Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, May 3, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
The North and South poles trace a complete circle relative to the stars every 26,000 years.
Marco Polo first thought Kublai Khan possessed the secret of the alchemists "because he has the art of producing money." China was using paper money, a medium that hadn't been heard of in Polo's Europe.
Believers in Jainism, a religion practiced in India by about 2 million people, do not believe in killing any living thing. Orthodox Jains do not ride automobiles, for the tires may kill. They do not wear shoes, for shoes will kill insects more surely than if one walks barefoot.
Human reproduction follows lunar time rather than solar time. Gestation is about 266 days - nine lunar months - and the menstrual period is one lunar month.
Because regular movements of electric current take place in the heart and in the brain, there are paper-thin, tiny fields of magnetism around the torso and around the cranium of every human being. But man does not possess, as far as is known, an organ that can exert the force.
The expression "wolves at the door" meant something else entirely through 1420 and 1438, when wolves roamed the streets of Paris and wolf packs could be found in all the forests of Europe.
A Seeing Eye dog, or any dog trained to guide the blind, cannot tell a red light from a green one. When it leads its master across the street, it watches the traffic flow to tell when it is safe to cross.