|
1841/ The roaring lion
in the MGM logo was named Volney and lived at the Memphis
Zoo.
1842/ The sensors on
the feet of a red admiral butterfly are 200 times more sensitive
to sugar than the human tongue.
1843/ Orkney was first
written about by the Greek explorer Pytheas who circumnavigated
the islands in 224BC and claimed to have seen the edge of
the world, "Ultima Thule" (which was probably Foula
in Shetland).
1844/ The shortest scheduled
air route in the world is between Westray (population 700)
and Papa Westray (population 85), two of the Orkney islands.
The flight time 1.5 minutes!
1845/ Of the first 1000
numbers . 168 of them are prime numbers ie a number that can
be divided, without a remainder, only by itself and by 1.
(Find
a list of the first 10,000 primes here)
1846/ The coolest stars
are red. Their surface temperature is less than 5,500°F.
This compares to blue stars which are the hottest stars, with
a surface temperature of more than 37,000°F
1847/ A nautical mile
is equivalent to 1.1515 miles on land. A knot is the measure
of speed on water. One knot is 1 nautical mile per hour.
1848/ Tomato juice is
the official state beverage of Ohio.
1849/ When duck eggs
are boiled, the white turns bluish and the yolk turns a reddish
orange.
1850/ World shrimp production
is over 5 billion pounds a year, about 20 % of which is farmed.
1851/ The vanilla bean
is the fruit of a tropical American species of orchid. It
is the only orchid which produces anything edible and there
are more than 20,000 orchid varieties.
1852/ The 6th century
B.C. philosopher Pythagoras condemned the fava bean and would
not let his followers eat it. It was thought that they contained
the souls of the dead.
1853/ According to The
Great Food Almanac by Irena Chalmers, the last food that Elvis
Presley ate was four scoops of ice cream and 6 chocolate chip
cookies.
1854/ Lard is actually
rendered and clarified hog fat. With one tablespoon containing
116 calories, 13 grams of fat and 12 mg of cholesterol.
1855/ Latvia has 100
women to every 85.3 men; Qatar has 197.8 men for every 100
women.
1856/ The fastest-moving
large glacier is the Columbia Glacier, Alaska, US. It flows
between Anchorage and Valdez at an average rate of 20 m per
day.
1857/ The longest river
in Italy is the River Po at 652km.
1858/ Tornadoes are most
frequent in the Mississippi-Missouri valley of the central
US, especially during the months March to June.
1859/ At Darts, a score
of 26 is called 'bed and breakfast'. (More
darts terminology here)
1860/ Edison tried to
invent a gun-powder powered engine for a helicopter. Upon
blowing up his lab he decided to stop work on that project.
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
More
next week...
|
