How did that silent "b"
get into the word "debt?"
I always had my doubts about silent letters, especially
when
a teacher offered to help me remember them with a
mnemonic.
Trying to get the spelling of "debt" right made
me feel
particularly dumb. In that I may have had something in
common with the people of thirteenth century England, who
couldn't leave well enough alone.
You see the word, which came into English with the Norman
Conquest two centuries earlier, was originally spelled
"det."
It came from the French word, "dette," meaning,
well, you
know. In jolly Olde England they just loped off the last
"e"
and totaled one of the "t's." So far, I
like it.
But then the pedants got at it. They did a little
research,
discovered that the French word came from the Latin,
"debita," and in the thirteenth century
upgraded the English
version. For kids learning spelling, it's been tough
going
ever since.
Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD AND PHRASE Origins by
William and Mary Morris
Didja Know...
The days between October 4 and October 15, 1582 did not
"exist," they were skipped, due to a decree
from Pope Gregory XIII, who changed the official calendar
from the Julian model to the Gregorian.
(Source: funtrivia.com)
How do spacewalking astronauts stay warm (or
cool)?
The environment of space is one of the most punishing
that humans have ever entered. In sunlight the
temperature can rise to 120 degrees Celsius (250 F),
while in the shade it can get as cold as -150 Celsius (-250
F).
To keep their human occupants comfortable, modern space
suits are marvels of high-tech design. The
astronaut's entire body is surrounded by 90 meters of
water-filled plastic tubing (295 feet).
The water circulates through a device in the suit's
backpack called a sublimator, where heat is removed by
evaporating some of the water.
Since the sunny side of the astronaut is so much warmer
than the shadow side, the water tube layer is surrounded
by a layer of insulating aluminized mylar, along with
several other layers
designed to hold in the pressure of the suit's pure
oxygen
atmosphere and to protect against the impact of
micrometeoroids.
More about space suit design:
http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/suitnasa.html
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/space/teachers/suited/5emu1.html
http://spaceboy.nasda.go.jp/note/Yujin/E/yuj108_suits_e.html
How the cooling technology of space suits helps MS
victims:
http://www.kron.com/nc4/use/stories/spacesuit.html
A new kind of robot will fly with astronauts soon:
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/2000/08/31.html
Why is caviar so expensive?
What makes a tin of this stuff possibly the most
expensive six-letter answer in a crossword puzzle ("champagne
and _ _ _ _ _ _ ")? It has to do with simple old
economics. Caviar is relatively scarce and difficult to
process.
The sturgeon, from which true caviar comes, takes from 8
to 15 years to mature. This ain't no chicken that keeps
on giving. Maturity is the only point at which the eggs
can be harvested. You catch the fish, cut it open and
take the eggs.
At every step, the eggs must be slowly hand-processed by
an expert, who can tell just how much salt to add. Bad
eggs, with an off-smell or color, must be thrown out,
sometimes significantly diminishing the total harvest.
So what will it be, Beluga on toast points or the down
payment on a Lexus?
Source: HOW DO THEY DO THAT? By Caroline Sutton
Didja Know...
Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy
metal music?
(Source: funtrivia.com)
Okey dokey
It's a hard life and a tough world, so when nature itself
provides soothing reassurance that all is well, we should
be
grateful. The source of this reassuring message is found
in a
lizard native to Southeast Asia. It's the bluish-gray,
red-
spotted gecko, whose call on quiet evenings can be heard
quite distinctly: "TO-kay! TO-kay!"
If it's TO-kay with you, it's TO-kay with me.
Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES
Why do men have Adam's apples?
In asking this question, most people aren't interested in
what the function of the Adam's apple is, just why men
have
them and women don't. Unfortunately, the answer to that
isn't very interesting: women do have Adam's apples,
they're just usually smaller than men's and tend to be
hidden by fat in the neck.
Now that we've established the Adam's apple as an equal
opportunity body part, we can explore why it's there in
the
first place. Officially known as the "thyroid
cartilage",
the plates of the Adam's apple make up the front and side
walls of the larynx. The rigid structure of the Adam's
apple helps to support and protect the delicate vocal
chords that lay inside the larynx. It's men's longer
vocal
chords that give them larger Adam's apples and deeper
voices.
(Main Source: THE BOOK OF TOTALLY USELESS INFORMATION
By Don Vorhees)
Are some people really double-jointed?
Almost all of us have known someone who was the hit of
the
party when they pulled their fingers back to their wrists
or bent their legs behind their heads. Although we refer
to
these people as double-jointed, in reality no one truly
has
double joints.
Contortionists are actually able to stretch the fibrous
tissues known as ligaments. As strong as rope, ligaments
hold organs in place and fasten bones together. Ligaments
normally restrict the movements of certain joints, but
some
folks find that their ligaments are more flexible than
others. Stretching exercises (and the thrill of grossing
people out) often promote the development of this special
talent.
(Main Source: THE BOOK OF TOTALLY USELESS INFORMATION
By Don Vorhees)
What animal had the longest neck of all?
The longest known neck was that of the dinosaur
Mamenchisaurus. Its neck could be as long as 15 meters (49
feet), two and a half times as long as a giraffe's neck.
The whole dinosaur could be as long as 26 meters (85 feet)
and might weigh as much as ten metric tons.
Mamenchisaurus necks contained 19 vertebrae, more than
any other known dinosaur. A giraffe's neck contains only
seven vertebrae.
Memenchisaurus was related to the Diplodocus, another
huge dinosaur. Both were herbivores that used their long
necks to get at vegetation without having to move their
bodies very much. Mamenchisaurus lived during the late
Jurassic Period, about 140 million years ago.
More about Memenchisaurus:
http://www.nature.ca/notebooks/english/mamenchi.htm
Previous Cool Facts about unusual necks:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/12/18.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/05/13.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/05/20.html
What's with the British? Don't they know that
the letter Z is pronounced "zee" not "zed"?
The British may be wrong about a lot of things (just look
at what they eat), but they're right about this one. Z's
pronunciation comes from the original Greek "zeta"
via the Old French "zede" and English speakers
throughout the world pronounce it that way.
Americans don't because we got into a fight with the
British a couple of hundred years ago. After the
Revolution, we adapted the infrequently used
pronunciation "zee," which seems to be
imitative of bee, dee, vee, etc.
But don't worry fellow Americans, we have a secret weapon
for converting the rest of the world: Television. By
sneaking the alphabet song in every children's TV show
that we export to the rest of the world, we'll teach them
to be just as wrong as we are.
(Main Source: THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY)
What's the most powerful kind of light
microscope?
The light microscope that can see the smallest details is
the laser scanning confocal microscope (LSCM). It's a
sophisticated combination of a laser, a computer, and
advanced optics.
The LSCM eliminates one of the biggest sources of optical
"noise" in ordinary microscopes: light from
parts of the image that are not in focus. Instead of
creating the whole image all at once, a confocal
microscope aims a tiny spot of light at the subject,
scanning it like the beam of electrons used in a scanning
electron microscope.
The result is an image that shows much smaller details
than traditional light microscope images. There are other
devices, like electron microscopes, which achieve much
greater magnification than the LSCM. Nevertheless, LSCM
images sometimes show information that is impossible to
see with any other microscope.
Galleries of confocal images:
http://www.neuro.soton.ac.uk/BIG/Pretty_Pictures/pretty.pictures.html
http://www.is.kochi-u.ac.jp/Bio/clsm/clsm.html
More about how it works:
http://www.llt.de/conprin.html
Why is it called Scotland Yard if it's not in
Scotland?
The headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police has
never been in Scotland. Scotland Yard is known throughout
the world for its skill and crime solving technique - can
it be that their renowned detectives don't even know
where they work?
This one is elementary, my dear reader. The London
Metropolitan Police began in 1829 and had its original
headquarters at Number 4 Whitehall Place--right next door
to the buildings that used to house kings and other
important visitors from Scotland.
The surrounding area came to be known as Scotland Yard
and the name stuck to the police facility, even after the
police moved to new offices (dubbed "New Scotland
Yard") in 1890. New Scotland Yard moved in 1967 to
the Westminster section of London, where it remains to
this day.
(Main Source: 1997 World Book Encyclopedia)
Fast Facts
The London Metropolitan Police was founded by Sir Robert
Peel. Ever since, police officers have been called "bobbies",
after Sir Robert's nickname.
Bonus Fact #2: Even though it's one of his most famous
quotes, Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my
dear Watson."
Do rocks from Mars fall onto the Earth?
Analysis of the chemical composition of some meteorites
suggests that they may be pieces of the planet Mars. They
were probably thrown into space during large asteroid
impacts on Mars, and may have spent millions of years in
orbit before falling onto the Earth.
In 1996 tiny fossil-like structures, smaller than
bacteria, were discovered inside one of these Mars rocks.
There is debate about whether these cylindrical capsules
were once living cells.
Is there life on Mars? The presence on Earth of Martian
meteorites may have given us a rare, close-up look at
Martian chemistry, but we still have no certain answers
about Martian life forms.
More about the meteorites from Mars, and the
controversial "fossils":
http://seti1.setileague.org/photos/marspix.htm
http://cnn.com/TECH/9608/06/mars.life/
http://www.fas.org/mars/aaas_001.htm
A previous Cool Fact about Mars:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/06/24.html
What does the US Postal Service do with mail
it can't deliver?
In researching this answer, I found a job that I would
like to do almost as much as I like writing trivia. Any
mail that is improperly addressed or otherwise
undeliverable is sent to a "dead letter" office
if the outer envelope doesn't have a return address on it.
There, a Postal employee opens the envelope and checks
out the contents.
I'm so curious, I would love to open other people's mail
for a living.
If there's no indication on the inside of the letter of
who sent it to whom , it is immediately destroyed. If the
envelope contains anything of value, the contents are
usually retained for about 90 days in case someone is
trying to find them. Any unclaimed items are auctioned
off to the public, and cash is placed into a general fund.
Money that remains abandoned after 1 year is rolled over
into a general account to be used by the Postal Service
however they see fit.
(Source: DO PENGUINS HAVE KNEES? By David Feldman)
Fast facts
I can melt metal with my bare hands. (As long as the
metal is gallium, which melts at 86 degrees Fahrenheit.)
Americans love their pets. Every year, they spend four
times as much on pet food as they do on baby food.
Why does a hurricane have a calm "eye"
in the center?
The eye of a hurricane is the inescapable result of the
laws of physics. No matter how strong the rotating winds
are around the center, there must always be a point where
there is no wind at all. That point, and a circular
region around it, is the eye. Sometimes the sky in the
eye is clear and blue, or stars may be visible if it's
night.
A hurricane's eye is surrounded by a circular wall of
boiling clouds.
The cloud wall marks the sudden transition between the
raging winds and relative calm. Air pressure in a
hurricane's eye is very low, often lower than any (sea-level)
pressures outside of such storms.
Although we know there must be an eye, there are many
unanswered questions. Why is the eye so sharply defined?
Why is there a downdraft in most eyes? How can a storm's
eye develop two concentric cloud walls, and why does the
storm often weaken immediately afterwards?
Here's some great writing about hurricane Hugo (South
Carolina, 1989):
http://www2.sptimes.com/weather/HG.6.html
Other Cool Facts about thunderstorms and hurricanes:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/10/29.html
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/01/11.html
Why does inhaling helium make your voice sound
funny?
This party stunt almost never fails to amuse when it
gives
a chipmunk-like voice to even the most masculine man. I've
often wondered who originated this stunt, and what else
did
they suck up in their quest for the funny voice?
The secret to this trick lies in the fact that helium is
less dense than air. The less dense the medium, the
faster
your vocal chords will vibrate, in this case making your
voice sound higher pitched. A lower pitch can be achieved
by inhaling a gas that's heavier than air, such as xenon,
but a party decorated with xenon filled balloons doesn't
sound as fun.
(Main Source: DO PENGUINS HAVE KNEES? By David
Feldman)
Did pirates really make people walk the plank?
This remains one of the most popular images associated
with pirates, along with peg legs, eye patches and
parrots. But there is only one single report of plank
walking that historians are aware of, from around the
year 1700. So while it does make for an exciting movie
scene, it doesn't appear to have been a common form of
punishment or entertainment for bullying buccaneers.
This is not to say that pirates were pleasant people.
Their enemies ended up in watery graves, but the pirates
were more likely to just toss them overboard than bother
with the plank. Other executions were similarly efficient
and didn't typically involve gratuitous cruelty. Even
when torture was employed, it was usually to find out
where the loot was hidden rather than for the sheer fun
of it.
(Main Source: DID MOHAWKS WEAR MOHAWKS? By Bruce
Tindall and Mark Watson)
What kind of spider catches flying insects
without using a web?
The arboreal (tree-climbing) tarantula, Avicula
versicolor, is so fast that it can grab flying insects
right out of the air. It is one of
the few spiders that can do this without using a web.
A. versicolor is found on Martinique and Guadeloupe
islands. It's a huge, furry, red and brown spider that
can jump rapidly and accurately among the tree branches
where it lives. Like most tarantulas it has excellent
eyesight, with full stereo vision.
If it sees a flying insect it springs at it, in an act of
exquisite
timing and precision, and snatches it right out of the
air. Dinner
is served!
Tarantulas are among the most intelligent arthropods:
http://www.image.dk/~boston/edderdyr/
Why do we knock on wood for luck?
Believing the old proverb, "He who talks much of
happiness, summons grief," many people knock on wood
to ward off evil.
This superstition goes back to pagan times, when people
believed that trees were the god's abode. To touch a tree
was to show respect to the gods.
The superstition was reinforced in people's minds by
Jesus' crucifixion. Since Jesus was crucified on a wooden
cross, many people believed that all wood was holy. Some
even wore
wooden crucifixes and touched them penitently when they
caught themselves gloating.
(Source: Every Wonder Why? by Douglas B. Smith)
When was the first meeting between Europeans
and Native Americans?
Columbus was not the first European to meet Native
American people. A much earlier meeting happened when
Viking explorers landed in the extreme northeast of North
America, around the year 1000.
The landing was part of a great exploratory wave, when
the Vikings sailed all around the north Atlantic visiting
Iceland, Greenland, and northern North America. They
found these lands almost entirely uninhabited.
There are two stories from the 13th and 14th centuries,
written records of much older orally transmitted tales,
that tell the story of their encounters with Native
Americans. They are "The Saga of Erik the Red,"
and "The Saga of the Greenlanders," both about
the explorer Erik the Red and his son, Leif Eriksson.
The Vikings were bold explorers:
http://www.nmnh.si.edu/arctic/features/viking/
A previous Cool Fact about Vikings:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/03/02.html
How did fake fossils fool a university
professor?
A fossil hoax known as "Beringer's Autographed
Stones" was so successful that a university
professor published a book about the fake fossils.
In the early 18th century fossils were still a matter of
considerable debate among geologists. Dr. Hohann
Bartholemew Adam Beringer, of the medical faculty at
Wuerzberg, held the view that fossils were mostly not the
remains of animals, but rather the handiwork of God, made
to please Him.
Two men who disagreed with his views carved various
shapes into stones and planted them at Beringer's
favorite digging site. Beringer believed these fake
fossils to be produced by the direct intervention of God,
and as the hoaxers planted more and more preposterous
fakes, Beringer became even more excited.
The hoax was eventually revealed, and Beringer was so
embarrassed that he bought back as many copies of his
book as he could find, at great expense.
The hoax ruined the reputations of everyone involved:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/berstone.htm
Is one dog year really equal to seven human
years?
One year may FEEL like seven to your dog if you're
dressing him up like a baby and pushing him around in a
carriage, but that's the closest you can come to making
the seven year rule true. Originally a dog food marketing
ploy, this common misconception is flawed in two
important ways.
First, and I hope this doesn't come as a shock to you,
dogs develop differently than people. For instance, many
puppies reach their adult height by six months of age,
which in human years would make for some very dangerous
toddlers.
Second, dogs mature at different rates. With over 130
breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club weighing in
at anywhere from one pound to two hundred, it's easy to
see why no hard and fast rule can be applied. If you
really need to compare Rover to your kids, some
scientists believe that 4 to 6 years per human year is a
little more accurate.
(Main Source: THE COLLEGE OF OBSCURE KNOWLEDGE By Jim
Marbles)
Why is caviar so expensive?
What makes a tin of this stuff possibly the most
expensive six-letter answer in a crossword puzzle ("champagne
and _ _ _ _ _ _ ")? It has to do with simple old
economics. Caviar is relatively scarce and difficult to
process.
The sturgeon, from which true caviar comes, takes from 8
to 15 years to mature. This ain't no chicken that keeps
on giving. Maturity is the only point at which the eggs
can be harvested. You catch the fish, cut it open and
take the eggs.
At every step, the eggs must be slowly hand-processed by
an expert, who can tell just how much salt to add. Bad
eggs, with an off-smell or color, must be thrown out,
sometimes significantly diminishing the total harvest.
So what will it be, Beluga on toast points or the down
payment on a Lexus?
Source: HOW DO THEY DO THAT? By Caroline Sutton
Didja Know...
Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy
metal music?
(Source: funtrivia.com)
Okey dokey
It's a hard life and a tough world, so when nature itself
provides soothing reassurance that all is well, we should
be grateful. The source of this reassuring message is
found in a lizard native to Southeast Asia. It's the
bluish-gray, red-spotted gecko, whose call on quiet
evenings can be heard quite distinctly: "TO-kay! TO-kay!"
If it's TO-kay with you, it's TO-kay with me.
Source: JUST CURIOUS JEEVES
How loud are a bat's echolocation calls?
Although we can't hear the sounds a bat makes as it flies
around in the dark because they are too high-pitched,
they are still sounds and instruments can measure their
loudness.
The loudest bats are those that usually fly in wide-open
spaces. These include the common brown bat, which can be
seen on summer evenings in temperate regions, flying
above the treetops. These are "shouters" whose
calls are sometimes as loud as a household smoke alarm (about
110 decibels). Even at that intensity, their ultrasonic
calls fade out at about 50 feet because air does not
carry ultrasound very well.
Quieter bats are those that fly in tighter spaces like
between the trees in a forest. These "whispering"
bats have calls measuring about 60 decibels, the loudness
of human conversation.
A bat's sense of echolocation can be almost as
accurate as our vision:
http://www.batcon.org/seedark.html
More than a million bats visit Austin, Texas every
year:
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/1998/01/08.html
Where was the first geothermal electricity
generated?
In 1904, the world's first geothermal electric generator
went into operation at Italy's Larderello Hot Springs.
Using pressurized steam from underground, the original
plant was able to generate about 250 kilowatts, barely
enough to run one modern home.
Electricity was not the first use of the hot springs at
Larderello. Hot water was used in 1777,and starting in
1790 brine from the springs was processed to extract
boric acid and other compounds of boron.
Today, Larderello has 300 wells as deep as 700 meters (2300
feet), which yield ultra-hot water at 235 degrees Celsius
(455 F) and a pressure of 30 atmospheres. The site now
produces 300-400 megawatts of power.
More about geothermal energy and how it is used:
http://geothermal.marin.org/pwrheat.html
http://wwwphys.murdoch.edu.au/acre/refiles/geo/text.html
Another place where geothermal energy is important:
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/1997/05/02.html
Why do we use alternating current (AC) electricity?
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/1999/10/14.html
How electric are electric eels?
Electrophorus electrcus, the electric eel, is nature's
own EE battery. You would only want to meet it in the
abstract, in print, rather than in its native habitat,
the Amazon River Basin in South America. That's because
it can deliver up to 600 volts of electricity when
disturbed--one heck of a hissy fit.
This fish is not really an eel, a technicality that would
mean little to you if you made contact with it. The
electric eel generates its charge by the difference in
electrical potential between the solutions inside and
outside the nerve cells in its tail, which makes up 4/5
of its length. That charge is applied to thousands of
tiny cells at its nerve endings along the tail. The
creature controls the strength of the charge by timing
its nerve impulses. Touch it at the wrong time and it
will turn your lights off.
(Source: ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA)
FAST FACTS:
Patrick Henry had a total of 17 children. He had the
distinction of being elected of the first governor of
Virginia. Of course, he was, he was responsible for
populating most of the state.
Patrick Henry was famous for the quote "Give me
liberty or give me death." With 17 kids, either one
was better than having to go home.
(Source: KID'S 20TH CENTURY QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
BOOK)
What kind of zoo keeps its animals in liquid
nitrogen?
All around the world, zoos are busy creating frozen
collections of tissue samples from hundreds of species of
life, including animals, plants, and other life forms.
These "frozen zoos" could be vital resources in
the future if any of these species become extinct.
With the current rate of species extinction between 1,000
and 10,000 times the natural "background" level
and still increasing, it is critical that we preserve the
genetic information of as many life forms as possible.
While we do not yet have the ability to create cloned
animals or plants from many of the samples, it seems
likely that in the future we will.
If we can get past the immediate crisis, then the frozen
zoos may provide the DNA we will need to reconstruct many
of the missing species and perhaps rebuild some of the
vanished ecosystems.
Betsy Dresser is one scientist who is building a
frozen zoo:
http://future.newsday.com/4/fmon0412.htm
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000103/dresser.htm
http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/yr1991/may/eisner_p1_910527.html
Zoos have changed a lot since the first menageries:
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/2000/05/11.html
When was money first used?
If money is a physical object traded as standard tokens
of value, then the first money was being used by 9,000 BC
in the middle east and Africa, where cattle and measures
of grain were exchanged as standard units for other items
like food, raw materials, land, or wives.
Among the first objects specially created as value tokens
were coils of cast silver "ring money" that
were used in Mesopotamia as early as 2,500 BC. These bits
of silver were weighed in shekels, the world's first
standard units of measure.
The first coins were circulated in Lydia in 687 BC,
according to Herodotus. Although the Chinese may have
used paper money for a short time in the same century,
the first western use of paper money was not until the 18th
century, by the French.
How did the invention of money change civilization?
http://www.discover.com/oct_issue/cradle.html
Coins and money systems in ancient Greece and Rome:
http://www.columbia.edu/~rcc20/romans/money.html
Mesopotamia's standard units of weight and measure:
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/1999/01/29.html
Did anyone invent ice cream?
Clearly it was not one person who created this gift to
humanity, for surely he or she would have already been
awarded the Nobel Prize. Short of world peace and cures
for terrible diseases, what better mark of progress and
civilization could there be than the advent of ice cream
in general and, if I may say so, chocolate ice cream in
particular?
Ice cream debuted in China 4000 years ago among the
nobility in the form of a milk and rice concoction packed
in snow. Fruit ices and a form of sherbet followed. In
the Middle Ages travelers brought these treats back to
Italy, where it was
still a dessert reserved for the upper crust. Improved
cheaper refrigeration techniques in the 16th century
brought ice cream to the masses, probably the most
important dot on the timeline of history until the
discovery of antibiotics 400 years later.
(Source: EXTRAORDINARY ORIGINS OF EVERYDAY THINGS)
FAST FACTS:
The dust bowl was a series of dust storms that swept
through the Midwest in the 1930's that destroyed crops
and killed livestock. I have the same experience every
time I clean under my bed.
Orville Wright was at the controls during the Wright
Brothers famous flight. The flight lasted only 12 seconds.
It's hard to pilot a plane where you have someone behind
you saying, "If you don't let me steer I'm going to
tell mom."
(Source: KID'S 20TH CENTURY QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
BOOK)
How do forest workers in Bengal protect
against tigers?
The mangrove forests of the Sunderbans in West Bengal,
India are home to deadly Bengal tigers, which are easily
able to kill a human. Yet hunters, woodcutters, and honey
gatherers often enter these swampy forests. How do they
protect themselves?
Each person who enters the Sunderbans wears a rubber mask
of a human face on the back of his or her head. The
belief is that the tiger will only attack its prey from
behind. If it can see your face, it will not attack.
The masks, issued by the government, are part of a larger
program that includes the placement of electrified human
dummies and the construction of freshwater ponds to keep
the tigers out of the rivers, where people are often
attacked.
The Sunderbans is one of the few places where the
tiger population is growing:
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1998/02/25/intl/intl.1.html
More about Bengal tigers:
http://the-planet.net/co/animal/Btiger.html
A reptilian tiger-equivalent that lived 260 million
years ago:
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/1999/02/10.html
Why do we call that British accent Cockney?
In the U.S. an accent or dialect identifies the
geographical place from which you come, while on the
other side of the pond it can also mark your social place.
The Cockney dialect, for instance, identifies the speaker
as hailing from a certain section of London. But it is
also something more.
The word Cockney comes from cock's egg, an egg with no
yolk and thus worthless. It first meant a spoiled child
or young
man--a dandy--then any young person from a town, who was
presumably weaker than the heartier youth hailing from
the countryside. Finally it designated residents of a
particular working class area of London, an example of
how in a class-conscious society, money can literally
talk.
(Source: WORD & PHRASE ORIGINS by W. & M.
Morris)
What year was missing ten days in October?
In 1582 Pope Gregory decreed that October's dates would
skip from the fourth to the fifteenth, dropping ten days.
The reason for this seemingly strange act had to do with
the calendar system that was in use at the time.
Unlike our current system, the old Julian calendar had a
leap year every four years without exception. Because a
year is really a fraction shorter than 365.25 days, tiny
errors began to accumulate. By the time of Pope Gregory's
decree, the calendar was adjusted by ten days compared to
Earth's solar year.
When he issued his decree, Gregory also fixed the leap
year rule, so that leap years do not occur on century
years (divisible by 100), unless the year is also
divisible by 400. There is one other exception: years
divisible by 4000 are not leap years. For example, 1900
was not a leap year, but 2000 is one.
More about calendar adjustments and leap years:
http://www.digtl.com/leapyr.htm
A suggestion for an even more accurate system:
http://www.greenheart.com/billh/leapyear.html
What clock measures time in thousands of years?
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/1998/12/18.html
What's the most accurate clock in the world?
http://features.LearningKingdom.com/fact/archive/2000/02/02.html
How do they choose a new Pope?
The Pope is chosen by the College of Cardinals, the
members
of which meet, pray, deliberate and vote in the Sistine
Chapel in the Vatican. Their conclave is all work and no
play. By tradition the Cardinals are isolated from the
outside world and swear an oath of secrecy because in the
Middle Ages secular rulers tried to influence their
deliberations. Their living accommodations and even their
food are kept plain because a conclave centuries ago
turned boisterous.
The winning candidate must receive one more than a two-thirds
majority. When a vote does not produce a clear choice,
the ballots are burned with a chemical that produces
black smoke.
The ballots that finally produce a Pope are burned to
produce a white smoke. Isn't that charming! In the age of
the Internet, the results of the world's most important
election are conveyed to the outside world by smoke
signals.
(Source: HOW DO THEY DO THAT? by Caroline Sutton)
FAST FACTS:
An elephant's tusks are actually teeth - the largest
belonging to any animal. The largest tusk ever found
topped the scales at 258 pounds and was more than10 feet
long
(Source: READER'S DIGEST BOOK OF FACTS)
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