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Illustration by Mike Padilla
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Arizona Daily Wildcat
Friday, September 24, 2004
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Things you always never wanted to know
In eighth and ninth century Peru, a special type of bullfighting was practiced. The matadors fought the bulls on horseback, and the best fighters were women. The women matadors were known as capeadoņas. Juanita Brena, a well-known capeadoņa of the 19th century, had a distinctive fighting style: She pursued the bull at full tilt riding sidesaddle.
If a person started counting the moment he or she was born and continued counting without stopping until he or she reached the age of 65, that person still would not have counted to a billion.
Earth's magnetic field has been weakening. It seems to have lost 15 percent of its strength since 1670. At the present rate of decrease, it will reach zero in 2,000 years. Between the years 3500 and 4500, the magnetic field will not be sufficiently strong to ward off charged radiation from space.
The longest indoor corridor in the world is the Grande Galerie in the Louvre, built in 1607 by Henry IV of France. On rainy days, the King would clear the entire passageway, move trees, rocks and grass turf inside, and stage a foxhunt with his entire court down the middle of the corridor.
The deadly martial art known as "tessenjutsu" is based solely on the use of a fan.
A 10-gallon hat holds less than a gallon.
It takes 120 drops of water to fill a teaspoon.
The base of the Great Pyramid in Egypt is large enough to cover 10 football fields. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, it took 400,000 men 20 years to construct this great monument.
During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.
Greta Garbo's real name was Greta Gustaffson. Mickey Rooney's real name was Joe Yule, Jr.
If the water from all the world's oceans were formed into one sphere, that sphere would be almost one-third as large as the moon.
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