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4 Jul 2009
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.
Random Facts
The common black ants and wood ants have no sting, but they can squirt a spray of formic acid. Some birds put ants in their feathers because the ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of the parasites.
Hatters did, indeed, go mad. They inhaled fumes from the mercury that was part of the process of making felt hats. Not recognizing the violent twitching and derangement as symptoms of a brain disorder, people made fun of affected hatmakers, often treating them as drunkards.
Because the Allies would not sell helium to Germany, the Germans were forced to rely on hydrogen as the lifting gas in their Zeppelins, Hydrogen, being the lightest element, is the ultimate lifting gas but is also flammable.
Cats are the only domestic animals that walk directly on their claws, not on their paws. This method of walking is called "digitigrade." When cats scratch furniture, it isn't an act of malice. They are actually tearing off the ragged edges of the sheaths of their talons to expose the new sharp ones beneath.
The temperature of ice cream is typically about -16°C when it’s served, at this temperature only about 72% of the water is frozen.
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High blood pressure affects more than one out of every three African Americans.
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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!
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In 1990, there were 239 near misses, or 'air proximity incidents', reported in European Airspace. By 1999 this had risen to 499.
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A cockroach can live for nine days without its head.
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The location of the Bermuda Triangle is between 80-90 degrees West and 30-20 degrees North. About 66 planes and ships are supposed to have disappeared mysteriously in this area.
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Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the death of their cats.
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Consider a raindrop falling from 10,000 feet. In a vacuum, it would arrive at the ground with a velocity in excess of 565 miles per hour. That's positively lethal, but in the actual situation, the small size and weight of a raindrop and the presence of the atmosphere limit its terminal velocity to only about 15 miles per hour.
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Sesame Street debuted on PBS in 1969.
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A dog was killed by a meteor at Nakhla, Egypt, in 1911. The unlucky canine is the only creature known to have been killed by a meteor.
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