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30 Aug 2008
Fact of the day
After two arduous years of research in the steamy Amazon jungle, English biologist Alfred Russel Wallace devised the theory of evolution before Charles Darwin. But Wallace's crucial evidence disappeared when the ship he was taking back to England in 1852 caught fire and sank.
Random Facts
When in the deepest stage of hibernation, ground squirrels are cold, furry balls that seem more dead than alive. Besides a body temperature that may fall below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, a squirrel may take as few as two breaths a minute, and its heart may beat just twice a minute (the normal heart rate for an active ground squirrel is about 200 beats per minute).
It took Einstein four years after the publication of his special theory of relativity to obtain an academic post. It was not until 1909 that he was appointed to a modestly paid professorship in the University of Zurich.
To prevent some numbers from occurring more frequently than others, dice used in crap games in Las Vegas are manufactured to a tolerance of 0.0002 inches; less than 1/17 the thickness of a human hair.
The collective name for a group of frogs is an “army of frogs”; in the case of their warty cousins, it’s a “knot of toads”.
The Olympic Flame was introduced in 1928 in Amsterdam.
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Aspirin went on sale as the first pharmaceutical drug in 1899, after Felix Hoffman, a German chemist at the drug company Bayer, successfully modified Salicylic Acid, a compound found in willow bark to produce Aspirin.
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The Hawaiian Islands are the projecting tops of the biggest mountain range in the world. Mauna Kea, on the island of Hawaii, is the largest mountain on Earth - though partially submerged, it is 4,000 feet taller than Mount Everest.
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The U.S Automobile Association was formed in 1905 for the purpose of providing 'scouts' who could warn motorists of hidden police traps.
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A rhinoceros beetle can support up to 850 times its own weight on it's back. That would be the equivalent of a man carrying 76 family-sized cars around on his back.
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In 1740 a cow was found guilty of sorcery in France and publicly hanged.
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The earliest fossil life was found in strata about 3.5 billion years old. These earliest fossils are bacteria like, indeed they are remarkably similar to some blue-green bacteria and other bacteria that are still living.
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In 1kg of water (1000 grams) there are 889 grams of oxygen and 111 grams of hydrogen.
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer still uses a 56k modem to access the internet at home. Despite living only 6 minutes from downtown Seattle, the ultra-rich suburb that Ballmer lives in does not have access to a regular broadband connection. (Ever heard of Satellite Broadband Steve?)
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For a beam of light from a distant star that just grazes the edge of the Sun, Einstein predicted that the deflection would be 1.75 seconds of arc, whereas Newtonian physics predicted just half of that. Later measurements by Sir Arthur Eddington supported Einstein's predictions and theory of general relativity.
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