Ants In Your Pants? There’s Plenty Of ‘Em!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Hi and welcome to fact day which does, as the title suggests, include an amazing fact about the number of ants ib the world. They may not be in your pants, but keep a look out just in case!

And now for the facts.

Enjoy.

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did you know2

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Halloween, which we’ve all just endured another year,

is thought to have originated around 4000 B.C.,

which means Halloween has been around for over 6,000 years

and is one of the oldest celebrations in the world.

happy halloween

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Most vegetables and almost all fruits contain

a small amount of alcohol in them.

Cheers!

vegetables

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Some scientific studies suggest there are about

10,000,000,000,000,000 individual ants

alive on Earth at any given time.

Ants are estimated to represent about 15–20%

of the total terrestrial animal biomass,

which exceeds that of the vertebrates.

Ant from_a_bugs_life

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When Pluto was discovered it was initially

believed to be larger than Earth.

Now astronomers know that it’s about

1,455 miles (2,352 kilometers) across,

less than 20 percent as big as the Earth.

planets in our solar system smaller than earth

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Thomas Stewart Armistead was a Confederate officer

who fought bravely in the American Civil War.

After being wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness he

was captured and placed in a camp near Morris Island

where the Union authorities used him as a human

shield to prevent fire from nearby Confederate artillery batteries.

Thomas Stewart Armistead and 599 other Confederate officers

who had also been captured became known as “The Immortal 600.”

When, on November 16, 1922, Armistead died at the age of 80 he

was the last survivor and member of “The Immortal 600.”

Thomas Stewart Armistead

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The American football team the Baltimore Ravens are named

in honor of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic poem ‘The Raven’.

Baltimore_Ravens_logo

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The construction of the Great Wall of China took over 2 thousands years,

the very first parts being built as early as in the 8th century BC.

Great Wall of China

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Table for one, sir?

Amsterdam´s restaurant At Eenmaal,

founded by social designer Marina van Goor,

has become famous because the only type of table

that you can find in the restaurant is a table for one.

restaurant At Eenmaal

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The largest thermometer in the world is 134-feet-tall (40.843m)

and was built by businessman Willis Herron in Baker, California.

The thermometer is supposed to serve as a memento of

the highest recorded temperature in the U.S.

measured in nearby Death Valley

– 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.6 Celsius) in 1913.

The thermometer is no longer in operation,

and was put up for sale in January 2013.

largest thermometer in the world

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In 410 A.D. Alaric the Visigoth demanded that Rome give

him three thousand pounds of pepper as ransom,

an amount not to be sneezed at.

Alaric the Visigoth

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Abu Nasr Isma’il ibn Hammad al-Jawhari was an author of

a notable Arabic dictionary containing about 40,000 entries.

He is also remembered in Arabic history for

his attempt to fly with wooden wings.

He leapt from the roof of a mosque in the old town of Nishapur,

whereupon gravity took control and

he promptly hit the ground and was killed.

Abu Nasr Isma'il ibn Hammad al-Jawhari

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If you spray an antiseptic spray on a polar bear,

its fur will turn purple.

I wonder who got close enough to find that one out?

antiseptic spray on a polar bear

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The Japanese Empire was the largest maritime empire in history,

spanning more than 7 million square kilometers and gained such

notoriety that it took atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki

plus plenty of other battles to defeat it.

Japanese Empire

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The movie that grossed the most money that was

adapted from a T.V. cartoon is Scooby-Doo

scooby-doo

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Quite often when a book is made into a movie a lot of things get changed.

Sometimes this spoils the story for those who have read the book,

other times it can improve it.

In Robert Bloch’s novel  the main character ‘Norman Bates’

was short, fat, older, and very dislikable.

In Alfred Hitchcock’s movie version, however,

he was young, handsome, and sympathetic, and one

of the most well-known characters in film history.

Here are a couple of clips….

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Let’s Not Have A Barney About These Facts.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Hi, and welcome to the fasab blog.

Today is fact day with another random selection of hopefully interesting things to learn.

Enjoy

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did you know1

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In gangster slang, a boxing match

that is fixed is called a ‘barney’.

boxers

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In 2009, one of the twelve surviving copies of

Edgar Allen Poe’s first book ‘Tamerlane and Other Poems’

was sold at Christie’s Auction House for $662,500,

a record price paid for a work of American literature.

Tamerlane and Other Poems

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Isaac Smith was a commissioned officer in

the Royal Navy and the cousin of Captain Cook,

with whom he explored the then-New World.

Smith also became the first European to arrive in eastern Australia

and the first man to create survey maps of various Pacific islands and coastlines,

including Tierra del Fuego in South America.

Despite all his pioneering in the world of exploration

he is best remembered as the last survivor

of James Cook’s first voyage in the South Pacific Ocean

aboard the HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771.

Midshipman_Isaac_Smith

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Research suggests that dark chocolate boosts memory,

attention span, reaction time, and problem-solving skills

by increasing blood flow to the brain.

Dark chocolate can also improve the ability

to see in low-contrast situations (such as poor weather)

and promote lower blood pressure.

Yum!

dark chocolate

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On average, 35 meters of hair fiber

is produced on the adult scalp.

Really???

shaved_head

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Ant colonies range greatly in size from

a few dozen individuals to many millions of ants.

The largest ant colonies are called ‘supercolonies’ that create

giant ant hills sometimes thousands of miles long.

The largest supercolony covers over 3,700 miles,

and has over 1 billion ants.

african_ant_hill

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Most toilets flush in E flat.

toilet

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The largest building in the world by volume

is The Boeing Everett Factory, in Everett, Washington,

which was originally built for the construction of the Boeing 747.

It has a volume of 472,370,319 cubic feet (1.7495e+7yd³)

and an area of almost 100 acres (40 ha 4685.6m2).

The Boeing Everett Factory

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Oak trees can live 200 years or more.

angel-oak-tree-l

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Astronaut John Glenn is a decorated World War II veteran,

one of the first American astronauts in history,

and one of the epic Mercury Seven.

Glenn was also the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth

and the fifth astronaut in history to go into space.

At the age of 93 he’s the last remaining astronaut of the Mercury Seven

and one of the very few surviving astronauts (American or Soviet)

of the Space Age that began in the late 1950s.

John Glenn

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A less successful astronaut was a Chinese man called Wan Hu,

a sixteenth-century local government official during the Ming Dynasty,

who had ambitions to travel to the Moon by means of a

special chair he designed with 47 attached rockets.

After lighting the rockets,

instead of shooting the ambitious government official into the air,

the rockets exploded, killing him.

Wan Hu

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When Pluto was first located by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930

it was just given the generic name Planet X.

It was named ‘Pluto’ by an 11-year-old girl,

Venetia Burney of Oxford, England.

Venetia Burney of Oxford, England

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Want somewhere quiet to eat?

Then try Nicholas Nauman’s restaurant called ‘Eat’

in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York,

which features nothing special except for the fact

that you cannot speak while dining there.

Apparently it was inspired by his life-changing stay

at a Buddhist monastery in India,

which made him want to create a place

where people could enjoy silence.

The silent dinners became so popular that nowadays,

people have to book their tables in advance.

restaurant called ‘Eat’

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The first toilet stall in a public washroom is the least likely to be used

and therefore also likely to be the cleanest.

first toilet stall in a public washroom

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The character of Michael Myers

was named after the European distributor of

John Carpenter’s previous film,

Assault on Precinct 13,

and apparently this was the director’s way of

saying a kind of weird “thank you” for the

film’s incredible success throughout most of Europe.

Michael_Myers

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