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FACT-OF-THE-DAY ARCHIVE
"Our life is what our thoughts make it."
- Marcus Aurelius

JUL 2011


Previous Archives

DATEFACT OF THE DAY
7/1/11     By the end of the twentieth century, over 300 motion pictures were made about vampires, and over 100 of them featured Dracula. Over 1,000 vampire novels were published, most within the past 25 years. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/2/11     Birth order can influence whether a marriage succeeds or fails. The most successful marriages are those where the oldest sister of brothers marries the youngest brother of sisters. Two firstborns, however, tend to be more aggressive and can create higher levels of tension. The highest divorce rates are when an only child marries another only child. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/3/11     In ancient Rome, an infant was placed at the father's feet shortly after birth. If the father took the child into his arms, it showed he accepted responsibility for its upbringing. If the baby was not accepted, it was be abandoned and left to die. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/4/11     The nation's estimated population on this July Fourth is 311.7 million. - Provided by U.S. Census Bureau
7/5/11     The most lava ever recorded from a single eruption was the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland. Though there was no single big explosion, this eruption killed one fourth of Iceland's population by producing poisonous gases and clouds of ash that resulted in widespread crop failure and starvation. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/6/11     In 1943, a Mexican farmer named Dionisio Pulido witnessed the birth of a volcano in his cornfield about 329 kilometers west of Mexico City. It started as a slight depression in his field and soon became a fissure that emitted smoke and hissing noises. During the next nine years, the volcano Paricutin had grown to an elevation of 2,272 meters and its voluminous lava flows had destroyed several towns. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/7/11     Over 75% of people who marry partners from an affair eventually divorce. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/8/11     Creator Gene Roddenberry said Star Trek was influenced by A.E. van Vogt's novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle, Eric Frank Russell's Marathon series, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, and the film The Forbidden Planet. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/9/11     Only recently, and mainly in Western countries, has smoking been seen as a serious health hazard. Smoking rates in the United States have dropped by half since 1965, from 42% to 26% of adults. Smoking in developing countries, however, is rising. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/10/11     A bull shark can live in both salt and fresh water by regulating salt and other substances in its blood. A bull shark may have been responsible for a 1916 shark attack that happened in a creek in New Jersey. They have also been found in the Mississippi River. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/11/11     Thirty-nine decimal places of pi suffice for computing the circumference of a circle girding the known universe with an error no greater than the radius of a hydrogen atom. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/12/11     Prior to the 12th Amendment of the Constitution in 1804, the presidential candidate who received the second highest number of electoral votes was named the vice-president. The amendment mandated that electors vote for the offices of president and vice-president separately. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/13/11     The bride's veil traditionally symbolized her youth and virginity. Veils also hid the bride from jealous spirits or the Evil Eye. In the past, veils could be red, blue, or yellow (the color of Hymen, the Greek god of marriage). The modern white veil became popular during the Victorian era as a symbol of purity and modesty. A white veil also connoted that a bride was wealthy enough to wear white. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/14/11     One in every five people in the world is Chinese. China's population is estimated to reach a whopping 1,338,612,968 by July 2009. China's population is four times that of the United States. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/15/11     Early Roman brides carried a bunch of herbs, such as garlic and rosemary, under their veils to symbolize fidelity and fertility and to ward off evil. These herbs served as a precursor to the modern bridal bouquet. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/16/11     After the fall of Rome, Latin continued in a variety of dialects which later developed into the Romance languages such as Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, French, and Spanish. Though not directly related, Latin has also significantly influenced English. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/17/11     The states in the U.S. at greatest risk for tsunamis are Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/18/11     The vintage year isn't necessarily the year wine is bottled, because some wines may not be bottled the same year the grapes are picked. Typically, a vintage wine is a product of a single year's harvest. A non-vintage wine is a blend of wines from two or more years. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/19/11     William Shanks (1812-1882) worked for years by hand to find the first 707 digits of pi. Unfortunately, he made a mistake after the 527th place and, consequently, the following digits were all wrong. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/20/11     The average adult male has about 50% more muscle mass and 50% less body fat than the average adult female. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/21/11     Angel sharks were once called monkfish or bishop fish because their fins look like flowing robes. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/22/11     Several of his descendants and a few historians claim that John Hanson (1721-1783) is actually the forgotten first president of the United States because he was the first president under the Articles of Confederation. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/23/11     As fewer people created their own goods after the Industrial Revolution, expert knowledge of handiwork skills and materials became obsolete. Leftovers and scraps that were once considered valuable and reusable now became trash. The first organized incineration of trash began in England in 1874. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/24/11     Wine facilitated contacts between ancient cultures, providing the motive and means of trade. For example, the Greeks traded wine for precious metals, and the Romans traded wine for slaves. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/25/11     In ancient America, tobacco was chewed, drunk as tea, inhaled as a powder-like snuff, and consumed as a jelly - but smoking tobacco was by far the most popular. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/26/11     As long as a shark's back is mostly under water, it can swim easily. A nine-foot-long bull shark can swim in just two feet of water. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/27/11     In the biggest cities, the temperature can be 18 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it would be if that land were undeveloped. Industrial manufacturing and air-conditioning actually create heat, plus the big buildings and roads absorb a lot of sunlight and store it efficiently. This causes the air to rise more over cities, which increases cloud formation, which in turn produces more rain and heavier thunderstorms. So if you live in a big city, your chances of experiencing thunderstorms also are greater than in the surrounding countryside. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/28/11     Each day 1,600 women die as result of pregnancy or childbirth complications. Nearly 99% of these deaths occur in developing nations. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/29/11     While it is a myth that stress can turn hair gray, stress can cause hair loss. In fact, telogen effluvium (hair loss) can begin up to three months after a stressful event. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/30/11     The earliest surviving opera (written by Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini) is Euridice which was performed in Florence in 1600. Opera quickly spread from Florence to Rome, Venice, and all other major cities in Italy. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
7/31/11     The first U.S. government building, the Philadelphia Mint, had its cornerstone laid in 1792. The Philadelphia mint still produces the majority of the coins used in daily circulation in the United States. - Provided by RandomHistory.com


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