Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
Continental snow cover would advance to the equator, and the oceans would eventually freeze if there were a permanent drop of just 1.6 to 2 percent in energy reaching Earth.
Roman Emperor Caligula appointed his favorite horse as a consul of Rome.
During his career, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov employed at least 151 pseudonyms. The best-known was Lenin (1870-1924).
To bemuse Axis agents about the imminence of a cross-channel Allied invasion of Nazi-held Europe, an actor posed as British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and conspicuously visited North Africa during WWII.
In England, from about the 15th to the 17th centuries, red was thought to help the sick. To bring down fevers, patients were dressed in red nightgowns and surrounded by as many red objects as possible.
The first aerial photograph was made from a balloon during the Civil War.
DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828) served as a New York state senator, lieutenant governor of New York and mayor of New York City simultaneously in 1811.