Strange But True

[ILUVDXL]

Good morning, everyone. Here is Thursday's edition.

Students at U.S. colleges and universities read about 60,000 pages in 4 years.

Tohru Iwatani, the inventor of the video game Pac-Man, came up with the idea when he saw a pizza with a slice missing at a dinner party.

The main library at the University if Indianna sinks over an inch every year because when it was built engineers failed to take into account the weight of the books that would occupy the building.

The names of the 2 stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by the then mayor Fiorello LaGuadia.

The Hoover Dam was built to last 2000 years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years.

The Great Wall streches 4,160 miles across North China.

The average person takes 9,000 steps a day.

Women who wink at men are known as nictitating women.

Xenophobia is the fear of strangers or foreigners.

Well, that's it for this week. DH and I are celebrating our 27th wedding anniversary on Saturday so I'll be taking the day off tomorrow so we can have more time together.

Have a great day and a wonderful weekend.

 

[Deb in IA]

The Great Wall streches 4,160 miles across North China.



I had the privilege of seeing the Great Wall just last month, when I went to Shanghai and Beijing with my parents. It is quite an impressive sight. It reportedly is the ONLY man-made structure that is visible from the moon.

It is even more impressive that it was all built BY HAND. As a result, many, many Chinese (no accurate count exists) laborers died while working on its construction, and are essentially buried in the Wall's foundation. (I didn't know this; our tour guide told this to us.)

In China, there is a saying that "One is not a true hero until one has climbed the Great Wall". (You can even get a "certificate" saying you have completed the climb).

 

[phamton]

The Great Wall is amazingly impressive. I would love to visit there myself. I've been reading about the previously invisible part that had been covered with sand. It was detected using imaging radar.

The great wall of China is visible from space (such as some space shuttles) as are some other manmade structures but isn't visible from the moon with the naked eye. NASA said this: "The Apollo astronauts never did see the Great Wall of China from the moon, as had been reported. But it is easily visible with space radar. "
http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/ootw/1996/ootw_960605/ob960605.html

http://www.urbanlegends.com/science/great.wall.from.space/great_wall_from_space.html

The sinking library from books is false: http://www.snopes.com/college/halls/sinking.htm

 

[EROS]

Thanks, Kathy .....