Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
Because physical vitality was considered as precious a legacy as intelligence, and because the health and usefulness of "our housed-up business men" had to be preserved, Yale University added dancing (jigging, clogging, soft-shoeing) to its curriculum at the turn of the 20th century.
In a single growing season, 10 small water hyacinths can increase to become more than 600,000 plants, forming a mat an acre in size and weighing 180 tons.
Somewhere out there in space is the Hasselblad camera, dropped during a space walk by U.S. astronaut Michael Collins. It will orbit the Earth indefinitely.
Skin disease became a capital crime under the benevolent rule of France's King Philip V, around 1320, when he accused a particularly helpless minority, the lepers, of conspiring against the government.
The sugar from the urine of diabetics is identical with grape sugar. Discovery of this fact by the French chemist Michel Eugene Chevreul, in 1815, was the first step in the direction of recognizing diabetes as a disease of sugar metabolism.
Lloyd's of London, the best-known association of insurance underwriters, does not offer life insurance.
Until the time of Galileo, an argument used with potent effect was that if the Earth moved, and if it indeed rotated on its axis, birds would be blown away, clouds would be left behind and buildings would tumble.
The only part of the human body that has no blood supply is the cornea. It takes its oxygen directly from the air.
Beethoven was completely deaf when he composed the Ninth Symphony.
In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to chew a quid of cocoa leaves.