Mr. Write's Page

The Questions…

1. What is the fastest speed a human has ever traveled, and who set the record?

2. What common flavoring, mostly used in baking, is derived from an orchid?

3. The South American nation of Ecuador and the Central American nation of El Salvador both use the same currency? What is it?

4. The mighty Google empire was born in 1996. The first Google search engine was an array of ten 4-gig hard drives linked together in a cabinet. What did Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin use to construct the cabinet?

5. Greyhounds, the fastest dogs on earth, were brought to the United States in the mid-1800s for what specific reason?

The Answers…

1. The speed record is 24,791 miles per hour. It was set in May 1969 by astronauts Gene Cernan, Tom Stafford, and John Young when Apollo 10 reentered the Earth’s atmosphere after orbiting the Moon.

2. Vanilla. Both vanilla extract and natural vanilla flavoring come from the cured pods (incorrectly called beans) of Vanilla planifolia, an orchid native to Mexico.

3. The U.S. dollar.

4. Lego building blocks.

5. To catch jackrabbits that were eating crops and competing with livestock for food. This soon led to the sport of coursing, where greyhounds chased rabbits in an enclosed field, then later to regulated greyhound racing. Mechanical rabbits replaced the real thing in 1920.