Happy National Pencil Day

By Terry Orr

INTERESTING PENCIL FACTS . . .

• More than 14 billion pencils are produced in the world every year  - enough to circle the globe 62 times.
• Two billion pencils are made in the United States each year.
• The pencil was invented more than 400 years ago, in 1565.
• Famous novelists Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck used pencils to write their books.
• Pencils didn't have erasers on them until 100 years ago because teachers felt they would encourage children to make mistakes.
• It would cost $50 in labor and materials for a person to make a 10-cent pencil.
• One million pencils are used annually on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
• The average pencil can be sharpened 17 times, write 45,000 words or draw a line 35 miles long.
• A good-size tree will make about 300,000 pencils.
• Pencils don't really contain lead.  That gray matter is granite and clay.

March 30 is National Pencil Day! Several years ago, I finally transitioned from wooden to mechanical pencils for daily use – although, there are still some wooden ones scattered here and there.

For those looking for different uses of the pencil other than its intended purpose, purpleslinky.com (http://purpleslinky.com/offbeat/56-uses-for-the-common-pencil/ offers 56 Uses for the Common Pencil.

There are many ways to sharpen your wooden pencils and here a few examples:

(All images from Google)