I can't think of any good questions.  Researchers are invited to
comment with a fascinating fact.  The first fact that I am unfamiliar
with wins the right to post the answer.  You may post only one fact to
this thread.  Violation = disqualification.

Dear Nelson,

I?m pleased to read that my ?fact? was fascinating.

If that put your teeth on edge, here?s a picture of some dentistry
from that period.
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/Onlineresources/RWWC/objects/record.htm?type=object&id=297241


answerfinder-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by answerfinder-ga on 30 Nov 2006 11:45 PST

Dear Nelson,

Many thanks for the tip.
I wish you well for the future.

My other fact was going to be that after the Battle of Trafalgar
Nelson's body was placed in a cask of brandy, and then transferred
into spirits of wine to preserve the body.

Brings a whole new meaning to being 'pickled'.

answerfinder

Thanks

Did you know that...
The Battle of Waterloo solved the shortage of teeth required for dentures?

?The night of 18 June 1815 was one to remember. After 23 years of war in Europe,
Napoleon faced the combined might of England, Holland, and Prussia at Waterloo.
By 10 pm, the battle was over. The French were defeated and 50,000 men lay dead
or wounded on the battlefield. The casualties were high, but for one group of
people that was reason to celebrate. They were the dentists who were about to
benefit from the great tooth bonanza.
In the early part of the 19th century, patients with plenty of money, but few teeth
were prepared to pay enormous sums for a good set of dentures. The best were
made with real human teeth at the front. Most of the time demand for second-hand
incisors far outstripped supply, but wars helped make up the shortfall. The
windfall from Waterloo provided enough to ship supplies all round Europe and
even across the Atlantic.?
Pain S. New Scientist. June 16, 2001

Quoted on 
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/108/4/956.pdf
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/terrace/adw03/c-eight/france/teeth.htm

Thanks for your many contributions.

Edmund Ruffin, a pro-South agitator (and entymologist), was given the
honor of firing the first shot against Ft. Sumter in the American
Civil War.  At the end of the war, with his cause lost, he committed
suicide:

http://scarab.msu.montana.edu/historybug/civilwar2/civilwar.htm
http://www.civilwar.si.edu/slavery_ruffin.html

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

The earth's moon has no official name other than "Moon". It is
occasionally referred to as "Luna" or "Selene", both of which
translate literally as "moon" in Latin and Greek repectively. So, if
you want to insist that everyone start calling the moon "Nelson" there
seems to be nothing preventing you from doing so.

ASK A SCIENTIST
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1995/astron/AST081.HTM
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/ast99/ast99509.htm

CURIOUS ABOUT ASTRONOMY
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=289

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

ALL TV reports about avoiding sunlight to prevent the most deadly form
of skin cancer are WRONG.


There is no useful chemotherapy treatment for malignant melanoma.
A study showed that simply supplementing with Vitamin D3 (
1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3not what you get in standard vitamin
supplements or supplemented milk) cuts mortality rate by 50%.

That is documented by medical reports published in reputable journals.

Add to that the fact that it takes an average of 15 years for U.S.
doctors to apply cutting edge information discovered in Europe and a
LOT of people are going to die needlessly.

Strangely, exposure to sunlight does not increase the mortality rate.

Sitting in an office behind glass, which blocks one frequency range of
UV actually causes D3 to be destroyed - evidence? Indoor workers who
get MM are far more likely to die of it than people who work outdoors
and therefore get unfiltered sunlight.

Unfiltered sunlight causes the skin to generate D3.


http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/forum05/H-PO-36.htm

A Melanoma Hypothesis: The Paradox of Outdoor and Indoor Solar UV Exposures.
D. E. Godar1 , J. C. Dowdy2 , S. G. Coelho3 , R. J. Landry3 , R. M.
Sayre2 , J. C. Van der Leun4 , 1OSEL, CDRH, FDA, Silver Spring, MD,
2Rapid Precision Testing Laboratories, Cordova, TN, 3OSEL, CDRH, FDA,
Rockville, MD, 4ECOFYS, Utrecht, The Netherlands
?Melanoma has been increasing at a steady logarithmic rate in
fair-skinned, indoor workers since the mid 1930's. A paradox exists
between indoor and outdoor workers because indoor workers get three to
nine times less solar UV (290-400 nm) than outdoor workers, yet have a
higher incidence of melanoma.?

The thrust of this paper is that outdoor workers are exposed to UVA
and UVB while indoor workers only get UVA because UVB is filtered out
by common window glass.

UVB is essential for the body to create Vitamin D3 while UVA causes
Vitamin D3 to break down.

?Skin cells can convert vitamin D3 to the hormone, 1,
25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, or calcitriol, which causes growth inhibition
and apoptotic cell death of melanoma cells in vitro and in vivo.?
(That means both in the laboratory and in living animals.)

In other words, D3 helps prevent and stop the spread of cancer.

Explanation
OK, don?t run out and get a sunburn ? that can cause cancer, but not
getting an hour or two of unfiltered sunlight over a week?s time can
lead to a Vitamin D3 deficiency and D3 is a treatment for cancer, a
potent one according to some studies which show that D3
supplementation can cut the death rate for MM by half.
Considering that there is no real treatment for recurrent MM, that is
rather significant (extreme understatement.)


That is the sort of information I have on my free research site (which
I won't post becuase it will get deleted by the editors.)


Of course I may not know what I'm talking about after 45 years as a
science reporter, but HON certified my medical research site.

(http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html)

And this may be my last chance to share this live-saving information.

Wow, Nelson, what a brilliant question and such fascinating comments.

Well done.

You will be sorely missed.

By the way, where do you live?

Bryan

OH,  before anyone complains, that HON contact 
URL DOES NOT indicate the location of my research site.

People who have had arms amputated experience a "phantom limb"
sensation.  They feel pain in the arm, even though the arm is not
there.  Most people are familiar with that concept.  Last July
scientists came up with a fascinating way to treat phantom limb pain.

Here's a subscription article in The Economist about it:
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_STRRSSS

It's worth going to the main site at economist.com and viewing an ad
to be able to see this article.

Basically, a researcher found that when patients with phantom limb
pain look into a mirror at their one arm, making it seem that they
indeed have two arms, the pain stopped!  The person can move one hand,
which makes both hands seem to be moving, and half of patients say
that their pain has completely disappeared.

    How is this possible?  MRIs showed that the mirror image of the
"arm" gave the brain sensory data in part of the brain which usually
controls the hands and expects the hands to be there.  The sensory
data usually was not there and the absence of it caused the pain in
that sensory area.  Because the brain got the visual feedback of the
existence of a hand with the mirror trick, it assumed that a hand was
there and no pain resulted.

Here's another article on the subject:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD004723.html

It seems incredible that something so blissfully simple as looking
into a mirror could stop pain, but that's how it is in this case.

Here is a little known fact.  Google has a great news archive, which
is searchable all the way back to the 1750's

In the October 18th, 1926 edition of Time magazine they mistakenly
referred to Lord Nelsons flagship at the battle of Trafalgar as the
Victoria when of course it should be Victory.
"from Nelson's Trafalgar-flagship Victoria"
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,729576,00.html

http://news.google.com/archivesearch

AnswerFinder, please post your comment as an answer.  That was indeed fascinating.

Bryan, I live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan.

There´s a vacuum between sun and earth, nobody will doubt about that. 
A vaccuum is a perfect isolator - that´s why a vacuum is used in
thermoses to keep you coffee warm.
Well, why is it warm on earth then ? 
I will post the answer to this paradox sounding fact if my question wins. 
;-)

till-ga

And thank you all for the great facts!

Till, you probably mean insulator and the answer is so obvious that I
can't believe you are posting this.

Baking soda in the fridge isn't that great in eliminating odors,
better to use charcoal.

US Dept of Energy - Ask a Scientist
Question -   
"I am attempting to find out how Baking Soda works to eliminate odors.
In other words, what does it do, chemically speaking, to eliminate
odors. I need to be able to explain this complex process in simplistic
terms.
Answer -
"Hoping to not disappoint you, baking soda does not eliminate odors
very  well at all... The popular "open box of Arm & HammerŽ in the
refrigerator" simply provides an adsorbent material that can soak up
odors -- but not very effectively. For example, if some of the
odoriferous materials floating around in the refrigerator are acidic,
the alkaline baking soda can absorb and neutralize the acid. Even in
that regard, it is not all that effective because, as the powder in
the box contacts water vapor, it tends to crust over an lose a great
deal of its already limited surface activity.  It all sounds quite
nice, but it does not work very well. Far better would be a canister
of activated charcoal because it can indeed adsorb vapors that contact
the charcoal."
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00388.htm

Best regards to you all, hopefully we'll meet again. 
Take care,
hummer

dear siliconsamurai-ga:

1 - yes, i used a wrong word, shame on me ! sure i meant "insulator"
2 - yes, i know that the answer is obvious to the leading expert in
anything you are (well maybe), but maybe not to anybody in the world.
3 - this was meant (by the asker) to be FUN. 

till-ga

till, so since this is just fun, why not simply post your answer?

Whoa there siliconsamurai-ga, it looks like the impending end of
Gargoyle Answers has made you a touch testy. Till-GA?s fact has just
as much right to be posted as any (and I for one would like to know
the answer). The reason that he didn?t ?simply post the answer? is
because that is not what nelson-ga wanted.
So why don?t you amaze or amuse me so that my last memory of Answers
is a positive one.

Answerfinder, a memory triggered by your clarification is that there
was a big of a brouhaha when Thomas Hardy died. He had of course set
all his novels in 'Wessex' but really wanted to be remembered for his
poetry (judged substandard by many people including myself except for
some of the funny ones such as 'Ah! Are You Digging On My Grave?'.)
Yet his body was offered a space in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.

As I remember it (being once again too lazy to look it up) his body
was buried at the Abbey but his heart was cut out and buried somewhere
in 'Wessex'. Apparently when the heart was extracted a cat ran off
with it, but I think it was recovered.

On a related note, there is a(nother) perhaps apocryphal story that,
when Hardy was born, the midwife declared him dead and he was almost
thrown out with the bathwater (or whatever they use).

- thaumaturge