Fact When were the first oil wells drilled? The first known oil wells were drilled around 347 AD in China. These
wells, drilled with rotating bits attached to bamboo poles, were as deep
as 800 feet (244 meters). Western science did not catch up until the mid-1800s,
when several wells were drilled in Asia, Europe, and Canada. The first
successful commercial oil well was drilled in 1859 by a retired railroad
conductor named Edwin Drake. His well near Titusville, Pennsylvania tapped
a layer of oil only 69.5 feet (21.1 meters) below the surface. Another
well nearby still pumps oil today. After the first success, Drake's designs
were used by others in nearby oil-rich zones. In May, 1865, a boom-town
named Pithole City sprang up after the Frazier Well came in with 250 barrels
of oil per day. By September, there were 15,000 people in Pithole. But
the town's life was short, as fires burned several wells and other wells
opened up nearby. Visit the Drake Well Museum http://www.usachoice.net/drakewell/ The history of the oil industry http://www.oilhistory.com/contents/contents.html http://www.sjgs.com/history.html What metal melts in your hand? The silvery metal gallium melts at 29.8 degrees C (85.6 degrees
F), so if you hold it in your hand it will melt. Gallium is element number
31 on the Periodic Table. It is similar to aluminum, but heavier. There
are a few other metals that would melt in your hand, some with which you
would not want to try the experiment. Cesium is element number 55, an alkali
metal that would not only melt, but would also react violently with your
skin and possibly catch fire. Another metal that is liquid at room temperature
is mercury, element number 80. Mercury is much heavier, but it looks very
similar to liquid gallium. It is a poison easily absorbed through the skin,
and therefore should not be touched. More about gallium http://www.mcp-group.com/HTML/gallium.html
Gallium's low melting point gives it interesting uses. Here's a technical
report about one of them http://www.spie.org/web/oer/february/feb99/ltconstr.html
Gallium can mix with other metals to form amalgam, a Word http://www.cool-word.com/archive/1999/10/13.html A Fact about mercury http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/08/10.html Why do we use alternating electric current? Household electricity alternates in polarity sixty times per second
(fifty in some countries). Thirty times per second, the positive pole changes
to the negative pole, then changes back. Why? The first commercial electricity
was supplied as direct current (DC), in which each electrical pole is constant.
This worked fine for short distances at low power, but it was impractical
to send DC power very far from the generating station. Efficient long-line
transmission requires high voltage, because less energy is lost that way.
Transforming DC power (changing its voltage) is difficult. Since alternating
current is easy to convert to different voltages using simple coil transformers,
it was chosen for its flexibility. Alternating current was invented by Nikola Tesla Old URL http://www.leyada.jlm.k12.il/proj/edsntsla/hist3.htm More Facts about electricity http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/05/02.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/01/19.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/12/11.html How was the Statue Of Liberty shipped to New York? France's gift to the United States for the US Centennial was the
colossal Statue Of Liberty, designed by Frederic-Auguste Bartholde. Upon
the completion of this 151 foot (46.5 meter) metal structure, it was taken
apart into 350 pieces and packed into 214 crates. The disassembled statue
was shipped across the Atlantic on the French frigate, "Isere," arriving
in New York in June, 1885. The huge task of reassembling the statue was
not easy. The arm and torch structure were not properly joined to the main
body, and when the statue was renovated for the 1986 bicentennial, extensive
repairs were required. The torch has also been redesigned, and the original
torch is on display in the museum under the statue. The giant statue, which
now stands in New York Harbor, contains 31 tons of copper and 125 tons
of steel. Its design required significant innovations, including an outer
shell of freely moving copper plates that hangs on a sturdy steel frame.
Statue Of Liberty National Monument http://www.nps.gov/stli/prod02.htm Take a virtual tour of the Statue Of Liberty http://www.nyctourist.com/liberty1.htm What was the first written language in Ireland? In fifth century Ireland, a 25-letter alphabet called Ogham [AWG-um
or OH-yum] was used by Celtic Druids to carve inscriptions on wooden or
stone objects such as gravestones. Some of these objects, called standing
stones, are still in existence today. Ogham was a phonetic system quite
similar to our own alphabet. Letters were marked vertically from bottom
to top, usually along a straight edge. They were mostly simple notches
designed to be easy to carve. The Ogham system is thought to have been
inspired by Ogma, god of eloquence. Twenty of its letters share the same
names as trees important to the Druids. Ogham was used until the Christian
era, when it was banned by the church. More about Ogham and the Druids http://members.aol.com/irishdremr/oghamintro.html http://www.indigo.ie/alia/tirnanog/oghaml.html http://members.aol.com/discord23/druid1.htm http://www.is.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/ogham/ More Facts about ancient writing http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/08/13.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/12/24.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/04/29.html What bird drinks the blood of other birds? The sharp-beaked finch of the Galapagos Islands (Geospiza difficilis)
engages in an unusual form of parasitism. It lands on the backs of larger
birds and pecks at them until they bleed, then it drinks the blood. Scientists
think this behavior may have started with the removal of parasites from
the larger birds. The robin-size bird, also known as the vampire finch,
also has another nasty habit. It rolls the eggs of other birds down hills,
to break them open and get at the contents. The sharp-beaked finch is one
of 13 species of finches of the Galapagos Islands. Scientists are fascinated
by the Galapagos finches because although they all appear to have evolved
from a common ancestor within the last million years or so, they show tremendous
variety of forms and lifestyles. More about the finches of Galapagos http://www.terraquest.com/galapagos/wildlife/island/finch.html More Facts about the Galapagos Islands http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/08/22.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/09/23.html What town is almost completely underground? The town of Coober Pedy, in Australia's hot, dry outback, is almost
entirely built inside holes in the ground. The town was originally an opal
mining settlement, and many of the holes are left over from opal mines.
The holes are quite cozy, with a year-round temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit
(25 degrees C). Visitors are welcome to stay (underground, of course) at
the Desert Cave Hotel, have a brew at the Underground Bar, and try a hand
of poker on the underground gaming machines. Coober Pedy got its name from
the Aboriginal phrase "kupa piti" (white man's burrow). The town, which
produces an estimated 70-90% of the world's opals, has about 3500 residents. More about Coober Pedy http://www.cpcouncil.sa.gov.au/default.htm http://www.ozramp.net.au/~senani/coober.htm How do solar cells turn light into electricity? Solar cells (also called photovoltaic cells) are able to capture
some of the energy in sunlight and turn it into a voltage difference that
can drive an electric circuit. When a photon (particle of light) strikes
one of the atoms in the surface of a solar cell, it may knock an electron
off of the atom, leaving the atom with a positive charge. The freed electron
flies away, carrying the photon's energy. Because of the pattern of impurities
in the solar cell, electrons move much more easily in one direction than
in the opposite direction. The electrons freed by the light collect on
one side of the cell, developing a negative charge there while the other
side develops a positive charge. More detailed explanations of solar cells http://www.howstuffworks.com/solar-cell.htm http://www3.umassd.edu/Public/Exhibit/enl600/assign6.html Today's Word is electric http://www.cool-word.com/archive/1999/11/08.html What happens when galaxies collide? The collision of two galaxies takes hundreds of millions of years.
Galaxies do not actually crash into each other, because they are mostly
empty space. Instead, they pass through each other, becoming distorted
by gravitational interactions. Even though colliding galaxies may contain
hundreds of billions of stars, very few stars collide with each other or
even come close, because the stars are so far apart relative to their size.
But planets orbiting those stars might be tossed into new orbits by the
gravity of passing stars. As galaxies pass through each other, the gases
they contain can heat up and collapse, forming "starburst" areas rich with
bright new star systems. Colliding galaxies may merge into one larger galaxy,
or pass completely through each other. More about galactic collisions http://astrowww.phys.uvic.ca/~patton/openhouse/collisions.html http://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/weekly/1997picks/97-138P.htm Computer simulation of colliding galaxies http://www.sdsc.edu/IOTW/week47/iotw.html More Facts about galaxies http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/09/08.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/01/12.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/06/02.html Why do golf balls have dimples? Golf balls are covered with dimples for the same reason that tennis
balls are covered with fuzz -- it helps them fly farther. When a ball travels
rapidly through air, the air is pushed apart by the ball. The air joins
back together behind the ball, but the joining is full of eddies and turbulence.
The turbulent wake reduces the pressure behind the ball, pulling it back
and slowing it down. The dimples on a golf ball (and the fuzz on a tennis
ball) trap a thin layer of turbulent air all around the ball, even wrapping
it around the trailing half. Because the turbulent layer is very thin,
the air joins together more smoothly behind the ball, creating a smaller
wake. The ball feels less backward drag, and it flies farther. More about golf ball aerodynamics http://wings.ucdavis.edu/Book/Sports/instructor/golf-01.html http://www.titleist.com/balls/tech1.htm More Facts about sports http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/10/01.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/09/14.html How can divers stay in deep water for many hours? Normally, when a SCUBA diver swims very deep, he or she can only
stay at that depth for a short time before it is necessary to return to
the surface. The deeper the dive, the less time is available at the bottom,
where the high pressure causes nitrogen gas to dissolve in the diver's
blood. On the way back up, the diver must rise slowly to decompress, avoiding
the dangerous "bends" that result from bubbles forming in the blood as
the nitrogen comes out of solution. But divers who live in an undersea
habitat can swim around at depth for many hours without needing a lengthy
decompression period before coming out of the water. Because the habitat's
air is at the same pressure as the water at the dive depth, there is no
danger of nitrogen bubbling out of their blood when they end the dive. The Aquarius 2000 underwater habitat http://www.uncwil.edu/nurc/aquarius/ "Saturation diving" can extend the time spent at the bottom http://www.culture.fr/culture/archeosm/en/plsatur.htm http://www.diveweb.com/uw/archives/arch/uw-sp94.32.htm How do clownfish avoid the stings of anemones? Colorful clownfish live among the deadly tentacles of sea anemones.
Unlike other fish, which are quickly stung to death and eaten by the anemones,
the clownfish are not harmed even when they snuggle deep into the tentacles.
From their very first minutes of life, the clownfish cover themselves with
a special mucus coating made of a combination of their own secretions and
the secretions of the anemone's tentacles. Because they are covered with
this coating, they are protected, just as the tentacles are protected from
their own stings. Clownfish live in a symbiotic (mutually beneficial) relationship
with the anemones. The clownfish are protected from predators, while the
anemones are kept clean and protected from fish that eat their tentacles. More about clownfish Old URL http://www.usdivers.com/fun_facts/cfish.htm
Who first used the freeze-drying process? The process of freeze-drying was first used by the Incas of Peru
who stored their vegetables near the peaks of high mountains. There, they
froze solid. Over time, the frozen water sublimated into the thin mountain
air (converted directly to vapor without passing through the liquid state),
leaving behind the perfectly preserved, dessicated vegetables. Modern freeze-drying
started during World War II to preserve blood plasma for use at the front
lines. Today, freeze-drying is done using flash-freezing and vacuum dehydration.
Freeze-drying preserves almost all the nutrients of foods, as well as the
important flavor elements. More about freeze-drying http://www.sciam.com/0996issue/0996working.html How to freeze-dry foods in your own freezer http://forums.cosmoaccess.net/forum/survival/prep/freeze.htm Today's Word is sublimate http://www.cool-word.com/archive/1999/11/15.html What's the oldest known Egyptian papyrus? It has been called "the oldest book in the world." The Prisse Papyrus,
written before 2000 BC, is the oldest papyrus document ever discovered.
It contains portions of two even older works, one of which is from the
third dynasty (3800 BC). The Prisse Papyrus is named after Prisse d'Avennes,
the French Egyptologist who discovered it. It is a copy of a work written
by Ptah-Hotep, Grand Vizier under the Pharaoh Isesi, who titled it "The
Instructions of Ptah-Hotep." It appears to be a book of advice for young
Egyptian men. Ptahhotep encouraged honesty, gentleness, and directness.
He offered advice for dealing with supervisors ("Let thy mind be deep and
thy speech scanty") and wives ("Be silent, for it is a better gift than
flowers"). His work influenced later writings for thousands of years, and
echoes of it appear in the Christian Bible. "The Instructions of Ptah-Hotep"
(two different translations) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/ptahhotep.html http://members.aol.com/mwhealton/pthgly.htm More Facts about Egypt and Egyptians http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/01/09.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/08/13.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/08/25.html What kind of ocean waves travel fastest? The fastest ocean waves are also the rarest and the most dangerous.
They are tsunamis, very long waves that move across the open sea at speeds
approaching 500 miles per hour (800 kph). A tsunami (sometimes incorrectly
called a "tidal wave") is caused by a geological event like an earthquake,
underwater landslide, or volcanic eruption. As it moves across the open
sea it is only a few feet high, although it may be more than 100 miles
long (160 kilometers). Ships do not notice its passage. But when it reaches
the shore, interaction with the bottom slows the wave down and all its
energy is concentrated at the surface. A wall of water quickly builds up
that can be as high as a multi-story building. More about tsunamis http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageseas/neptune-side-tsunamis.html http://www.geophys.washington.edu/tsunami/welcome.html More Facts about the ocean http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/03/16.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/10/09.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/10/20.html What's the fastest that humans have ever traveled? Relative to the planet Earth, the fastest speed humans have achieved
was 24,791 miles per hour (39,914 km/hr), by the Apollo 10 astronauts,
on their return trip from the moon in 1969. But the universe is much bigger
than the Earth-Moon system, and everything moves. If the Sun is taken as
a fixed point, then all the humans on Earth are moving at about 66,660
miles per hour (107,320 km/hr) as the Earth follows its orbit. If the center
of the Milky Way galaxy is a fixed point, then the solar system is moving
at about 500,000 miles per hour (800,000 km/hr) in its orbit around the
galaxy. From an even broader reference frame, our entire local group of
galaxies is moving at about one million miles per hour toward another galaxy
group called Virgo Cluster. Apollo 10 did not include a moon landing, but
it did include the first live color-TV from space http://www.nasm.edu/APOLLO/AS10/ Virgo Cluster contains about 2,000 galaxies http://www.seds.org/messier/more/virgo.html A Fact about the fastest human-made object http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/09/01.html A Fact about Earth's orbit around the Galaxy http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/01/12.html What moon has the closest orbit to its planet? Of all the moons in the solar system, the one with the closest orbit
is Phobos, the larger of the two satellites of Mars. The orbit of Phobos
is less than 6000 kilometers above the surface of the planet (3700 miles).
Phobos is an irregularly shaped chunk of rock and ice about 27 kilometers
long (17 miles). Because its orbit is so low, it can only be seen from
a limited strip of the planet near its orbital path. Seen from that strip,
it crosses the sky quickly from west to east, twice a day. Phobos' orbit
is so low that tidal forces are pulling it closer and closer to Mars. Scientists
expect that in about 50 million years it will either crash into the planet
or break up into a thin ring of orbiting debris. Phobos and Mars' other
moon, Deimos, are thought to be captured asteroids http://www.seds.org/nineplanets/nineplanets/phobos.html More Facts about Mars http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/09/15.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/02/26.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/07/13.html What's the smallest graffiti in the world? If you have any electronic device that contains microchips, you
may own some chip graffiti, the smallest form of public art. For many years,
chip designers have placed tiny, embossed drawings in unused spots on integrated
circuit chips. The drawings are made out of the same silicon and other
materials that form the circuits. The art is dying out because most chip
designs these days are created by automatic software, but many devices
still contain older chips that hold the drawings. There is great variety
among the designs, which include human figures, animals, buildings, vehicles,
appliances, comic strip characters, and cultural icons like "Mr. T," the
"happy face" and Pac Man. Two galleries of chip graffiti http://www.chipworks.com/SiliconGallery/07main.htm
Why do meteors sometimes come in showers? Most meteors are tiny flecks of cosmic dust that strike the Earth's
atmosphere in random directions. But there are also collections of dust
and grains of rock (meteoroids) that orbit in streams around the Sun. When
the Earth's orbit crosses one of these streams, we might have a sudden
meteor shower. Meteoroid streams form along the orbits of comets, which
release dust and debris as the Sun evaporates their ices. Some of them
repeat every year at the same time. These are named according to the constellation
from which the meteors appear to originate (the radiant of the swarm).
We have the Leonids from Leo, the Orionids from Orion, and many others.
The most intense meteor showers are spectacular meteor storms, where dozens
or even hundreds of meteors flash across the sky every minute. More about meteor showers and storms http://www.tiac.net/users/lewkaren/meteorobs/storms.html Where are the coldest volcanoes in the solar system? Neptune's moon Triton is the coldest place in the solar system,
with a surface temperature of -235 degrees Celsius (-390 degrees Fahrenheit).
As cold as it is, there are active volcanoes on Triton in which the erupting
liquid is frigidly cold liquid nitrogen. At Triton's surface, nitrogen
normally exists as frozen ice. But under the surface, where Triton is heated
by slow radioactive decay of its rocks, nitrogen melts into a liquid. When
the liquid heats up still further, it boils and erupts through the surface,
spewing evaporating liquid nitrogen high into space. Triton is one of the
few moons in the solar system that has an atmosphere and clouds. The clouds,
seen by Voyager 2, are evidence of Triton's volcanoes http://www.letsfindout.com/subjects/space/tritncls.html http://www.hawastsoc.org/solar/eng/triton.htm More Facts about planets and moons http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/08/29.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/10/02.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/07/09.html What expensive seafood was once used as fertilizer? During the 1700s and early 1800s, there were so many lobsters along
the coast of New England that one could walk down the beach and pick them
up off the sand. Lobsters were so abundant that native Americans used them
as fertilizer, and colonists thought of them as food for poor people. Servants
complained when they were forced to eat lobster more than three times in
a week. Today, of course, lobsters are prized as an expensive delicacy.
They are hunted intensely by humans, and they are no longer so abundant.
Today's wild lobsters are puny runts compared to the huge forty- pound,
three-foot specimens (18 kg, 1 meter) that were once common along the New
England coast. Gulf Of Maine Aquarium's great lobster pages http://octopus.gma.org/lobsters/
Lobster recipes, cooking and cleaning advice, and interesting facts http://www.spruceharbor.com/lobster/lobrecip.html http://www.maine-lobster.com/lobfacts.htm More Facts about lobsters and their relatives http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1997/02/18.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/09/08.html What living tissue contains no blood vessels? The only living tissue in the human body that contains no blood
vessels is the transparent cornea of the eye. It's the firm, smooth outer
shell that arcs across in front of the iris and pupil. The cornea contains
no blood vessels because it must be perfectly clear. Even one tiny capillary
would cast the shadow of hundreds of streaming blood cells into the light
coming through the pupil. Without blood to provide oxygen and nutrients,
the cornea must get them from somewhere else. Nutrients come from the tears
and from the liquid (aqueous humor) that fills the chamber behind the cornea.
Oxygen is no problem, since the cornea is in direct contact with the air.
More about the cornea http://www.nei.nih.gov/publications/cornea.htm How did the cornea get its name? To find out, see today's Word http://www.cool-word.com/archive/1999/11/29.html More Facts about eyes http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/03/12.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1998/07/08.html http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/03/24.html
