According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Cypress Gardens, a theme park near Winter Haven, FL, landed the largest Easter Egg hunt title in 2007. With nearly 510,000 eggs hidden around the park, it took less than an hour for the eggs to be collected by eager participants.
Easter is the second most important candy-eating occasion of the year for Americans, who consumed 7 billion pounds of candy in 2001, according to the National Confectioner’s Association. It plays second to, of course, Halloween.
Ebony
Ebony is a dense black wood, yielded from various tropical trees in Southeast Asia, but the term can apply to many heavy black woods. Because of its fine texture, smooth polish, and intense color, it’s often used as an ornamental wood. In fact, ebony is used to make the black keys on pianos.
Though it may seem that termites enjoy all wood, they will bypass ebony.
The song “Ebony and Ivory” spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was the fourth-biggest hit of 1982. For Paul McCartney, the song’s run atop the chart was his longest-running solo hit and for Stevie Wonder, it was his longest-running chart-topper.
The wood of ebony sinks in water because it is so dense.
Because they are so difficult to dry, ebony trees are usually girdled to kill them and then left standing for two years to dry out. After they are felled and cut into lumber, they must dry for another six months.
Echo
Zeus, the King of the Olympians, was known for his many love affairs. Sometimes the young and beautiful Nymph Echo, who loved her own voice, would distract and amuse his wife Hera with long and entertaining stories, while Zeus took advantage of the moment to court the other mountain nymphs. When Hera discovered the trickery, she punished the talkative Echo by taking away her voice, except in foolish repetition of another’s shouted words. Thus, all Echo could do was repeat the voice of another.
Bats have developed the use of echolocation for navigating and hunting for food at night. By making high-frequency sounds, the echoes bounce back which enables bats to determine the size, location, speed, and even texture of objects in their path!
“A duck’s quack doesn’t echo” is an urban myth! A duck’s quack has an acoustic range similar to an echo and is subsequently hard to distinguish to the untrained human ear.
No secret is safe…A whispering gallery is an enclosure beneath a dome or vault, where whispers can be heard in other parts of the building. Famous whispering galleries are located at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England; Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy; and the Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol.
In Hyderabad, India, the ruins of the once-stunning city, Golkonda Fort, can be found. It’s been said that a perfect acoustical system had been designed at Golkonda. If one were to clap his/her hands at the fort’s main gates, it could be heard at the top of the citadel, situated on a 300 ft (91 m) high granite hill.
Eclipse
Ancient cultures may not have understood the causes of eclipses, but they were often able to predict them. The gradual appearance of a lunar eclipse led people to suspect that something was consuming the Moon. In fact, the ancient Chinese term for an eclipse is chih, which also means, “to eat.” The dark-blood color of most lunar eclipses confirmed the idea that the Moon was being eaten, with “blood” spreading across its face.
By February 1504, the famed explorer Christopher Columbus had been marooned on Jamaica for several months. Though the island natives initially brought him food, arrogant Columbus alienated them so much that they eventually stopped. As hunger and possible starvation set in, Columbus consulted his shipboard almanac and discovered that an eclipse was due. He called together the native chiefs and warned that if they continued to deny food to him, then God would punish them with a marked sign in the sky—he would darken the moon.
Arguably, the most famous eclipse of ancient times ended a five-year war between the Lydians and the Medes. The two Middle Eastern armies were consumed in battle when the day suddenly turned into night. The sign of this solar eclipse (recorded date is fixed as May 28, 585 BC) was enough cause to cease the fighting at once. They agreed to a peace treaty and cemented the bond with a double marriage.
A solar eclipse can last up to 7 minutes, 31 seconds.
Edison, Thomas
Bright ideas…Edison has long since been credited for the invention of the electric light bulb in 1879, but this is not entirely true. In 1809, Sir Humphrey Davy in England connected two wires to a battery and attached a charcoal strip between the other ends of the wires. The charcoal glowed, making the first arc lamp.
Edison is the inventor of the basic tattoo machine, still used today. In 1876, he patented the invention as the Stencil-Pens, which was intentionally designed as an engraving device. It was years later when Samuel O’Reilly made the world’s first tattoo machine by patenting a tube and needle system to provide an ink reservoir.
At the tender age of three, Edison was removed from school by his mother when teachers commented that he wasn’t the brightest of the pack and “addled”. His mother, so infuriated, began to home-school him instead. “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint.”
At age 12, Edison started to lose his hearing. One rumored legend claims that a train conductor smacked him in the ears after he started a fire in a boxcar by doing experiments. Another states that it was caused by a bout of scarlet fever during childhood. The most likely reason is that it was a genetic condition since both his father and one of his brothers had impaired hearing.
Edison earned a record 1,093 United States patents. His favorite invention was the phonograph.
Eggs
Not only is the ostrich egg the largest in the world, it is also the toughest egg. It can withstand a person weighing slightly over 253 lbs.
The least amount of spider eggs is laid by the Oonops domesticus, a tiny pink spider living in the walls of European homes. It only lays two eggs.
The older an egg is, the easier it is to peel once it is hard-boiled. After cooking your eggs, you should also run it under cold water to chill the shell and keep it under the water while you peel it. It makes the shell come off more easily and prevents the greenish tinge from forming around the yoke.
Generally, fresh eggs will lie on the bottom of the bowl of water. Eggs that tilt so that the large end is up are older. The tilting is caused by air pockets in the eggs that increase over time as fluid evaporates through the porous shell and oxygen and gases filter in. A rotten egg will actually float in the water and should not be eaten.
Seeing double? Some hens will actually lay double-yolked eggs as the result of unsynchronized production cycles. A double-yolked egg will be longer and thinner than an ordinary single-yolk egg.
Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam, enjoy balut, which is a fertilized duck (or chicken) egg with a nearly developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell…with a little salt. It is high in protein and is reputed to be an aphrodisiac.
Eiffel Tower
In 1925, the con artist Victor Lustig “sold” the Eiffel tower for scrap metal…twice. The Bohemian Lustig managed to convince French scrap metal merchants that the upkeep on the Eiffel Tower was so out of hand that the city could not afford its maintenance and wanted to sell the scraps. As the Eiffel Tower was designed to be temporary for the 1889 Paris Exposition, the idea was not entirely implausible. Lustig asked for bids to be submitted the next day, and reminded them that the matter was a state secret. He escaped with the money given to him by a man named Poisson, and nothing happened to him because Poisson was too humiliated to complain to the police. Lustig attempted to sell the Eiffel Tower a second time, but his mark went to the police and the story exploded in the press. Lustig was forced to leave Europe and head to the US.
In the 1980s, an old restaurant and its supporting iron scaffolding midway up the tower were dismantled. 1
1,000 pieces crossed the Atlantic in a 40 ft (12 m) cargo container and were reassembled in New Orleans, LO. It was purchased by entrepreneurs John Onorio and Daniel Bonnot, and was reconstructed on St. Charles Avenue, originally as the Tour Eiffel Restaurant and later called the Red Room. Today, it is run and operated by new owners as a training school for professional chefs and a banquet facility.
During the Nazi occupation of Paris in 1940, the lift cables were cut by the French so that Adolf Hitler would have to climb the steps to the summit of the Tower. Allegedly, the parts to repair them were impossible to obtain during the war so German soldiers were instructed to climb to the top to hoist the swastika. The flag was so large it blew away just a few hours later, and it was replaced by a smaller one. It was said that Hitler conquered France, but did not conquer the Eiffel Tower. A Frenchman eventually scaled the tower during the German occupation to hang the French flag.
The Eiffel Tower is painted every 7 years in 3 shades of brown (darkest shade at the bottom). Approximately 60 tons of paint is used.
Fifty engineers and designers produced 5,300 drawings, and over 100 workers built more than 18,000 different parts of the tower in a workshop. Another 132 workers assembled them on site.
Elder Tree
Jesus’s cross was made from elder tree wood and Judas, his betrayer, also hanged himself from an elder tree.
Elderberry, the fruit of several species of the elder, such as the American or sweet elder, is a roadside shrub found across North America. The berries are generally cooked and made into jelly or used for elderberry wine.
In Germany, one was to doff one’s hat to an elder tree as a form of acknowledgement that it was the wood of the cross of Christ’s crucifixion.
The fragrant flower heads from the elder tree can be used to make two delightfully refreshing summer drinks. One is the non-alcoholic elderflower press and the other is the slightly alcoholic elderflower “champagne.”
The elder has long been used for medicinal purposes. Elderberries have been used to soothe winter coughs—a glass of hot elderberry wine can certainly soothe the throat. Apart from rosehips and blackcurrant, the berries contain more vitamin C than any other herbal extract. This may explain why Elderberry Wine is a potent remedy, especially when taken hot at night, for promoting perspiration in the early stages of severe catarrh, accompanied by shivering, sore throat, etc. It has also been hailed as an excellent remedy for asthma. Berry good, indeed!
Electricity
The US is the greatest consumer of electricity in the world using 3.892 trillion kWh (2007 est.) while China is a close second.
Electric eels can generate an enormous electrical charge to stun prey and dissuade predators. Their bodies contain electric organs with 6,000 specialized cells called electrocytes that store power like tiny batteries. When threatened or attacking prey, these cells will discharge simultaneously to release 600 volts of electricity—five times the power of a standard U.S. wall socket. Electric eels are not actually eels, and their scientific classification is closer to carp and catfish. Breaded and deep-fried, they would taste…electrifying?
Thales of Miletus (600 BC) found that amber attracted small particles when rubbed. In fact, that certain objects such as rods of amber could be rubbed with cat’s fur and attract light objects like feathers was known to ancient cultures around the Mediterranean.
Static electricity is produced when one object takes negative charges from another object. Amber, a material created by fossilized tree sap, is a very good accumulator of static charge. For example, amber will become negatively charged when rubbed with wool so when a piece of amber is “charged up,” it can pick up feathers and other light objects by electrostatic induction.
Elephant
Elephants suck water up into their trunks (up to 15 quarts at a time) and then blow it into their mouth. The trunk alone contains about 100,000 different muscles.
At Coney Island in 1903, an elephant named Topsy was scheduled to die after she had killed three men while she was helping to build Luna Park. Topsy was prepared by being fed carrots laced with 460 grams of potassium cyanide—and a current from a 6,600-volt AC source was then sent through her body. She was dead in seconds. An estimated 1,500 people witnessed the event and the film of the event was seen by audiences across the United States. It was directed by Thomas Edison who wanted to demonstrate the power of electricity as well as the dangers of it.
Unlike most mammals, which grow baby teeth and then replace them with a permanent set of adult teeth, elephants have cycles of tooth rotation throughout their entire life. Over their lives they usually have 28 sets of teeth.
Elephants are so clever! Not only can they play music, they also can be taught to paint. With their trunks, elephants can be taught to hold a paintbrush and through a series of commands and touches instructed by their keeper, they can create a finished piece. In 2004, one of these artistic elephants, Lankam, joined seven fellow elephants to create a recordbreaking oil painting. Measuring 8 ft wide and 39 ft long, the piece was sold for 1.5 million baht ($43,000) to a Thai businesswoman living in California.
Founded in 2000, the twelve-piece Thai elephant orchestra at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, is the largest animal orchestra.
Elvis
Elvis Aaron Presley, born January 8, 1935 was an identical twin—his brother was stillborn and given the name Jesse Garon.
Following his separation from Priscilla, he lived with Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, from July 1972 until just a few months before his death.
Elvis was already a star by the time he was 10. He entered a talent contest at a state fair, donned a cowboy suit, stood on a chair so he could reach the microphone, and sang a version of Red Foley’s “Old Shep.” He won second prize, five bucks, and a free ticket to the county fair rides. In 1956, he sang the song again on his second album and the record went gold.
On December 21, 1970, Elvis Presley paid a visit to President Richard M. Nixon at the White House in Washington, D.C. Prior to their meeting, Elvis wrote to Nixon to suggest that he be made a “Federal Agent-at-Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). Despite the fact that no position existed, Nixon met with Elvis with desperate hopes to improve his image and win the love of the American youth.
Of all the requests made each year to the National Archives for reproduction of photographs and documents, the most requested item is the photograph of Elvis Presley and Richard M. Nixon shaking hands.
Environment/ Consumption
Using the latest figures available, in 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%.
If just 25% of U.S. families used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we would save over 2.5 billion bags a year.
About 1% of U.S. landfill space is full of disposable diapers, which take 500 years to decompose.
In Peninsular Malaysia, more tree species are found in 125 acres of tropical forest than in the entire North America.
New aluminum cans that are manufactured from used beverage containers use 95% less energy than producing them from virgin materials, the energy-saving equivalent to tens of millions of barrels of oil each year.
Each year, Americans throw out enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the entire state of Texas.
Epitaphs
“Workers of all lands unite. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Karl Marx, Highgate Cemetery, London, UK
Rodney Dangerfield, the comedian and actor, died in 2004 from complications following heart surgery at age 82. A master of self-deprecating one-liners, his epitaph reads “There goes the neighborhood.”
Mel Blanc, the man who lent his voice to renowned characters—including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, and Sylvester the Cat—died of heart disease and emphysema in 1989 at age 81. His epitaph marked a legacy with a dose of humor “That’s all folks!”
The Utterly, Completely, and Totally Useless Fact-O-Pedia Page 7