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

OCT 2015


Previous Archives

DATEFACT OF THE DAY
10/1/15     When a girl is born, her complete potential egg supply is born with her. In the womb, she creates about seven million egg cells. At birth, she has two million. By puberty, there are only about 400,000 left, of which fewer than 500 are actually ever released during the menstrual cycle. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/2/15     HIV is the world's leading infectious killer. To date, approximately 25 million people have died of AIDS around the world. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/3/15     Adolf Hitler plotted to kill Sir Winston Churchill with exploding chocolate. Hitler's bomb makers covered explosive devices with a thin layer of dark chocolate and wrapped it in black and gold paper. British agents foiled the plot. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/4/15     One of the earliest known records of pi was written by an Egyptian scribe named Ahmes (c. 1650 B.C.) on what is now known as the Rhind Papyrus. He was off by less than 1% of the modern approximation of pi (3.141592). - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/5/15     Tanks were initially called "landships." However, in an attempt to disguise them as water storage tanks rather than as weapons, the British decided to code name them "tanks." - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/6/15     Even though over 50 native tongues are still spoken in rural locations, Spanish is the national language of Mexico. In fact, Mexico is the most populated Spanish-speaking country in the world. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/7/15     Las Vegas is the top wedding destination with over 100,000 weddings a year, followed by Hawaii at 25,000 weddings a year. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/8/15     Slaves made up between 40% and 80% of ancient Greece's population. Slaves were captives from wars, abandoned children, or children of slaves. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/9/15     Perhaps as a relic of an ancient Roman custom of planting parsley on graves, a sprig of parsley was either associated with the devil or as an antidote for poison. Adding a sprig to a plate of food may have originated as a gesture of good faith and as way to safeguard the meal from evil. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/10/15     During REM sleep, the flow of blood to the brain increases, as does the brain's temperature. Additionally, both the penis and the clitoris in women become erect. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/11/15     In the Pacific region, nearly 500,000 people have died from tsunamis over the last 2,000 years. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami alone exerted a death toll now estimated at more than 280,000. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/12/15     At its height in A.D. 117, the Roman Empire stretched from Portugal in the West to Syria in the east, and from Britain in the North to the North African deserts across the Mediterranean. It covered 2.3 million miles (two-thirds the size of the U.S.) and had a population of 120 million people. During the Middle Ages, Rome had perhaps no more than 13,000 residents. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/13/15     Though he was offered sanctuary on the "Aryan side," Polish teacher Janusz Korczak voluntarily left with the children from his orphanage when they were deported to extermination camps. It is believed that he died in August 1942 at the Treblinka concentration camp. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/14/15     The most common cause of death for American women is heart disease, which causes just over 27% of all mortalities in females. Cancer ranks just below, causing 22% of female deaths. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/15/15     The United States government suggests citizens should have a two-week supply of water and food, a supply of necessary prescription drugs, and a supply of nonprescription drugs in case of flu quarantines or other emergencies. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/16/15     Alcohol slows activity in the cortex, which causes a person to sink into a deep, slow-wave sleep rather than experiencing REM sleep. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/17/15     In 1454, a real human chess game took place in Marostica, Italy. Rather than fight a bloody duel, the winner of the chess game would win the hand of a beautiful girl. To commemorate the event, each September in even-numbered years, the town's main piazza becomes a life-sized chess board. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/18/15     Approximately 1% of Haiti's population owns more than 50% of the nation's wealth. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/19/15     In Mayan civilization, cacao beans were the currency, and counterfeiting cacao beans out of painted clay had become a thriving industry. Goods could be priced in units of cacao: a slave cost 100 beans, the services of a prostitute cost 10 beans, and a turkey cost 20 beans. While the Spanish conquistadors horded gold, the Mesoamericans horded cacao beans. In some parts of Latin America, the beans were used as a currency as late as the 19th century. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/20/15     Even though the U.S. government didn't grant Native Americans citizenship until 1924, nearly 13,000 of them served in WWI. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/21/15     Wolves have about 200 million scent cells. Humans have only about 5 million. Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometers) away. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/22/15     Doctors in the late 1400s and early 1500s were so afraid of syphilis they would not write down its name. Instead they used the Greek letter Sigma as its symbol. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/23/15     In Kansas, when two trains meet at a crossing, "both shall come to full stop and neither shall start up again until the other has gone." - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/24/15     Researchers believe that more than half of all cancers and cancer deaths are potentially preventable. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/25/15     The most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated was Russia's Tsar Bomba. It is also the single most physically powerful device ever created by man. The fireball reached nearly as high as the altitude of the release plan and was seen 620 miles from ground zero. The mushroom cloud was over 40 miles high and the base of the cloud was 25 miles wide. It was test-denotated on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/26/15     Researchers found that every two hours spent watching television was associated with a 14% increase in diabetes risk. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/27/15     Suicide is the 8th leading cause of death in the United States. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/28/15     A person who weighs 100 lbs. on Earth would weigh the least on Pluto than on any other planet, at 6.7 lbs. on Pluto. A person would weigh the most on Jupiter. A 100 lb. person on Earth would weigh 236.4 lbs. on Jupiter. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/29/15     The first Google storage was made from Legos. Google needed an expandable and cheap way to house 10 4GB hard drives. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/30/15     According to popular legend, tea was discovered by the Chinese emperor Shennong in 2737 B.C. when a tea leaf fell into his boiling water. The Chinese consider tea to be a necessity of life. - Provided by RandomHistory.com
10/31/15     The 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing were the most expensive games in history. - Provided by RandomHistory.com


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2014
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2013
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2012
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2011
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2010
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