Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know.
Snails produce a colorless, sticky discharge that forms a protective carpet under them as they travel along. The discharge is so effective that snails can crawl along the edge of a razor without cutting themselves.
The Philippines consist of 7,100 islands. The total land area is about that of Arizona.
To view the wonders of the undersea world that no other man had probably seen, Adm. R. J. Galanson, chief of U.S. Naval Materials, peered through the portholes of a U.S. deep-submersible craft nearly half a mile below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The first thing he saw on the ocean floor was an empty beer can.
Most people have lost 50 percent of their taste buds and 40 percent of their ability to smell (by the age of 60).
It was while he was examining urine, seeking the philosopher's stone (the magic elixir needed to change baser metals into gold), that the German chemist Hennig Brand discovered phosphorus. At least he discovered something.
Dr. James Barry, a woman posing as a man, became a general in the army of Queen Victoria. Barry entered the medical corps, served 40 years as a surgeon and rose to the rank of inspector-general of hospitals. Only after Barry's death in 1865 was "his" true sex discovered.
Robert Moses, the planner largely responsible for many of New York's bridges, tunnels and parkways, never learned to drive an automobile.
The tallest bird of all time was the moa, a flightless inhabitant of New Zealand that became extinct 400 years ago. It grew to be 11 feet tall, and its drumstick was a yard long.