2000

In order to celebrate Knowledge Guild’s 2000th post, we are going to take a closer look at the number 2000. Do not worry, it is not as dull as it sounds.

• A blue whale has 2,000 times more cells than a human, which has 30 trillion cells. Despite having more cells, blue whales suffer from cancer less. This is known as Peto’s Paradox.
• A new type of beetle is discovered at roughly one an hour. Since 1700, the rate has been no more than six hours. There are 2,000 coleopterists in the world and 10,000,000 species of beetle, making up around two-thirds of all insects.
• If 2,000 coleopterists discovered four new species of beetle per day, it would take them three-and-a-half years to discover 10 million species.
• A spider eats 2,000 bugs a year.
• Another famous amateur Olympian is Eric “The Eel” Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea. He was a swimmer in the 2000 Summer Olympics who had never seen an Olympic sized swimming pool until the games.
• British actor Brian Blessed is the oldest man to go to the North Pole; he is also a black belt in judo, a boxing champion (he once boxed with the Dalai Lama), and he keeps overs 2,000 animals in his house and gardens in Surrey.
• Dates on films are given in Roman numerals so that it makes it harder to tell what year they were made. Early Hollywood film makers were worried that people would not see a film made only a few years ago, so they used the numerals, which before the year 2000 used all different kinds of numerals and made it more difficult to deciper.
• Doner kebabs are one of the most unhealthy foods sold in Britain. The average doner has 1,000 calories, which is half a woman’s daily allowance, but some have 2,000 calories. An average doner also has 98% of the daily allowance of salt and 148% of the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat. “Doner” is Turkish for a spit.
• Edward Craven Walker, the inventor of the Lava-lamp died in 2000. Of his invention he said: “It starts from nothing, grows possibly a little feminine, then a little masculine, then breaks up and has children. It’s a sexy thing.”
• For nearly 2,000 years, cockfighting was Britain’s national sport. Every village had a cockpit. Expressions that come from cockfighting include, “show a clean pair of heels”, “well heeled”, “to pit someone against” and “being game”.
• If Barbie was 5’6″, her feet would be size three, her breasts would be 39 inches and she would fall flat on her face. She also lacks the 17-22% body fat that would allow her to menstruate. She got a naval in 2000. Her first words were in 1992. Amongst them were, “Will we ever have enough clothes”, “I like shopping” and, “Math is tough.”
• In Japan they use various household cleaners and pesticides to make hydrogen sulphide and it is a very common form of suicide. A single breath will kill you. There have been over 2,000 “detergent suicides” recorded in Japan since 2005. The other side-effect of this method of suicide is that you do not notice the first smell, because it kills the olfactory system, so it usually kills 80% of people who turn at the scene of the suicide who are also killed by the gas left over.
• In Kyrgyzstan there was a forest, possibly planted by WWII German prisoners of war, which when it grew up was shaped like a swastika. There was another forest swastika in Brandenburg, Prussia, which used larch trees that turned yellow at a particular time of year so the swastika was only visible for a brief period each year. It was possibly planted by enthusiastic Hitler Youths. In modern day Germany anything seen to promote Nazism is illegal so the trees were cut down in 2000.
• In the South American Republic of Guyana, between 2000-2005, 0% of the country’s rainforest has been cut down, because a new tree is planted for every one which is cut.
• The mammal with the most cells in its body is the blue whale, because it is the largest animal in the world. This question is given especially to Alan, who for once gets a question about the blue whale right, which results in him scoring lots of bonus points which he does not want. A blue whale has 2,000 times more cells than a human, which has 30 trillion cells. Despite having more cells, blue whales suffer from cancer less. This is known as Peto’s Paradox.
• The speaker of the Swazi Parliament was sacked in 2000 after he stole a cowpat belonging to the King, Mswati III.

5

In order to celebrate Knowledge Guild’s 5th anniversary we are going to take a closer look at the number 5. Do not worry, it is not as dull as it sounds.

• The number of people killed by sharks since records began is equal to just five per cent of the number of toilet-related injuries in the USA in 1996.
• In the 18th century, 75% of all children died before they were five years old. 90% of children born in workhouses died before they were five years old.
• As a trick, the writer Arthur Conan Doyle once sent a letter to five friends that read, “We are discovered. Flee immediately.” One of his friends disappeared and Doyle never saw him again.
• An enzyme found in pineapples called “Bromelain” destroys fingerprints. It was used as a plotline in an episode of Hawaii Five-O. This enzyme can also get rid of mouth ulcers.
• Chelmsford was capital of England for five days in 1381 during the Peasants Revolt.
• The Punjabi for the number “5” is “4”.
• The most dangerous sport for American women is cheerleading. In 2002, 22,900 children between five and eighteen years of age went to hospital for cheerleading related injuries.
• Charles Darwin is one of only five people who are not royal to be buried in Westminster Abbey.
• Smoking takes five years off your health expectancy on average. However, as a man, removing your testicles adds thirteen years onto it.
• The Hebrew for the number “5” is pronounced “Hey”.
• The average height of an Eskimo is 5’4″ and the average life expectancy is 39. If you put five Eskimos in car, every Eskimo in the world could fit into the Los Angeles International Airport car park.
• The best thing to do with an old Christmas tree is to contact your local zoo and see if they want to give it to their animals for food. In Germany people often feed Christmas trees to elephants, which can eat five of them for lunch. In Dresden Zoo they also give Christmas trees to giraffes, rhinos, camels, deer and sheep.
• In Alexandre Dumas’ novel La Dem Aux Camelias, the main heroine, Marguerite Gautier, wears a white camellia for 25 days of month when she is available for sex, and a red one for five days when she is not available because she is having her period. The novel caused scandal in 19th century France when it was published and the flowers popularity grew.
• The five appendages on most starfish exhibit pentamerism.
• Only five people died in the Great Fire of London.
• India has no speed limits and every car in the country within five years will be involved in a fatal road accident. The UK has the largest number of car thefts in the world.
• Five pound notes are made out of a mixture of cotton and linen. Wooden paper is too fragile.
• There are only five places in America which have an apostrophe in them which are Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Ike’s Point, New Jersey; John E’s Pond, Rhode Island; Carlos Elmer’s Joshua View, Arizona; and Clark’s Mountain, Oregon.
• In the British Army, you can tell which branch of the Brigade of Guards a soldier is in by the gaps between the buttons. If they are evenly spaced, they are in the Grenadiers Guards. Pairs mean they are Coldstream Guards, threes are Scottish Guards, fours are Irish Guards, and fives are Welsh Guards.
• The ideal way to kiss a Frenchman depends on what region of France you are in. Two kisses are normal in central and southern France and four in northern France. However, in Corsica it can be as many as five kisses. In Belgium and the Netherlands, three kisses is the usual amount.
• Anchovies are now mainly used for feed salmon in fish farms. For every salmon, five kilograms of anchovies are killed. Therefore, salmon farming is not really sustainable.
• Each country in the world has their own idea of how many portions of fruit and veg you should eat every day. The reason it is five in Britain is because doctors are of the belief that you cannot persuade the public to eat more than that. In Japan they recommend eating nine portions of fruit and veg, in Denmark it is six, in France it is ten.
• A Fitzroy is a bastard child of a royal. Charles II had five Fitzroys from his mistress Barbara Palmer.

See other: Anniversaries

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.

See other: Anniversaries