1500

In order to celebrate Knowledge Guild’s 1500th (consecutive) post, we are going to take a closer look at the number 1500. Do not worry, it is not as dull as it sounds.

• The number 1500 is located between the number 1499 (the Sophie Germain prime) and 1501 (centred pentagonal number).
• Google.com provides over 2.610.000.000 results for the number 1500.
• A bullet fired from a Kalashnikov weighs only a quarter of an ounce, but leaves the barrel at more than 1,500 mph. This gives it a force of impact equivalent to that of a brick dropped from the top of St Paul’s cathedral.
• One of the strongest fascia in the human body, the tensile strength of the tunica within the penis is around 1200-1500 millimetres of mercury. For reference, the average human blood pressure is 120/80 millimetres of mercury.
• In the United States, the average child will eat 1500 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before he/she graduates.
• 1500 plastic water bottles are consumed in the US every second.
• There were 1500 gallons of fresh milk, 1500 bottles of wine, 1500 mustard spoons, salt spoons and soufflé dishes aboard the Titanic.
• The 1500 metres or 1,500-metre run (approximately 0.93 miles) is the foremost middle distance track event in athletics.
• 1500 is the UN number for Sodium nitrite, the inorganic compound with the chemical formula NaNO₂.
• The year 1500 was seen as being especially important by many Christians in Europe, who thought it would bring the beginning of the end of the world. Their belief was based on the phrase “half-time after the time”, when the apocalypse was due to occur, which appears in the Book of Revelation and was seen as referring to the number 1500.
• In the year 1500, Christopher Columbus was arrested for mismanaging the New World.
• Around 1500, Europe’s population is estimated at 56.7 million.
• On April 22, 1500 the Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral officially discovers Brazil and claims the land for the Kingdom of Portugal.
• Some time around 1500, after being hit by a terrible earthquake, the residents of Crete tried to calm the earth by lowering a large basket of olives into a well.
• There were already millions of books in Europe by the year 1500, just half a century after the first printed page flew from the press. To read a million books in a lifetime you would have to read forty a day for seventy years.
• Although other reports exist, it is thought that the last wolf in England was killed in 1500, making the species extinct in that country.
• The year 1500 in the common European calendar was the year 7008–7009 in the Byzantine calendar, 5260–5261 in the Hebrew calendar, 3833 in the Korean calendar, 878–879, in the Iranian calendar, and 9 Meiō in the Japanese calendar.
• The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Germany, who was born in 1500, was said to have spoken French to men, Italian to women, Spanish to God and German to horses.

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