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

FEB 2016


Previous Archives

DATEFACT OF THE DAY
2/1/16     Unlike most other fish, the ocean sunfish does not have a tail. A female sunfish can lay 300 million eggs each year. Each egg is smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/2/16     A woman's risk of hip fractures is equal to her risk of developing breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer combined. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/3/16     On average, only an inch of rain falls in Egypt per year. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/4/16     Currently, over 5.5 trillion cigarettes are produced globally per year. Cigarettes are an attractive source of government revenue because so many people smoke them. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/5/16     About two-thirds of shark attacks on humans have taken place in water less than six feet deep. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/6/16     The word "tragedy" is Greek for "goat-song" because early Greek tragedies honored Dionysus, the god of wine, and the players wore goatskins. Tragedies were noble stories of gods, kings, and heroes. Comedy or "revel," on the other hand, were about lower-class characters and their antics. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/7/16     Twenty-five million people die each year from contaminated water. That is the entire population of Canada. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/8/16     According to a 2008 report, the average life expectancy in the world as a whole is 66.26 years. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/9/16     Unlike other animals, wolves have a variety of distinctive facial expressions they use to communicate and maintain pack unity. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/10/16     Individuals with an "apple" body shape are at greater risk for diabetes than are those with "pear" body shapes. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/11/16     Once reserved for the elite, chocolate became available to everyone due to the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. However, as chocolate became increasingly popular in Europe and America, thousands of people were used as slaves to produce cacao. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/12/16     A refined value of pi was obtained by the Chinese much earlier than in the West. The Chinese had two advantages over most of the world: they used decimal notations and they used a symbol for zero. European mathematicians would not use a symbolic zero until the late Middle Ages through contact with Indian and Arabic thinkers. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/13/16     In the early 1900s, many American cities created laws that required all women in bathing suits to wear stockings. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/14/16     The most popular flower on Valentine's Day is a single red rose surrounded with baby's breath. The red rose was the flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/15/16     Not all lumps that are found in the breast are cancerous but may be a fibrocystic breast condition (disease), which is benign. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/16/16     Scientists think that animals may sense weak tremors before a quake. Other scientists think that animals may sense electrical signals set off by the shifting of underground rocks. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/17/16     A cat can jump up to five times its own height in a single bound. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/18/16     An estimated 16 million Americans have pre-diabetes, and many of them are unaware of their condition. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/19/16     Mexico City is built over the ruins of a great Aztec city, Tenochtitlan. Because it is built on a lake, Mexico is sinking at a rate of 6 to 8 inches a year as pumps draw water out for the city's growing population. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/20/16     Approximately one third of the deaths associated with cocaine use are caused by the direct pharmacological effects of the drug itself. The vast majority of deaths related to cocaine are caused by homicide, suicide, and motor vehicle collisions as a result of the drug's mind-altering properties. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/21/16     J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, is the first person to become a billionaire (U.S. dollars) by writing books. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/22/16     The maximum length of a mammal's life is generally related to its size. Thus, a man's lifespan should be somewhere between that of a goat and a horse, between 10 and 30 years. However, humans have developed ways to protect themselves from predators and disease, increasing their average lifespan to 74.7 years in the United States. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/23/16     The World Bank estimates that rebuilding the tsunami-affected areas of Japan after the 2011 tsunami will cost $232 billion and will take at least five years. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/24/16     A dog most likely interprets a smiling person as baring their teeth, which is an act of aggression. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/25/16     China is often considered the longest continuous civilization, with some historians marking 6000 B.C. as the dawn of Chinese civilization. It also has the world's longest continuously used written language. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/26/16     As of July 2011, the population of Egypt was 82,079,663, making it the 15th most populated country in the world. Approximately 99% of the population lives on about 5.5% of the land. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/27/16     Americans buy over 29 million bottles of water every year. Making all those bottles uses 17 million barrels of crude oil annually, which would be enough fuel to keep 1 million cars on the road for one year. Only 13% of those bottles are recycled. Plastic bottles take centuries to decompose - and if they are burned, they release toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/28/16     The first printing press in North America was used in Mexico City in 1539. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
2/29/16     The only president to be unanimously elected was George Washington (1732-1799). He also refused to accept his presidential salary, which was $25,000 a year. - Provided by RandomHistory.com


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