10 Random and Odd Facts – Jan 15, 2010

1. The name of the mathematical sign for infinity (∞) is lemniscate, and was devised by mathematician John Wallis in 1655, although similar symbols were used by eastern religions much earlier.

2. American newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst was expelled from Harvard University in 1885 for raucous behavior after presenting his professors with chamber pots (historically used as toilettes) with their individual pictures and names painted inside.

3. The incredibly fast American SR-71 spy-plane (designed to make reconnaissance flights over the USSR) required so much titanium in its construction that the CIA ended up buying Russian titanium on the black market in order to meet the demand.

4. When Henry Waterman invented the lift (elevator) in 1850, he intended to transport barrels of flour, and never imagined that it would be widely used to transport people.

5. Want to sound smart? Trying working the longest non-technical word into your next conversation: floccinaucinihilipilification, which means “useless”. However, the floccinaucinihilipilificatiousness of this advice should be obvious. You’ll just sound silly.

6. It is illegal in North Carolina to use an elephant to plough a field.

7. United States taxpayers now have a total debt of over $59,000,000,000,000 – which works out to be $516,000 per U.S. household according to USA Today as of 5/29/07.

8. Galileo sketched a design of the first ballpoint pen.

9. According to Time Magazine, if every home in the United States paid its bills online, solid waste would be decreased by 1,600,000,000 tons each year.

10. According to Discover Magazine, Abdulhamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s, censored all references to water in chemistry books because he was convinced that H2O stood for “Hamid the Second is nothing”. Cuckoo!

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