If you have a “Sister Joseph’s Nodule,” you have been diagnosed with belly-button cancer.
Sister Joseph, a surgical assistant at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, had a knack for spotting malignant lumps on patients. On several occasions, she found a particular kind of lump in patients’ navels that would turn out to be associated with cancer. She informed Dr. William Mayo of her observations, and he in turn reported the condition in 1928 during a lecture at the Cincinnati Academy of Medicine, calling it “pants-button umbilicus,” but made no mention of Sister Joseph. It wasn’t until 1949 that Sister Joseph’s name was attached to the condition, ten years after her death.
The yeast extract left over from the manufacture of beer is considered a delicacy in Australia.
Fred Walker, a Melbourne native working in the food industry, found that the tons of leftover yeast extract that comes from brewing beer were not only a good source of vitamin B, but also quite delicious—if you liked that sort of thing. He first marketed the product in 1922, calling it Vegemite, but it took 14 years before his countrymen fell in love with it. Currently, 22 million jars of the pungent spread are sold each year.
The number of twin births in the United States is decreasing.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, between 1980 and 2000, the number of twin births increased 74%. Triplet births have increased fivefold. The increase is attributed to American women getting pregnant later in life (multiple gestations are more likely after the age of 30) and the rise of fertility drugs and assisted reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilization.
The jigsaw puzzle was invented to teach geography.
In 1767, John Spilsbury, a teacher in England and formerly the apprentice to the Royal Geographer, made the first jigsaw puzzle. He glued a map of England and Wales to a board and used a fine saw to cut along the borders in hopes of creating a tool to teach his students geography. For the next 20 years, only geographical jigsaw puzzles like Spilsbury’s were made. Interlocking pieces did not come into being until the invention of power tools, more than a century later.
More people died from the two eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, Italy, than all the eruptions of other volcanoes put together.
Fewer than 7,000 people died in the eruptions of A.D. 79 and 1631. The 1815 eruption of Tambora killed at least 92,000 people. The second most deadly eruption was in 1883 at Krakatoa, where 36,417 people died in the ensuing tidal wave. The most deadly eruption in recent times was in 1985 at Ruiz, Colombia, when 25,000 people perished.
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