Facts 5

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15/06/02

How come early American flags don't always look the same?

Until June 24, 1912, no rules were established about the order of the
stars on the flag, nor about its proportions. Flags made before that
year sometimes show unusual arrangements of the stars or strange
proportions. It was entirely up to the flag maker.

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Who cut the American flag into pieces and was actually honored for it?

No, it wasn't a dissenter. Explorer Robert Peary cut up the flag and
scattered pieces of it at the North Pole.

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Is it ever appropriate to fly the US flag upside down?

According to Title 36 of the United States Code Chapter 10, the flag
should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of
dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

14/06/02

What is the strongest creature?

You might think it's the elephant or the ox, but you'd be wrong. The
strongest creature on this planet is a bug: the rhinoceros beetle. The
ox and the elephant can carry more weight, of course, but in terms of
proportional strength, no one beats the rhinoceros beetle. This little
guy can carry 850 times its own weight on its back. Imagine being so
strong you could carry 850 fellow humans on yours. The elephant, by
contrast, can only carry up to 25 percent of its own weight.

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How many kinds of beetles are there?

The British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane once commented that the Creator
has "an inordinate fondness for beetles." That's because there are more
kinds of beetles on this planet than kinds of anything else. Scientists
estimate that there are more than 350,000 different types of beetles. At
least one scientist has estimated that beetles account for a MILLION of
the earth's six million animal species.

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Is it true that there are aquatic beetles?

Beetles live pretty much everywhere, all corners of the globe, and even
underwater. There are about 5,000 different "diving" beetles that spend
nearly all of their lives in the water.

13/06/02

How much was the director of "Gone With the Wind" fined for using a
profanity in the movie?

Everyone who has seen "Gone With the Wind" remembers the moment when
Rhett Butler tells Scarlet O'Hara, "Frankly me dear, I don't give a
damn." According to James O'Connor's book, "Cuss Control: The Complete
Book on How to Curb Your Cursing" ($12.95, Three Rivers Press), the
director of the classic film payed plenty for that single word: $5,000
(a much larger sum, of course, in 1939). Considering how famous the line
has become, the five grand paid for using it is a bargain.

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Who popularized the word "goon"?

Elzie C. Segar, a journalist active in the late 1920s, created a comic
strip called "Thimble Theater" (known to us today as "Popeye"). One of
his characters was "Alice the Goon," a female with a hulking body, huge
hands, a bald head, and hairy arms. Despite her frightful appearance,
Alice was basically a good-hearted woman. During the 1930s, a period of
intense labor disputes, the word took on a more sinister meaning when it
was applied to equally-frightful thugs hired to terrorize workers. Segar
popularized the word, but it did exist prior to his comic, and may be a
shortened form of "gooney," which means simpleton.

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How many expletives are contained in Eddie Murphy's two concert films,
"Delirious" and "Raw"?

Eddie Murphy's later movies are incredibly tame compared to his earlier
work. His two concert films, "Delirious" and "Raw," contain a combined
921 profanities.

12/06/02

Why do Australian lifeguards sometimes wear pantyhose on their arms and
legs while swimming <http://dev.tcla.net/jump.php?id=28576> ?

To protect themselves from the deadliest of poisonous creatures: the sea
wasp, or marine stinger, a type of jellyfish. Pantyhose doesn't seem
like it would offer that much protection, but it does. Turns out that
the stingers along the sea wasp's tentacles are triggered chemically, by
touching the skin of a fish or human. If the tentacles DON'T come into
contact with the chemicals on human skin, the person won't get stung.

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Can a sea wasp kill a human?

Yes, but the human would have to get tangled up in the tentacles and
make contact with at least ten feet of tentacle. Of course, that's
possible when you consider the size of the sea wasp. The "bell" of this
particular jellyfish can get as big as a soccer ball and it can have as
many as 60 tentacles hanging down as much as 15 feet. Some scientists
consider the sea wasp the deadliest creature on this planet (not
counting microbes and humans!). The sea wasp holds this honor because
its venom kills prey almost instantaneously and because a very small
amount of venom is all that's needed to do the trick.

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What are the bodies of jellyfish made up of?

Water, water, and more water. More than 95 percent of a jellyfish is
nothing but water. Jellyfish have no bones, no heart, no blood, and no
brain <http://dev.tcla.net/jump.php?id=28793> ! Some jellyfish, however,
have eyes that can detect light from dark and even detect some movement.
How can jellyfish have eyes and no brain? (After all, the brain is
usually necessary to process visual stimuli.) Scientists are still
working on that one.

11/06/02

How deep is the deepest part of the ocean?

Pretty darn deep - so deep that if you took Mount Everest and dropped it
in the water, you wouldn't see it anymore. The deepest part of the ocean
is the Marianas Trench (located in the Pacific Ocean, just east of the
Philippines <http://dev.tcla.net/jump.php?id=28256> ), which is about
11,000 meters (almost seven miles!) below sea level.

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Does anything live that far down in the ocean?

Plants can't live that far down because they need light for
photosynthesis. As you can imagine, light doesn't penetrate THAT far.
But something lives down there: shrimp-like crustaceans, marine worms,
and sea cucumbers. Bacteria, which live pretty much everywhere, also
live in the Marianas Trench.

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How do they know how deep the water is?

Well, if we can make it to the moon, we can certainly make it to the
bottom of the ocean. A U.S. Navy <http://dev.tcla.net/jump.php?id=28351>
bathyscape reached the bottom of the Marianas Trench in 1960. In 1995, a
Japanese probe made what is probably the most accurate measurement of
its depth.

10/06/02

Can plants grow underground?

At least one can. Scientists have discovered a rare meat-eating plant
that grows underground. The unusual species of utricularia is
carnivorous -- eating nematodes <http://dev.tcla.net/jump.php?id=27936>
and other tiny underground creatures with a nodule that sucks the meat
into the plant. It was discovered at the Central Florida Archbold
Biological Station in Lake Wales, Fla. Scientists say by growing
underground, the unique plant is protected from evaporation. It has
leaves that grow upward and roots that grow downward from the
underground main stalk.

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What plant is cultivated on every continent except Antarctica?

Wheat. For more than 7,000 years, wheat has been cultivated just about
everywhere you can think of. It is the most widely grown plant and a
staple of Western diets.

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What are the six "kingdoms" into which we classify all living things?

Biologists classify all living organisms according to a system
introduced by Carolus Linnaeus in 1735. Linnaeus and his colleagues
divided all living organisms into just two kingdoms: plants and animals.
Since that time, biologists have realized that there are enough
fundamental differences between living organisms to warrant adding an
additional four kingdoms. We now recognize the following kingdoms:
Plants, Animals, Fungi, Protists, Monera, and Archaea.