Home Articles Facts Games Poems & Quotes
Fact File


In the Fact File section we bring you a new collection of quick facts each week. (Click on the links below for more facts)

 
 

1181/ Sixty Five million years ago, a ten-kilometre rock from space hit the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America. The resulting pall of dust, which drowned out the sunlight for nearly a year - not to mention vicious forest fires and huge tidal waves - wiped out most of the animal species on Earth, including the dinosaurs.

1182/ In 1973 Bhutan issued a stamp that looked like a record. Put it on a record player and it would actually play the Bhutanese national anthem!

1183/ Thomas Edison invented the talking doll in 1888.

1184/ In 2000, across the global economy, travel and tourism accounted for around 11 per cent of world exports, goods and services, surpassing trade in food, textiles, and chemicals.

1185/ Nearly 80 per cent of international tourists come from Europe and the Americas, while only 15 per cent come from East Asia and the Pacific, and five per cent from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

1186/ Around 3.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from air travel, a share that is expected to increase as air travel does.

1187/ The secret to balsa wood's lightness can only be seen with a microscope. The cells are big and very thinned walled, so that the ratio of solid matter to open space is as small as possible. Most woods have gobs of heavy, plastic-like cement, called lignin, holding the cells together. In balsa, lignin is at a minimum. Only about 40% of the volume of a piece of balsa is solid substance. Balsa is third or fourth lightest wood in the world.

1188/ In 1870 Thomas Adams introduced Black Jack, the first manufactured flavoured gum, and one that is still sold today.

1189/ Patagonia, in the south of Argentina and Chile, became so popular for reclusive celebrities (including George Soros, Sylvester Stallone and Ted Turner) in the 1990s that at one stage, a sixth of the region was said to be owned by 350 foreigners.

1190/ A poll of 1,004 Americans for TIME and CNN in 1996 found that 82 percent believed in the healing power of prayer, and 64 per cent that doctors should pray with their patients.

1191/ Contributing to about 300,000 deaths per year, obesity is only exceeded by smoking as a cause of death. These two health issues are connected for some children. A Harvard University study found that children as young as nine were trying to control their weight by smoking cigarettes. Researchers found that 17% of girls and 15% of boys, between the ages of nine and fourteen, had experimented with smoking or were considering smoking because of their concern for weight control.

1192/ 60.8 million Americans have some form of cardiovascular disease, ranging from congenital heart defects to high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.

1193/ Grapefruit was discovered in the West Indies in the early 1700s and first introduced to Florida in the 1820s. In the United States today, most grapefruit is still grown in Florida.

1194/ Walter Diemer, an accountant for Fleer, invented modern bubble gum, in 1928. Pink was the only coloring nearby when he made the first batch and so the trend was set. The gum was named Dubble Bubble.

1195/ 22% of all the plant species on the planet are in Brazil. Brazil also has the most species of mammals (524), fresh water fish, insects and parrots of anywhere.

1196/ The UK National Lottery says that 27% of female winners keep the winning ticket in their bra.

1197/ Kenneth Grahame, the author of the children's classic, The Wind in the Willows, was the Secretary of the Bank of England 1898 - 1908. The book was published in 1908, the year in which he retired from the Bank. It is possible that some of the characters in the book were based on those people he knew and worked with.

1198/ Although platinum was used by the South American Indians before the fifteenth century. They could not melt it, but developed a technique for sintering it with gold on charcoal, to produce artefacts. A pre-Columbian platinum ingot was found which contained 85% pure platinum.

1199/ "Coffee" comes from the Latin form of the genus Coffea, a member of the Rubiaceae family which includes more than 500 genera and 6,000 species of tropical trees and shrubs.

1200/ The average adult male Polar Bear weighs between 850 and 900 pounds, but one was killed in 1960 that weighed 2,210 pounds. That is the weight of a small family car!

Click on the links below for more great facts...

 

More next week...

   

©FirstScience.com About UsContact Us

Home   l  Biology   l  Physics   l  Planetary Science   l  Technology   l  Space

First Science 2014