|
4221/ The friction between the
tides and the ocean bed slows the rate at which the Earth
spins on its axis. As a result, the day is getting longer
- by about 1/1000th of a second per century.
4222/ The Earth actually completes
1 revolution on its axis in 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds.
In other words, the Earth revolves 366 times every 365 days.
4223/ The Sun's average distance
from the Earth is 150 million kilometres/ 93 million miles;
but because the path of the Earth's orbit around the Sun is
an ellipse, not a circle, the actual distance varies by about
1 per cent on either side of this figure. The Sun's light
takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the Earth.
4224/ Between 1400 and 1500 the
number of universities in Europe increased from 20 to 70.
4225/ The heart is the body's
largest muscle - and it needs to be. Its workload and its
stamina are phenomenal. It is the most efficient pump ever
created. Every minute of every day, throughout an entire adult
lifetime, depending on the demands made upon it, it pumps
out, and reprocesses anything between 4 and 24 litres 8.5
and 51 pints of blood. It not only circulates this huge quantity;
it sends it on its way recharged with the oxygen essential
to the functioning of all the body's organs, the brain included.
And it does so from a reservoir of blood that amounts to only
about 5 litres/10.5 pints in total.
4226/ The Moon's mass is only
1/80th of the Earth's.
4227/ In 1784, John Michell presented
an argument in favour of the proposition that the stars were
light years distant from the Earth. It would be another 54
years before the German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel
would prove the truth of Michell's assertion by making the
first-ever measurement of the distance to a star.
4228/ A man sitting 4 feet/1
metre away from the TV may be exasperated by his wife's complaints
that she is missing all the jokes. But if she is sitting 6
feet / 1.5 metres away, the volume of sound reaching here
ears will be less than half that reaching his.
4229/ The highest wind speed
ever recorded was on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, on April
12th 1934. It registered 371 kilometres/ 231 miles per hour.
That is three times hurricane force.
4230/ A proton weighs 1,836 times
more than an electron.
4231/ In 1956, the Texan geologist
William Maurice Ewing showed that a 55,000 kilometre/35,000
mile long mountain ridge wound its way right round the world,
in the middle of the ocean floor.
4232/ The term 'tectonic plates'
first appeared in a journal article in1968, and the term rapidly
replaced 'continental drift'.
4233/ The most destructive earthquake
on record occurred in China's Shanshi province in 1556. It
spread destruction over an area 500 kilometres/300 miles in
radius, and caused the death of an estimated 800,000 people.
4234/ Coal is not a mineral.
It is the fossilized remains of plants that flourished around
200 to 300 million years ago, in the periods known to geologists
as the Permian and the Carboniferous.
4235/ About three per cent of
the weight of sea water is accounted for by solids, of which
three quarters is common salt. It seems that the overall composition
of sea water has not changed to any marked extent for the
past 100 million years.
4236/ Three-quarters of all the
fresh water on land is not in the form of water, but ice.
And two-thirds of all the Earth's fresh water sits virtually
motionless on the Antarctic ice cap.
4237/ The ice sheets of Antarctica
are, on average, 2000 metres/7000 feet thick.
4238/ It took Einstein four years
after the publication of his special theory of relativity
to obtain an academic post. It was not until 1909 that he
was appointed to a modestly paid professorship in the University
of Zurich.
4239/ In 1909, a Danish botanist,
Wilhelm Ludwig Johannsen, coined the term gene to
denote 'heriditary factors' that were passed on in a process
of random selection at the moment of conception. And over
the next 20 years the science of genetics developed at breakneck
speed.
4240/ In the United States the
average incidence of twins is just under 1 in every 90 births
(In Afro-American women it is about 1 in 70 and in Caucasian
women 1 in 88; but in the case of Chinese women the figure
is around 1 in 300). While the average figure for triplets
is 1 in 7500, and for quadruplets 1 in 650,000.
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
Now
check out our other great facts and resources!
|
