Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower, which opened in 1889, created at its peak the highest man-made love nest so that he could carry on his personal trysts. The aerie is now open to all visitors.
When George Washington became president in 1789, the average life expectancy was 34.5 years for males and 36.5 years for females.
Lichens have been detected on bare rock in Antarctica as close as 264 miles from the South Pole. That's the southern-most plant growth.
About 25 percent of all male Americans between the ages of 10 and 15 were "gainfully employed" at the turn of the 20th century. By 1970, so few in that age bracket were employed that the Census Bureau didn't bother to make inquiries about them.
The inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel, also invented plywood and worked out detailed plans for prefabricating plywood houses that could be easily transported to the construction site for quick production.
In the early 1860s, a New York firm offered a prize of $10,000 for a satisfactory substitute for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls. John Wesley Hyatt, an American inventor, won the prize. He devised what came to be known as celluloid, the first synthetic plastic.
Although a writing machine was patented in England as early as 1714, the first practical typewriter was built by an American, William Burt, in 1829. The chief use of the early machines, which produced embossed writing, was for the blind.