The healthy human eye can distinguish about 17,000 different colors.
The pigmy shrew, a relative of the mole, is the smallest mammal in North America. It weighs 1/14 of an ounce less than a dime.
The lanula is the half-moon shaped pale area at the base of fingernails.
The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six (yes, six) inches for each gallon of diesel fuel that it burns.
If you attempted to count the stars in our galaxy at the rate of one each second, it would take 3,000 years to count them all.
When NASA first sent up astronauts, they discovered that ballpoint pens would not write in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from freezing to 300*C. The Russians used a pencil.
10 comments:
That one about the Russians using a pencil made me laugh out loud! Typical!
And what amazes me is that even if you could spend 3,000 years counting the stars in our galaxy there are billions of other galaxies to start on all over again!
I did not know this....and that last one is kind of upsetting. 12 Billion Dollars? What's wrong with a pencil? ~Joy
You can erase pencil... perhaps human nature requires we document things with a pen... since we would tend to erase negatives.
Oh, it just seems silly that it cost that much to do it.
Of course, since it was probably a federal government grant and federal workers and federal pensions involved around the development instead of private business... it would cost a gazillion times more.
If the ink is permanent, it's worth it. The astronauts have to document so many priceless and important details (besides, I hate pencils LOL).
No one can accuse the QEII of being "green".
Still laughing over the Russian pencil. Simple is usually best.
Just think of all the people who were employed working the ballpoint-pen-doesn't-work problem
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The pencil leapt to my mind. Perhaps I have Russian blood.
These facts are all new to me. I agree that the price of developing a special pen is outrageous, but since there would not be any further profit for the manufacturer it may make a little sense.
I am so with Gilly on the Russians using pencil. We seem to, many times, think complex don't we? :)
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