Fast Facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, September 16, 2005
Things you've always never wanted to know
A manned rocket reaches the moon in less time than in took a stagecoach to travel the length of England.
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, it was not a federal felony to kill a president of the United States.
"Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggcha-ubunagungamaugg" is an alternate name for Lake Webster in Massachusetts. The name means approximately "Englishmen at Manchaug at the Fishing Place at the Boundary." Larry Daly, editor of the Webster Times, wrote a humorous article about the lake and about disputes concerning the meaning of its name. He proposed the tongue-in-cheek translation "You Fish on Your Side, I Fish on My Side, Nobody Fish in the Middle," which met with so much popular acceptance that the actual translation is fairly little-known.
"Red tape," the rigid application of regulations and routine resulting in delay in getting business done, got its name from the color of the tape that was commonly used to tie official papers. The term occurred as early as 1658.
The Ch'in Dynasty (221-207 B.C.) buried alive many scholars in its program to suppress learning and Confucianism.
The total loss of human lives during World War II exceeds anything in the history of wars - 55 million to 60 million dead. More than one-third of this number were Russians: 10 percent of the Russian population. The total number of people killed in World War I - as terrible as it was - was not more than about 10 million.
Joshua Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone. In 1865, when he was 51 years old, he left Newport, R.I., in his 36-foot oyster boat Spray, returning three years and two months later after sailing 40,000 miles.
Before the mechanical clock was invented in the 14th century, the most complex machine was the pipe organ installed about A.D. 650 by Bishop Aelfeg in his cathedral in Winchester, England. The organ had 400 pipes, and 70 men were needed to operate the 26 bellows.
Although the song "Auld Lang Syne" is usually attributed to Robert Burns, it was known at least a century before he published it in 1796. One of his letters says, "It is the old song of the olden times, which has never been in print. ... I took it down from an old man's singing."
There was no clear understanding as to why the sun shines until about 70 years ago. The discovery that it is because of nuclear reactions was made in the 1930s by Hans Bethe and Carl von Weizsacker. What a funny last name.
The American chemist Robert Hare discovered that a blowpipe flame acting upon a block of calcium oxide (lime) produces a brilliant white light that could be used to illuminate theater stages. We speak of someone who faces the glare of publicity as being "in the limelight."