The Wonderful World of Completely Random Facts — Issue 39

The Empire State Building’s Bricks

The 102-story Empire State Building in New York City was built from more than 10 million bricks. In addition to the massive amount of bricks, the Empire State Building has 200,000 cubic feet of Indiana limestone and granite on the exterior of the building and 700 tons of stainless steel and aluminum. It would seem the Empire State Building should have taken a long time to build with this much material, but it was constructed in only one year and 45 days after the first steel was set in 1930. Source

Burning Calories with Sleep

A 160-pound person will burn about 552 calories after 8 hours of sleep (69 cal/hr), while a 200-pound person will burn roughly 688 calories after sleeping 8 hours (86 cal/hr). A Big Mac is 563 calories, just for reference.

Energy used during sleep is calculated using a Metabolic Equivalent or MET value. The MET value is the energy cost of an activity. For sleep, that value is 0.9 MET.

Here’s how to calculate how many calories you’ll burn during sleep based on your weight: 0.9 MET x…