AWESOME FACTS ABOUT EVERYTHING - CXXXVI

1. Even if you are left-handed, you cannot play polo holding the stick (mallet) with your left hand. In the 1930s, left-handed players were banned to avoid head-on collisions between players approaching the ball from opposite directions.

2. The American soap opera, One Life to Live, ran on TV for 43 years - from July 15, 1968 - January 13, 2012. 

3. Papua New Guinea is the world's 2nd largest island.

4. Guyana is the only country in South America where English is the official language.

5. If you transposed the usual inset of Hawaii onto a map of the contiguous United States, the island archipelago would cover almost one third  of the country. For example, if Maui and Oahu were in central Texas, Kure Atoll, the most remote of the northwestern Hawaiian Islands and the northern-most coral atoll in the world, would be in San Francisco.

6. On April 21, 1787, the Congress of the Federation of the United States authorized a design for an official copper penny, later referred to as the Fugio Cent because of the image of the sun and its light shining down on a sundial with the caption "Fugio" (Latin for "I flee/fly" - referring to time flying by.) The first official circulation coin of the United States, it is also known as the Franklin Cent, as by some accounts it was designed by Benjamin Franklin. Before the mottos, "E Pluribus Unum" and "In God We Trust," the Fugio Cent bore the motto MIND YOUR BUSINESS. Considering Franklin's fondness for witty maxims, historians agree that this motto was not meant to be rude, but was meant to be understood as "be resourceful and responsible for your own affairs."

7. The legacy of Alfred Nobel and the Nobel Prize has a surprising back story. Though it has never been historically documented, the inventor of dynamite might have been inspired to leave his vast fortune to create the Nobel Prize fund by reading an obituary - his own. Nobel, like his father before him, was deeply involved in the weapons of war. He was hugely wealthy and owned nearly 100 factories that made explosives and munitions. Many historians believe that his change of heart was inspired by a case of mistaken identity. In 1888, Nobel's brother Ludvig died in France of a heart attack. Due to poor reporting, at least one French newspaper believed that it was Alfred who had died, and it proceeded to write a scathing obituary that branded him "a merchant of death" who had grown rich by developing new ways to "mutilate and kill." The error was later corrected, but not before Alfred had the unpleasant experience of reading his own death notice. The incident may have brought on a crisis of conscience that caused him to re-evaluate his career.