FastFacts
March 2, 2006
- There are two radios for every man, woman and child in the United States.
The National Academy of Engineering estimates that 15,000 deaths each year are directly attributable to air pollution. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health estimates that many of the 10,000 people who die each year from occupational exposure die as a result of hazardous air quality at work.
The life expectancy for women in the United States is nearly twice what it was 100 years ago.
A diamond will not dissolve in acid. The only thing that can destroy it is intense heat.
Each year, more than 300,000 American teenagers become afflicted with some form of venereal disease.
One cannot catch cold at the North Pole in winter. Neither can one contract the flu, nor most of the ailments transmitted by viruses and germs. The winter temperature is so low in this part of the world that none of the standard disease-causing microorganisms can survive.
Big Ben is not a clock. It is a bell located in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament in London.
During the Renaissance, fashionable aristocratic Italian women shaved their hair several inches back from their natural hairlines.
Rennet, a common substance used to curdle milk and make cheese, is taken from the inner lining of the fourth stomach of a calf.
Playing cards in India are round.
Three million people in the United States have an impairment of the back or limbs that is the direct result of an accidental fall.
