|
| |
|
Did you
Know |
| |
During winter, the skating rinks in Moscow cover
more than 250,000 square metres of land.
The octopus doesn’t have a
blind spot.
When Galileo discovered Saturn in 1610, he had less
advanced equipment than we do now. He noticed
Saturn's disappearing/reappearing rings and thought
he was losing his mind!
The Great Wall of China, which
is over 2,500 miles, took over 1,700 years to build.
When someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles to
frown, but it only takes 4 muscles to extend your
arm and whack them in the head
|
Artificial Hips were first
developed in the early years of the 20th century;
although hip replacement operations didn't become
routine until the 1970s.
Snakes do not urinate. They secrete and excrete uric
acid, which is a solid, chalky, usually white
substance.
Ivy has long been identified
with immortality. Because it's always green and
clings tenaciously to life, it is often used as a
symbol of eternal life in Christian Art.
In 1900, Karl Lansteiner found that a sample of
human serum 'clumped' red blood cells from some
people but not others. He suggested that the
clumping was due to the reaction of 'antibody'
molecules in the recipient's serum with 'antigen'
molecules on the surface of the donor's red cells.
Leukaemia is the commonest
cancer affecting children.
|
In the early days of silent films, there was blatant
theft. Unscrupulous film companies would steal the
film, re-shoot a scene or two and release is as a
new production. To combat this, the Biograph company
put the company's trade mark initials AB somewhere
in every scene - on a door, or a wall or a window.
The largest crater on the
planet Mercury is called Caloris Planitia.
If you take one pound of cobwebs and spread them out
in one straight line, it will go around the earth 2
times.
One pencil can write about
50,000 English words before it wears out.
The kangaroo and the emu are the two animals found
on the Australian coat of arms.
|
The encephalization quotient,
or EQ - is a measure of brain size relative to body
size. A domestic cat has an EQ of 1.0 - it has just
the right size of brain to control its body size.
Dogs came in at 1:8; i.e. having a bit of spare
brain to play with. Chimps scored 3:0, and humans
scored 7:4!
In 1999, a report from the Office for National
Statistics in Britain showed that young men are
three times more likely to die in road accidents
than young women, and that most of the women who do
die are passengers. The particular danger areas
highlighted for men in the report were fifteen to
twenty-four and over seventy-five.
Human ears can detect sounds
between frequencies of 20hz and 20,000hz.
Because of an incredible anti-dehydration system,
some cactus species release 1/600th the moisture of
an ordinary plant the same size. Others are able to
drink water from humidity in the air.
10 percent of all human beings
ever born are alive at this very moment.
|
Melanophila beetles are attracted to forest fires
and lay their eggs on burnt wood.
A chameleon's tongue is twice
the length of its body.
The fur of the vicuna, a small member of the camel
family which lives only in the Andes Mountains of
Perus, is so fine that each hair is less than
two-thousandths of an inch thick. The animal was
considered sacred by the Incas, and only royalty
could wear its fleece.
Only certain types of wood can
be used in good violins; for proper resonance, backs
are maple, tops are spruce.
Coffee is the world trading system's second most
valuable legal commodity (behind oil), with over 10
billion pounds exported each year from over 70
countries. In 1996, the export of coffee beans
brought almost $2 billion to the people of Colombia
and $2.4 billion to the people of Brazil.
|
| |
|
Top of Page |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
