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Arizona Daily Wildcat
August 31, 2005
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Things you've always never wanted to know
It takes a person 15 to 20 minutes to walk once around the Pentagon.
A newborn polar bear cub weighs only twice as much as a healthy newborn human - about 15 pounds. Yet when fully grown, polar bears reach weights of up to 1,600 pounds.
Between 1968 and 1978, the price of the average American automobile doubled.
Parrots, most famous of all talking birds, rarely acquire a vocabulary of more than 20 words.
Rennet, a common substance used to curdle milk and make cheese, is taken from the inner lining of the fourth stomach of a calf.
Rice is the chief food for more than half the people of the world.
Vaslav Nijinsky (1890-1950), the famous Russian ballet dancer, was able to cross and uncross his legs 10 times during a single leap, an elevation known in ballet as an entrechat dix. No other dancer has ever been able to duplicate this feat.
Louis XIV had 40 personal wigmakers and almost 1,000 wigs.
A comet's tail always points away from the sun.
The moon weighs 81 billion tons.
The star Antares is 60,000 times larger than our sun. If the sun were the size of a softball, Antares would be as large as a house.
A housefly lives only two weeks. Not patient enough? The best time to spray household insects is 4 p.m. Insects are most active and vulnerable at this time.
A peanut is neither pea nor nut - it is a legume.
If the Earth were compressed to a sphere with a 2-inch diameter, its surface would be as smooth as a billiard ball's.
Of all professionals in the U.S., journalists are credited with having the largest vocabulary - approximately 20,000 words. Clergymen, lawyers and doctors each have about 15,000 words at their disposal. Skills workers who have not had a college education know between 5,000 and 7,000 words. Farm laborers know about 1,600. The average American's vocabulary is 10,000 words.
In ancient China, people committed suicide by eating a pound of salt.
The human brain is 80 percent water, more watery than our blood.
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