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Illustration by Arnie Bermudez
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, October 31, 2003
Things you always never wanted to know
The Chinook, a wind phenomenon that occurs over Montana in the United States and Alberta in Canada, is capable of raising the temperature more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit in three minutes. Damp sea air from the Pacific Ocean drops rain and snow as it passes over the Rockies. The dry air then tumbles down the eastern slops, becoming compressed as it does so, and, as a consequence, grows incredibly hot. One February, the temperature in Calgary rose from ö14 degrees to 76 degrees Fahrenheit.
Lightning kills more people in the United States than any other natural disaster, resulting in an average of 400 deaths and 1,000 injuries annually.
Observations of increased rain after U.S. Civil War battles led to abortive experiments with weather control. Cannon volleys were fired into clouds in order to induce rain. These experiments met with little success, though all in all, there are few better excuses for firing cannonballs at smug clouds.
The Donatists of fourth-century North Africa were so committed to the idea of martyrdom that they would stop strangers and demand to be killed by them. Since the strangers were threatened with death if they refused, the Donatists found martyrdom easy to come by, unless of course a Donatist ran into another Donatist.
Hatto II, archbishop of Mainz, Germany, was said to have found a unique solution to the great famine of 914 A.D. According to chroniclers, he gathered in a barn at Caub a large number of the exceedingly poor and oppressed, under the pretext of feeding them there. Once the crowd was inside, he set fire to the structure. His rationale: If the poor were sent to their heavenly reward, the famine would cease sooner. Years later, Hatto may have gotten his just reward ÷ he was said to have been eaten alive by hordes of mice.
President Ulysses S. Grant's wife was cross-eyed and wanted to correct the problem. Grant refused to let her have the operation because he liked her that way.
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