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8 Nov 2009
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Fact of the day
Nostradamus wrote 942 quatrains (4 line long poems) in his lifetime which he organised into centuries. Many people believe that he could predict the future and that these poems contain cryptic information about future events.
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Americans buy about 5 million things that are shaped like Mickey Mouse, or have a picture of Mickey Mouse on them in the course of a day.
Venus may well once have had water like Earth does, but because of the scorching surface temperature of 482 degrees C (900 degrees F). Any sign of it has long ago evaporated.
In the United States the average incidence of twins is just under 1 in every 90 births (In Afro-American women it is about 1 in 70 and in Caucasian women 1 in 88; but in the case of Chinese women the figure is around 1 in 300). While the average figure for triplets is 1 in 7500, and for quadruplets 1 in 650,000.
Methyl alcohol, also called methanol or wood alcohol, was discovered in 1661.
Packed inside each firework are many marble-sized explosives called stars, which create the dazzling flashes of colour. Stars are made from a mixture of black powder, binding agents and colorants: magnesium or aluminium for flashes of white, sodium salts for yellow, copper salts for blue and charcoal for orange.
 
 

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Humans
At sea level, every portion of our bodies is subjected to an air pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch.
Earth
In hot weather, the best time of the day to refuel your car to reduce ozone pollution is in the evenings since it is cooler in the evenings, and hence refuelling in the evenings reduces evaporative emissions. In addition, there is no sunlight available to aid in the formation of ozone.
Machines
The risk of dying in an aeroplane crash over a period of one year is about 0.000002, or one in 500,000.
Nature
At last count, there were about 226,000 trees in New York's Central Park.
Mysteries
In the 1970s, Peter Sturrock sent questionnaires to 2,611 members of the American Astronomical Society. Replies were received from 79 percent of the members (2062). Of these 62 respondents had either personally observed a UFO or had detailed knowledge of a sighting.
Origins
The first dinosaur to be the subject of a tavern song was the Diplodocus due to the fact that tycoon Andrew Carnegie gave a replica of the animal to King Edward VII. The tune, which was popular around the turn of the century, went:

"Crowned heads of Europe All make a royal fuss Over Uncle Andy And his old Diplodocus

Big Theories
A laser beam striking a sapphire crystal at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA in September 1964 generated a note of 60 gigahertz.
Technology
The world's largest tea cup is located inside the Toki city JR station near the ticket gate. This tea cup (one piece in a set of three) was crafted in1985. Made from about one ton of clay, these three pieces took 5 months to complete.
Space
The asteroid Ceres (an 'asteroid' being a fragment of a full-sized planet) is some 940 kilometres in diameter.
 
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