This section really has very little to do with chemistry, and much less so with carboxylic acids and esters. However I thought I would include a selection of facts which have amused or interested me so that you may entertain yourself under the guise of using an educational website, or merely reward yourself for successful revision. Either way, I hope they provide a welcome distraction.
Facts and trivia
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Each of the 2009 ten most common UK baby names for boys were also found to be in the ten most commonly regretted boy's names in a 2010 poll.
Position in most popular list Position in list of regrettable names
- Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words.
1 Jack 3
2 Oliver 2
3 Harry 9
4 Charlie 8
5 Alfie 4
6 Thomas 5
7 Joshua 6
8 James 10
9 William 1
10 Daniel 7
- Lethologica describes the state of forgetting the word you wanted.
- Illiteracy was a requirement for job applicants for routine jobs at the Manhattan Project due to the risk of literate candidates reading the documents.
- Thomas Edison - widely creditted with inventing the light bulb - was afraid of the dark.
- False floors were fitted to both of Hitler's Mercedes-Benz cars to make him look taller.
- In breaking glass, the cracks travel at 3000mph.
- The sentence: "A rough, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman emerged from a slough to walk through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing." features all nine of the English ways to pronounce the syllable "ough".
- The average human body contains enough iron to make a three-inch nail.
- The bacteria in the gut would consume the body within 48 hours if the body's natural defences failed.
- A newborn kangaroo is small enough to fit in a teaspoon.
- Calvin Coolidge was famous for speaking very little. A female guest at a White House dinner told him that her father had bet her that she wouldn't be able to get more than two words out of the President. The only words Coolidge said to her all night were: "You lose.".
- Approximately 98% of the atoms in the body are replaced every year.
- The chemicals in the human body are estimated to have a combined worth of € 6.25.
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The only time a kangaroo can jump is when its tail is touching the ground.
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Having survived two German bombing raids targetted at it in WW2, Big Ben then lost five minutes when a flock of starlings perched on its minute hand.
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Feeding a large dog for one year requires 1.1 hectares of land, to fuel a Toyota Land Cruiser driven 1000okm per year would require only 0.41 hectares per year.
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If each of the ten million office workers in the UK were to use one fewer staples each day, 12o tonnes of steel would be saved every year.
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Officially the shortest sentence in the English language is "I am."
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17% of the world's cranes are in Dubai.
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When leaving a cave, bats always turn left.
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The last word in the standard English dictionary is zymurgy, it concerns the fermentation in the brewing process.