cantata is that coffee
used to be considered a wicked vice. All sorts of laws were
passed against it, some places even had spies roaming the
city, sniffing the air trying to catch people in the act of
roasting coffee beans. These days Americans consume 4,848
cups of coffee per second, 24 hours a day.
1613/ The world's three
richest people have assets that exceed the combined wealth
of the 48 least developed countries, according to a recent
United Nations report on global inequality.
1614/ A monkey was once
tried and convicted for smoking a cigarette in South Bend,
Indiana.
1615/ The average scalp
has 100,000 hairs. Redheads have the least at 80,000; brown
and black haired people have about 100,000; and blondes have
the most at 120,000. Hair is the fastest growing tissue in
the body, second only to bone marrow. 35 metres of hair fibre
is produced every day on the average adult scalp.
1616/ Some studies indicate
that mortality (death) from cancer, including lung, colorectal,
and prostate cancers, is lower among people with higher selenium
blood levels or intake. Also, the incidence of nonmelanoma
skin cancer is significantly higher in areas of the United
States with low soil selenium levels. Brazil Nuts are amongst
the highest natural sources of selenium.
1617/ A large unsightly
bony bump around the big toe joint is called a bunion. The
main cause of a bunion is congenital, and shoes may have very
little to do with the formation of a bunion, but can be an
aggravating factor.
1618/ Nails are made
of a natural protein called keratin. Keratin is also found
in the hair & skin. Nails grow at about 1 mm per week
and take about three to five months to replace themselves.
1619/ Geckos have the
best eyesight out of all the lizards. They have scalloped
pupils that when contracted, can completely shut out all light.
1620/ The oldest mentioning
of something resembling a pencil was by Philip of Thesalonica,
a Greek poet who lived around 20 B.C. He described the use
of writing tools made of lead in disc-shaped pieces.
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