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More than 2,500 barbiturates have been synthesized. At the height of their popularity, about 50 were marketed for human use.
As many as 20% of Americans have been infected by the fungus known as Histoplasmosis. While most people are asymptomatic or only have slight symptoms, infection can progress to a rapid and potentially fatal superinfection.
Human kidneys will clean about 1 million gallons of blood in an average lifetime.
Cancer has been around as long as humankind, but only in the second half of the twentieth century did the number of cancer cases explode.
Pope Sylvester II tried to introduce Arabic numbers into Europe between the years 999 and 1003, but their use did not catch on for a few more centuries, and Roman numerals continued to be the primary number system.