Fast Facts
February 7, 2006
- Christopher Columbus had blond hair.
No one knows where Mozart is buried.
During the early 1920s, at the height of the inflation in the German Weimar Republic, one American dollar was equal to 4 trillion German marks.
Crystals grow by reproducing themselves. They come nearest to being “”alive”” of all members of the mineral kingdom.
The primary source of physical discomfort among Americans is back pain.
In medieval Japan, a woman who was caught alone in a room with a man other than her husband was immediately put to death, even if the meeting was completely innocent.
Magical symbols drawn by Roman soldiers on the shields to repel the evil eye became the basis for European heraldic designs during the Middle Ages.
Ants stretch when they wake up. They also appear to yawn in a very human manner before taking up the tasks of the day.
A male emperor moth can detect and find a female of his species a mile away.
The distance from Honolulu to New York is greater than the distance from Honolulu to Japan.
The receipts from illegal gambling each year in the United States surpass the total revenues of America’s 75 largest industrial organizations combined.
Voltaire considered Shakespeare’s works so deplorable that he referred to the Bard as “”that drunken fool.””
Until 1893, lynching was legal in the United States. The first anti-lynching law was passed in Georgia, but it only made the violation punishable by four years in prison.
The original name for the butterfly was “”flutterby.””
James J. Ritty, owner of a tavern in Dayton, Ohio, invented the cash register in 1879 to stop his patrons from pilfering house profits.
