Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, April 30, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
The Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, forbade clerks in holy orders to include surgery in their practice of medicine so they would not spill blood. Surgery was left to men who were neither scholars nor gentlemen. Thus a distinction grew between physicians - who were members of a learned profession - and surgeons, who practiced a menial trade, often doubling as barbers or dentists.
The Bunsen burner was not invented by the German chemist Robert W. Bunsen - he merely popularized its use.
Thanks to the electric light, Americans today sleep 1.5 hours less each day than American of eight decades ago. A University of Florida report noted that most adults sleep 7.5 hours per day and that about 15 percent sleep less than 6.5 hours.
General Lew Wallace's bestseller "Ben-Hur," published in 1880, was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a pope.
Earth's magnetic field has flip-flopped north and south at least 171 times. The reversals have been confirmed in rocks in many parts of the world and dated by fossils and radioactive isotopes.
The scientist Otto Heinrich Warburg, though Jewish, was allowed to work in Nazi Germany. He was working on cancer research, and Hitler feared throat cancer. When Warburg was routinely removed from his post in 1941, Hitler ordered the removal canceled and made it clear that this was an exception.