Trivia and amazing facts |
May 26, 2003 On its journey from Earth to Jupiter, Galileo traveled 2.4 billion miles. Along the way, about 67 gallons of fuel from the propulsion system were used to control Galileo's flight path and to keep its antenna pointed at Earth. That's equivalent to getting 36 million miles per gallon! With that kind of mileage, one would use up only 4 tablespoons of gasoline to drive to the Moon and back! One of the world's rarest and most sought after collector coins, the 1933 Double Eagle, was sold at Sothey's auction house in New York on Tuesday 30th July 2002 for the record sum of $7.59 million. Insect control -- The 20 million Mexican free-tail bats from Bracken Cave, Texas eat 250 tons of insects nightly. Maximum sparks -- A Positive Giant is a lightning strike that hits the ground up to 20 miles away from the storm. Because it seems to strike from a clear sky it is known as "A Bolt From The Blue". These Positive Giant flashes strike between the storm's top "anvil" and the Earth and carry several times the destructive energy of a regular lightning strike. Except for your brain cells, 50,000,000 of the cells in your body will have died and been replaced with others, all while you have been reading this sentence. Given their sheer volume, ninety-nine percent of the living space on the planet is found in the oceans. Biologists estimate that somewhere between 500,000 and 5,000,000 marine species have yet to be discovered and described. |