Fast Facts
April 20, 2006
- If the world were a single town with a population of 100, one of those 100 people would have a college education, 30 would be able to read and write, 15 would live in adequate housing (the rest would live in huts) and 50 would be hungry most of the time. Six of the 100 would control almost half the wealth of the town, and of these six, three would be Americans.
Ninety percent of all teenagers suffer from some form of acne.
Teenagers are 50 percent more susceptible to colds than people over 50.
The San Blas Indian women of Panama consider giant noses a mark of great beauty. They paint black lines down the center of their noses to make them appear longer. Among San Blas men, an enormous nose is the mark of a great leader.
In 18th-century England, women’s wigs were sometimes 4 feet high. These remarkable headdresses were dusted with flour and decorated with stuffed birds, replicas of gardens, plates of fruit or even model ships.
In 1500 B.C. in Egypt, a shaved head was considered the ultimate in feminine beauty. Egyptian women removed every hair from their heads with special gold tweezers and polished their scalps to a high sheen with buffing cloths.
There really are such things as “”cooties.”” Though most people believe that “”cooties”” is just a nonsense word used by children to describe unpleasant insects, cooties are in fact a kind of body lice. The word is from the Malay kutu, meaning louse.
Part of Lewis Carroll’s classic “”Through the Looking Glass”” was omitted from the original publication and was only made known to the general public after 107 years of obscurity. The section, which featured a giant wasp wearing a wig, was left out because Carroll’s illustrator, John Tenniel, refused to illustrate it. “”A wasp wearing a wig,”” said Tenniel, “”is altogether beyond the appliance of art.””
