What's the fastest growing city in the United States according to the 2000 census? New York? LA? Houston? Philadelphia?
Nope, it's Las Vegas. While the nation holds a growth rate of 13%, Vegas checked in at a whopping 84%. (Sidenote: With only about 4 inches of rain a year, it's likely that the city will face major water issues in the years to come.)
Although the contagious nature of yawning is well established, we know less about why this is so. Researchers are currently giving the topic some serious attention. One theory suggests it's a holdover from a period in evolutionary history when yawning served to coordinate the social behavior of a group of animals. A recent study postulates that contagious yawning could be part of the "neural network involved in empathy."
Mercedes-Benz has been around for 111 years and sold 222,000 vehicles in America last year.
The company was created by merging the companies of Gottlieb Daimler, inventor of the gasoline internal combustion engine in 1883, and Carl Benz, inventor of the first gasoline-powered motor vehicle. In 1900, they designed a new car for Emil Jellinek, consul general of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Daimler named the new car "Mercedes" in honor of Jellinek's daughter, Mercedes. Ever since then, they have been known as Mercedes-Benz.
"Bluetooth" is a wireless technology that connects various electronics devices together.
Harald Bluetooth was king of Denmark in the late 900s. He managed to unite Denmark and part of Norway into a single kingdom then introduced Christianity into Denmark. Choosing this name for the standard indicates how important companies from the Baltic region (nations including Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) are to the communications industry, even if it says little about the way the technology works.
Before they can read, almost one in four children in nursery school are learning a skill that even some adults have yet to master: using the Internet. About 23% of children in nursery school -- kids age 3, 4, or 5 -- have gone online, according to the Education Department.
By kindergarten, 32% have used the Internet, typically under adult supervision!
Earth's atmosphere has no sharp boundary or upper edge. But 99% of it does lie below about 30 kilometers (19 miles). Air pressure and density continue to decrease as altitude increases and the atmosphere dwindles into the near vacuum of space.
The lowest satellite orbit is about 160 kilometers (100 miles) up. At this altitude, there is virtually no drag from air molecules to slow the satellite. In order for a satellite to remain over the same part of the earth (like a weather or TV satellite), it needs to be in a geostationary orbit (22,240 miles above the earth!)
There are over 6.3 million auto crashes each year, resulting in an injury every 11 seconds, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The United States consumes over 20 million barrels (840 million gallons) of petroleum products each day, almost half of it in the form of gasoline used in over 200 million motor vehicles which travel over 7 billion miles per day.
On children's cereal boxes, the animated
characters eyes always look downwards. This
allows children (shorter than adults) walking through the aisles
of the grocery stores to make eye contact with
the cereal character (and want to buy it).
The English word thug, meaning a violent criminal, comes from the Hindi word thag (and originally from the Sanskrit word sthaga), meaning a thief or villain.
The original Thugs were bands of roving criminals in India who strangled and robbed travellers. Originally these gangs committed murder following precise religious rites to honor Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction.
The heart of Google's search technology is PigeonRank. Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, Google founders Page and Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. (Yes this is a joke from google)
Men now make up only one in five teachers in the nation's public schools, and account for only nine percent of teachers in elementary schools, according to the National Education Association.
As of June 2005, Google has become the world's most highly-valued media company after only 10 months of trading as a public company (currently $280 a share).
With $3.2B in sales, Google is now worth $80B, ahead of media giant Time Warner at $78B (with $42B of sales).
While John F. Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president, Theodore Roosevelt actually holds the record for being the youngest president to serve.
Roosevelt, 42 years and 322 days at swearing in, took over the presidential office upon the assassination of WIlliam McKinley in 1901. Kennedy was already 43 years and 236 days when he began his term.
A total of 49.6 million children attended public and private school in 2003, beating the previous high mark of 48.7 million set in 1970 when the baby boom generation was in school.
The increase is partly due to the "echo" of the Baby Boom (the surge in births following the second World War), where those babies born after 1945 grew up and had kids of their own.
In football, sailing, and running, it's to the player's advantage to have the wind behind him or her.
However, in discus throwing, the advantage comes when there is a head wind. Throwing a a discus into the wind can allow it to travel more than 25 feet farther than if it is thrown in the same direction as the wind.
The lift from the pressure differences over and under the disc (just like a plane) are more significant than the drag forces the disc incurs.
![[filler]](http://www.factme.com/images/star_filler.gif){kind=small}
Link
Email Fact
IM Fact
Source: 
