Fastfacts


Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, April 5, 2004

Things you always never wanted to know

  • Americans in 2001 spent $25 billion on recreational watercraft. That's more than the gross domestic product of North Korea.

  • Sixty percent of Americans say celebrities get special treatment from the legal system because they have a lot of money. But a majority also says Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant will receive or have received fair trials.

  • Singapore Airlines has begun offering the longest regularly scheduled, nonstop commercial air service in history: 18 hours and 15 minutes, between Singapore and Los Angeles. The 9,298-mile flight offers movies screens for each seat, complimentary champagne, a 12-page menu and buffet.

  • A national survey found that 45 percent of American women contemplate cosmetic surgery. Of the women surveyed who had already had one such procedure, 87 percent said they wanted another.

  • Ben Jonson, the English dramatist and poet, was working as an actor and playwright in 1598 when he killed another actor in a duel. He was tried, and successfully defended himself by claiming the right of clergy.

  • Lord Byron, the English romantic poet, was born with a clubfoot, about which much has been written. But was it his right foot or his left? Scholars today are not sure, and literature on the disability has always been foggy.

  • A mosquito has 47 teeth.

  • During World War II, the American air force stationed at Gander, Newfoundland, found that Eskimo hunters who had never before seen a machine were top technicians.

  • Cavalry captured a fleet during the wars of the French Revolution. Gen. Charles Pichegru, invading Holland in the winter of 1794, found Dutch ships icebound off the coast. He led his Hussars in a charge across the frozen waters and seized the vessels.