Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Things you always never wanted to know
The human female neocortex, the roof of the cerebral cortex, contains 19.3 billion neurons. The human male neocortex contains 22.8 billion neurons.
The work of an artist cannot be exhibited in the Louvre until he has been dead for at least 60 years. The only exception ever made to this rule was Georges Braque.
Fifty-three operas have been written about Faust.
Jules Verne's real name was L. M. Olehewitz. Voltaire's real name was Francois Marie Arouet.
"Nazi" is the short form for a member of the "Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei."
Benito Mussolini was named after Mexican revolutionary and liberal statesman Benito Juarez.
There are more than 50,000 earthquakes throughout the world every year.
Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890), the English explorer and the first westerner to enter Mecca, spoke 20 languages, almost discovered the source of the Nile, fought Indians with Kit Carson, was a close friend of Brigham Young, was one of the first white men to sail down the Amazon and wrote the first western translation of "The Arabian Nights."
In one second, 6,242,000,000,000,000,000 electrons pass any given point in an electrical current.
During World War I, Woodrow Wilson's wife grazed sheep on the front lawn of the White House.
According to Time magazine (Aug. 6, 1951), the following rules of thumb can be used to determine whether victims of radiation poisoning will live or die: First, all those who do not vomit after contamination will live. Second, those who vomit for an extended period of time will probably die. Third, half of those who stop vomiting within a few hours will probably live.
Anti-plague remedies from the 14th century included smoking tobacco, opening the boils and burning them with a hot iron, washing the body with goat urine, and applying the entrails of a young pigeon or a newborn puppy to the forehead.
In one sitting, a mosquito can absorb one and a half times its own weight in blood.