Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, April 15, 2005
Dueling was so popular among wealthy gentlemen in Ireland during the 18th century that travelers could always find a special set of dueling pistols at an inn - in readiness for those who had forgotten their own.
When he became governor of New Jersey in 1911, Woodrow Wilson had never held public office before. One year and 10 months later, he was elected president of the United States.
A nearly fatal misjudgment marked Pablo Picasso's birth. The midwife, thinking him stillborn, had abandoned him on a table. But his uncle, a cigar-smoking physician, revived him with a blast of needed (albeit smoke-filled) air into his lungs.
The top of the tower on the Empire State Building was originally intended (though never used) as a mooring place for dirigibles.
If the coils of a French horn were straightened out, the instrument would be 22 feet long.
The female knot-tying weaverbird will refuse to mate with a male who has built a shoddy nest. If spurned, the male must take the nest apart and completely rebuild it in order to win the affection of the female.
The worst college campus riot prior to the 20th century erupted in medieval Oxford - the "town and gown" battle of 1354. Originating in a tavern quarrel, the violence lasted for three days, involved dozens of townsmen and students and ended with several dead and many injured.
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and teacher of the deaf, was a speed demon. His hydrofoil boat set a world water speed record in 1919, when Bell was 72, by topping 70 mph.
In 1973, a cat fell from the 20th floor of a Montreal building and suffered only a pelvic fracture.