Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, March 8, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
Every person has nearly 400,000 radioactive atoms disintegrating into other atoms in his or her body each second.
It is a comparatively recent insight that light travels from the object to the eye. Until 400 years ago, it was thought that there was "something" in the eye that went out and saw the object.
The surface of the Sahara is strewn with milling and grinding stones from the new Stone Age. Biologists and other scientists believe the stones were used to grind wild grain-like grasses that once grew there.
It cost $4,000 per inch to build an interstate highway project on the fringe of New York City in the late 1970s - more than $250 million per mile.
In 1816, the Scottish physicist David Brewster invented the kaleidoscope, patented it and sold thousands per day. However, many other people began to construct kaleidoscopes, and it became impossible to sue them all. Brewster made virtually no money out of his invention after the first few days.
The average daily yield of an oil well at full production in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field is 10,000 barrels.
Internal combustion engines lose efficiency at the rate of more than 2 percent for every 1,000 feet of altitude. At Lake Titicaca, at 12,500 feet in the Andes, motorcars and powered boats lose about 30 percent of their rated horsepower.
The custom of being clean-shaven is said to date back to Alexander the Great, who had a scanty beard. A century later, shaving entered the Roman world in the West, and the Eastern world abandoned the custom.
The African eagle, swooping in at better than a hundred miles per hour, can brake to a halt within 20 feet.