Mr. Write's Page

Another batch of useless facts for inquiring minds.

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— Ants comprise 15 percent of the animal biomass (volume of living matter) on the planet. In tropical areas such as the Amazon rainforest, ants account for 25 percent of the biomass. Ants exist everywhere except Iceland, Antarctica, and Greenland.

— The average life of an American one dollar bill is 18 months.

— Those $15 HDMI cables from the dollar store work exactly the same as the $200 premium HDMI cables you splurged on.

— The Atacama Desert in Peru lies in a valley between the Andes Mountains and the Chilean Coastal Range. With mountains blocking both sides, the valley rarely gets rain or fog. Some riverbeds in the Atacama have been dry for 120,000 years. Some Atacama weather stations have never recorded rain.

— People, dogs, mice, and other critters can survive just fine aboard a spaceship, and have. But birds cannot. Birds would starve during a spaceflight, because they have evolved to depend on gravity to swallow.

— In Russian, “brat” means “brother.”

— During a typical growing season, a large oak tree will expel 28,000 gallons of water into the atmosphere. The moisture is released in the form of water vapor through pores in the leaves.

— Domestic cats, those fearsome predators of suburbia, lack the genes that allow them to taste sweets. Sweetness signals the presence of carbohydrates, and cats, being exclusively carnivorous, have no use for carbs.

— The “YKK” on your zipper stands for “Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikigaisha” (Yoshida Industries Limited). Founded in 1934, YKK manufactures 90 percent of the world’s zippers. The YKK factory in Macon, Georgia, makes 7 million zippers per day.

— Buckingham Palace has over 600 rooms.

— The average person will grow 590 miles of hair during his or her lifetime. The average person sheds about 200 head hairs per day.

— According to studies, children laugh an average of 300 times per day, and adults laugh an average of 17 times per day. Adults, lighten up, okay?