AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING VIII

1. Alaska is so big that the 21 smallest states in the United States could fit into it. It is so sparsely populated that if New York City had the same ratio of residents per square mile, only 14 people would be living in Manhattan.

2. Birds are the only living descendants of dinosaurs.

3. Sara Josepha Hale (1788-1879) wrote Mary Had A Little Lamb and was instrumental in establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

4. The vast majority of blind people in the U.S. and the U.K. do not read Braille. Statistically - under 1% in the U.K. and under 10% in the U.S.

5. It's not only humans who are right and left-handed. Most female cats prefer using their right paw and most males are left-pawed.

6. At the Orfield Laboratories in Minnesota, there is an anechoic chamber that is the quietest place in the world. Sound is measured in negative decibels. You can hear your own heartbeat and your bones moving. No one has been able to bear the sound - or rather lack of it - for more than 45 minutes. Other than driving people crazy, the chamber is used by companies to determine how loud their products are and by NASA astronauts in training to adapt to the silence of outer space.