Fact of the Matter...part 1

1. Soap was considered a frivolous luxury of the British aristocracy from the early 1700s until 1862, and there was a tax on those who used it in England.
   
2. Every second, a hurricane releases as much energy as the explosion of a Hiroshima-type atomic bomb.
3. The highly seasoned stew of meat or fish called ragout(rhymes with 'blue') is prepared without vegetables. The name is derived from French and means 'to restore the appetite of'.
4. Since white tigers have pigmented stripes and blue eyes, they are not albinos.
5. A tanka is a Japanese verse form of 31 syllables in five unrhymed lines, the first and third having five syllables each, and the others seven.
6. The first city to reach a population of 1 million people was Rome in 133 BC. London reached the mark in 1810 and New York City made it in 1875. Today, there are over 300 such cities in the world.
7. Originally a palace, the Louvre was made into a museum after the french revolution.
8. Light from the moon takes about a second and a half to reach the earth.
9. Grey whales migrate 12,000 miles each year, farther than any other mammal.
10. Polaris is the closest visible star to true north and is thus called the North Star. By about 2100 AD, the wobble of the Earth's axis will slowly begin pointing the North Pole away from Polaris.
11. The herring is the most widely eaten fish in the world. Nutritionally its fuel value is that equal to that of a beefsteak.
12. Uncontrollable winding is the physical symptom of those suffering from blepharospasms.
13. At one time it was believed that citrus fruits could provide protection against poisons.
14. No matter how popular the show, a serial (or soap opera) on Mexican television runs no longer than just one season.
15. The natural diet of lady beetles consists of soft-bodied insects, such as aphids, spider mites, and young caterpillars, Adults can consume up to 100 aphids a day.
16. Bananas do not grow on trees. They grow on plants that are giant herbs and are related to the lily and orchid family.
17. The Hope diamond was acquired by King Louis XIV in 1668. It was wore 120 years later by Marie Antoinette and now resides in the Smithsonian Institution. It weighs 44.5 carats today.
18. While the bones of most airborne birds are hollow for lightness, penguins are endowed with solid bones for ballast when they dive, sometimes to 850 feet or more.
19. Dinner guests in medieval England were expected to bring their own knives to table. The fork did not appear until the sixteenth century, and fork-and-knife pairs were not in general use in England until the seventeenth century.
20. Pleonexia is a clinical term for morbid greediness.
21. Sunflower seeds in bird feeder will attract the greatest variety of wild birds.
22. One of Napoleon's drinking cups was made from the skull of the famous Italian adventurer Cagliostro.
23. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
24. The first college on record to use the word 'campus' to describe its grounds was Princeton in the USA. 'Campus' is Latin for 'field'.
25. Some form of bowling is played in more than 90 countries around the world. Approximately 100 million people participate in bowling today.
26. The number two is the only number greater than zero that, when added to or multiplied by itself, gives the same result: 4.
27. When traveling in Jordan, it is important for foreigners to know that the host may ask a visitor to stay for dinner. It is customary to refuse twice before accepting.
28. Pine, spruce, or other evergreen wood should never be used for barbequeing. These woods, when burning or smoking, can add harmful tar and resins to the food.
29. The whale has the slowest metabolism of all animals. Despite its great size, it lives on one of the smallest of all creatures: the microscopic plankton, found throughout the sea.
30. In 1986, Rob Angel, a 24-year-old waiter from Seattle, Washington, developed Pictionary, the game in which partners try to guess phrases based on each other's drawings.
31. All pet hamsters are descended from a single female wild golden hamster found with a litter of 12 young in Syria in 1930.
32. A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks.
33. The Nile is the longest stretch of river in the world without any tributaries.
34. Horse racing is one of the most ancient sports, originating in Central Asia among prehistoric nomadic tribesmen around 4500 BC.
35. Evergreens, because of their long life span and their needles' year-round exposure to pollution are the trees most vulnerable to air pollution.
36. Jupiter is the largest planet, and it has the shortest day. Although Jupiter has a circumference of 280,000 miles, compared with Earth's 25000, Jupiter manages to make one turn in 9 hours and 55 minutes.
37. Lightning bolt charges can propagate for up to 160 km; however, the actual channel of lightning is rarely larger than the width of a pen.
38. Nyctitropism is the tendency of the leaves of petals of certain plants to assume a different position at night.
39. The venom of the king cobra is so deadly that one gram of it can kill 150 people. Just to handle the substance can put one in a coma.
40. Increasing herbicide use has created a jungle of at least 48 'super-weeds' that are resistant to chemicals.
41. It takes approximately 69000 venom extractions from the coral snake to fill a 473 ml container.
42. It was reported that Napoleon carried chocolate with him on his military campaigns, and always ate it when he need a boost of energy.
43. Nine ways to pronounce 'ough' - A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after failing into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.
44. The alteration of the architectural appearance of a city by the contruction of skyscrapers and high-ride buildings is known as 'Manhattanisation'.
45. During World War II, the US Navy commissioned the world's first floating ice cream parlour for service in the Pacific theatre. It made ten gallons of ice cream in seven seconds.
46. Winds ten times stronger than a hurricane on Earth blow around Saturn' equator. Wind speeds can reach 1760 kmph.
47. Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentine's Day candy box in the late 1800s.
48. The winning term in chess, 'checkmate' comes from the Arabic phrase shah mat, meaning is dead.
49. Apricot trees were first cultivated in China, then they made their way to India, Armenia, and Persia. Before the thirteenth century, they arrived in England via Italy.
50. Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.
51. In France, chocolate was initially considered a barbarous, noxious drug. The French court accepted chocolate after the Paris faculty of medicine gave its approval.
52. Some insects, after their head is severed, may live for as much as a year. They react automatically to light, temperature, humidity, chemicals, and other stimuli.
53. The body has 120000 km of blood vessels. The heart pumps blood through this labyrinth and back again once every minute.
54. Just 50 years after Johannes Gutenberg invented his printing press in the mid-15 th century, more than 6 million books had been published on law, science, poetry, politics, and religion.
55. There is just one known species of ostrich in the world-it is the one called Struthioniformes.
56. An elementary rule of mushroom collecting is never to place edible and poisonous specimens together. The slightest tough may contaminate.
57. 73 percent of people who buy flowers for Valentine's Day are men, while only 27 per cent are women.
58. Left-handed people are 20 per cent more likely to sample a forkful of food from the plates of fellow diners than are right-handed people.
59. Notre Dame de Paris ranks as one of the greatest achievements of Gothic architecture. The massive interior can accommodate over 6000 worshippers.
60. Redhaven, fairhaven, elberta, desert gold, and sunhaven are varieties of peaches.
61. Birds may travel great distances on their migrations. The Arctic tern travels from the top of the world, the Arctic, to the bottom, Antarctica. Round trip in a single year: 40000 km in all.
62. Hail destroys crores of rupees' worth of crops and property each year, a greater toll than that taken by tornadoes.
63. The hides of mature female blue sharks are more then twice as thick as those of males, probably as a protection against courtship bites.
64. There are mice that nest in trees. These creatures may spend their whole life without ever touching the ground.
65. After his infamous 1997 attack on Evander Holyfield, the Hollywood Wax Museum moved boxer Mike Tyson's figure to the Chamber of Horrors-next to the figure of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
66. To make a daguerreotype, an early photograph, required a 15-minute average exposure time.
67. The first bit of gold that Christopher Columbus brought back from the Americans was used to gild the ceiling of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. The ceiling and the gold are still there.
68. The islands of Bermuda have no river or lakes. The inhabitants must use rain for water.