FACT-OF-THE-DAY ARCHIVE
"Our life is what our thoughts make it."
- Marcus Aurelius
DEC 2016

Previous Archives

DATE	FACT OF THE DAY
12/1/16	The five-second rule is a myth: bacteria can live after four weeks on carpet. And, thanks to "microbial adhesion," germs such as the following are immediately transferred to food: Salmonella typhimurium, Campylobacter, and Salmonella enteritis, a nasty bacterium that causes horrible diarrhea and vomiting. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/2/16	Iraqis celebrate two New Year's Days. The first celebration is Muharram on the first month of the Muslim calendar. Some Iraqis also celebrate New Year's Eve on December 31 of the Gregorian calendar. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/3/16	When Tutankhamen's tomb was opened in 1922, the wine jars buried with him were labeled with the year, the name of the winemaker, and comments such as "very good wine." The labels were so specific that they could actually meet modern wine label laws of several countries. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/4/16	Coined by the National Retail Federation in 2005 to generate consumer excitement, Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) is the online equivalent of Black Friday. In 2009, Cyber Monday generated $887 million. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/5/16	Approximately 90% of people with Type 2 diabetes are obese. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/6/16	In the early 1980s, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traced a number of the first AIDS cases in the U.S. to Haitian immigrants. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/7/16	At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, there were 96 ships anchored. During the attack, 18 were sunk or seriously damaged, including eight battleships. There were 2,402 American men killed and 1,280 injured. Three hundred and fifty aircraft were destroyed or damaged. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/8/16	The entire surface of the moon is covered in a layer of crushed and powdered rocks called regolith (from the Greek rhegos = blanket + lithos = rock). The dust is a result of millions of years of bombardment from space by tiny micrometeorites. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/9/16	Flirting in Little Rock, Arkansas, can land someone in jail for 30 days. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/10/16	The first probe to reach the moon was the Soviet space probe Luna 2. It crash-landed on the moon in 1959. The first probe, Luna 1, missed the moon by 3,000 miles (5,000 km). - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/11/16	A bride is traditionally carried over the threshold either to symbolize her reluctance to leave her father's home or because evil spirits hovered over the threshold of a house - so she was lifted over the entrance to protect her from the spirits. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/12/16	Early Roman women were forbidden to drink wine, and a husband who found his wife drinking was at liberty to kill her. Divorce on the same grounds was last recorded in Rome in 194 B.C. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/13/16	When the mind recalls a memory, it's not the original memory. In fact, the act of remembering is an act of creative reimagination. The put-together memory doesn't just have a few holes; it also has some entirely new bits pasted in. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/14/16	We can never truly measure the circumference or the area of a circle because we can never truly know the value of pi. Pi is an irrational number, meaning its digits go on forever in a seemingly random sequence. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/15/16	An adult male Emperor Penguin is the longest-fasting bird. It will not eat for approximately 115 days during its chick's incubation/hatching period. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/16/16	Diabetes has been reported in horses, ferrets, and ground squirrels. In environments where animals are liberally fed, diabetes has been reported in dolphins, foxes, and even a hippopotamus. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/17/16	Studies show that those who have autism are more likely to be left-handed. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/18/16	According to U.S. statistics, if there is daughter and no son in a marriage, the union is 5% more likely to end. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/19/16	Built by the Roman emperor Hadrian (118-125), the Pantheon ("Temple of the Gods") is remarkable because its massive dome is made of concrete that has withstood the elements for almost 2,000 years - with no steel reinforcing. The Pantheon was the largest concrete curved dome in existence until the nineteenth century. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/20/16	Blocking off a dolphin's ears with suction cups hardly affects it hearing, yet if its lower jaw is covered with a rubber jacket, a dolphin will have trouble hearing... leading scientists to believe sound may be carried from the water to its inner ear through a different route than the ear canal, such as the lower jawbone or even its entire body - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/21/16	Iran is one of the primary trans-shipment routes for Southwest Asian heroin to Europe. Over 3,600 Iranians have been killed in the past 25 years fighting heroin smugglers. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/22/16	The Akita is one of the most challenging dogs to own. Some insurance companies have even characterized it as the number one "bad dog" and may even raise an Akita owner's homeowner insurance costs. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/23/16	Manitou Lake on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron is the world's largest lake within a lake (41.1 square miles). - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/24/16	Known as the "Three Fountains," Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) are arguably the three most famous Italian authors of all time. Dante's Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia) had tremendous influence on Italian literature, and he is considered the father of the Italian language. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/25/16	In A.D. 350, Pope Julius I, bishop of Rome, proclaimed December 25 the official celebration date for the birthday of Christ. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/26/16	The Indonesia 9.0 earthquake in 2004 released more energy than all the earthquakes on the planet in the last 25 years combined. A segment of seafloor the size of the state of California moved upward and seaward by more than 30 feet, displacing huge amounts of water. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/27/16	Nearly 1,600 Saturns could fit inside the Sun. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/28/16	A body mass index of 20 or less is associated with an increased risk of osteoporosis. Women who are overweight have a lower risk of osteoporosis because fat cells produce estrogen. However, being overweight is associated with many other risk factors. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/29/16	According to one poll, over 80% of American drivers have heard of the term BAC or blood alcohol content, but only 27% of drivers can correctly identify the legal BAC limit for their state. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
12/30/16	When a troop of guenon monkeys gets a new leader, the new alpha-male will sometimes kill all babies who are still being suckled - an evolutionary behavior known as kin selection, where the male protects his own offspring by killing the offspring of other males. - Provided by FactRetriever.com
12/31/16	While waves generated by wind may travel anywhere from around 2 to 60 miles (3.2 to 97 km) per hour, tsunami waves can travel at speeds of 600 miles (970 km) per hour, the speed of a jet plane. - Provided by FactRetriever.com

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