Fast Facts
October 10, 2007
In an average year, more Americans are killed by flash floods than by any other weather-related event.
Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they cannot find food.
Casanova named 116 lovers in his memoir, “”The Story of My Life,”” even though he often boasted of seducing thousands.
Lake Nicaragua has the only fresh water sharks in the world.
Louisiana’s counties are actually called parishes-for example, Jefferson Davis Parish.
Identical twins do not have identical fingerprints.
Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine, coined a new word to describe his stories: “”scientifiction.”” Over time, people began pronouncing it “”science fiction.””
The driest place on Earth is a series of valleys near Ross Island in Antarctica, where no rain has fallen for at least the last two million years.
Preachers who traveled on horseback through the Old West were known as “”circuit riders.””
Napoleon named his pet dog Fortune.
Pecans are the only food astronauts do not have to treat and dehydrate when flying in space.
It took a 19th-century Danish schoolmaster a lifetime to calculate pi to 800 decimal places. It took a modern computer only a few seconds to check his figures and find them correct.
The Pilgrims ate popcorn during the first Thanksgiving dinner.
The smallest and shallowest ocean in the world is the Arctic.
Sean Connery has to have tattoos on his arm covered by makeup when filming. The tattoos declare his love for his mom and dad, as well as for Scotland, which he represented in the 1952 Mr. Universe contest.
In the movie “”Psycho,”” the color of Mrs. Bates’s dress is periwinkle blue.
