The Book Of General Ignorance Part 25

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Who was the most dangerous American in history?

J. Edgar Hoover? J. Robert Oppenheimer? George W. Bush?

It was probably Thomas Midgely, a chemist from Dayton, Ohio, who invented both CFCs and lead in gasoline.

Born in 1889, Midgely trained as an engineer. Early in his career he discovered by chance that adding iodine to kerosene slightly reduced 'knocking' in engines. But 'slightly' was not good enough for him. So he taught himself chemistry from scratch and, over six years, worked through the entire periodic table looking for the perfect solution. In 1921, he found it.

By then, the company he worked for had merged with General Motors who eagerly began adding his completely 'knock-free' answer to fuel for car engines. It was tetraethyl lead. Ethyl gasoline transformed the modern world. But it was also toxic, and pumped billions of tons of lead into the atmosphere over seven decades, poisoning thousands of people including Midgely himself (though he always denied it).

Some think it was Midgely's guilt over lead gasoline that motivated him to develop a safe alternative to the noxious chemicals like sulphur dioxide and ammonia which were used in refrigeration. His discovery of dichloroflouromethane the first of the Freons took three days. CFCs seemed like the perfect solution inert, non-toxic, beneficial. Unfortunately, we now know they destroy the ozone layer and, since 1987, their production has been banned internationally.

By any standard, Midgely was an extraordinary man. He held 171 patents, loved music and wrote poetry. But his inventions were lethal. At fifty-one he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs. In a final irony, the harness he designed to help him get in and out bed got tangled one morning and in the ensuing struggle, America's most dangerous man inadvertently strangled himself. He was fifty-five.

PHILL Then he decided to cut out the middle-man and just kill babies with hammers. Then he decided to cut out the middle-man and just kill babies with hammers.

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What valuable commodity gives the US the legal right to seize foreign territory?

It's not oil: it's bird-s.h.i.+t.

In the 1850s, American farmers were so desperate for fertiliser that they were reduced to putting hair, feathers and soot on their over-farmed soil to increase the yields of wheat, cotton and tobacco.

Bird dung, rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, and known as guano (from a Quechua Indian word meaning 'the droppings of sea-birds') looked like the answer. The discovery of ma.s.sive deposits off the coast of Peru in the early nineteenth century set off a guano rush, which enabled the Peruvian government to charge huge prices for it. The American response was to pa.s.s a special bill through Congress in 1856 called the Guano Islands Act. This granted mining rights to any US citizen who hoisted the stars and stripes on any previously unclaimed, guano-laden island. Almost a hundred Pacific and Caribbean islands were acquired in this way, including Christmas and Midway Island. The Act has never been repealed.

The scene of one of the most notorious 'guano-s.n.a.t.c.hes' was the island of Nava.s.sa, near Haiti. Now uninhabited except for giant iguanas and goats the size of ponies (left by seventeenth-century pirates), in the late nineteenth century, it was home to the notorious Nava.s.sa Phosphate Company where, in 1899, four white overseers were killed by black miners rioting against appalling working conditions. The discovery of this shameful pocket of slavery caused outrage among liberal Americans and some historians credit the Nava.s.sa Riot with kick-starting the modern American labour movement. Nava.s.sa is still subject to a formal claim by Haiti the last US territory to be claimed by a foreign nation.

Guano is the product of billions of anchovies (Engraulis ringens) that live in gigantic shoals off the coast of Peru, the largest fish resource by weight in the world. It feeds the planet's largest bird colony: ten million b.o.o.bies, cormorants, gulls and penguins that feed on the anchovies. Their droppings produce such a powerful fertiliser that the Incas ranked it alongside gold as a gift from the G.o.ds, allotting the death penalty for anyone who molested the birds that made it.

In the 1860s, guano accounted for 75 per cent of Peru's total revenue. At the time the Guano Islands Act was pa.s.sed, the Peruvian President, Ramon Castilla (17971867) was earning twice as much as Franklin Pierce (180469), his American counterpart.

Even though the guano rush is long over, anchovy fishmeal is still Peru's biggest export, much of it going to China to feed chickens. Sadly, Peruvians rarely eat the anchovy itself, believing it to be poisonous.

Which aeroplane won the Battle of Britain?

The Hawker Hurricane.

The Spitfire was a more advanced design, faster, lighter to handle and capable of operating at alt.i.tudes of up to 30,000 feet. But the records clearly show that the heavy fighting in the Battle of Britain was done by the Hawker Hurricane.

There were more of them, for a start. In 1940, Hurricane squadrons outnumbered Spitfire squadrons by three to two; 1,715 Hurricanes were used in the battle, more than all the other RAF aircraft put together.

And they downed more planes. In Francis K. Mason's exhaustive account, Battle over Britain Battle over Britain (1969), he shows that of 11,400 reported engagements, Hurricanes accounted for 55 per cent of all kills, to the Spitfires' 33 per cent. (1969), he shows that of 11,400 reported engagements, Hurricanes accounted for 55 per cent of all kills, to the Spitfires' 33 per cent.

In general, the Hurricanes specialised in attacking bombers, while the Spitfires took the fighters. However, the highest-scoring RAF pilot in the battle, Sergeant Josef Frantiek (a Czech), only flew Hurricanes and still managed to down nine Me 109s the fastest and best-equipped German fighter among his total of seventeen enemy aircraft.

The first Hawker Hurricane flew in 1935 and was basically a single-winged Hawker Fury, one of the most reliable of the biplanes designed for Hawker between the wars by Sydney Camm. Hurricanes were built from 1937 to 1944 on a steel frame with a linen fabric covering. The Spitfire was all metal.

The Hurricane was cheap to make and easy to repair. Its fabric skin meant bullets could pa.s.s right through, and on more than one occasion Hurricanes returned safely with large pieces of wing missing.

Hurricanes could be turned around more quickly for battle, absorbed the shudder of eight guns rather better than Spitfires and, because the c.o.c.kpits were larger, fighter pilots could wrap up warmer. There was no c.o.c.kpit heating in either plane.

Spitfires scored their first kills for the RAF in September 1939 when they inadvertently shot down some of their own Hurricanes.

The RAF lost 1,173 planes and 510 pilots and gunners in the Battle of Britain, including 538 Hurricanes and 342 Spitfires. The Luftwaffe lost 1,733 planes, and 3,368 airmen were killed or captured.

STEPHEN My great uncle had his tongue shot off in the war; he never talked about it. My great uncle had his tongue shot off in the war; he never talked about it.

When did the last survivor of the Crimean War die?

2004.

The last veteran of the Crimean War, which ended in 1856, was Timothy, a Mediterranean spur-thighed tortoise. He was thought to be approximately 160 years old at the time of his death, and the UK's oldest known resident.

Timothy was found aboard a Portuguese privateer in 1854 by Captain John Courtenay Everard of the Royal Navy and served as a mascot on a series of Navy vessels until 1892, including service as s.h.i.+p's mascot of HMS Queen Queen during the first bombardment of Sebastopol in the Crimean War. during the first bombardment of Sebastopol in the Crimean War.

He then retired to Powderham Castle, where he was taken in by Everard's relative, the tenth Earl of Devon.

Timothy had the Devon's family motto 'Where have I fallen? What have I done?' inscribed on his underside.

During the Second World War, he left the shade of his favourite wisteria and dug his own air-raid shelter under the terrace steps. Lady Gabrielle Courtenay, aunt to the current Earl and Timothy's keeper, claimed this was because the vibration from bombs falling on nearby Exeter had disturbed him. She also believed he could recognise people's voices, and always came when called.

After the war, he returned to the same rose-bed to hibernate every year, wearing a large tag marked 'My name is Timothy I am very old. Please do not pick me up.'

According to Rory Knight-Bruce, Timothy's biographer, the few who were allowed to carry him 'would have held a doughty veteran with a gimlet eye whose density of weight was about that of a medium-sized Le Creuset pot.'

In 1926, the Devons decided that Timothy should mate. It was then discovered that Timothy was actually female. Given her age, they decided against changing his/her name, and although they did introduce a potential mate called Toby, she died without an heir.

Timothy was buried in the family burial plot in the castle grounds.

SEAN Did he actually fight in the war? Did he actually fight in the war?

STEPHEN No. No.

RICH I hope they didn't use him to send messages. I hope they didn't use him to send messages.

How many dog years equal one human year?

It's not seven.

No reliable authority can be found to help us make simple cross-species age comparisons.

Some twelve-year-old cats and dogs have a much higher level of physical capability than even the most sprightly eighty-four-year-old human and there does seem to be significant variation between different breeds.

The best that can be done is to apply a widely accepted approximate formula which suggests that kittens and puppies mature much faster than babies, with the rate of ageing slowing down significantly after two years.

Therefore, a one-year-old cat might be roughly sixteen in human years, while a four-year-old could be compared to a man or woman of thirty-two, an eight-year-old to a sixty-four-year-old and so on.

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How long is a day?

That depends.

A day is a single rotation of the earth about its axis. It is never exactly twenty-four hours long.

Astonis.h.i.+ngly, it can be as much as fifty whole seconds longer or shorter. This is because the speed of the Earth's rotation is continually changing as result of friction caused by tides, weather patterns and geological events.

Over a year, an average day is a fraction of a second shorter than twenty-four hours.

Once atomic clocks had recorded these discrepancies, the decision was made to redefine the second, hitherto a set fraction of the 'solar' day i.e. an eighty-six-thousand-and-four-hundredth of a day.

The new second was launched in 1967 and defined as: 'the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.' Accurate, but not easy to say when tired at the end of a long day.

This new definition of a second means that the solar day is gradually drifting away from the atomic day. As a result, scientists have introduced a 'leap second' into the atomic year, to bring it into line with the solar year.

The last 'leap second' added (the seventh since Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) was established in 1972) was on 31 December 2005, on the instruction of the International Earth Rotation Service based at the Paris Observatory.

That's good news for astronomers and those of us who want our watches to correspond to the movement of the Earth around the Sun, but bad news for computer software and all technology based on satellites.

The idea was vigorously opposed by the International Telecommunication Union who made a formal proposal to abandon the leap second by December 2007.

One compromise might be to wait until the discrepancy between UTC and GMT reaches an hour (in about 400 years time) and adjust it then. In the meantime, the debate about what const.i.tutes the 'real' time continues.

What's the longest animal?

Not the blue whale. Sorry.

Or the lion's mane jellyfish.

The bootlace worm, Lineus longissimus Lineus longissimus, reaches lengths of sixty metres (that's just under 200 feet), almost twice as long as a blue whale and a third longer than the longest lion's mane jellyfish, the previous record holder.

You could drape a bootlace worm from one end of an Olympic swimming pool to the other and still have some spare.

Bootlace worms, also known as ribbon worms, belong to the Nemertea worm family (Nemertea comes from the Greek Nemertes Nemertes, a sea-nymph). There are more than a thousand species, most of them aquatic. They are long and thin: even the longest may be only a few millimetres in diameter.

Many sources claim the bootlace worm only reaches 30 metres (nearly 100 feet) in length, which is not quite as long as the lion's mane jellyfish. But the latest information reveals that their capacity to stretch is extraordinary. Several have been found that are over 50 metres (165 feet) when fully extended.

Fossil evidence shows they have been around for at least 500 million years.

Bootlace worms have no hearts their blood is pumped by their muscles and they are the simplest organisms to have a separate mouth and a.n.u.s.

They are voracious carnivores, shooting out a long thin tube which is sticky or armed with poisonous hooks, to skewer and stun small crustaceans. This can be three times as long as the worm's own body.

Most ribbon worms lurk in the murk of the ocean bottom but some are incredibly brightly coloured.

Nemerteans can regenerate if damaged. But some bootlace species actually reproduce by fragmenting into small pieces, each of which becomes a new worm.

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What happens if you cut an earthworm in half?

You get two halves of a dead worm, usually. Sometimes the head end survives, but you can't get two worms from one.

Some species of worm can regenerate amputated tails, depending on how many body segments they've lost, and some species jettison tails to escape predators, but the headless part will always die, as will the head if it hasn't retained sufficient body. The death throes of the severed sections can go on for hours, and could easily be mistaken for lively wriggling.

The 'both ends become a worm' idea seems to have started as a way of shutting up small children. Sadly, n.o.body ever gets round to telling you that it isn't true once you've grown up.

The smooth band a third of the way along an earthworm isn't the 'join' from which the 'new worm' grows. It is called the c.l.i.tellum and is responsible for secreting the sticky clear mucus that covers the worm.

There is a freshwater flatworm called a planaria or 'cross-eyed worm' which also has an extraordinary ability to regenerate itself when damaged. The American geneticist and n.o.bel laureate T. H. Morgan (18661945) found that a piece of planaria 1/279th of its original size could regenerate into a full-sized planaria, and a planaria split lengthwise or crosswise will regenerate into two separate individuals.

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What's the loudest thing in the ocean?

Shrimps.

Though the blue whale produces the loudest noise of any individual animal in the sea or on land, the loudest natural noise of all is made by shrimps.

The sound of the 'shrimp layer' is the only natural noise that can 'white out' a submarine's sonar, deafening the operators through their headphones.

Below the layer they can hear nothing above it and vice versa. Hearing from below can only be accomplished by raising a mast up through it.

The noise of the collected shrimps amounts to an ear-splitting 246 decibels, which even adjusting for the fact that sound travels five times faster in water, equates to about 160 decibels in air: considerably louder than a jet taking off (140 dB) or the human threshold of pain. Some observers have compared it to everyone in the world frying bacon at the same time.

The noise is caused by trillions of shrimps snapping their single oversized claw all at once. Snapping shrimps, members of the various Alpheus Alpheus and and Synalpheus Synalpheus species, are found in shallow tropical and subtropical waters. species, are found in shallow tropical and subtropical waters.

But it's even more interesting than it sounds. Video shot at 40,000 frames per second shows clearly that the noise occurs 700 microseconds after the claw has snapped shut. The noise comes from burst bubbles not the shutting of the claw itself an effect known as 'cavitation'.