Fastfacts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
When Galileo wrote his masterpiece "Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems," he made no mention that his longtime friend Johannes Kepler had modified and improved the Copernican theory beyond measure.
The first man ever to set foot in Antarctica was American sealer John Davis. He arrived Feb. 7, 1821, but his entry was not known until 1955, when his ship's log was discovered and studied.
Woodrow Wilson is the only U.S. president with a doctorate.
The liquid inside young coconuts can substitute for blood plasma in an emergency. Surgical incisions also heal faster when sewn with sterilized coconut fiber rather than catgut.
Mozart composed, wrote down, rehearsed and performed his "Linz" Symphony in five days.
The British Naval commander Viscount Horatio Nelson never overcame seasickness. No matter how frequently they are exposed to the motion stimulus, 5 percent of all individuals never seem to acquire immunity to seasickness.
Early guns took so long to load and fire that bows and arrows, in trained hands, were 12 times more efficient.
Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, sentenced to life in prison for splinting the fractured leg of President Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, became a hero to guards and inmates of his island prison in 1968 when he stopped a yellow fever epidemic there, after many doctors had died. President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, pardoned Mudd in early 1869.