Things you've always never wanted to know
Human skin has about 100,000 bacteria per square centimeter. Ten percent of human dry weight is because of bacteria. In 1996, Christmas caroling was banned at two major malls in Pensacola, Fla. Shoppers and merchants complained the carolers were too loud and took up too much space. Afternoon temperatures on Mars go up to about 80 degrees in some areas and down to minus 190 degrees at night. When Diane Sawyer competed in the America's Junior Miss Pageant, several judges considered her too serious and sophisticated to serve as a teen titleholder. During rehearsals, nearsighted Sawyer walked headfirst into a metal post in front of the judges and dissolved into girlish giggles. Charmed by Sawyer's silly side, several judges changed their votes in her favor and she was named 1963 America's Junior Miss. The first macaroni factory in the U.S. was established in 1848. It was started by Antoine Zegera in Brooklyn, N.Y. At Disneyland Paris, the park's famous Sleeping Beauty Castle is known as Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant. Talk show hosts Jay Leno, David Letterman and Conan O'Brien made President Bill Clinton the target of their jokes 810 times in 1997. Red wines have about five times more tannin than white wines. Charles Alderton, a Texan pharmacist, created a soft drink and named it after his prospective father-in-law, Dr. Charles Kenneth Pepper. The doctor was unimpressed, so Alderton dropped the period after the abbreviation for doctor and made his fortune with "Dr Pepper." The dense globules of gas from which stars are born are much larger than the stars they will form. In the Orion Nebula, globules have been detected which are 500 times larger than the solar system. A cockroach heart is nothing but a simple tube with valves. The tube can pump blood backward and forward in the insect. The heart can even stop moving without harming the roach.