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| February 27, 2005
| Society
FactID: 271
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Rated
4.30 stars from 10 votes
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The "Gates" in New York City's Central Park have attracted more than 1 million visitors in the short period (16 days) they were on exhibit. 7,503 "gates" spread out over 23 miles, one for each year the couple waited to display their dream.
The 'art' cost $21 million to create, and used 5,290 tons of steel, about two-thirds the amount used to make Paris' Eiffel Tower. It also used 1 million square feet of vinyl. The materials will be recycled.
The "Gates" close on Monday, February 28th.
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| Source: NYTimes via Udayan & NYC.gov
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| February 26, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 260
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Rated
4.62 stars from 21 votes
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Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, fights crocodiles, venomous snakes, and sharks but is scared of birds.
Crocodile Hunter is scared of parrots, because they always bite him and have "nearly torn his nose off", while he says he's been "catching crocodiles since I was nine".
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| Source: Scientific American via Jason Langberg
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| February 24, 2005
| Cars
FactID: 255
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Rated
4.42 stars from 12 votes
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The Ford F-150 has been the best-selling vehicle in America every year for the past 23 years.
It's also the best-selling pickup truck for 28 consecutive years. Get one fully loaded for only $39,995 MSRP!
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| Source: Motorweek on PBS and Ford
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| February 23, 2005
| History
FactID: 262
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Rated
3.83 stars from 12 votes
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Johnny Appleseed didn't just bring fresh fruit to the frontier, he brought the alcoholic drink of choice.
When apple juice is left to ferment in a barrel for a few weeks, you get a hard cider, about half the strength of wine.
Better yet, the cider could be distilled into brandy or frozen into applejack (about 66 proof -- what a name for a kids' cereal, huh?). In rural areas, cider took the place not only of wine and beer but also of coffee, juice, even water. Now that's what makes a good folk hero!
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| Source: "Botany of Desire" via Madeleine Deblois
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| February 22, 2005
| Computers
FactID: 253
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Rated
3.24 stars from 17 votes
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Every person on Earth would need to perform 100,000 calculations a second in order to equal the power of IBM's Blue Gene.
In November 2004, Blue Gene posted a new record 70.72 Teraflops, or trillions of floating point calculations per second.
Who needs that many calculations? IBM's primary partner, the National Nuclear Security Agency, who's getting a 360 Teraflop version soon.
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| Source: Popular Science
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| February 21, 2005
| Health
FactID: 252
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Rated
4.46 stars from 13 votes
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Coffee can help prevent liver cancer.
And an impotent form of the HIV virus just might be able to combat any type of cancer. With it's outer coat removed and replaced with one that hunts down P-glycoproteins instead of T-cells, it becomes an "effective carrier for gene therapy".
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| Source: CNN and BBC via Chris Shields
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| February 20, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 251
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Rated
3.75 stars from 12 votes
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Monkeys can ride dogs.
Check out Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey and his first commercial.
And then there is always the skateboarding dog. Animals rock.
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| Source: ESPN & WKMG-TV8 via Jason Langberg
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| February 19, 2005
| Math
FactID: 243
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Rated
3.48 stars from 23 votes
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What's a Google?
"Googol" is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by a hundred zero's. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web
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| Source: Wikipedia via Udayan Seksaria
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| February 18, 2005
| Science
FactID: 247
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Rated
4.55 stars from 11 votes
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The normal static electricity shock that zaps your finger when you touch a doorknob in the winter (why winter?) is usually between 10,000 and 30,000 volts!
But it can't hurt you because it is only 2 milliamps (i.e. about 12 million billion electrons that fly over to your finger in a flash) compared to 500mA that a 60W bulb uses.
Sick of getting shocked? Here's how to avoid it.
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| Source: Mythbusters on Discovery Channel
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| February 17, 2005
| World
FactID: 246
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Rated
4.44 stars from 16 votes
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By 2010, India will become home to the largest population of English speakers in the world.
See more facts about India
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| Source: Wired via Mattila
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| February 16, 2005
| Entertainment
FactID: 245
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Rated
4.30 stars from 10 votes
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The September 2004 issue of Vogue ran to 832 pages -- the largest in monthly magazine history!
Of the 832 pages, 648 were filled with ads! (at a cost of almost $100,000 for each full-color ad).
All of this to reach a paid circulation of 1.3 million!
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| Source: Slate via Mattila & Conde Nast Media Group
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| February 15, 2005
| History
FactID: 248
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Rated
4.54 stars from 13 votes
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Rosa Parks was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat on a bus.
On July 14, 1944, Irene Morgan boarded a bus from Gloucester, Virginia, to Baltimore and was passing through Richmond when she was told she was defying Virginia's 1930 law segregating seating by rows. She refused to move and was ejected. A state court rejected her argument, but in 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7–1 that Virginia had no right to impose segregation beyond its borders.
It took Rosa Parks's similar refusal in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 to extend the same principle to bus travel within a state.
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| Source: Virginia Historical Society via Jason Langberg
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| February 13, 2005
| Business
FactID: 236
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Rated
4.10 stars from 10 votes
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So we're running out of UPC bar codes.
Evidently, humans want to keep track of more than 1,000,000,000,000 items, (the number allowed by the 12 digits of the UPC code today), so the European Article Numbering association (EAN) has come up with a 14 digit solution that allows for the unique identification of 100 trillion different items, (plus a check digit to make sure it read the number right)
Reminds me of the April fact that we're also running out of IP addresses for computers.
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| Source: EAN UCC, How Stuff Works
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| February 12, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 240
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Rated
3.31 stars from 13 votes
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Some dogs have tails (Labradors, Dachshunds) and others don't (e.g. Rottweilers).
It's not because some grow tails and some don't. Most breeds got their start in docking of tails to avoid a tax that was charged on "luxury" dogs - aka pets. Since working dogs weren't taxed and typically had their tails docked, breeders began docking tails to avoid paying the tax.
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| Source: American Rottweiler Club via Elsa
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| February 11, 2005
| Science
FactID: 239
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Rated
4.00 stars from 8 votes
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Aluminum is the third most abundant element in the earth's crust. However, since it's never found in a pure state the refining process makes it one of the more expensive metals.
Aluminum is everywhere -- many gemstones, for example ruby and sapphire, are mainly crystalline aluminum oxide (Al2O3). In addition, many of the world's top performance vehicles, like the Ferrari 360 Modena and the Audi A8, are 100% aluminum, since it's lighter than steel but at least twice as strong.
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| Source: History Channel via John Evans and The Aluminum Association
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| February 10, 2005
| Sports
FactID: 241
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Rated
4.36 stars from 14 votes
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The combined paid attendance for the last 10 college basketball national championship games: 427,395.
Combined paid attendance over the last 10 seasons for Carolina-Duke games: 445,113.
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| Source: TarheelBlue.com via Katie C
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| February 9, 2005
| Computers
FactID: 237
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Rated
3.94 stars from 17 votes
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Halo 2, an Xbox game, generated more money in one day ($125M) than any movie in history.
So a videogame beat out every one of the Top 100 Grossing Films of all time (including Titanic, ET, Forrest Gump, etc. in first day sales).
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| Source: Xbox.com and MovieWeb
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| February 8, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 238
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Rated
4.31 stars from 13 votes
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Chimpanzees make for funny superbowl commercials (with outtakes)...all this monkey business for only $7.2 million...
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| Source: Careerbuilder.com and NYTimes
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| February 7, 2005
| Science
FactID: 229
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Rated
3.62 stars from 8 votes
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The caffeine extracted from coffee beans to make decaf is sold to drug and soft drink manufacturers.
Caffeine is an alkaloid that occurs naturally in the leaves, seeds, and fruit of tea, coffee, cacao, and kola trees, and has been prescribed for human use as far back as the 6th century B.C. when the spiritual leader Lao-tzu is said to have recommended tea as an elixir for deciples of his new religion, Taoism.
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| Source: National Geographic
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| February 6, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 233
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Rated
4.50 stars from 8 votes
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Shrek isn't just a funny ogre, he's also a funny sheep in New Zealand.
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| Source: BBC via Chris Shields
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| February 5, 2005
| Sports
FactID: 227
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Rated
3.82 stars from 11 votes
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The Super Bowl is on Sunday (February 6).
The name "Super Bowl" was inspired by the daughter of Lamar Hunt, Kansas City Chiefs owner and Texas Financier, while she was playing with a small, bouncy rubber ball called a super ball. He watched her playing with it and the name Super Bowl came to him.
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| Source: Wikipedia via Jason Langberg
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| February 4, 2005
| Animals
FactID: 235
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Rated
4.59 stars from 17 votes
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Cows have digestive enzymes in their noses which is why you often see them with their tongues in their nostrils.
It helps them digest their food better.
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| Source: Elsa's biology professor
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| February 3, 2005
| Random
FactID: 234
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Rated
4.80 stars from 59 votes
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This past week, Richard Kral from Slovkia peed himself free from an avalanche by drinking tons of beer.
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| Source: Ananova via Chris Shields
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| February 2, 2005
| Technology
FactID: 232
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Rated
4.00 stars from 10 votes
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Plants can now talk.
Not quite as cool as skateboarding dogs, but it's up there.
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more Technology
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| Source: BBC via Chris Shields
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