20 Things You Didn't Know About Pencils - And Still Don't Want Too

I am currently reading this article, which I will finish before I type the summary below (I promise). It is called 20 Things You Didn't Know about Pencils. These articles always amaze me. As intriguing as pencils aren't, I still wanted to read this article. And you'll still read the summary, because, it's a welcome distraction (even if Srav is the only one that reads this because she is studying)!

So, 20 things you never wanted to know about pencils...

1. They don't cause lead poisoning if you stab someone. Only lawsuits and possible infections.
2. One guy saw another guy involved in Watergate and "fleetingly considered" stabbing him in the neck. It would be a much better #2 if he did (no pun intended).
3. Graphite is from the Greek word "graphein" which means "to write".
4. The word pencil is from the Latin word "penicillus" which means "little tail". (WTF?)
5. Graphite sticks to paper, that's how pencil marks show up. (BORING)
6. "The average pencil holds enough graphite to draw a line about 35 miles long or to write roughly 45,000 words." Statistics have not been proven.
7. The modern pencil dates to 1565.
8. Pencil sharpeners - 1828. (Before that they probably used a knife, which is what my mom did when she couldn't find our pencil sharpener. Ghetto I know.)
9. Before erasers, they removed mistakes with breadcrumbs.
10. Pencils sold in America most likely come with eraser tips on the ends. In Europe, pencils don't come with erasers. (This article suggests that Europeans are more confident scribblers. I say, "erasers sold separately").
11. Henry David Thoreau wrote "Walden" with pencils. His father owned a pencil making shop thing. (I hated reading Thoreau).
12. 1861, first factory in NYC devoted to pencil making.
13. Pencils were among basic equipment issued to Union soldiers in the Civil War.
14. "The mechanical pencil was patented in 1822. The company founded by its British developers prospered until 1941, when the factory was bombed, presumably by pencil-hating Nazis" (Maybe the Nazis just hated Henry David Thoreau).
15. After Soviets declared USSR a country, some American entrepreneur was awarded a monopoly for producing pencils there.
16. More than half the world's pencils (10 billion). (Fancy that.)
17. Pencils can write in zero-gravity and were used in the first spaceships. Even though NASA engineers were worried about flammability in pure oxygen and bits of graphite floating around.
18. After Apollo 1 fire, NASA banned pencils. (HAHAHAHA.)
19. "The world’s largest pencil is a Castell 9000, on display at the manufacturer’s plant near Kuala Lumpur. Made of Malaysian wood and polymer, it stands 65 feet high." (They fail to mention why anyone would EVER need a pencil that big.)
20. "At the other extreme, engineers at the University of California at Santa Barbara have used an atomic force microscope as a kind of pencil to draw lines 50 nanometers (two millionths of an inch) wide. Just because they could."

Now, that really failed to entertain me. I'm actually quite bored. BUT, they gave me other links at the bottom of the page that I could look at too. Just because there are 3 OTHER topics that I could learn 2o things about, even though I don't want too. Funny, because these sound WAY more interesting than pencils.

Related Links From Discover
•20 things you didn't know about ... nothing
•20 things you didn't know about ... robots
•20 things you didn't know about ... lab accidents

Enjoy. Let me know if you read any of these.