Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Things you always never wanted to know
There are 186 million more neurons in the left brain than in the right brain. The left cerebral hemisphere is considered the seat of reason, whereas the right cerebral hemisphere is responsible for passions and dreams.
A young robin eats as much as 14 feet of earthworms a day.
Juan Sebastian del Cano, a Spanish navigator, deserves the title of the world's first circumnavigator. When his skipper, Ferdinand Magellan, was killed in a squabble with natives in the Philippines, Cano assumed command of the Magellan expedition and sailed the Victoria across the Indian Ocean, around the southern tip of Africa and back to Spain, arriving Sept. 8, 1522, three years after setting sail.
Potatoes were first imported into Europe in the 1500s on Spanish ships returning from Peru. The trend was slow to catch on.
Potatoes were banned in Burgundy in 1610 because, it was said, "frequent use caused leprosy."
Henry Ford shocked his fellow capitalists by more than doubling the daily wage of most of his workers in 1914, 11 years after he had established his first automobile factory. The buying power of his workers increased, and their raised level of consumption stimulated buying elsewhere. Ford called it the "wage motive."
Cezanne was turned down by the École des Beaux-Arts when he applied for entrance.
The blubber of a male elephant seal may only be 7 inches thick, but it yields as much as 210 gallons of oil. The oil is considered superior to that of the sperm whale for lubricating machinery.