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Illustration by Holly Randall
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, April 9, 2004
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Things you always never wanted to know
When pole-vaulters land, they absorb up to 20,000 pounds of pressure per square inch on the joints of their tubular bones.
Track star Jesse Owens beat a racehorse over a 100-yard course in 1936.
A perpetual-motion machine would violate the laws of thermodynamics. Nobody has succeeded in producing one, and nobody ever will.
Coal dust sprayed by aircraft over Russian fields absorbs the early spring sunshine. The resulting warmth melts the snow a little sooner.
Egyptians lived an average of only 35 years, and the pyramids took at least 20 years to make. The average Parisian in the Middle Ages lived only 45 years, yet the city built Notre Dame, which took 137 years. The U.S. space program that put men on the moon consumed only one-sixth of an adult's lifetime.
While Columbus was seeking new worlds to the West, Italian engineers were rebuilding the Kremlin in Moscow.
If the population of Earth continued growing at its present rate, by 3530 the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of Earth. By 6826, the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the known universe.
Lord Byron's daughter, Augusta Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, was an accomplished mathematician and associate of Charles Babbage, who designed the principles of the first general-purpose digital computer. She is credited with developing the essential ideas of computer programming.
The method of house numbering using odd numbers on one side of the street and even numbers on the other was instituted by the United States.
Scientists estimate they could fill a 1,000-volume encyclopedia with the coded instructions in the DNA of a single human cell if the instructions were translated into English.
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