Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, August 8, 2005
taken weekly wi th a grain of salt
In 1909, Australian swimming star Annette Kellerman appeared on a Boston beach wearing a figure-fitting jersey bathing suit with sleeves shortened almost to her shoulders and trousers ending two inches above her knees. She was arrested for indecent exposure.
About 1 million windmills dotted the U.S. landscape in the early 1930s, a time when 40 million people lived on farms and before the rural electrification program was inaugurated.
The United States has the largest health expenditure, at $3,724 per capita, according to the World Health Organization's World Health Report 2000. Somalia has a health budget of only $11 per capita.
The oldest existing and continually operating educational institution is the University of Karueein, founded in 859 A.D. in Fez, Morocco.
At the close of the fifteenth century, the University of Paris could boast 50 colleges and 20,000 students.
Although a writing machine had been patented in England as early as 1714, the first practical typewriter was built by American William Burt in 1829. The chief use for the early machines, which produced embossed writing, was for the blind.
When Whitcomb L. Judson, a Chicago inventor, patented what would later become the zipper in 1891, he had in mind something to save people the trouble of buttoning and unbuttoning their shoes every day. He called his invention the "Clasp Locker and Unlocker for shoes."
George Washington seldom slept more than three or four consecutive hours in any day during the Revolutionary War.
During Prohibition in the United States, there were more than 200,000 illegal "speakeasies." In New York City alone, an estimated 32,000 speakeasies replaced about 15,000 saloons. Prohibition encouraged hypocrisy and disrespect for the law. Politicians, including President Warren G. Harding, paid lip service to Prohibition in public and drank freely at home. The expression was that "Congress votes dry and drinks wet."
After the first moonwalk, in 1969, Pan American Airlines began accepting reservations for commercial flights to the moon, dates and time unspecified. More than 80,000 requests poured in immediately.
Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr. played a record 2,632 consecutive games for the Baltimore Orioles from May 30, 1982 to September 19, 1998
The West Japan Railway Company operates its 500-Series Nozomi bullet trains or "shinkansen," at an average speed of 162.7 mph on the 119-mile line between Hiroshima and Kokura on the island of Honshu, Japan.