Random Facts 11

Shroud of Turin
Located in the Cathedral of Turin, Italy, where it has been housed since the late 1500's. Believers say the nen cooth bears a life-size imprint of the dead body of Jesus Christ; scientistshave tried to solve this historical mystery with carbon dating. The results thus far are inconclusive.
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 3.27.06

Past Olympic Sports
Tug of War was an Olympic sport from 1900-1920. Croquet (1900), Cricket (1900), Golf (1900-1904), Jeu de Paume (1908), Motor Boating (1908), Rugby (1900-1924), Polo (1900-1936), and Lacrosse (1900-1948)
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 4.30.06

Braille
At the age of 3, Louis Braille accidentally poked his eye with his father's awl. Within a year he was totally blind. While at school for the blind in Paris, he was inspired by a military code using dots and dashes that could be felt in the dark and came up with the idea of using no more than six dots per letter. In 1824, at the age of 15, Louis unveiled the Braille alphabet. It was 1852 before his alphabet became widespread.
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 4.14.06

King Camp Gillette
In 1903, King Gillette began making safety razor blades with William Nickerson, quickly becoming a millionaire. But his real passion was the World Corporation, a utopian community where 60 million Americans would live in one Metropolis containing millions of rooms serviced by vast common dining rooms. He picked Niagara River as its power source and tried to get Teddy Roosevelt and then Henry Ford to be its president. Both refused. Gillette lost his fortune in the crash of '29 and died in 1932 while in the midst of a new but unsuccessful enerprise - trying to extract oil from shale.
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 4.18.06

Humans in Space
The first human in space was Russian cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. His Vostok spacecraft orbited the Earth once - the entire flight lasted only 108 minutes. Gagarin died in 1968 on a routine jet proficiency flight. John Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, in 1962.
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 4.12.06

Hottest Places
El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 degrees Celsius) on September 13, 1922 - the hottest ever measured. The hottest temperature in North America was Death Valley on July 10, 1913 at 134 degrees Fahrenheit.
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 4.13.06

DDT
In 1962, Rachel Carson decried the toxic hazards of DDT in her book Silent Spring. But no replicated, peer-reviewed study has ever confirmed that DDT harms humans. Nevertheless, it was banned, with fatal consequences for countries where it was the most effective defense against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The World Health Organization estimates that malaria annually causes 300 million acute illnesses and over a million deaths (mostly from pregnant women and children under 5), which is why UNICEF and the National Academy of Sciences join the WHO in calling for a lift on the ban.
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 3.20.06.

World's Largest Gothic Cathedral
Is the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York measuring 601 feet long, 146 feet wide, and has a transept measuring 320 feet from end to end.
Fact or Crap Page-a-Day Calendar, 3.21.06.