Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday, February 26, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
In the '70s, the Rhode Island Legislature proposed a $2 tax on every act of sexual intercourse.
During his career as an actor and light-opera singer, DeWolf Hopper recited "Casey at the Bat" at least 10,000 times.
Half of the people in the United States live in just eight of the 50 states: Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, California, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey and New York.
Robert E. Lee was a superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, but had never commanded in battle before he became commander of the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War.
On Feb. 18, 1979, snow fell on the Sahara. A half-hour storm in southern Algeria stopped traffic, but within a few hours all the snow had melted.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the Elizabethan champion of the scientific method, died in pursuit of a better way to preserve food. He caught a severe cold after attempting to preserve a chicken by filling it with snow.
All the men in an entire city were needed to pull the 4,000 oars of the largest ship (420 feet long, 57 feet wide) built by King Ptolemy IV of ancient Egypt. Because they were cumbersome and difficult to maneuver, the ships usually were useless.
The oldest continuously inhabited city, Damascus, in present-day Syria, was populated at least as early as 2000 B.C.
Dice have been discovered in the excavations near the Nineveh, in modern-day Iraq.
Chimpanzees have been trained recognize vocabularies of 100 to 200 words. They can also distinguish different language patterns.