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541/ People in the United
States eat about 800,000,000 pounds of peanut butter each
year.
542/ A newborn giant panda
is only the size of a stick of butter.
543/ An elephant herd can
move fifty miles in a day.
544/ Some male songbirds sing
more than 2000 times each day.
545/ Astronauts get two or
three inches taller out in space.
546/ Buffalo are a red colour
when they are born. The colour changes to brown about two
months after they are born.
547/ Less than 30% of the
coral reefs in Japan, Philippines and Costa Rica are in good
or excellent condition.
548/ Oceans cover 71% of the
Earth's surface - 360 million square km.
549/ The average depth of
the ocean is 4km.
550/ Moonstones are so named
because they have a soft, luminous glow much like moonlight.
551/ More than 100 years ago,
the felt hat makers of England used mercury to stabilize wool.
Most of them eventually became poisoned by the fumes, as demonstrated
by the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Breathing mercury's fumes over a long period of time will
cause erethism, a disorder characterized by nervousness, irritability,
and strange personality changes.
552/ The Salvation Army's
motto is 'Blood and Fire'.
553/ The San Blas Indian women
of Panama consider giant noses a mark of great beauty. They
paint black lines down the centre of their noses to make them
appear longer.
554/ The chief oil in the
oil paints used by artists is linseed oil, made from the seed
of the flax plant.
555/ The colour black absorbs
heat. White reflects it.
556/ The sound heard by a
listener when holding a seashell to his ear does NOT come
from the shell itself. It is the echo of the blood pulsing
in the listeners own ear.
557/ The statue by Auguste
Rodin that has come to be called 'The Thinker' was not meant
to be a portrait of a man in thought. It is a portrait of
the poet Dante.
558/ The country with the
most post offices is India with over 152,792 compared with
just over 38,000 in the United States.
559/ The diameter of the wire
in a standard paper clip is 1 millimetre or about 0.04 of
an inch.
560/ The U.S Automobile Association
was formed in 1905 for the purpose of providing 'scouts' who
could warn motorists of hidden police traps.
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facts...
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