Are you smarter than a Librarian?
Are your smarter than a Librarian? For Library and Information Week (17-23 May), we asked our Library staff to submit their favourite unusual factoid.
- The sun is large enough that approximately 1.3 million Earths could fit inside.
- The first appendectomy in Australia was performed in Toowoomba at the back of a shop, on March 11, 1893. Toowoomba resident Emma Webb was the patient. The main building of Toowoomba Hospital is named in her honour.
- Christiaan Bernard was the first person to perform a human-to-human heart transplant – and is related to Council’s Communities Manager (our boss).
- Australia has 1 million camels.
- Elephants are the only animal that bury their dead (by heaping sticks and foliage on them) and who actively grieve.
- Dr. Willian Cleaver Woods (Meandarra Librarian Carolyn’s Great-Grandfather), was a pioneer in the use of diagnostic x-rays in the 1890’s, and the first in the world to use x-rays to treat cancer.
- No, Thomas Crapper did not invent the modern toilet. Although Thomas Crapper was a real person – and was in fact a plumber, founded a sanitation business and held a number of patents improving the lavatory – the flushing toilet was not his invention and it’s unlikely the word “crap” came from his name.
- The national animal of Scotland is the unicorn.
So, are you smarter than our Librarians? How many of these facts had you heard before?
Want to make sure we’re telling the truth? Click the links to confirm our facts.