Did You Know?

The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days. The ant has two eyes, each eye is made of many smaller eyes. Ants are capable of carrying objects 50 times their own body weight with their mandibles. The Army Ant (Ecitron Burchelli) of South America, can have as many as 700,000 members in its colony. Ants lived alongside the dinosaurs. Ants belong to the order "Hymenoptera" and are said to be closely related to sphecid wasps. The largest ant ever discovered was actually a fossilized specimen belonging to Titanomyrma giganteum, was about 2.4 inches long and had a wingspan of almost six inches. An ant’s waist has 1 or 2 movable parts providing great flexibility. There are 22,000 different species of ant. The queen ant lays all the eggs in the anthill. An ant brain has about 250,000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million so a colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human.

Just a single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees! Bees fly an average of 13-15 mph. About 8 pounds of honey is eaten by bees to produce 1 pound of beeswax. The honey bee's wings stroke 11,400 times per minute, thus making their distinctive buzz. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip. It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world. The honey bee has been around for 30 million years. Bees collect 66 lbs of pollen per year, per hive. Pollen is the male germ cells produced by all flowering plants for fertilization and plant embryo formation. Honeybees are not native to the USA. They are European in origin, and were brought to North America by the early settlers. The queen bee can live for several years. Worker bees live for 6 weeks during the busy summer, and for 4-9 months during the winter months. The practice of honey collection and beekeeping dates back to the stone-age, as evidenced by cave paintings. 

Each of the WTC towers had 110 stories. Tower One (the North Tower, which featured a massive 360 foot high TV antenna added in 1978) stood 1,368 feet (417 m) high, and Tower Two (the South Tower, which contained the observation deck) was 1,362 feet (415 m) high. The length and breadth of the towers were 208 feet (63.4 m) x 208 feet (63.4 m). Although only Tower 1 featured an antenna, the structure of both buildings were designed to carry a broadcast mast. Sixty-eight miles of steel were used in the construction of the buildings. In addition to the towers, five other office buildings made up the WTC complex The WTC had 12 million square feet of space. The buildings had their own ZIP codes - 10047 and 10048. The north tower was opened in Dec. 1970 and the south tower in Jan. 1972; they were dedicated in April 1973. The 1993 bombing of the WTC killed six people and injured 1,000 more. 1,300 pounds of explosives ripped through the garage in the 1993 attack. 12 mountain