Tuesday Trivia

Since the big day just past, I thought a couple quick bits about Income Tax would be in order:

• The US federal income tax was first enacted in 1862 to support the Union's Civil War effort. It was eliminated in 1872, revived in 1894 then declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court the following year. In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the US tax system.
• The first 1040 form was 4 pages long -- including instructions. Today, the instructions ALONE are 92 pages.

And then a few things about your heart and the blood it pumps:

• By the time you turn 70, your heart will have beat some two-and-a-half billion times (figuring on an average of 70 beats per minute.)
• The most common blood type in the world is Type O. The rarest, Type A-H, has been found in less than a dozen people since the type was discovered.
• The sound heard by a listener when holding a seashell to his ear does not come from the shell. It is the echo of the blood pulsing in the listener's own ear.
• Human blood most closely resembles sea water in terms of chemical composition.
• People living in high altitudes have more red blood cells than people living at sea level.
• Type O is the most common blood type in the world. Type AB is rarest. There is also a subtype called A-H, but to date, only three people in the world are known to have it.
• A simple, moderately severe sunburn damages the blood vessels to such an extent that it takes four to fifteen months for them to return to their normal conditions.
• Drinking lowers rather than raises the body temperature. There is an illusion of heat because alcohol cause the capillaries to dilate and fill with blood.
• Men have more blood than women. Men have 1.5 gallons as compared to 0.875 gallons for women.
• Is laughter really the best medicine? It has been proven that frequent laughter helps control pain, lower blood pressure, and relieve stress.
• Human blood races through arteries at 3 feet or 90 centimeters per second.
• In the second it takes to turn a page of a book, you will lose about 3 million red blood cells. During that same second, your bone marrow will have produced the same number of new ones.

And finally something very important to your health. Use it today as many times as pollible:

• Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.