|
Illustration by Holly Randall
|
|
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Print this
Things you always never wanted to know
The strongest any liquor can be is 190 proof. This means the beverage is a little more than 97 percent alcohol.
Vintage port takes 40 years to reach maturity.
When one adds up the number of letters in the names of the playing cards, the total comes to 52, the precise number of cards in a deck.
The candies most likely to cause tooth decay are dark chocolate and fudge. Those least likely to damage the teeth are nut or coconut-covered candies. The most harmful baked goods are chocolate-chip cookies, frosted cakes and graham crackers. The least harmful to the teeth are pies, plain cakes and doughnuts.
The Washington Post reported that nearly a third of the millions of newly registered American voters didn't know where to go to vote.
ABC has dropped the Miss America pageant because of sharply declining ratings. In the 1960s, more than 40 percent of U.S. households tuned in to watch the pageant. This year, 6.4 percent did, according to The Associated Press.
One has to eat 11 pounds of potatoes to put on one pound of weight – a potato has no more calories than an apple. The potato was not known in Europe until the 17th century, when it was introduced by returning Spanish conquistadors. At first, potatoes were thought disgusting and were blamed for starting outbreaks of leprosy and syphilis. As late as 1720 in America, eating potatoes was believed to shorten a person's life.
Benjamin Franklin invented crop insurance.
All the planets in our solar system could fit inside the volume of the planet Jupiter.
A Venetian law decrees that all gondolas must be painted black. The only exceptions are gondolas belonging to high public officials.
It was illegal for women to wear buttons in 15th-century Florence.
Though it is not widely known, the Italian painter Michelangelo (1475-1564) was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the greatest poets of all time. About 250 of his poems and sonnets are still read by scholars, historians and poets.
Write a Letter to the Editor
|
|
|
