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1761/ Clouds that are flat
and look like blankets in the sky are called stratus. Big
fluffy clouds are called cumulus and they can be in any part
of the atmosphere. Special cumulus clouds which bring thunderstorms
are called cumulonimbus. Thin, wispy clouds are called cirrus
and are usually high up in the atmosphere. They are made of
ice crystals since the higher air is colder. There is not
enough moisture in cirrus clouds to cause rain.
1762/ Temperatures in
the Amazon rainforest stay at about 27 degrees Centigrade
all year round.
1763/ Charles Dickens
was an insomniac, who believed his best chance of sleeping
was in the centre of a bed facing directly north.
1764/ Pope Paul IV, who
was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the
naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel that he
ordered Michelangelo to paint garments on to them.
1765/ Red light has the
greatest wavelength.
1766/ Manaus, in the
Amazon Basin has a population of over one million and a famous
19th century opera house.
1767/ The greatest rainfall
in one day in the UK is 280mm in Martinstown, Dorset, 18 July
1955.
1768/ A record number
of 148 tornadoes within 24 hours was recorded in the southern
and midwestern states of the US on 3-4 Apr. 1974.
1769/ Canada has 10%
of the world's forest and is the world's largest exporter
of wood products and paper.
1770/ It can take 3000
-12000 years to produce a sufficient depth of mature soil
for farming.
1771/ The country with
the lowest population is the Vatican City State with a population
of approximately 1000.
1772/ The most exploited
of all tropical hardwoods is mahogany. A bulldozer must remove
60 rainforest trees to reach one Mahogany tree.
1773/ 120 tribes in the
Amazon Rainforest have been wiped out since 1900.
1774/ Rainbows are caused
by sunlight passing through very small water drops.
1775/ Go figure... When
people run around and around in circles we say they are 'crazy'.
When planets do it we say they are 'orbiting'.
1776/ Cloud seeding has
been practiced in parts of Texas almost continuously now for
over 25 years. A water district in West Texas, the Colorado
River Municipal Water District, has used cloud seeding to
augment runoff into its reservoirs on the upper Colorado River
in virtually every summer since 1971!
1777/ Experiments in
West Texas into Cloud Seeding indicated that seeding with
silver iodide (AgI) more than doubled the amount of rain volume
(230%) produced by the clouds; moreover, the seeded clouds
lived 36 percent longer, expanded to produce rainwater over
an area 43 percent larger, and tended to merge with adjacent
convective cells nearly twice as often then unseeded clouds.
more
1778/ There are twice
as many fatal heart attacks in winter as in summer.
1779/ The fastest surface
wind speed in the US of 231 miles per hour was recorded in
Mount Washington, New Hampshire on April 12th 1934.
1780/ Admissions to psychiatric
wards and mental health centres increase on humid days.
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
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next week...
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