- The black robin (petroica traversi) came about as close to extinction as possible without actually becoming extinct - in 1980, there was only one breeding pair among the five surviving black robins in the world. As a result, the 300 birds that make up the current population are genetically identical.
- If you go to Scotland, a native may say to you "See you Jimmy!" even though you aren't leaving and your name isn't Jimmy. It's a common Scottish greeting, but even the Scots don't know why.
- Although something like 75% of the Earth's surface is covered with water, if you were able to shrink our planet to the size of a cue ball, you wouldn't be able to tell it was wet without a microscope.
- The narwhal is classified as an odontocete, or toothed whale, but it has at most two teeth.
- An African elephant's ears are such efficient cooling mechanisms that the blood leaving them is 15o cooler than the blood entering.
- The largest living thing on Earth isn't a whale or a giant redwood tree; it's the square mile of honey mushroom (Armillaria ostoyae) living in eastern Oregon.
- Donkeys are somewhat of a mystery, because no matter where they come from, they are all physiologically indistinguishable from each other.
- Yogi Berra, the famous Yankee catcher, had a novel way of dealing with the pounding his hand took from big league pitching: he put a "falsie" - a padded bra insert - inside his glove.
- Hernando deSoto and his army only managed around 11 miles per day as they explored up through Florida and into Alabama and Georgia in the 1540s. Why so slow? They were herding pigs as an emergency food supply.
- Idaho is unique among state names because it's the only one that's just a made-up word.
- In 1274, Kublai Khan sent his invincible army to conquer the island nation of Japan. However, huge winds arose in the Sea of Japan, destroying much of the Mongol armada and drowning 13,000 of the Khan's soldiers. The Mongol ruler tried again, seven years later. Again, great winds in the Sea of Japan destroyed his invasion force. As a result, the Japanese came to believe that their nation was protected by a wind of the gods - in Japanese, kamikaze.
- The Japanese were skilled code breakers and managed to decipher the codes used by the United States Army and the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. They never broke one of the codes used by the U.S. Marines, however. The Marine "code talkers" transmitted messages to each other in Navajo, an unwritten language that has no alphabet.
- The moon is leaving us, but it will be a while before it's gone. Receding at the rate of 1.5 inches per year, the center of the moon will be, on average, a mile further from the center of the Earth in a little over 42,000 years.
- Attila, the fierce leader of the dreaded Huns, the man who called himself "the Scourge of God", died from a nosebleed.
- "The Lady in Red" who betrayed John Dillinger to the FBI was wearing orange, not red. Her skirt looked red in the lights of the Biograph Theater.
- In 1951, Life published a somewhat unusual photo-essay on the B-36, the Air Force's first truly strategic bomber (and its last major bomber with piston engines). The photo-essay was unusual because
- The photos supposedly showing mid-air refueling of a B-36 actually depicted a B-29, since B-36s were never equipped for mid-air refueling.
- The wonderful shots of the deep blue, high altitude sky were taken from a B-47, not from a B-36.
- The essay included maps showing overseas Air Force installations, none of which included a single B-36 in its complement.
- Percy Spencer, a Raytheon engineer, was doing some radar-related research when a candy bar in his pocket melted. Curious, he put some popcorn kernels near the device he was testing, and they popped, the first food ever cooked by what would become the microwave oven. Spencer, by the way, eventually held 150 patents, but he never finished high school.
|
