Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Things you always never wanted to know
When one adds up the number of letters in the names of the playing cards without counting the Joker, the total comes to 52, the precise number of cards in a deck.
A "clue" originally meant a ball of thread. This is why one is said to "unravel" the clues of a mystery.
A "hendecasyllabic" is an adjective applied to a line of verse of 11 syllables.
A caterpillar has more than 2,000 muscles.
The Mexican fishing spider attaches itself to a small leaf, floats across a pond as if on a raft and from this vantage point hunts its prey – large tadpoles and small fish.
After mating, the female black widow spider turns on her partner and devours him. The female may dispatch as many as 25 suitors a day in this manner.
Cats have no ability to taste sweet things.
There is no single cat called a panther. The name is commonly applied to the leopard, but it is also used to refer to the puma and the jaguar. A black panther is really a black leopard.
Guinea pigs were first domesticated by the Incas, who used them for food, in sacrifices and as household pets.
The human body has 45 miles of nerves.
An average man on an average day excretes 2.5 quarts of sweat.
A moderately severe sunburn damages the blood vessels to such an extent that it take four to 15 months for them to return to their normal condition.
The weight of a carat (200 milligrams), standard unit of measurement for gemstones, is based on the weight of the carob seed, which was once used as a weighing standard by jewelers in Africa and the Middle East. The word "carat" itself is believed to be derived from an Arabic word meaning "bean" or "seed."
1796, the state of Tennessee was called Franklin.