Fast facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Tueday, December 7, 2004
In the 1936 Swaything Cup Match in table tennis, Alex Ehrlich of Poland and Paneth Carcas of Romania volleyed for 2 hours and 12 minutes on the opening serve.
Traveling at about 186,000 miles per second, light takes 6 hours to travel from Pluto to Earth.
The earth moves in its 585-million mile orbit around the sun approximately eight times faster than a bullet travels.
It takes 100 pounds of rain water to produce a single pound of food from the earth. Between 10 and 20 tons of water must pass through the roots of an acre of corn before one bushel of corn will be produced.
The stegosaurus, a giant dinosaur that grew to more than 18 feet long and was armed with enormous bony plates on its neck, back and tail, had a brain that weighed only 2 ounces and was no bigger than a walnut.
In 1972, there were fewer than 2,000 automobiles in the entire country of Albania.
It is possible for a fetus in the womb to get hiccups.
In ancient Egypt, when a rich man was mummified his heart was removed from his body and a heart-shaped stone carving of a dung beetle was put in its place.
The life expectancy for women in the United States is nearly twice what it was 100 years ago.
In 1700 there were more people living in Boston (population 7,000) than in New York City (population 5,000). The total population of the American colonies at that time was less than 250,000.
A woman's arthritic pains will almost always disappear as soon as she becomes pregnant.
Men are twice as likely to contract leprosy as women.