Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, February 9, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
One-third of all the automobiles in New York City, Boston and Chicago in 1900 were electric cars, with batteries rather than gasoline engines.
A giant sequoia tree waits 175 to 200 years before producing its first flowers, the most delayed sexual maturity in all nature. It bears millions of seeds, but each seed is so small it takes 3,000 of them to weigh 1 ounce.
The giant water lily Victoria regia has leaves so large and buoyant that it can support the weight of a young child, like a raft. The leaves grow as large as 8 feet across.
Heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney lectured on Shakespeare at Yale University.
The constitutional guarantee of a free press is a wholly American concept, emanating from early conflicts between the British authorities and editors in the American colonies.
In 1870, Henry Laurens, who served in the Continental Congress, was captured by the British while negotiating a treaty abroad with the Dutch. For two years, Laurens was imprisoned in the Tower of London and charged "rent" for the "privilege."
Georges Schmidt, a former member of the translation service of the United Nations, could translate 66 languages and speak 30 of them fluently.
Margaret Higgins Sanger, the birth-control pioneer, was one of 11 children.
Johannes Kepler calculated that the first voyages to the moon would take four hours, and thought the passengers, in order to endure the trip, would have to take narcotics.
After Spartacus' gladiatorial revolt was suppressed in 71 B.C., 6,000 recaptured slaves were crucified on miles of crosses along Rome's main highway, the Appian Way.
Having survived a barrel ride over Niagara Falls that broke "nearly every bone" in his body in 1911, Bobby Leech embarked on a lecture tour around the world. In New Zealand, he slipped on a banana peel and died of complications from the fall.