Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
During the next minute, 100 people will die and 240 will be born. The world's population increases by 140 people per minute.
The first president born in the 20th century didn't take office until 1961: John F. Kennedy.
A French term for wartime propaganda, "bourrage de crane," means "brain-stuffing."
One of the great but little-known treasures of New York City is a 40-acre hemlock forest. The grove stands on the banks of the Bronx River, in the New York Botanical Garden.
Lightning strikes Earth a hundred times every second, from the 1,800 thunderstorms in progress at any given moment.
Troops returning from Gettysburg restored order in the New York City draft riots of 1863. But by then, 1,200 people had been killed.
In early Egyptian history, silver was more valued than gold because silver was less often found in nugget form.
In one 10-day period late in his reign, the first Ming Emperor, Hung Wu, had to approve 1,660 documents dealing with 3,391 separate matters.
"I am so rich that I just wiped out a hundred thousand francs," said Picasso, after making a new picture he didn't like disappear from the canvas.
Pierre and Marie Curie refused to take out a patent on the process of making radium. Radium, they declared, belonged to the world - no one had any right to profit from it.
The first contraceptive diaphragms - centuries ago - were citrus rinds, like half an orange rind.
Because of a rapidly increasing population, the ancient Romans built tenement houses. They were made cheaply, of a kind of concrete, and usually had three stories.