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Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, October 8, 2003
Things you always never wanted to know
It takes as much heat to turn one ounce of snow to water as it does to make an ounce of soup boil at room temperature.
Robert Louis Stevenson said that he had envisioned the entire story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in a dream and simply recorded it the way he saw it. Stevenson claimed to be able to dream plots for his stories at will.
In ancient Greece, no one died or gave birth on the island of Delos. Whenever someone became pregnant or ill, she or he was quickly removed from the sacred island and was kept away until nature took its course.
When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 mph. To photograph the event, a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second.
Tibetan monks and Incan priests both practiced a brain operation called "trepanation," in which a small hole is drilled through the skull of a living person, right between the eyes. Its purpose was to stimulate the pineal gland and thereby induce a mystical state of consciousness.The operation is occasionally still practiced today.
The toe of the metal statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's Cathedral, Rome, is worn down almost to a nub by the great number of pilgrims who have kissed it over the centuries.
Cleopatra was married to her own brother, Ptolemy.
Priests in ancient Egyptian temples plucked every hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.
The Pekingese dog was considered sacred among Chinese royalty. At the court of Li Hsui, one of the last Manchu queens, all court Pekingese had human wet nurses. Each dog had its own eunuch to protect it from the other dogs; some even had private palaces, complete with servants.
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