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1041/ About 180 tons of diamonds
are created in laboratories each year. Mainly for industrial
uses - almost 9 times as much as comes out of the ground.
( Click
Here for a History of Industrial Diamonds)
1042/ Coloured diamonds are
caused by impurites such as nitrogen (yellow), boron (blue).
With red diamonds being due to deformities in the structure
of the stone, and green ones being the result of irradiation.
1043/ The first iron battleship
in the Royal Navy was HMS Warrior 860.
1044/ In one year a single
1,000kw wind turbine will save 2000 tonnes of CO2 being produced
by other energy sources.
1045/ Scientists estimate that
there are currently 1.4 million animal species known to science;
with possibly as many as 30 million on the planet.
1046/ Satellites have shown
that there has been a 10 percent cut in snow cover on mountain
glaciers since the 1960s; together with a 10-20cm rise in
sea level during the last century.
1047/ 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. (Click
Here for an article about how aspirin works)
1048/ Phosphorus was originally
extracted from urine and was the 13th element to be discovered.
1049/ A dramatic crimson aurora
visible in England in 1177 was widely believed to signify the
blood of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas
a Beckett, who was murdered purportedly on the orders of
the King.
1050/ In a psychological experiment
that investigated smiling, the researchers found that when
a happy face was shown, 35% of the volunteers would look at
the eye area of the face, searching for tell-tale wrinkles
that would indicate a genuine smile.
1051/ The computer mouse was
invented by Douglas
Engelbart at Stanford University in 1963; even though it
was not until 1984 that his invention was popularised by the
launch of the Apple Macintosh Computer. It was also Engelbart
who pioneered the concept of 'windows' for use in computing
which was the precursor for modern operating systems such as
those developed by Microsoft. In a magazine called Byte, in
an article honouring the 20 persons who have had the greatest
impact on personal computing (September 1995), they went so
far as to say of Engelbart: "Comparisons with Thomas Edison
do not seem far fetched. . ."
1052/ In an article in 1998,
The Journal of the American Medical Association claimed that
adverse drug reactions may cause more than 100,000 deaths
a year in the US alone.
1053/ In 430BC Athens in Greece
suffered from a mysterious plague that wiped out an estimated
65,000 people. Modern day scientists are still unsure as to
what caused this catastrophe, but some suggest that it may have
been the Ebola
virus, which is a deadly viral disease that flares up in
Central Africa from time to time.
1054/ Over three hundred cases
of spontaneous human combustion have been recorded. (Click
Here for some reported cases)
1055/ World production of
gold to date is about 125,000 tons. Enough to form a solid
gold cube with sides 62ft long. (Click
Here for more gold facts)
1056/ Alchemy has become a reality
in the modern world (albeit at incredibly small amounts); as
it is now possible to make gold by bombarding lighter elements
with sub-atomic particles at high speeds in particle accelerators.
(Click
Here for a jam-packed alchemy website)
1057/ There are an estimated
2,500 collisions between birds and planes each year in the
US.
1058/ It was Dr
Alec Jeffreys, at the University of Leicester who first
worked out how to identify a person by their DNA.
1059/ Snowboarding as we know
it wasn't conceived until 1963, when a boy named Tom Sims
from New Jersey decided to design a 'skiboard' as his woodwork
class Christmas project. Three years later, Sherman Poppen
invented the 'Snurfer' - two skis stuck together - he patented
it and snow surfing took off in the US.
1060/ At the turn of the last
century there were probably one to two million chimps in 25
African countries. Now they are extinct in four nations and
may soon disappear from five more. There numbers are currently
estimated at perhaps 150,000; with their possible extinction
predicted within 15 years unless something is done to alter
the decline. (Learn more here
and also find out how you can help)
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
More
next week...
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