Fact of the Matter...part 2

1. Because its eyeball is fixed, the whale must move its huge body to shift its line of sight.
2. Blype is the skin that peels off after a bad sunburn.
3. Drusus Caesar, son of the Roman emperor Tiberius, so loved broccoli that he ate little else for more than a month. He only stopped when his urine turned green.
4. Without any greenhouse effect, Earth would be cold and lifeless with an average temperature of 0.4 degree Fahrenheit.
5. If the Antarctic ice cap were to melt, the sea level would rise by an average of 230 feet.
6. Winking at women, even to express friendship, is considered bad manners in Australia.
7. The shallow champagne glass originated with Marie Antoinette, from wax moulds made of her breasts.
8. An adult female ladybug will eat about 300 medium-size aphids before it lays eggs. About three to ten aphids are eaten for each egg the beetle lays.
9. Our galaxy has approximately 250 billion stars and it is estimated by astronomers that there are 100 billion other galaxies in the universe.
10. Next to wood, coal is the oldest of fuels. The Chinese mined it as long ago as 1000 BC nad used it to smelt iron and copper.
11. The Japanese word for chef, itamae, literally means 'in front of the cutting board.'
12. Paul Gauguin, the French painter, was a labourer on the Panama Canal. About 25,000 workers died during its construction.
13. A species of starfish known as the Linckia columbiae can reproduce its entire body - that is, grow back completely - from a single severed piece less than a half-inch long.
14. Bugs hold special places in the hearts of many Japanese, who often keep crickets, beetles and fireflies as pets.
15. Most insect repellents used by humans work on the principle of either masking odours that might attract insects or by creating smells that are repulsive to them.
16. A quarter horse gets its name from its speed in running the quarter-mile.
17. The American opossum, a marsupial, bears its young just 12 to 13 days after conception. The Asiatic elephant takes 608 days to give birth, or just over 20 months.
18. Moonstones are so named because they have a soft, luminous glow, like moonlight. The Greeks believed that the stones became brighter or dimmer with the phases of the moon, A moonstone was also believed to be a good luck charm, and wearing one was considered to guarantee success in any endeavor.
19. As a rule, many birds generally lay fewer eggs in a clutch in the tropics, where the amount of daylight is shorter than in northern latitudes.
20. Cattle branding was practiced 4,000 years ago. Old tomb paintings show Egyptians branding their fat, spotted cattle.
21. Did you know that even a racehorse loses weight? A racehorse averages a weight loss of between 6.75 and 11.25 kg during a race.
22. Chocolate has over 500 flavour components, more than twice the amount found in strawberry and vanilla.
23. At 840,000 square miles, Greenland is the largest island in the world. By comparison, Iceland is only 39,800 square miles.
24. The letter 'O' is the oldest letter. It has not changed in shape since its adoption in the Phoenician alphabet in circa 1300 BC.
25. The term 'rhinestone', from the French caillou du Rhin, came to be because the colorless, hard-glass artificial gems were originally make at Strasbourg (on the Rhine).