10 facts for today
- Limelight was how we lit the stage before electricity was invented. Basically, illumination was produced by heating blocks of lime until they glowed.
- As much as 80% of microwaves from mobile phones are absorbed by your head.
- Nuclear ships are basically steamships and driven by steam turbines. The reactor just develops heat to boil the water.
- The amount of oil that is used worldwide in one year is doubling every ten years. If that rate of increase continues and if the world were nothing but oil, all the oil would be used up in 400 years.
- Radio waves travel so much faster than sound waves that a broadcast voice can be heard sooner 18,000 km away than in the back of the room in which it originated.
- The rickshaw was invented by the Reverend Jonathan Scobie, an American Baptist minister living in Yokohama, Japan, built the first model in 1869 in order to transport his invalid wife. Today it remains a common mode of transportation in the Orient.
- The world’s oldest surviving boat is a simple 10 feet long dugout dated to 7400 BC. It was discovered in Pesse Holland in the Netherlands.
- Rock drawings from the Red Sea site of Wadi Hammamat, dated to around 4000 BC show that Egyptian boats were made from papyrus and reeds.
- The world’s earliest known plank-built ship, made from cedar and sycamore wood and dated to 2600 BC, was discovered next to the Great Pyramid in 1952.
- The Egyptians created the first organized navy in 2300 BC.
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