|
Illustration by Earl Larrabee
|
|
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, July 6, 2005
Print this
taken weekly with a grain of salt
Though he specialized in hygiene and was one of the first to emphasize the subject as a matter of good health rather than of good manners, the German chemist Max Joseph von Pettenkofer disdained the germ theory of disease. He said he’d show them, and miraculously did – he deliberately swallowed a virulent culture of cholera bacteria. That he did not get the disease remains, a century and a half later, a source of amazement.
A study of the common cold, made by two epidemiologists at the University of Michigan, disclosed that the incidence of colds was greater among the better educated.
In a single raid on Britain about 1,000 years ago, the Vikings used a fleet of 80 “dragon ships,” each carrying a hundred soldiers.
About 1250, the English scholar Roger Bacon pointed out that the year in the Julian calendar, then in use, was a trifle too long; the vernal equinox came earlier and earlier every year. It took 30 years for the Western world to make the necessary change to the correct Gregorian calendar now in use. Russia made the change only after the Communist revolution.
There are 2,500,000 rivets in the Eiffel Tower.
Peter the Great had his wife’s lover executed and his head put into a jar of alcohol. She had to keep it in her bedroom.
Most people by the age of 60 have lost 50 percent of their taste buds and 40 percent of their ability to smell.
During the Middle Ages, there was, on the average, a church for every 200 people. The area covered by religious buildings took up a large part of every city. In the English cities of Norwich, Lincoln and York, which had populations of between 5,000 and 10,000, there were 50, 49 and 41 churches, respectively.
In 1954, Roger Bannister overcame physical and psychological barriers and became the first human to run a mile in less than four minutes. He did it in 3:59.4, in Oxford, England. Within two months, the four-minute mile was beaten again, as it has been over 50 times since Bannister’s unprecedented feat.
U.S. Congressmen expressed surprise on learning in 1977 that it takes 15 months of instruction at the Pentagon’s School of Music to turn out a bandleader, but merely 13 months to train a jet pilot.
The coastline of Alaska is longer than the entire coastline of the lower 48 states of the United States.
Write a Letter to the Editor
|
|
|
