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FACT-OF-THE-DAY ARCHIVE
"Our life is what our thoughts make it."
- Marcus Aurelius

JAN 2012


Previous Archives

DATEFACT OF THE DAY
1/1/12     Every cigarette smoked cuts at least five minutes of life on average, which is roughly the time it takes to smoke one cigarette. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/2/12     Individuals with bachelor's degrees earn an average of 60% more than people with only a high school diploma, which adds up to more than $800,000 over a lifetime. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/3/12     Corn dextrin, a common thickener used in junk food, is also the glue on envelopes and postage stamps. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/4/12     The blue whale is the largest of all whales and is also considered the largest animal to have ever existed in the world. An adult blue whale can measure up to 108 feet in length and can weigh nearly 200 tons. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/5/12     In the whole of the Biblical Old Testament, only the Book of Jonah has no reference to the vine or wine. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/6/12     Nearly 6.2 million Americans get a new HPV (human papillomavirus) infection each year. Most HPV infections cause no clinical problems and resolve on their own without treatment (91% of new infections clear up within two years). - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/7/12     Herbert Hoover (1874-1964), a Republican, was president when the Great Depression began. He infamously declared in March 1930 that the U.S. had 'passed the worst' and argued that the economy would sort itself out. The worst, however, had just begun and would last until the outbreak of WWII (1939). - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/8/12     More than 300 million people (nearly 1 in 20) live in the shadow of active volcanoes, including Mount Vesuvius in Italy, Mount Rainer in the U.S., and Popocatepetl in Mexico. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/9/12     Stress causes capillaries to close, which restricts bleeding if a flesh wound should occur. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/10/12     Nearly all cultures have showered the wedding couple with symbolic food. For example, the French throw wheat, Sicilians throw wheat bread and salt, and the English throw pieces of cake. Early Romans or Greeks threw nuts, dates, and seed-bearing plants. Bulgarians have thrown figs. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/11/12     Each year in the United States, there are approximately six million pregnancies. This means that at any one time, about 4% of women in the U.S. are pregnant. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/12/12     Howler monkeys spend up to 80% of their time resting. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/13/12     Snowflake Birth: 1. Rising air, moisture and cold temperatures combine to form snowflakes in clouds high above the earth. First, water droplet freezes into ice crystal. 2. If temperature is near 5 degrees Fahrenheit and plenty of moisture is present, crystal grows six branches with arms. 3. Crystal grows heavier as moisture condenses onto it. 4. Crystal continues growing as it falls through the cloud. 5. Crystals falling into warm air begin melting. Water can act like glue, holding crystals together in large flakes. - Provided by Reference.com
1/14/12     With age, red wines tend to lose color and will eventually end up a sort of brick red. On the other hand, white wines gain color, becoming golden and eventually brown-yellow. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/15/12     Yale University has the second largest academic library in the nation, boasting 9.5 million volumes. Harvard's is the largest, with 13.6 million volumes. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/16/12     "At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement." - Provided by NobelPrize.org
1/17/12     The busiest U.S. airport is Hartsfield-Jackson, in Atlanta, GA, which 89 million passengers traveled through in 2010. - Provided by The World Almanac 2012
1/18/12     Approximately one in three babies in the United States is now delivered by cesarean section. The number of cesarean sections in the U.S. has risen nearly 46% since 1996. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/19/12     The human female egg is the largest cell in the human body. It is the only human cell that can be seen with the naked eye. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/20/12     Every 11 years, solar activity surges. The sunspots that pepper the sun explode, hurtling massive clouds of gas known as "CMEs" through the solar system. This is called "solar maximum." - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/21/12     Whales and other cetaceans move through the water by plunging their tails up and down in a vertical motion. This action distinguishes them from fish, which move their tails from side to side when swimming. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/22/12     Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or Mad Cow Disease cannot be killed in meat by cooking. The interval between the virus getting into the body and the final illness is about one to two years in small animals to an estimated five to 30 years in humans. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/23/12     President James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other hand simultaneously. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/24/12     Roman physicians had a wide range of surgical tools, including catheters and speculums. Many modern medical terms still have Latin roots. The knee cap, for example, is the patella, which is Latin for "shallow dish." - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/25/12     In just seven years, a single pair of cats and their offspring could produce a staggering total of 420,000 kittens. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/26/12     The term bachelor in "bachelor's degree" most likely is from the Medieval Latin term baccalaureate, which is a play on the Latin words bacca lauri or laurel berries. The word is also a re-Latinization of the French word bachelor, which means a "youthful knight" or a "novice in arms." - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/27/12     The basic geographic unit for mobile telephone services is a 'cell' in a cellular system. A city or county is divided into 'cells', each of which is equipped with a low-powered radio transmitter/receiver. The cells can vary in size depending upon terrain, capacity demands, etc. By controlling the transmission power, the radio frequencies assigned to one cell can be limited to the boundaries of that cell. When a cellular phone moves from one cell toward another, a computer at the Switching Office monitors the movement and at the proper time, transfers or hands off the phone call to the new cell and another radio frequency - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/28/12     Roman coins were used to publicize the emperor, his achievements, and his family in a world with no mass media. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/29/12     The cells of every living organism contain deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a nucleic acid that holds the genetic instructions for the development and functioning of a life form. It is this substance that allows a living thing to grow and reproduce. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/30/12     With no large moon like Earth's to stabilize it, Mars periodically tilts much more toward the sun, creating warmer summers on Mars than it otherwise would have. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
1/31/12     U.S. colleges with the most transfer students are University of Phoenix online campus (35,515); Excelsior College in Albany, NY (16,541); Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ (5,446); University of South Florida in Tampa, FL (4,623); and University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL (4,455). - Provided by RandomHistory.com


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