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701/ Only sixteen Concordes
were ever made, the last in 1980. On New Years Eve 1994, one
Concorde plane carried wealthy revellers on a 32 hour trip
to nowhere. These travellers, who paid $23,000 apiece for
the trip, rang in the New Year twice because they twice crossed
the International Date Line.
702/ Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896),
a German inventor, made about 2,000 flights in gliders he
had designed and built by himself. He died following a glider
crash.
703/ 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.
704/ Prior to the invention
of lawn mowers, lawns were cut with scythes, but this operation
was ineffective unless the lawn was wet. The sale of lawn
mowers got a great boost when lawn tennis came into vogue
in England in 1870.
705/ Scientists can condense
matter to greater densities and temperatures than those at
the centre of the sun. Fusion energy research at Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory in California uses 20 laser beams to
concentrate on targets so tiny that dozens can be gathered
on the head of a pin.
706/ Seating on the first
scheduled intercity commuter airplane flight consisted of
moveable wicker chairs. There were 11 of them on the first
Ford Tri-Motors. After several years, Ford replaced them with
Aluminium framed leather chairs.
707/ Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak are best known as the creators of the Apple computer,
but before they became PC technology darlings, they designed
a popular arcade game for Atari called 'Breakout'.
708/ The Boeing 767 aircraft
is a collection of 3.1 million parts from 800 different suppliers
around the world: fuselage parts from Japan, centre wing selection
from Southern California, and flaps from Italy.
709/ The Times Square "Time
Ball" for the year 2000 was named the "Star of Hope".
It was specifically made by Waterford Crystal in Ireland and
contained 504 glass crystals cut into triangles, 600 light
bulbs, 96 big lights and 92 mirrors.
710/ The US conducted a census
in the year 2000. The first US census to be tallied by a computer
was in 1950. Univac did the tallying.
711/ The world's first underground
railway, between Paddington (Bishop's Road) and Farringdon
Street - with trains hauled by Steam Engine - was opened by
the Metropolotan Railway on January 10th 1863. The initial
section was six km (nearly four miles) in length, and provided
both a new commuter rail service and an onward rail link for
passengers arriving at Paddington, Euston and King's Cross
main line stations to the City of London.
712/ The Wingspan of a Boeing
747 jet is longer than the Wright brothers first flight.
713/ The air is so polluted
in Cubato, Brazil, that no birds or insects remain and most
trees are blackened stumps. Its Mayor reportedly refuses to
live there.
714/ The world's largest wind
generator is on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii. The windmill has
two blades 400 feet long on the top of a tower twenty stories
high.
715/ The angle between the
main branches of a tree and its trunk remains constant in
each species - and this same angle is found between the principal
vein of the tree's leaves and all its subsidiary branching
veins.
716/ The average life expectancy
of a white ash tree is 275 years.
717/ The world's tallest grass,
which has sometimes grown 130 feet or more is bamboo.
718/ The world's windiest
place is reputed to be Commonwealth Bay, Georgia, Antarctica,
where wind speeds of 200 miles per hour have been recorded.
719/ There are more than 50,000
earthquakes throughout the world every year.
720/ Some 'gardeners favourites'
that are dangerous if eaten are: buttercups, daffodils, lily
of the valley, sweet peas, oleander, azalea, bleeding heart,
delphinium and rhodendron.
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