Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
Three hundred sixty-five different languages are spoken in Indonesia.
A fresh egg will sink in water, but a stale one won't.
The Sargasso Sea does not have a coastline.
Apart from chlorofluorocarbon, the biggest threat to the ozone layer is hydrocarbon emissions from cars and cows. Cows release some 100 million tons of hydrocarbon annually. With the gas from 10 cows, you could provide heating for a small house for a year.
There are more than 20,000 brands of beer.
In ancient Egypt, baboons were trained to wait on tables.
So far in the 20th century, two objects have struck the earth with enough force to destroy a whole city. Each object, one in 1908 and one in 1947, struck regions of Siberia. No one was hurt on either occasion.
In the early 17th century, more than 1,000 children were kidnapped in Europe and shipped to America as indentured servants.
New York City's administrative code still requires that hitching posts be located in front of City Hall so that reporters can tie their horses.
In case you're ever stranded on one for whatever reason, small, flat icebergs have been fitted with sails and piloted more than 2,400 miles from the Antarctic to Valparaiso, Chile, and to Cakkaiub, Peru.
Some locusts have an adult life span of only a few weeks or so, after having lived in the ground as grubs for 15 years.
Fish can be susceptible to seasickness. In one study, artificial "storm waves" made in a glass bowl made goldfish seasick.