The Business Master (3rd Edition)

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DATABASE OF FUN (Excerpts from Almanac 1991) by Jeff Napier This Chapter copied by permission from Another Company Almanac 1991. The complete Almanac can be had by sending $9.95 to: Another Company, Box 298, Applegate, OR 97538. At one time Thoreau was a school teacher. When he was accused by his supervisors of leniency, he grabbed six random kids and spanked them. The flu mutated into a killer in 1918 and killed 20 million people. In the US: 548,000. One out of every 300 Americans is a millionaire. Americans use enough toilet paper in one day to wrap around the world 9 times. If it were on one giant roll - that we all used - we would be unrolling it at the rate of 7600 miles per hour. (roughly mach 10, ten times the speed of sound) The world's longest operation took 96 hours. During February 4 - 8, 1951, surgeons in Michigan removed an ovarian cyst from a woman. When they were done, she weighed 308 lbs less. Cataract surgery (removal of lens from eye) was first done in 1748. But the first anesthesia wasn't until 1842! Galileo Galilei, the famous astronomer spent so much time looking at the sun with his telescope, that he went blind for the last four years he lived. 24% of Los Angeles is road and parking lots for cars. According to the best calculations of some of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb) before the first test, there was a 3 in one million chance that an atomic bomb would melt down the earth - yet they went ahead and tested the first atomic bomb. There are 1.3 billion cattle in the world, and they all belch. This is a serious problem! Each of these cattle burp up about 8 oz of methane per day, which totals 1/3 million tons. According to one scientist's calculations, this is enough methane to ruin the world's weather by raising the temperature 5 degrees within 60 years, due to the greenhouse effect. The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) considers chocolate acceptable for public consumption as long as there are less than 60 insect fragments per 100 grams. (about 4 ounces) The Volkswagen was originally called the Strength- Through-Joy-Wagon. Your hair grows a total of 83 feet per day. Explanation: You have over 100,000 hairs and each one grows about 1/100 of an inch. Try to say the alphabet without moving your lips or your tongue. Every letter will sound exactly the same. "LEECHES AND THEIR APPLICATION. - The leech used for medical purposes is called the hirudo Medicinatis, to distinguish it from other varieties, such as the horse-leech and the Lisbon leech. It varies from two to four inches in length, and is of a blackish brown colour, marked on the back with six yellow spots, and edged with a fellow line on each side. Formerly leeches were supplied by Sweden but latterly most of the leeches are procured from France, where they are now becoming scarce. When leeches are applied to a part, it should be thoroughly freed from down or hair by shaving, and all liniments, &c., carefully and effectually cleaned away by washing. If the leech is hungry it will soon bite, but sometimes great difficulty is experienced in getting them to fasten on. When this is the case, roll the leech into a little porter, or moisten the surface with a little blood, or milk, or sugar and water, Leeches may be applied by holding them over the part with a piece of linen cloth or by means of an inverted glass, under which they must be placed. When applied to the gums, care should be taken to use a leech glass, as they are apt to creep down the patient's throat; a large swan's quill will answer the purpose of a leech glass. When leeches are gorged they will drop off themselves; never tear them off from a person, but just dip the point of a moistened finger into some salt and touch them with it. Leeches are supposed to abstract about two drachms of blood, or six leeches draw about an ounce; but this is independent of the bleeding after they have come off, and more blood generally flows then than during the time they are sucking." - from an old book, written 131 years ago. Lifespans of Animals Horse...............30 Rabbit...............5 Dog.................15 cat.................13 Elephant...........100 Crocodile..........300 Cow.................25 Pigeon..............20 Eagle..............100 Whale..............100 Tortoise...........350 Lion................40 Pig.................25 Crow...............100 World's worst meal? Eating a bicycle! A man did this by grinding it into powder. Some people have as many as 500 taste buds per square centimeter, others as few as 5/cm2. Do pancakes with maple syrup taste the same to you as they do to me? NOTE TO OUR READERS: Although we have researched the material in this database carefully it is possible we have made a mistake or two. You might want to do your own checking to verify facts before placing bets, etc. In 1743 a teen-age boy was observed to have eaten 384 pounds of food in one week. In 1963 a man ate a single meal weighing 54 pounds. Coca-Cola, Hires Root Beer and Dr. Pepper were all introduced in the same year, 1886. John Pemberton, the inventor of Coca-Cola referred to it as, "Esteemed Brain Tonic and Intellectual Beverage." 7-Up was originally called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon- Lime Soda when it was invented in 1929. The 7 is for the original size - 7 ounces - and the Up was for "bottoms up." The first advertising slogan for 7-Up was, "It takes the ouch out of grouch." It takes 25 gallons of water to produce one pound of wheat. It takes 2500 gallons to produce one pound of meat! If the water used by the cattle business was not paid for by American taxpayers, beef would cost $35 per pound. The mayfly has a two-hour long lifespan. It has no mouth, because it will not have time to digest a meal. In Russia, the average citizen spends 100 hours per year waiting in lines just to receive food. That's two and a half work weeks. We drink 3 million gallons of orange juice daily in America. We drink 15 million gallons of beer daily in America. (We drink five times more beer than orange juice.) In Massachusetts it is against the law to use tomatoes in clam chowder. Archie Bunker's daughter in All in the Family, Sally Struthers was the voice of Pebbles in the cartoon, The Flintstones. One of 88 births is twins. One out of every 16 children are born with defects. Most of these are minor, such as the many babies born with tails, which doctors cut off. Most people do not know if they had a tail. In 1914, the world's first airline service started. The St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, with two scheduled flights per day, had a plane with one passenger seat. The world's first automobile was made in France, in 1771 by Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. It had a top speed of 2.3 mph. It was powered by a two-cylinder steam engine. In total, 18 million Model T Fords were built. Soldiers do not march in step across bridges because the vibration could be sufficient to knock the bridge down. Every day 20,000 people write a letter to the president. The term Gadget came from Gaget, one of the partners in the company that built the Statue Of Liberty. He sold miniatures of the statue to the public who mispronounced his name when referring to the little statues. 90% of tires on the road are underinflated. How are yours? You have a greater chance of injury playing volleyball than football. Most tennis injuries actually happen after the game when the winner tries to jump over the net. Most people think the Wright Brothers were first to fly. The first real airplane flight happened in France on Oct 9, 1890 by Clement Ader. It was steam powered. The altitude was only a few inches. The Wright Bros. knew about and studied this flight. Decibel = smallest amount of change detectable by the human ear. great gross = 12 gross = 1728. hand = 4" Hertz = cycles per second 1 hp = ability to lift 33,000 lbs one foot in one minute. One real horse = .66 hp Karat = how many parts out of 24 are pure. (i.e. 18 Karat = 3/4 pure) Quire = one 20th of a ream ream = 500 sheets (sometimes 480) SOME CELEBRITY'S REAL NAMES Alan Alda - Alphonso D'Abruzzo Woody Allen - Allen Steward Konigsberg Alice Cooper - Vincent Furnier Redd Foxx - John Sanford Donna Summers - LaDonna Gaines Elton John - Reginald Dwight Martin Sheen - Ramon Estevez The giant squid has the largest eye of any living animal at up to 15" diameter. World wide there are 1,006.7 men for every 1,000 women. Life expectancy around the world in 1950 was 47.4 years. Mid-1983, the average stay in a California hospital was $775.00. 50% of bomb deaths occur to the people setting the bombs. 20% of women visiting emergency rooms are there because of injuries inflicted by the men they love. All of the radio waves from space ever studied equal less than the power of a snowflake hitting the ground. The U.S. has on the road 127,000,000 cars. Lined up bumper to bumper, they would circle the globe 18 times. The worlds most boring publication is probably the calculation of pi to 2 million places, in 800 pages. The last episode of M*A*S*H* on Feb 28,1983, was watched simultaneously by 125 million people. L.A. is an abbreviation, but most people don't know the full name. It is, "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula". Dolphins have brains that are 40% larger than humans. Are we really the most intelligent animal on earth? The worlds longest limousine is 47 feet and has a built-in swimming pool. It rents for $5,000 per day. In 1957, a senator, Strom Thurmond, made a speech that lasted 24 hours, 19 minutes. There is a place in Hong Kong so populated, that each person has 42.69 square feet. It would seem that this allows only about 6 X 7 feet floor space per person, but most buildings are many stories high. If all the people came out on the streets at once, such as during an earthquake, there would not be enough room to stand. CALORIE COUNTER 1 apple................... 80 1 banana................. 100 1 can beer............... 150 1 brownie................. 85 1 tbsp butter............ 100 1 carrot.................. 30 1 oz cheese............ 82115 1 egg..................... 85 1 french fry.............. 11 1 oz ground beef.......... 60 1 tbsp honey.............. 65 1 hot dog................ 170 1 cup milk............... 255 1 pancake................. 60 1 cup peanuts............ 840 1 slice pizza............ 145 1 cup popcorn............. 25 1 saltine cracker......... 15 1 can soft drink......... 145 1 tbsp sugar.............. 45 1 oz whiskey.............. 70 1 slice white bread....... 70 8 oz yogurt.............. 230 DATES OF INVENTIONS aerosol spray............1926 air conditioning.........1911 anesthesia...............1842 antiseptic surgery.......1867 aspirin..................1889 ball-point pen...........1888 electric motor...........1837 electron microscope......1931 helicopter...............1939 incandescent light.......1879 nylon....................1930 optical microscope.......1590 penicillin...............1929 rocket engine............1926 submarine................1776 television...............1923 thermometer..............1593 vacuum cleaner...........1907 SOME RUSSIAN COMEDY A man had a frog on his head so he went to a doctor. The doctor Said, "So, what seems to be the problem?" And the frog said, "There's something stuck to my butt." The people who work in the Interior Decorating Department of Sears have to do a lot of paperwork. They have to write a customer's name 67 times for a job which can sell for as little as $300 installed. American women spend $900 million per year on lipstick. That's $1700 per minute. Lindbergh was the 67th man to make a non-stop flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Each episode of Miami Vice, the TV show, is budgeted at $1.4 million. The whole yearly budget of the real Miami Police Vice department is only $1.2 million. The IRS offers free advice, but 30% of the advice they give is wrong. If you fill out your forms incorrectly based on what they have told you, you are still responsible for the fines and penalties. A mouse can have 8 babies. Assuming four of them are female, and knowing that a mouse can give birth 60 days after being born itself, after 18 months, a pair of mice can become 4.5 million. People have died from shaking vending machines and having the machines fall on them. "Dr. Leroy Wolins, a psychologist at Iowa State University, had a student write to 37 authors of scientific reports asking for the raw data on which they based their conclusions, of the 32 who replied, 21 said their data either had been lost or accidentally destroyed. Dr. Wolins analyzed seven sets of data that did come in and found errors in 3 significant enough to invalidate what had been passed off as scientific fact." quoted: - Dr. Mendolsohn, Confessions of a Medical Heretic All your blood vessels and capillaries stretched out would be over 100,000 miles long. During 1971, an Englishman committed suicide with an electric drill by making 8 holes in his head. In 1930, five German men had to bail out of their glider plane. Conditions were right for hail that day, and these men fell to the ground as the cores of giant ice rocks. Your color TV is a source of some very rare and weird elements. There are europium and yttrium to make the reds, and without cerium the radiation from your set would turn the picture tube glass purple. The outlaw who killed Jesse James, Bob Ford, later starred in a play called "How I Killed Jesse James". Americans spend 37 billion hours per year waiting in lines. That's almost four work weeks (40 hours per week) per year for each of us. 16 out of every 100 doctors will be sued this year. Heaviest man: Jon Minnoch (1941-1983), 1400 lbs. Most operations: Joseph Ascough (b 1935) underwent 327 operations for windpipe warts. The highest shade temp ever recorded was 136.4 degrees fahrenheit in Libya. Who says dinosaurs are extinct? One live specimen of the lizard Komodo Monitor was found that was 10'2" long and weighed as much as three average people. The largest dinosaur ever, Brachiosaurus, weighed the same as 800 people and was 4-1/2 stories tall. Do you wish you could cancel call waiting from your phone sometimes? You can in most communities. On a touch tone phone, after you get a dial tone, enter * 70, on rotary phones dial 1170. Call waiting will resume after you hang up. Ferdinand Porsche went to trade school to be trained as a factory foreman. He got the lowest grades in his class. People often wonder how Hitler, with all his crazy ideas and rough manner could become so popular a leader. A great deal of Hitler's appeal to the masses was that he decided to control the automobile industry and promised them Volkswagens, cars that every family could afford at a time when there was only one car for every 211 people in Germany. German Count Von der Wense was asked by the Nazis to surrender his land for the government Volkswagen plant. They offered payment, however. He took the money and bought other land, but that land was conquered by Russia. Finally, after the war, he ended up with the job of official tour guide of the Volkswagen facilities, on the very land he used to own. During WWII, 2,700,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany, (killing 300,000 civilians, seriously injuring 780,000 people.) "When elephants clash, the grass gets trampled" - old proverb 10% of all Americans earn their livings in some way associated with the automobile industry. People can usually determine the sex of another unseen person from their smell, according to a study by the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania. German researchers trained honey bees to expect food at a certain time every day. Then they cut off the bees' heads and transplanted a part of their brains into the brains of other bees. The bees with the brain transplants then expected the food at the same time of day. Bees may have a true sixth sense, one that people probably do not have: They have magnetic crystals in their abdomens with which they may feel direction relative to the earth's magnetic field. According to research by a British fashion design firm and by Sears Roebuck, yesterday's fashions will no longer fit modern women. There has been a gradual trend of breasts and hips becoming smaller, and waists thicker. Generally, women are becoming more tube-shaped. In France computer use is called l'informatique, and in Sweden computers are called dators (because they handle data). If your kitty-cat scratches up valuable furniture, tape balloons to it. The cat will never scratch there again. If you could stack up all the copies of the Guinness Book of World Records made just in the year 1985, your pile would reach into outer space. It would be 1006 miles high. People who live near big airports have as much as a 19% higher death rate. Could it be that the noise makes them crazy? There has also been some research indicating a higher birth defects rate near airports. "When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not." - Mark Twain. The first typewritten manuscript submitted to an author was for a book called Life On The Mississippi, by Mark Twain in 1874. A bicycle racer in good condition can apply about one- half horsepower for 20 minutes, and one horsepower for not more than 30 seconds. Eighty-eight employees of the IRS were convicted of crimes in 1987 ranging from selling drugs to embezzlement. One out of every 149 Americans is named Smith. Average attorney fees during 1989 is $118/hour. If a man could be paid minimum wage for shaving, he would earn $11,222.50 in a lifetime, working 3,350 hours. There have been 2,458,000,000 copies of the Bible made. If you put them on a long bookshelf and started driving along the shelf at 55 mph, you would have to drive 40 hours per week for over 17 weeks to get to the end. Baby ducks think the first moving thing they see is Mom. If they see a kitty cat when they hatch... A scientist has managed through gene-splicing to create cedar and poplar trees with square trunks. These will mean less wasted wood at the mills when lumber is cut. In an average lifetime a person will walk the same distance as three times around the equator. 2 out of every 3 new businesses are started by women. 1 out of 4 women fail in their new businesses. The failure rate of men is 4 out of 5. At graduation a child has logged 13,000 hours of school, and 15,000 hours of television. When the FDA randomly checked turkeys at packing houses, they found 1/2 of all them infected with food poisoning. Last year 81 million Americans got sick from food poisoning and 9,000 of them died. The average American will get food poisoning 100 times in a lifetime. The symptoms are headache, sick feeling, diarrhea. Most people think this is the flu. To prevent food poisoning, clean all kitchen items with heat, never leave food at room temperature. Remember when you could buy little green turtles in department stores? These were discontinued because they passed salmonella (food poisoning) to children. People who knew about the turtle scam were glad. Almost all of those turtles starved to death. It seems that a turtle can survive several months without eating after birth. The commercial turtle food that was available where the turtles were sold was usually nothing more than "ant eggs." In fact, it was only ant egg SHELLS. But it does not matter that the food was not nutritious, because the turtles wouldn't eat it anyway. When the shells decomposed and sank to the bottom of the water, people used to think that the turtle had eaten. Your mouth makes 2 glasses of saliva in one day. How do we know what animals think, feel? I say be kind to animals just in case it matters to them. The poet William Blake said, "How do you know but that every bird that cleaves the aerial way is not an immense world of delight closed to your senses five?" There are 35 countries that have atomic bombs with which we can be blown up: Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, East Germany, Egypt, Finland, France, Iran, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands,Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Yugoslavia. The longest legitimate word in the English language is probably: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. This 45-letter word is a lung disease. It can be found in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 8th Edition. See if you can pronounce it. Hemidemisemiquaver is a musical term meaning a 64th note. The proper name for "/" is solidus. Do you know the artist Rembrandt's last name? In the US 30.8% of women live to be at least 85 years old, but less than 15% of men do. Abbott and Costello had an insurance policy covering damages due to a disagreement between them. Rembrandt's last name is van Rijn. In Switzerland women could not vote until 1971. There is a policeman in Ontario, Canada who is blind. (He does not direct traffic, he transcribes surveillance tapes.) The guy who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1915 had to get out and push his broken car for more than the last mile of the race. W.C. Fields kept $50,000 in a German bank during WWII in case the Germans won. In 1939 an author named Ernest Vincent wrote a 50,000 word novel called Gadsby. What was unusual is that there is not a single letter e in the whole thing. The Mexican term for Americans, GRINGOS, came from a song that cowboys often sung, called "Green Grow the Lilacs." Human beings and pigs are the only animals that can get sunburned. A person can sweat up to 3 gallons per day. As you know, there is some iron in humans. How much? About as much as one small nail. On December 5, 1664, a ship sank off the coast of Wales. The only survivor was a man named Hugh Williams. On December 5, 1785, another ship sank. One man survived, another Hugh Williams. On December 5, 1860, yet another ship went down with only one survivor - you guessed it - his name was Hugh Williams. There is a species of lizard that has three eyes. Sometimes snakes are born with two heads. They usually co-exist alright until one tries to swallow the other. Scientists tested vision in men with tight collars and ties and found significant improvement in these mens' vision when they loosened their ties and unbuttoned their collars. A baby was born to parents in Turkey that weighed 24- pounds, 4-ounces at birth. In one large city a telephone operator traced the source of an emergency phone call because the caller would not speak. The phone only emitted unusual noises. When the emergency technicians arrived at the scene, they found a basset hound who had dialed 911 in the processes of chewing up the phone. There are over one million earthworms under the average homeowner's lawn. These will move about three tons of dirt per year. Dogs can hear sounds up to ten times farther away than humans. Have you ever wondered why cats and some dogs turn around in circles before lying down? This is an instinctual motion dating to when the animals had to squash down tall grass to make a comfortable place to settle. There are over 100 million germs in a teaspoon of soil. In a fish, the brain weighs about the same as the spinal cord. In a human, the brain is fifty-five times heavier. An elephant's brain is four times bigger than a man's. Nerve impulses move slowly. It takes 1/50 second to notice a pain in you foot. Some dinosaurs had two brains! Since nerve signals move from one part of the body to another relatively slowly and since these beasts were so large, a second brain was located at the base of the tail to maintain control of the back of the creatures. Interestingly, the rear brain was bigger than the one in their heads. Ex-First Lady Nancy Reagan was in a high-school play (in 1939) in which she had only one line: "They ought to elect the First Lady and then let her husband be President." Of all occupations a person who is a professional baseball player is likely to live longest. If you are 50 pounds overweight, you will have at least 8,000 miles more blood vessels than a thinner person. It is said that James A. Garfield, a United States President could write with both hands simultaneously. And, while one hand was writing translation into Greek, the other could be writing Latin. If you could harness the electrical output of your brain, you could power as a 10-watt light bulb. Fifty percent of women did not live to age thirty-five 200 years ago. In pre-historic times, average human lifespan was 18 years. The scientist, Louis Pasteur, used to sneak a microscope into friends' houses under his coat and then examine the food they were about to serve to make sure it was safe from germs. It is possible for a tapeworm 32 feet long to grow inside your belly. (although very uncommon) Surgeons used to have to operate quickly, before the patients died of extreme pain or blood loss. Robert Liston worked so fast that one day he accidentally cut off his nurse's fingers. It is not known whether the rest of the operation was a success. Some vultures have learned that for dinner they can crack other bird's eggs by throwing stones at them. Some anglerfish, who live in the ocean at depths of over one mile, have unusual lives. To see where they are going in that depth, or perhaps to attract food, the females have a chemically operated lamp that hangs on a stalk in front of their mouths. The male doesn't need to see because early in his life, he bites into the belly of the female and stays there forever. After a while the female grows skin over the connection, and the male degenerates, losing his teeth, his fins, and any means of life beyond being a small appendage hanging off the female. One species of shark is so competitive that the babies fight each other within their mother, until only one is left to be born. If you keep alligator eggs below 86 degrees, all females will be born. At above 93 degrees, the result is all males. Horned toads shoot streams of blood from their eyes when they are disturbed. "I couldn't wait for success, so I went on ahead without it." - Jonathan Winters The ex-husband of the columnist Ann Landers started Budget Rent-A-Car with $5,000 and turned it into a big company which he later sold for $10 million. Here's an easy one, see if you can remember: What are the names of the four musicians who composed the Beatles? (..Read on, I'll tell you in a minute) The Mets baseball team of 1962 had two pitchers whose names were Robert G. Miller and Robert L. Miller. They called Robert G. Righty, and Robert L. was referred to as Lefty. There is a man whose official name has been legally changed to Mr. 1069. Japanese rickshaws were invented by an American who visited in Japan in 1869. The game of tennis was originally called sphairistike. Answer: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr. When the subject of a national bird to represent America came up, Benjamin Franklin suggested a turkey, but an eagle was selected. During a battle of the Civil War, Major General John Sedgewick said - just before he was shot to death, "Why, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." I'll bet you don't know what a Zambony is. It is a machine that refinishes the ice in a skating rink. Black and Hispanic people were twice as likely to suffer a personal crime in 1988 at 10.4 per 1000 people, compared to white people who had 4.7 crimes per 1000. In general, crime is down 25% since the 1970's. In India jewelry is sold by weight (by grams) no matter how much handwork has gone into it. "If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys." -Armand Hammer The typical dog owner spends about $5,000 on the dog during ten years. An octopus has three hearts. How successful was Vincent Van Gogh? He only sold one painting in his whole life! "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." -Oscar Wilde In a research study, it was found that three-quarters of women in the United States wear the wrong size bra. 10 Americans per day accidentally poison themselves to death. An English king used to like eating rotten oysters. If you are the typical owner of a computer, you watch 40% less television than people without computers. If you paid an eighteen year old American minimum wage for all the hours of television the kid has watched, that teenager would get $50,000! If you paid $1 for every murder an average 18-year old has seen on television, the kid would get $20,000! During the 1920's there was a law in Russia that all private automobiles (not ones used by the government) had to have a yellow stripe painted all the way around the whole body. You can type the word "typewriter" all from the row of keys above the home row. How much money is there in America? There is about $823 cash in circulation for each of us. The Bible contains 3,566,480 letters, 810,697 words. Every weekday morning, the commuters of Los Angeles use 250,000 gallons of gas getting to work. They drive 5 million miles, which would be like one car driving to the moon and back 20 times, or around the earth's equator 192 times. In 1945, the Empire State Building was hit by an airplane, which destroyed most of the seventy-eighth floor. If you lined up all the mountain bikes in America, tire-to-tire, and then rode a bike along that line, it would take you 18 weeks, (riding 40 hours per week, 15 miles per hour) to get to the end of the line. When researchers in Louisiana placed rubber snakes and turtles on highways and observed the behavior of 22,000 motorists, they discovered that 87% of the drivers purposely avoided hitting the creatures, but 6% of drivers went out of their way to "kill" the rubber animals with their tires. Percent of gross national product spent on science: Cuba 0.7% Soviet Union 4.6% United States 2.5% Mexico 0.6% Argentina 0.39% It appears that Adolf Hitler may not have died from suicide as people used to believe. He could still be alive in hiding. A scientist has tried to match dental records from the corpse in the bunker that was supposed to have been Hitler and found that the dental features don't match photos taken of Hitler when his mouth was open. One night in 1833 there were almost a quarter-million shooting stars. A church steeple was struck by lightning and destroyed on April 18th, 1599. The members of the church rebuilt it. It was hit by lightning three more times between then and 1783, and rebuilt again and again. Every time it was hit, the date was April 18th. The army of Liechtenstein was made up of one man, who gave up the military life at age 95. 230 people died when Moradabad, India was bombed with giant balls of hail over 2 inches in diameter. While fishing at a pond in New York State, a man lost the glass part of his lantern. Five years later, once again fishing in the same spot, he caught a fish that was wearing that glass lantern chimney. Major earthquakes have hit Japan on: September 1, 827, September 1, 859, September 1, 1185, September 1, 1649 and September 1, 1923. The largest moths in the world have a 14 inch wingspan. These "Hercules" moths live only 2 weeks and never eat. Would you be upset if one landed on your head? Sweden once had a supreme court justice who was nineteen years old. When he was ten, he could speak fluently in 12 languages. There is only one person in all recorded history who has been killed by a meteorite. Manfredo Settala (1600- 1680). Male natives of New Guinea shave their beards with sharp blades of grass. There are plants with a body temperature just like birds and mammals. Skunk cabbages can have an internal temperature 25 degrees higher than their surroundings. Americans smoke 1 billion cigarettes per day. If you lined up all the cigarettes smoked in one day, then drove past them at 55 miles per hour, it would take 28 weeks (driving 40 hours per week) to get to the end of the line. 11,000 cigarettes are lighted every second, just in America. Every 22 seconds, a kid tries smoking for the first time. The most words on a single postage stamp is 746 (from the country of Greece, year: 1954) A Japanese priest set a kimono on fire in Tokyo because it carried bad luck. The flames spread until over 10,000 buildings were destroyed and 100,000 people died. (Year: 1657) Insects are nearsighted. They cannot see farther than 9 feet. ";qooooooo.,,,xkiiiiiii" This is what happens when a kitty cat walks across a computer keyboard. The person who is currently the oldest in the world is 115 years old. She spent 75 years of her life in a mental institution. You have just enjoyed a small random collection of excerpts from ALMANAC 1991. For your complete ALMANAC 1991 (pre-registered copy) send $9.95 to: ANOTHER COMPANY Box 298 Applegate, OR 97530 503-846-7884 Please specify whether you prefer 5.25" or 3.5" disk.