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1881/ A bucket filled with
earth would weigh about 5 times more than the same bucket
filled with the substance of the Sun. However, the force of
gravity is so much greater on the Sun that a man weighing
150 pounds on our planet would weigh 2 tons on the Sun.
1882/ A chest X-ray is
comprised of 90,000 to 130,000 electron volts.
1883/ Time magazine named
the computer its "Man of the Year" in 1982.
1884/ A bicycle headlight
mostly allows others to see you. However, some of the brighter
lights do aid nighttime vision. Most lights range in wattage
from 2.4 to 20. Police-department bikes in the United States
use a minimum of 15 watts.
1885/ A chip of silicon
a quarter-inch square has the capacity of the original 1949
ENIAC computer, which occupied a full city block.
1886/ A device invented
as a primitive steam engine by the Greek engineer Hero, about
the time of the birth of Christ, is used today as a rotating
lawn sprinkler.
1887/ Pollen grains are
so tiny and uniform they have been used to calibrate instruments
that measure in thousandths of an inch. Forget-me-not pollen
grains are so small that 10,000 of them can fit on the head
of a pin.
1888/ The most drought
resistant tree is the baobab tree. It stores 35,900 gallons
of water in its trunk for later use.
1889/ Primitive blue-green
algae grow in hot springs near Yellowstone's steaming geysers,
defying scientific expectations by enduring and thriving in
water temperatures as high as 160 degrees F.
1890/ The North Atlantic
Deep Water Current is an oceanic "river" that carries
twenty times more water than all the rivers of the world put
together.
1891/ The oak tree can
take as long as 30 years to produce its first crop of acorns.
1892/ The onion is a
lily, botanically.
1893/ The orchid is named
after the male genitalia. Its botanical family name, Orchidaceae,
means "testicles" in Greek and may derive from an
early notion that the orchid possessed aphrodisiac qualities.
1894/ The petunia and
the potato are related to each other.
1895/ A beautiful mirage
called the Fata Morgana appears in the Straits of Messina,
between Sicily and Italy. It is an image of a town in the
sky, but it seems more like a fairy landscape than a real
town. It is believed to be a mirage of a fishing village situated
along the coast.
1896/ A "pogonip"
is a heavy winter fog containing ice crystals.
1897/ Victorian publications
never dared show a bed in any of their advertisements. When
illustrations of the bedroom were required, the bed itself
was hidden by curtains.
1898/ When officials
in one city sought champagne in 1927 to welcome aviator Charles
Lindbergh back after his historic transatlantic flight, they
were told by a tavern keeper that the sale would be illegal
unless medicinal or religious need was shown. After securing
vouchers provided by several churches, police officers returned
a little later for the champagne.
1899/ "Soldiers
disease" is a term for morphine addiction. The Civil
War produced over 400,000 morphine addicts.
1900/ Sunday school teachers
Patty and Mildred Hill wrote a song in the 1890s that we still
sing today. Happy Birthday to You was a rewrite of their earlier
song, Good Morning to All.
Click on the links below for more great
facts...
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