FACT-OF-THE-DAY ARCHIVE
"Our life is what our thoughts make it."
- Marcus Aurelius
APR 2013

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DATE FACT OF THE DAY 4/1/13      The first film ever made in Hollywood was D.W. Griffith's 1910 In Old California, a Biograph melodrama about a Spanish maiden (Marion Leonard) who has an illegitimate son with a man who later becomes governor of California. It was shot in two days. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/2/13      A small colony of bats can eat over one ton of insects in one year, or more than 600 million bugs. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/3/13      Bears can run up to 40 miles per hour, fast enough to catch a running horse. The fastest known human alive today is Usain Bolt, who can run 27mph. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/4/13      There are more than 500 million domestic cats in the world, with approximately 40 recognized breeds. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/5/13      Currently, a woman living in the U.S. has a 12.1% (or 1 in 8) chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer. In the 1970s, the risk was 1 in 11. The increase is most likely due to longer life expectancy as well as changes in reproductive patterns, longer-term menopausal hormone use, increased obesity, and increased screening. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/6/13      The average person has about 1,460 dreams a year. That's about four per night. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/7/13      Twenty-five percent of patients waiting for a heart transplant die before an organ becomes available. Approximately 2,300 heart transplants are performed annually in the U.S. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/8/13      When it comes time to give birth, the female shark loses her appetite so she won't be tempted to eat her own pups. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/9/13      In several countries, including Germany and Greece, the bride attempts to cover her new husband's foot while dancing in order to establish dominance. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/10/13      Four out of 10 workplace dating relationships result in marriage. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/11/13      Other planets and moons in our solar system have volcanoes, but they do not have mountain ranges like Earth's because only Earth has plate tectonics. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/12/13      Before the discovery of insulin in 1921, physicians would often put their diabetic patients on starvation or semi-starvation diets, recommending they eat only foods such as oatmeal. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/13/13      Cats are extremely sensitive to vibrations. Cats are said to detect earthquake tremors 10 or 15 minutes before humans can. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/14/13      A driver with a blood alcohol content level of .08 g/dL is 11 times more likely to be in a fatal accident than a driver who has consumed no alcohol. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/15/13      Thirty-nine decimal places of pi suffice for computing the circumference of a circle girding the known universe with an error no greater than the radius of a hydrogen atom. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/16/13      Carat weight can be 10, 12, 14, 18, 22, or 24. The higher the number, the greater the purity. To be called "solid gold," gold must have a minimum weight of 10 carats. "Pure gold" must have a carat weight of 24, (though there is still a small amount of copper in it). Pure gold is so soft that it can be molded by hand. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/17/13      Japan has 10% of the world's active volcanoes. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/18/13      An early version of Google at Stanford could analyze 30-50 pages a second. Currently, it's millions of pages a second. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/19/13      The number one country of origin of foreign college students in the United States is India, followed by China and South Korea. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/20/13      British physician Sir Richard Morton (1637-1698) is considered to have recorded the earliest medical description of anorexic illness. He reported two cases, one in which the girl was "sad and anxious" and "pored over books." The second case was a boy who was "prone to studying too hard." - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/21/13      The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that diabetes has reached epidemic proportions and expects that 80% of all new cases of diabetes will appear in developing countries by 2025. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/22/13      Researchers found a huge decline in happiness four years into a marriage with another decline in years seven to eight. In fact, half of all divorces occur in the first seven years of marriage, which gives rise to the popular term "the seven-year itch." - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/23/13      The state of Wyoming is the deadliest state for drinking and driving, with just over 13 drunk-driving fatalities for every 100,000 people occurring each year. New York experiences the least amount of drunk-driving fatalities, with only 2.06 per 100,000 residents. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/24/13      In America, T.V. soap opera weddings attract more viewers than a presidential address. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/25/13      The Earth's plates move just a few inches a year - about as fast as a person's fingernails grow. This continental pattern predicts that 250 million years from now, a new supercontinent will be born. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/26/13      More than 65 million men from 30 countries fought in WWI. Nearly 10 million died. The Allies (The Entente Powers) lost about 6 million soldiers. The Central Powers lost about 4 million. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/27/13      Only one U.S President is known to have been divorced: Ronald Reagan. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/28/13      Each year, several pounds of soil can accumulate in and under a carpet. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/29/13      Shakespeare's works contain first-ever recordings of 2,035 English words, including critical, frugal, excellent, barefaced, assassination, and countless. - Provided by RandomHistory.com 4/30/13      Google uses approximately 20 petabytes of user-generated data every day. (Petabytes are estimated at 10 to the 15th power. So 1 petabyte is approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.) It uses massive amounts of computation to index the Web, process search results, serve up ads, and more. - Provided by RandomHistory.com

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