Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
So they could be picked out quickly, slaves under the last emperors of China, the Manchus, wore pigtails.
At the age of 2, William Schwenck Gilbert was kidnapped from his parents in Naples, Italy, and ransomed for 25 francs. He wrote of the kidnapping in two of his operettas with Arthur Sullivan: "The Gondoliers" and "The Pirates of Penzance."
From the monarchs' investment of $6,000 in Columbus' first voyage, Spain had a return of $1,750,000 in gold after one century.
When George Washington became president in 1789, a king ruled in France, a Holy Roman Emperor ruled much of Europe, a czarina ruled Russia, a shogun ruled Japan and an emperor ruled China. Of these, only the office of president remains.
There were 15 nations that gave women the right to vote before the United States did in 1920. The earliest were New Zealand in 1893, Australia in 1902 and Finland in 1906.
Winston Churchill's prodigious memory made it possible for him to repeat verbatim a lecture or a whole Shakespearean play.
Henry Ford was convinced the soybean was a promising raw material. He was sure it could be converted into products with commercial value. Ford once appeared at a convention in all his attire, except for his shoes, which were produced from soybeans.