FACT-OF-THE-DAY ARCHIVE
"Our life is what our thoughts make it."
- Marcus Aurelius
APR 2010

Previous Archives

DATE FACT OF THE DAY 4/1/10      The word 'dad' entered the English language in the sixteenth century and is believed to have originated from the Welsh word tad, meaning father. The word 'father' comes from the Old English term faeder and was first used in the 1500s. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/2/10      In 1919, Henry Ford sued the Chicago Tribune for libeling him in an editorial headlined, 'Ford is an Anarchist'; the jury found in his favor and awarded him 6 cents plus trial costs. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/3/10      1898: The Winton Motor Carriage Company places a magazine advertisement cajoling readers to 'dispense with a horse.' It’s the earliest known automobile ad. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/4/10      U.S. trademarks protect words, names, symbols, sounds, or colors that distinguish goods and services. Unlike patents, they can be renewed forever as long as they are being used in business. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/5/10      President Eisenhower named the presidential retreat Camp David after his grandson. President Franklin Roosevelt previously had called it the 'USS Shangri La.' - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/6/10      The Great Depression changed the family in several ways. Many couples delayed marriage, and divorce rates and birth rates dropped. Some men also abandoned their families; a 1940 poll revealed that 1.5 million married women were abandoned by their husbands. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/7/10      Globally, boy babies are 25% more likely to die in infancy than girl babies. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/8/10      About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. - Provided by Associated Press 4/9/10      On Aug. 3, 1958, the nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/10/10      Longest hot spell in the world: Marble Bar, W. Australia, 100 °F (38 °C) or higher, for 162 consecutive days, October 30, 1923 to April 7, 1924. The world's highest official temperature is 136 degrees recorded at El Azizia, Libya, on September 13, 1922. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/11/10      Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench is the deepest point in Earth's oceans. The bottom there is 10,924 meters (35,840 feet) below sea level. If Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth, were placed at this location it would be covered by over one mile of water. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/12/10      Before 1977, lawyers in the U.S. were not allowed to advertise. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/13/10      Franklin D. Roosevelt was selected in a Zogby poll as the greatest president of the 20th century, but his wife Eleanor Roosevelt consistently outranked him in approval polls during his lifetime. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/14/10      The highest tides on planet Earth occur near Wolfville, in Nova Scotia's Minas Basin. The water level at high tide can be as much as 16 meters (52.5 feet) higher than at low tide. The greatest difference between high and low tide ever recorded was at Burntcoat Head, Nova Scotia at 16.27 metres (or 53.38 feet) in the Bay of Fundy's Minas Basin. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/15/10      From 2000 to 2007, 93% of all new jobs created in the state of New Jersey were government jobs. - Provided by Wall Street Journal 4/16/10      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 The World Almanac 2010 4/17/10      The United States is bordered by Canada and Mexico. The length of the Canadian border is 3,987 miles and the length of the Mexican border is 1,933 miles. Of the 50 states, Alaska has the longest border with Canada; of the 48 contiguous states, Montana has the longest border with Canada. Texas has the longest border with Mexico. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/18/10      The world's largest cut diamond is an unnamed Fancy Black, containing small red diamond crystals. It weighs 555.55 carats and was polished into 55 facets over several years and completed in June 2004. The repetitive use of the number five is culturally significant in the Islamic world, and was inspired by Ran Gorenstein (Belgium), who also commissioned this creation. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/19/10      The most lava ever recorded from a single eruption was the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland. Though there was no single big explosion, this eruption killed one fourth of Iceland's population by producing poisonous gases and clouds of ash that resulted in widespread crop failure and starvation. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/20/10      More than 14 percent of the world's population speaks Mandarin Chinese as a first language; 5 percent of the world's population speaks English as a first language. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/21/10      A human brain comprises only 2% of the body, yet it uses 20% of the oxygen and blood. The heaviest human brain ever recorded weighed 5 lb. 1.1 oz. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/22/10      NTT DoCoMo (Japan) is the world's largest wireless internet provider, with 45,687,117 subscribers to their i-mode service as of January 2006. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/23/10      Around 32.5 million Americans (more than 10 percent of the population) had at least one foreign-born parent in 2008. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/24/10      Angel Falls in Venezuela is the highest waterfall in the world. The falls are 3230 feet in height with an uninterrupted drop of 2647 feet. Angel Falls are located on a tributary of the Rio Caroni. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/25/10      First developed in 1967 in Canada, the IMAX technology premiered with the first IMAX film, a short titled Tiger Child at the Fuji Pavilion at EXPO '70 in Osaka, Japan. Today the company has 371 IMAX theaters in 43 countries, although two-thirds of them are located in North America. The bulb used in an IMAX projector is bright enough to be seen by residents of the International Space Station if pointed in their direction. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/26/10      Of the 3,141 county and county equivalents in the United States, 261 are 'dry.' Dry counties prohibit the sale of alcohol. They exist in 13 U.S. states. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/27/10      Doctors have the highest suicide rate of any profession. About one physician a day commits suicide, or somewhere between 300 to 400 every year, qualifying it for the highest rate of any profession. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/28/10      Mass-market paperback books first became available in 1939. In an effort to make books more affordable to the average consumer, entrepreneur Robert DeGraff launched Pocket Books, shrinking the size of the book and using glue in the spine to save money. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/29/10      In 2006, the most-visited site in the U.S. National Parks System, with almost 19 million visitors, was the Blue Ridge Parkway located in North Carolina and Virginia. The Golden Gate National Recreation Area ranked second with over 13 million visitors. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010 4/30/10      The only state in the Union where radar detectors are illegal is Virginia, and they are also illegal next door in the District of Columbia. Radar detectors are legal in passenger vehicles in all other states. They are illegal in commercial vehicles that weigh greater than 10,000 pounds. - Provided by The World Almanac 2010

Fact-of-the-Day Archives

2010
DEC	NOV	OCT	SEP	AUG	JUL
JUN	MAY	APR	MAR	FEB	JAN

[ Return to Fact-of-the-Day ]
[ Return to Refdesk Home Page ]