The First Book of Factoids | Page 5

of moonlight filtering through the water, rendering the squid indistinguishable from its light-flooded environs.
To generate the fine tuned radiance, the squid hosts a community of luminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischeri. From the first moments of its life, the squid circulates bacteria-infested seawater through a hollow chamber in its body. Only the Vibrio fischeri cells are caught by the squid's tiny cilia. Henceforth, the squid provides his microscopic "prisoners" with oxygen and amino acids - and they reciprocate with emitted light.
The squid constantly monitors to what extent the night sky is illuminated, using dedicated sensors on the surface of its body. It then adjusts an iris-like "shutter" to release the correct amount of light from his bacterial colony. The squid replaces the hosted vibrios daily.
Still, bacteria multiply ceaselessly. How is a constant level of luminescence maintained as time passes?
Woody Hastings, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois, noticed in the early 1960s that though the bacterial population doubles every 20 minutes - the quantity of luciferase (the light producing enzyme) remains constant for up to five hours. luciferase production resumes only when a certain "critical mass" (quantitative threshold) is attained. This is called "quorum sensing".
http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/
http://www.biolum.org/
Black Death
AIDS has infected hitherto 42 million people, of which perhaps 22 million have died.
The "Black Death" - an epidemic of bubonic plague which ravaged both Europe and the Mediterranean in 1347-1351- killed one quarter to one third of the population - c. 25 million people. This is the equivalent of 250 million today. It took 150 years for the population to recover its pre-epidemic levels.
Scholars believe that the plague emanated from the Middle East through southern Russia, between the Black and the Caspian seas.
Contemporaries did not use the term "Black Death". They called it the "Pestilence" or the "Great Mortality". They regarded it as divine punishment of humanity's sins.
http://www.ento.vt.edu/IHS/plague.html

Black Holes
Black holes are extremely dense bodies. Their density and gravitation are so enormous that it was thought nothing - not even electromagnetic radiation such as light - can escape them once caught by their gravitational pull. Hence the "black" in "black holes". This is what laymen and the media know about them.
Yet, the truth is different.
The English physicist Stephen William Hawking proved that in the vicinity of tiny black holes, it is possible for one member of an electron-positron or proton-antiproton pair of particles to escape while the other is hurled towards the singularity (i.e., the center of the black hole). The escaping particle draws energy from the black hole itself and thus "evaporates" it. It is as if the black hole gives off heat, thermal radiation.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoles.html
http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_home.html
Bolivar, Simon
Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) is a Latin American folk hero, revered for having been a revolutionary freedom fighter, a compassionate egalitarian and a successful politician. He is credited with the liberation from Spanish colonial yoke of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, a country named after him. Venezuela's new strongman, Hugo Chavez, renamed his country The Bolivarian republic of Venezuela to reflect the role of his "Bolivarian revolution".
Yet, while alive, Bolivar was a much hated dictator and - at the beginning of his career - a military failure.
His aide and friend, Gen. Daniel O'Leary, an Irish soldier described him so:
"His chest was narrow, his figure slender, his legs particularly thin. His skin was swarthy and rather coarse. His hands and feet were small ...a woman might have envied them. His expression, when he was in good humor, was pleasant, but it became terrible when he was aroused. The change was unbelievable."
Bolivar explained his motives:
"I confess this (the coronation of Napoleon in 1804) made me think of my unhappy country and the glory which he would win who should liberate it"
And, later, after a victory against the Spaniards in 1819:
"The triumphal arches, the flowers, the hymns, the acclamations, the wreaths offered and placed upon my head by the hands of lovely maidens, the fiestas, the thousand demonstrations of joy are the least of the gifts that I have received," he wrote. "The greatest and dearest to my heart are the tears, mingled with the rapture of happiness, in which I have been bathed and the embraces with which the multitude have all but crushed me."
Venezuela became independent in 1811 and Bolivar, being a minor - though self-aggrandizing - political figure, had little to do with it. After his first major military defeat, in defending the coastal town of Puerto Cabello against royalist insurgents out to oust the newly independent Venezuela, he advocated the creation of a professional army (in the Cartagena Manifesto). Far from being a revolutionary he, justly, opposed the reliance on guerrilleros and militiamen.
He then reconquered Caracas, Venezuela's capital, at the head of a small army and declared himself a dictator. He made Congress award him the title of El Libertador (the Liberator). The seeds of his personality cult were