Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
Alligators and old people have something in common - they can hear notes only up to 4,000 vibrations per second.
When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, 20 percent of the people in the United States were slaves.
On Aug. 15, 1978, 33 years to the day after V-J Day, China and Japan signed a "peace and friendship" treaty, formally ending their part in World War II.
Russia built more than 10,000 miles of railroad between 1896 and 1900 as it drove the Trans-Siberian Railroad steadily eastward, regardless of the cost. Thirty-two tunnels were smashed through mountains.
It takes 40 minutes to hard-boil an ostrich egg.
Though his mathematical genius dominated Western scientific thought for well over two centuries, Sir Isaac Newton considered his finest work to be his interpretation of the biblical Book of Daniel. He devoted several millions of words in his manuscript to the book, all of it disregarded by posterity.
The spectacle of a public execution witnessed in Paris so horrified Leo Tolstoy that he said, "Never again under any circumstances will I take service under any form of government whatsoever."
It has been estimated that the Spaniards killed 1.5 million American Indians within a few years of Columbus discovering the New World.
One group of people, and only one, has been found to be totally free of cancer in all of its forms. It is the Hunza people of northwest Kashmir, who are also known for their longevity.
In 1777, George Washington had the entire Continental army - then 4,000 men - vaccinated. This action, considered controversial at the time because few American doctors believed in vaccination, may have saved the army as a fighting force.