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Illustration by Arnie Bermudez
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 2, 2004
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Things you always never wanted to know
Gold is the 16th-rarest chemical element found on Earth. If all the gold produced in the world in the past five centuries were melted down, the result could be compressed into a cube measuring 50 feet on each side.
Blackbird, a chief of the Omaha Indian tribe, was buried sitting on his favorite horse.
The Minoans of ancient Crete had surprisingly advanced plumbing around 2000 B.C. Well-engineered drain systems, supply pipes and a flush toilet were found in the palace of Knossos when it was excavated in 1899.
When racing at top speed, the jackrabbit bounds, or broadjumps, up to 15 feet.
John D. Rockefeller made his first contribution to a philanthropic cause in 1855 at the age of 16. By the time he died, 82 years later, the oil magnate had given away $531,326,842.
At the height of inflation in Germany in the early 1920s, one American dollar was equal to 4.2 trillion German marks.
The Indians of Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America near Antarctica, wore no clothes to protect themselves from the sleet-filled air and icy waters.
The venom from a sea snake is 10 times as poisonous as that of a cobra, and has killed people within two and a half hours.
In 1932, a "continuous mass" of sea snakes 10 feet wide and 70 miles long was observed in the Straits of Malacca.
George Washington Carver, who researched crops such as the peanut to lead the South away from a one-crop economy (cotton), was illiterate until the age of 20.
Benjamin Franklin was cautious in performing his famous kite experiment in which he charged a Leyden jar with electricity drawn from the clouds. The first two men who tried to repeat the experiment were electrocuted.
The Central American country of Costa Rica, which has a population of more than 2 million people, does not have an army.
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