60+ Facts

·        The Canadian holiday Boxing Day got its name from the custom of giving. Servants were given boxes which had money hidden inside them from their employers. The servants would have to break the box into pieces to get the money

·        In proportion, if Jupiter were a basketball, then the sun would be the size of the Louisiana Super Dome

·        The Toronto Maple Leafs used to be called the Toronto Arenas, then the St. Patricks and finally the Maple Leafs

·        A dime has 118 ridges around the edge

·        Next to Warsaw, Chicago has the largest Polish population in the world

·        In 1391, China began producing toliet paper for use by its Emperors

·        In the United States, the most frequent month for a tornado to occur is in May.

·        There are some ice creams that are 75% air

·        In the United States, lightning hits the ground 40 million times a year.

·        A mother hen turns her egg approximately 50 times in a day. This is so the yolk does not stick to the shell

·        The reason why flamingos are pink is because they eat shrimp which have a red pigment

·        Totally Hair Barbie is the best selling Barbie of all time. It sold over ten million units

·        Jellyfish have been on Earth for over 650 million years. This is before sharks and dinosaurs

·        Although white wine can be produced from both red and white grapes, red wine can only be created from red grapes

·        Shirley Temple was considered to play the role of Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz."

·        Babies that wear disposable diapers are five times more likely to get a diaper rash than babies wearing a cotton diaper

·        One million cloud droplets are needed to make enough water to produce one raindrop.

·        In the world, the Netherlands has the highest concentration of museums in the world. Just in Amsterdam alone there are 42 museums

·        Amongst pre-schoolers, Caillou is the fastest-ever-growing television show and is seen in close to 97% of U.S. households

·        Rice flour was used to strengthen some of the bricks that make up the Great Wall of China

·        Research has indicated that a tie that is on too tight can increase the risk of glaucoma in men

·        Each year all of the Hostess bakeries combined bake 500 million Twinkies a year. (A twinkie is a sponge cake with a creamy filling.)

·        Charlie Chaplin once lost a contest for a Charlie Chaplin look a like

·        Pluto is the only planet in our solar system that has not been visited by a spacecraft

·        The worlds tallest free fall rollercoaster is The Giant Drop located in Australia. The drops is 120 meters which is equivalent to a 39 storey building

·        Stalks of sugar cane can reach up to 30 feet

·        The markings that are found on dice are called "pips."

·        Joseph Gayetty is credited for inventing toilet paper in 1857. Unfortunately, his invention failed and did not catch on until ten years later

·        A newly hatched fish is called a "fry."

·        The music band UB40 got its name from an unemployment form in England

·        The Olympic Flame was introduced in 1928 in Amsterdam

·        The YKK on the zipper of your Levis stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushibibaisha, the worlds largest zipper manufacturer

·        Armadillos can be housebroken

·        The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one-mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies

·        The material to build the Taj Mahal was brought in from various parts of India by a fleet of 1000 elephants

·        Medical research has found substances in mistletoe that can slow down tumor growth

·        In the USA, 32% of employees eat lunch and work at the same time

·        In Alabama, it is against the law to wear a fake mustache that could cause laughter in the church

·        In the United States, more than 4.2 million couples live together that are not married

·        Bill Gates house was partially designed using a Macintosh computer. new

·        The male howler monkey of Central and South America is the noisiest land animal, which can be heard clearly from a distance of ten miles away

·        Nerve cells can travel as fast as 120 metres per second

·        It is said that grapefruit got its name because it grows like grapes in clusters. One cluster can have up to 25 grapefruits

·        Abdul Kassam Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went. Four hundred camels carried the 117,000 volumes

·        An average adult produces about half a litre of flatulent gas per day, resulting in an average of about fourteen occurrences of flatulence a day

·        Maine is the toothpick capital of the world

·        Peanut butter is an effective way to to remove chewing gum from hair or clothes

·        The longest kiss on record lasted 30 hours and 45 minutes. Dror Orpaz and Carmit Tsubara recorded it on April 5, 1999 at a kissing contest held in Tel Aviv, Israel

·        Polar bears are excellent swimmers. They have been known to swim more than 60 miles without a rest

·        The most expensive perfume in the world is Parfum VI, which was made by Arthur Burnham. A 4 inch bottle which is covered with diamonds and 24-carat gold costs $71,380

·        If Wal-Mart was classified as a country, it would be the 24th most productive country in the world

-->·        Cimetière du Père-Lachaise located in Paris is the most visited cemetery in the world. The cemetery opened in 1805 and has over one million people buried there, including rock star Jim Morrison

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Gene Therapy Hope for HIV: Engineered Stem Cells Hold Promise

Gene Therapy Hope for HIV: Engineered Stem Cells Hold Promise

 

 

When it comes to research on HIV and AIDS treatments, it can be hard to know when to celebrate a small advance–everyone wants to see progress, but so many experimental avenues that seemed promising have turned out to be dead ends. Still, a new study that tried a sophisticated form of gene therapy as an HIV treatment seems cause for cautious optimism. If it bears out under further testing, the technique could lead to a one-shot, long-lasting treatment that could replace the punishing regimen of daily medications.

Treating HIV currently comes down to controlling the viral load with a mixture antiretroviral drugs, but over time, this drug cocktail becomes less effective. Researcher John Rossi and his colleagues tried to craft a more permanent treatment by genetically modifying the HIV-infected patients’ own blood stem cells and increasing the cells’ ability to fight off the virus. The researchers weren’t able to truly combat the virus in this experiment–the patients’ viral loads remained the same–but their work moved beyond previous attempts in two ways: They successfully modified blood stem cells by giving them anti-HIV genes, and those cells survived for two years in patients.

Earlier clinical studies the group conducted with the same strategy made little headway, but now the researchers have overcome two key obstacles, says Rossi, a molecular geneticist. One is that they managed to stitch the anti-HIV genes into a high percentage of the appropriate stem cells. The other is that the cells lived for a long time. “If we could increase the number of modified cells by 10- or 100-fold, we might be able to stop the virus itself,” says Rossi. [ScienceNow]

The small study published in Science Translational Medicine tested the safety of the technique for HIV-infected patients, and served as a proof of concept. The four patients in this study were undergoing therapy for AIDS-related lymphoma at City of Hope cancer center in California. Part of the usual treatment for this condition is to remove blood stem cells (found in bone marrow) before cell-damaging chemotherapy, and to then return them after treatment. Researchers wanted to test their virus-fighting cells’ survival skills, so with each patient’s normal blood stem cells, the researchers also reintroduced a small number of modified cells.
They modified the cells in three ways: They boarded up the cells’ doors to keep the HIV virus out, and made two genetic changes to the cells’ internal defenses so that the virus would have a harder time copying itself if it made it through.

[T]he team added three genes to the immune stem cells’ DNA: one that cripples the CCR5 receptor that HIV exploits to enter the cell (this mimics a successful transplant recently done in Berlin with a much discussed patient who apparently was “cured” of his HIV infection), and two others that disable viral genes and prevent HIV from copying itself. This makes it increasingly difficult for HIV to find new targets and mops up any new virus produced [ScienceNOW].

As a safety precaution, the researchers didn’t implant enough of these novel cells to test how well they might fight the virus, but they did get a glimpse of how long the modified cells could stay in a person’s system. Up to two years after the treatment, patients still had low levels of these special cells.

“That’s a major finding,” Rossi added. While the number of cells expressing those genes was too low to provide any therapeutic benefit, it’s “proof of principle” that gene therapy may provide long-term HIV treatment, he said. [The Scientist]

As a next step, researchers hope to implant a greater number of modified cells in patients, to see how well they can fight and how long their defenses hold.

 

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Zero-Energy Fridge Uses Gel to Preserve Food

Zero-Energy Fridge Uses Gel to Preserve Food

Written by Megan Treacy on 16/06/10

This one's a weird one, kids, but still cool.  A new concept for a zero-energy refrigerator uses an odor-free, gel-like substance to cool and preserve food items.
The Bio Robot Refrigerator was designed by Yuriy Dmitriev and is currently a semifinalist in Electrolux's Design Lab competition.  The Bio Robot has no motor, compressor or other electrical components, but it does contain a green biopolymer gel that uses luminescence to preserve food.
To store food, you press the item into the gel, which then envelopes it, creating a "separate capsule" for each product.
The designer highlights its benefits as being:  zero-energy and silent operation, four times smaller than a traditional fridge, but maximized storage space and the absence of doors allows horizontal or vertical placement and displays food in plain view.
I'm not sure how you'd go about cleaning this refrigerator, or how it'd handle storing, say, a pot of soup, but any zero-energy concept is OK by me.
via EcoFriend

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2013 Solar Storm Expected To Cause Trouble

(Telegraph) - National power grids could overheat and air travel severely disrupted while electronic items, navigation devices and major satellites could stop working after the Sun reaches its maximum power in a few years.

Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken.

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph....

read full story here

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NASA: Moon may have more water than the Great Lakes

NASA: Moon may have more water than the Great Lakes 

 

 

 

 

The fight to keep Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes isn’t just regional anymore. Things just got global, if not interplanetary.
That’s because new NASA-funded research suggests that the amount of water locked up in Earth’s longtime orbital nemesis — the moon — could exceed the volume of the Great Lakes.
So unless the region conserves every drop it can, I’ll have to listen to my grandkids prattle on about how “The Great Lakes were cool until their volume was marginalized by the discovery of hydroxyl indigenous to lunar apatite, a water-bearing mineral.”
For over 40 years we thought the moon was dry,” said Francis McCubbin of Carnegie and lead author of the report published in Monday’s Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “In our study we looked at hydroxyl, a compound with an oxygen atom bound with hydrogen, and apatite, a water-bearing mineral in the assemblage of minerals we examined in two Apollo samples and a lunar meteorite.

 

 

 

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Planes Punch Holes in Clouds and Create Rain

Look up in the sky near an airport and you might see some unusual cloud formations. The one on the left is called a “hole-punch,” and meteorologists have been speculating on the cause. They suggested that the holes may have been the result of shock waves from jets or warming of the air by jets.
Researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and elsewhere now say that the odd-shaped clouds can be caused by either turboprop or jet aircraft as they pass through a particular type of cloud layer. Their study appears in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
On average, about 7.8 percent of the Earth is covered by midlevel liquid-layer topped stratiform clouds (those are the ones that look like a flat layer of cloud). The liquid is super-cooled, at a temperature below freezing but still in liquid form. When a plane passes nearby, pressure changes from the spinning turboprop or air passing over wings can cool the liquid even further, turning it into ice. That ice becomes the “seed” for precipitation. More water droplets condense and freeze on these seeds, forming snow. If the air below is warm enough, if melts into rain. The same process is also responsible for canal clouds, which are just a long and thin versions of the hole-punch.
The cloud layer needed for this phenomenon is especially common in the Pacific Northwest and western Europe. I’m off to Seattle this weekend; I think I’ll have to check out the skies. (HT: Greg Laden)

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NASA Discovers 300 Planets outside Solar system

NASA has proclaimed that it has discovered as many as 300 planets surrounding the solar system. As per their estimations, these planets are as large as the size of Earth.

The observations have been made from Kepler orbiting telescope, which was placed in the orbit in March, last year. The spacecraft has identified the indications of a planet crossing nearly 700 stars.

The lead author of the current study, William Borucki, said that the existence of the planets has not been given any approval from other scientists, as there are rooms for mistakes in identifying them.

In order to confirm, more detailed studies are to be conducted by the team. Kepler has been noting the intensity of as many as 156,097 stars in Cygnus and Lyra. They are trying to identifying any reduction in their brightness due to the presence of any planet in front of them.
The planets discovered in the current study have been termed as `candidate planets'.
The report was compiled on May 25 and presented on June 14. Kepler researchers observed the stars and the spotted planets for nearly 33.5 days.
The team observed as many as 12,000 stars losing brightness with the progress in their motion.

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The future of summer: Air conditioners that are 90 percent more efficient

Air conditioners are a pain. They use an incredible amount of energy, reflected in incredibly high electricity bills in the summer months. But in some places, like Texas and Arizona, it’s hard to go without them. Now, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory may have an answer to the problem: A brand new air conditioning design that could make AC units 90 percent more efficient than they are today.
This is not just a new spin on the traditional design. NREL has ditched major components of today’s AC units, including their condensers and compressors. It generates colder air by evaporating water off a wet surface with a built-in fan. There is a desiccant included to make sure the air is dry.
In addition to slashing the amount of energy needed to run a typical AC unit, the NREL model, called the DEVap, also eliminates the need for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), toxic chemicals used in many of today’s air conditioners that pollute the atmosphere.
Previously, this evaporative air conditioning process only worked in dry, hot climates, because the cool air generated would otherwise contain too much moisture. The addition of the desiccants has made it functional in a range of climates, even very humid environments, NREL says.
The challenge now will be to make the NREL air conditioner cost competitive with those already on the market. It might be as many as five summers before consumers can get buy the units to cool their houses, the laboratory says. It will be licensing the deign for commercial distribution.
Steeply reducing the amount of energy sucked by air conditioners could have a major impact on overall energy use in the U.S. and abroad. After all, air conditioners account for 5 percent of energy used in the U.S. every year.

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Seventh Graders Find a Cave on Mars

Seventh Graders Find a Cave on Mars

June 17, 2010










 
Enlarge

Sixteen seventh-grade students at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif., found the Martian pit feature at the center of the superimposed red square in this image while participating in a program that enables students to use the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

(PhysOrg.com) -- California middle school students using the camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter have found lava tubes with one pit that appears to be a skylight to a cave.

They went looking for lava tubes on Mars -- and found what may be a hole in the roof of a Martian cave.
The 16 students in Dennis Mitchell's 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, California, chose to study lava tubes, a common volcanic feature on Earth and Mars. It was their class project for the Mars Student Imaging Program (MSIP), a component of ASU's Mars Education Program, which is run out of the Mars Space Flight Facility on the Tempe campus.
The imaging program involves upper elementary to college students in Mars research by having them develop a geological question about Mars to answer. Then the students actually command a Mars-orbiting camera to take an image to answer their question. Since MSIP began in 2004, more than 50,000 students have participated to varying extents.
"The students developed a research project focused on finding the most common locations of lava tubes on Mars," says Mitchell. "Do they occur most often near the summit of a volcano, on its flanks, or the plains surrounding it?"
To answer the question, the students examined more than 200 images of Mars taken with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Philip Christensen, a Regents' Professor of geological sciences in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, is the instrument's designer and principal investigator. The students chose for their targeted THEMIS image (plus a secondary backup image) areas on Pavonis Mons volcano that had yet to be photographed by THEMIS at highest resolution (18 meters, or 59 feet, per pixel).
On their two targeted images the students found lava tubes, as they had hoped. And on the backup image, they also found a small, round black spot. Many Martian lava tubes are marked by aligned chains of collapse pits, which typically have flat floors and sloping sides. The spot they students found, however, appears to have vertical sides.
Such features made a stir in the news in 2007, when Glen Cushing, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist, published a paper showing several Martian examples, which had been located using the heat-sensing capability of THEMIS. He argued that these holes were anomalous as compared to the usual chain pit crater, being smaller and resembling a relatively straight-sided shaft going down into the ground.


Cushing proposed that these anomalous pit craters are "skylights" — places where a small part of the roof of a cave or a lava tube has collapsed, opening the subsurface to the sky. They typically appear cooler than the ground surface by day, but warmer than it by night. This is exactly what would be expected, given that Martian surface temperatures have a large diurnal range, while subsurface temperatures hold fairly even.
"This pit is certainly new to us," Cushing told the students. "And it is only the second one known to be associated with Pavonis Mons." He estimated it to be approximately 190 by 160 meters (620 x 520 feet) wide and 115 meters (380 feet) deep at least.
In addition, he said, the spot appears clear against the background surface of Pavonis Mons. "It sticks out like a sore thumb in THEMIS predawn thermal observations."
The students have submitted their site as a candidate for imaging by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE can image the surface at about 30 centimeters (12 inches) per pixel, which may allow a look inside the hole in the ground.

"The Mars Student Imaging Program is certainly one of the greatest educational programs ever developed," says Mitchell. "It gives the students a good understanding of the way research is conducted and how that research can be important for the scientific community. This has been a wonderful experience."

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Human Race "Will Be Extinct Within 100 Years," Claims Leading Scientist

Human Race "Will Be Extinct Within 100 Years," Claims Leading Scientist

Professor Frank Fenner has warned that the human race can not surviveAs the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.


And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.


He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and 'unbridled consumption.'


Fenner told The Australian newspaper that 'homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years.'


'A lot of other animals will, too,' he added.


'It's an irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.'


Since humans entered an unofficial scientific period known as the Anthropocene - the time since industrialisation - we have had an effect on the planet that rivals any ice age or comet impact, he said.


Fenner, 95, has won awards for his work in helping eradicate the variola virus that causes smallpox and has written or co-written 22 books.


He announced the eradication of the disease to the World Health Assembly in 1980 and it is still regarded as one of the World Health Organisation's greatest achievements.


He was also heavily involved in helping to control Australia's myxomatosis problem in rabbits.


Last year official UN figures estimated that the world's population is currently 6.8 billion. It is predicted to exceed seven billion by the end of 2011.


Fenner blames the onset of climate change for the human race's imminent demise.


He said: 'We'll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island.


'Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we're seeing remarkable changes in the weather already.'


'The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years.


'But the world can't. The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we've seen disappear.'

A map of the world from an atlas which concentrates on population rather than land mass released last year. The Earth's population is due to hit 7bn by next year.

Retired professor Stephen Boyden, a colleague of Professor Fenner, said that while there was deep pessimism among some ecologists, others had a more optimistic view.


'Frank may well be right, but some of us still harbour the hope that there will come about an awareness of the situation and, as a result the revolutionary changes necessary to achieve ecological sustainability.'


Simon Ross, the vice-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, said: 'Mankind is facing real challenges including climate change, loss of bio-diversity and unprecedented growth in population.'


Professor Fenner's chilling prediction echoes recent comments by Prince Charles who last week warned of 'monumental problems' if the world's population continues to grow at such a rapid pace.


And it comes after Professor Nicholas Boyle of Cambridge University said that a 'Doomsday' moment will take place in 2014 - and will determine whether the 21st century is full of violence and poverty or will be peaceful and prosperous.


in the last 500 years there has been a cataclysmic 'Great Event' of international significance at the start of each century, he claimed.


In 2006 another esteemed academic, Professor James Lovelock, warned that the world's population may sink as low as 500 million over the next century due to global warming.


He claimed that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the problem, merely buy us time.

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facts 8

Facts 8

· The highest toll paid by a ship to cross the Panama Canal was by the Crown Princess on May 2, 1993 in the amount of $141,349.97 U.S. funds

· The name of the famous snack "Twinkies" was invented by seeing a billboard in St. Louis, that said "Twinkle Toe Shoes."

· The word "Nazi" is actually an abbreviation for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which refers to the National Socialist German Workers Party

· The unique characteristics of Barbie dolls in Japan are that they have their lips closed with no teeth showing

· The Coca Cola company offers more than 300 different beverages

· Neptune was the first planet in our solar system to be discovered by mathematics

· Five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married

· Camel is considered unclean meat in the Bible

· Soldier Field is the oldest field in the NFL

· In the U.S., over one million gallons of cosmetics, drinks, and lotions are sold that contain aloe in them per year

· The name Jeep came from the abbreviation used in the army for the"General Purpose" vehicle, G.P.

· Eating eight strawberries will provide you with more Vitamin C than an orange

· The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".

· Mosquitoes have teeth

· To be born on Sunday was considered a sign of great sin during the Puritan times

· The citrus soda "7 UP" was created in 1929. The original name of the popular drink was "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda", but it got changed to "7 UP."

· The average four year-old child asks over four hundred questions a day

· Prosopagnosia refers to the inability to identify people by their faces. In severe cased prosopagnosia a person may not be able to identify themselves in a mirror

· On November 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an "Honorary Harlem Globetrotter."

· An adult sheep can eat between 1 to 4 kg of food per day

· In 1888, Hollywood was founded by Harvey and Daeida Wilcox, who named the city after their summer home in Chicago

· Blood is such a good stain that Native Americans used it for paint

· In 1876, the first microphone was invented by Emile Berliner.

· "I am." is the second shortest complete sentence in the English language

· On average, a person will spend about five years eating during their lifetime

· Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, Diamonds - Julius Caesar

· Many cancer patients that are treated with chemotherapy lose their hair. For some when the hair grows back, it can grow back a different colour, or be curly or straight

· A volcano has enough power to shoot ash as high as 50 km into the atmosphere

· The longest hiccups on record was by an American pig farmer whose hiccups persisted from 1922 to 1987

· Coupons were introduced in 1894 when Asa Candler bought the Coca-Cola formula for $2,300 and gave people coupons that he had written out to receive a free glass of coke

· Panthers are known as black leopards, as they are the same species of leopard. If looked at closely, black spots can be seen on a panther

· Approximately 25% of all scald burns to children are from hot tap water and is associated with more deaths than with any other liquid

· In London, during rush hour traffic moves on average at 13 kilometres an hour

· Tomatoes and cucumbers are fruits

· In the United States, approximately 50 million people fish per year

· Cattle can produce up to 180 litres of saliva in one day

· Dolphins hear by having sound waves transmit through their skull to their inner ear region

· Teflon was accidently discovered by scientist Dr. Roy Plunkett while he was conducting a coolant gas experiment in 1938

· The risk of cardiovascular disease is twice as high in women that snore regularly compared to women who do not snore. updated

· Close to 80% of people who watch the Super Bowl on television, only do so to view the commercials

· The first theatre to show motion pictures was the Nickelodeon on June 19, 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was opened by Harry Davis on Smithfield Street

· The White House has a movie theater, swimming pool, bowling lane, jogging track, and a tennis court

· About two hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Druids used mistletoe to celebrate that winter was approaching

· Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, dogs only have about ten

· A butterfly can see the colors red, green, and yellow

· In the game of Monopoly, the most landed on properties are B&O Railroad, Illinois Avenue, and "Go."

· The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the nameof the Don McLean song.)

· Lions cannot roar until they reach the age of two.

· A baby kangaroo is called a joey

· Montreal is the second largest French speaking city after Paris

· There were 43,687 toilet related accidents in the United States in 1996

· In Albania, nodding your head means "no" and shaking your head means "yes."

· Ringo Starr appeared in a Japanese advertisement for apple sauce. Ironically his name means "apple sauce" in Japanese

· The average US worker toils for two hours and 47 minutes of each working day just to pay income tax. Indeed, the average American pays more in taxes than for food, clothing and shelter put together

· There is cyanide in apple pips

· True spiders always have organs for spinning silk known as spinnerets

· Great Britain has the highest consumption of ice cream than any other European nation

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Facts

Facts 7

       ·        70% of the poor people in the world are female

·        The thickness of the Arctic ice sheet is on average 10 feet. There are some areas that are thick as 65 feet

·        The adult human body requires about 88 pounds of oxygen daily

·        The biggest pumpkin the world weighs 1,337.6 pounds

·        The highest consumption of Pizza occurs during Super Bowl week

·        During World War II, condoms were used to cover rifle barrels from being damaged by salt water as the soldiers swam to shore

·Approximately 55% of movies released are Rated R

·        The Roman emperor Domitian took great pleasure in being secluded in his room for hours and catching flies and stabbing them with pens

·        Tarantulas can live up to 30 years

·        On average redheads have 90,000 hairs. People with black hair have about 110,000 hairs

·        More than half the time spent in United States courts is cases that involve automobiles

·        The smoke that is produced by a fire kills more people than a burn does because of carbon monoxide and other dangerous gases

·        The Saguaro Cactus, found in South-western United States does not grow branches until it is 75 years old.

·        In Belgium, 172,000 tons of chocolate are produced in a year

·        The word Nike comes from Greek Mythology. Nike is the goddess of victory and was often depicted as a small winged figure whom the goddess Athene carried

·        The biggest bug in the world is the Goliath Beetle which can weigh up to 3.5 ounces and be 4.5 inches long

·        Leaving the water running while brushing your teeth can waste four gallons of water in a minute

·Steve Fletcher holds the record for the largest gum wrapper collection. His collection has 5300 gum wrappers from all across the world

·        There was once a country called Prussia. After World War II, it was divided among Poland, Germany, and the USSR

·        The word Spain means "the land of rabbits."

·In 1936, the first practical helicopter was invented. It was the German Focke-Wulf Fw 61.

·The word tulip comes from the Turkish word for turban

·        Psychokinesis refers to the ability of moving objects through psychic power

·        The fat that comes from sheep, which is called tallow, can also be used to produce soap and candles

·        In Britain, one out of every four potatoes is eaten in the form of french · <!--[endif]-->In the movie Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, chocolate syrup was used for blood in the shower scene

·        The movie "Chicken Run" made in 2,000 had the most plasticine used in an animated movie. They used 2,380 kg of plasticine for the movie

·        During WWII, because a lot of players were called to duty, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles combined to become The Steagles

·        The titan arum flower is the largest flower in the world and gives off a horrible odor that smells like rotting flesh when it blooms

·        Every day, the average person swallows about a quart of snot

·        When the only queen ant dies, so does the entire colony, because no new workers are born

·        The Dutch people are known to be the tallest people in Europe

·        The average American kid will eat approximately 1.500 peanut butter sandwiches by high school graduation

·        Goats do not have upper front teeth

·        It has been suggested that shepherds are responsible for inventing the game golf. It is said that they used to use their staffs to hit the stones

·        There are about 6,800 languages in the world

·        Studies have shown that by putting on slow background music it can make a person eat food at a slower rate

· By walking an extra 20 minutes every day, an average person will burn off seven pounds of body fat in an year

·        Ironically, when doctors in Los Angeles, California went on strike in 1976, the daily number of deaths in the city dropped 18%

·        Octopus and squid are thought to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates

·        On average, a beaver can cut down two hundred trees a year.

·        The name of the first menthol cigarette in the United States was "Spud."

·        A world record 328 pound ovarian cyst was removed from a woman in Galveston, Texas, in 1905. updated

·The fastest shark is the "Shortfin Mako," which can swim as fast as sixty miles per hour

·        The flatulation from domesticated cows produce about 30% of the methane on this planet

·        Ironically, watermelons, which are 92% water, originated from the Kalahari Desert in Africa

·The first tattoo machine was invented by Samuel O'Reilly. He did this by using equipment that Thomas Edison used to engrave hard surfaces.

·     In a lifetime, an average human produces 10,000 gallons of saliva

·        A slug has four noses

·        Chili Powder was invented in the 19th century in the American Southwest

·        The sea cucumber spills its internal organs out as a defense mechanism

·        Approximately 25,000 workers died during the building of the Panama Canal and approximately 20,000 of them contracted malaria and yellow fever

·        Braces were first invented by Pierre Fauchard in 1728. The braces were made by a flat strip of metal, which was connected to the teeth by thread.

·Marilyn Monroe had six toes

·        There is a town in Texas called Ding Dong. In 1990, the population was only twenty-two people

·       The total volume of mail that went through the Canadian postal system in 1950 was 1,362,310,155 items

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