How many McDonald’s hamburgers are made from a pound of meat?
Ten McDonald’s hamburgers are made per pound of beef, apportioned by a computer formula.
Krakatoa the volcano, located in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, erupted on August 27, 1883. Four hours later, the sound of the eruption could be heard nearly 3,000 miles away; 10 days later, volcanic dust fell at points more than 3,000 miles away.
The first astronauts who went to the moon were: Edwin E. (“Buzz”) Aldrin, Jr., Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins. Collins circled the moon in the capsule while Aldrin and Armstrong landed.
Broadway’s all-time longest-running show was A Chorus Line. It ran 6,137 performances from 1975 to 1990. Its nearest competitor is Oh! Calcutta! with 5,959 performances between 1976 and 1989.
The speech known as the Gettysburg Address, given by Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863, runs 271 words, if you count “resting place” as two words.
The symbols of the theme of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, “The World of Tomorrow,” were massive: The Trylon, a tapering three-sided shaft, was 750 feet high; the Perisphere was a globe 200 feet in diameter. The two objects were built at a cost of $1.7 million.
The hero of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Sergeant Alvin York, launched on September 26, 1918, killed 25 Germans and captured 132, along with 35 machine guns in World War I. The Tennessee sharpshooter, who had petitioned unsuccessfully for exemption as a conscientious objector, was lionized for his exploits and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and…