AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING CXIX

1. Virgil asked that "The Aeneid" be burned at his death because he had not finished the final edits. Legend says that this dying wish was overridden by Augustus himself. "The Aeneid" was an instant hit in Rome and was felt  to be technically perfect in its structure and meter.

2. Fireflies are actually nocturnal beetles, not flies. Also called lightning bugs, they exist on every continent except Antarctica. In the United States, for some unknown reason, few live west of Kansas.

3. Theodore Roosevelt's first wife, Alice Hathaway, and his mother died on the same day - February 14, 1884 - Valentine's Day.

4. March 14 of any year is Pi Day, from the 3.14 date being the first three digits of the infinitely long mathematical term Pi (the value of the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter). Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day in 1879, and Stephen Hawking died on Pi Day in 2018.

5. That thing in your bottle of pills that says "Do not eat" is called a dessicant. It is silica gel - which absorbs water and keeps the pills dry. (It's a choking hazard.)

6. The schwa is the most common vowel sound in English and the most natural to say. It is represented phonemically by an upside-down, reversed, lower-case "e." The schwa is the unaccented vowel sound in a word - such as the i in family, the o in gallon, the a in balloon.

7. An acre is 43,560 square feet.

 

8. A mil is a unit of length equal to 1/1000 of an inch.

9. The lungfish looks like the missing link. It has premature limbs and can breathe air.