siagonology
n. the study of jawbones
Unquote
“I mean, it’s a great story. It’s got some great things in it. I mean, there’s something like eight violent deaths.” — Mel Gibson, on reasons to like Hamlet
Lightning Strikes
The average lightning bolt carries enough energy to light a 100-watt light bulb for two months.
MV Joyita
In 1955, the merchant vessel Joyita disappeared en route from Samoa to the Tokelau Islands, about 270 miles away.
A search and rescue mission found nothing, but five weeks later she was sighted more than 600 miles from her scheduled route. The ship was partially submerged and there was no trace of her 16 crewmembers or 9 passengers, including two children.
An inquiry found that the disappearance of the passengers and crew was “inexplicable on the evidence submitted.” But the Fiji Times and Herald quoted an “impeccable source” saying that the Joyita had passed through a fleet of Japanese fishing boats and “had observed something the Japanese did not want them to see.”
What was it? No one knows.
High PageRanks
Web sites with a Google PageRank of 10:
- adobe.com – Adobe software
- apple.com – Apple Computer (including iTunes Music Store)
- energy.gov – U.S. Department of Energy
- firstgov.gov – U.S. government portal
- keio.ac.jp – Keio University, Tokyo
- harvard.edu – Harvard University
- macromedia.com – Macromedia software
- nasa.gov – U.S. space agency
- nsf.gov – U.S. National Science Foundation
- nytimes.com – The New York Times
- real.com – RealPlayer software
- statcounter.com – web traffic tracking service
- w3.org – World Wide Web Consortium
- webstandards.org – Web standards project
And, of course, Google itself.
Yellowstone Caldera
Most people know that Yellowstone National Park is geologically active, but few realize that it sits atop a gigantic volcano. No one knows when it will blow next, but past eruptions have been huge, up to 2,500 times the size of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Today that would kill millions and change the worldwide climate catastrophically.
For now, we just have to wait — the problem is far too big for today’s engineers to tackle.
Common Surnames
Most common surnames in the United States …
- Smith
- Johnson
- Williams
- Jones
- Brown
- Davis
- Miller
- Wilson
- Moore
- Taylor
… and in the United Kingdom:
- Smith
- Jones
- Williams
- Taylor
- Brown
- Davies
- Evans
- Wilson
- Thomas
- Johnson
Wide Awake
The world record for going without sleep was set in 1965 by 17-year-old high school student Randy Gardner, who stayed awake for 264 hours, or 11 days.
He spent it playing pinball.
A Natural Troll
Like mermaids, trolls probably joined the culture when people misperceived perfectly natural phenomena. This one “lives” on the coast of the island of Hamarøy in Norway.
Death Tolls
- 300 million – smallpox, worldwide, 20th century
- 200 million – bubonic plague, worldwide, 1300s
- 62 million – World War II
- 60 million – Mongol conquests, 13th century
- 19 million – AIDS, worldwide to date
- 1 million – Irish potato famine, 1846-1849
- 830,000 – Shaanxi earthquake, China, 1556
- 650,000 – Deaths in the Roman Colosseum for public entertainment, 80-404
- 36,000 – Krakatoa eruption, Indonesia, 1883
- 15,000 – Holy Inquisition, 1184-1800
- 1,517 – RMS Titanic, 1912
- 300 – Great Chicago Fire, 1871
- 270 – Pan Am Flight 103, Lockerbie, Scotland, 1988
- 36 – Hindenburg disaster, Lakehurst, N.J., 1937
- 7 – Space shuttle Challenger, Florida, 1986
- 4 – Kent State shootings