AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING LIII

1. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan novels have been translated into more than 30 languages.

2. The South Beach section of Miami Beach has one of the largest concentrations of Art Deco buildings in the world, containing more than 800 Art Deco buildings within a square mile.

3. NORAD - North America Air Defense - began tracking Santa's journey around the world in 1957. The tradition began when a department store ad inviting kids to call Santa accidentally printed NORAD's telephone number. Today the website (www.noradsanta.org) receives more than 300 million hits during Christmas week.

4. The ball point pen was invented and patented by an American, John J. Loud, in 1888, but it was not a commercial success. 50 years later, in 1938, Hungarian-Argentine inventor Laszlo Biro  developed the first commercially successful ball point pen, and he is generally credited as the inventor. The design was conceived and developed as a cleaner and more reliable alternative to dip pens and fountain pens. The ball point pen is the world's most-used writing instrument. Millions are manufactured and sold daily. It has influenced art and graphic design and spawned an artwork genre. Perhaps because he neglected to get a U.S. patent for his pen, Laszlo Biro is not widely known in the States, but in most of the world "Biro" is the generic name for a ballpoint pen.

5. Sikhism, a major religion of India and the fifth largest faith in the world, numbers some 26 million adherents.

6. On a movie set, the gaffer is the chief electrician, the grip is responsible for setting up the equipment that supports the camera and building and breaking down sets, and the best boy is the assistant to both the gaffer and the grip.

7. In knitting, to make the first row of stitches is to cast on.

8. The atomic number of an element, which determines its place in the periodic table, is equal to the number of protons in its nucleus.

9. Virginia Dare was the first child of English parents born in America.

10. Czech runner Emil Zatopek was the first and only man ever to win  an Olympic "triple crown" - the 5,000 and10,000 meters and the marathon. Zatopek, born in 1922, made history in the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki.