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Illustration by Arnie Bermudez
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
Tuesday, December 9, 2003
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Things you always never wanted to know
The story of Newton and the apple is one legend that is true. Newton described it himself. He saw an apple fall from a tree to the ground at a time when the crescent moon was in the evening sky. He pondered whether the moon was held in the grip of the same force the apple was - the rest is history. However, there is one part of the legend that isn't true. When it fell, the apple did not hit Newton on the head.
Men can have hemophilia, but can't pass it on to their children. Woman may not even show symptoms of hemophilia, yet can pass on the "royal disease."
Physicians in ancient India were skilled in a form of plastic surgery. They created new noses for people whose real noses had been mutilated - a punishment often applied for offenses such as adultery. The physicians cut triangular pieces of skin from the patient's forehead and sewed the graft in place. The patient breathed through reeds placed in his nostrils.
Chapbooks, the comic books of their time, were named after the chapmen, or peddlers, who sold them. They were cheap and crudely illustrated. In 1682, one of the most popular American chapbooks was "Mary Rowlandson's Captivity," an account of a woman captured by Americans Indians. It sold five million copies. Chapbooks reached their greatest popularity in the early 19th century, but had disappeared by the advent of the American Civil War.
The media made a big deal out of the two little words nestling in Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt's acceptance speech at the Democratic Presidential nominating convention in Chicago in 1932. The words were "new deal." F.D.R. had flown in a flimsy trimotor airplane form Albany, N.Y., to Chicago to accept the nomination rather than follow tradition and acknowledge it weeks later.
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