addLoadEvent( randomFact )

var numOfFacts = 17;
var facts = new Array(numOfFacts);

facts[0] = "Purdue University Civil Engineering Professor Charles Ellis designed and oversaw the surveying of the Golden Gate Bridge.";
facts[1] = "Surveying is the "second oldest profession" and dates all the way back to the days of Egypt and Babylonia.";
facts[2] = "Terminus was the Roman god of land boundaries.";
facts[3] = "Three of our nation's presidents were surveyors - Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson.";
facts[4] = "Pres. Jefferson hired Lewis and Clark (William Clark was a surveyor; Meriwether Lewis led the expedition) to survey the newly-acquired Louisiana Purchase - which covered millions and millions of square miles of wilderness acreage - and to seek a water route to the Pacific for trade purposes for the U.S.";
facts[5] = "American writer, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was a surveyor.";
facts[6] = "Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were the famous British surveyors who settled a land grant property dispute in the 1700's between Maryland and Pennsylvania, resulting in the Mason-Dixon Line.";
facts[7] = "Appointed by George Washington in 1796, Rufus Putnam was the first Surveyor General of Public Lands for the United States.";
facts[8] = "The movie <i>The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain</i>, starring Hugh Grant, is the only movie to feature a land surveyor as the lead character.";
facts[9] = "Meade's Ranch in northwest Kansas is the beginning point of reference for land surveying in North America.";
facts[10] = "Surveying equipment - <i>plumb</i> and <i>transit</i> - indicates if columns on tall buildings are perfectly vertical. This is especially helpful to architects and contractors.";
facts[11] = "Like many in the profession, Keith Jimenez, who owns SurveySA, comes from a family of surveyors in Texas, including his father, Ernest Jimenez, who was a surveyor for 40 years, and his uncle, Amil Baker, who founded Baker Surveying and Engineering.";
facts[12] = "In surveying, the term <i>thalweg</i> refers to the deepest part of the channel of a river or stream.";
facts[13] = "The initials PK, as in the commonly used term PK Nail, stand for Parker-Kalon.";
facts[14] = "In addition to surveying instruments, inventor John Dolland designed and produced a wide range of barometers, manometers, microscopes, and astronomical instruments.";
facts[15] = "Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were the famous British surveyors who settled a land grant property dispute in the 1700's between Maryland and Pennsylvania, resulting in the Mason-Dixon Line.";
facts[16] = "&quot;And the one who spoke to me had a gold measuring rod to measure the city, and its gates and its wall.&quot; - Rev. 21:15";
facts[17] = "In the 1921 short film "Playhouse", Buster Keaton and his photographer Elgin Lessley used surveying instruments to stage special effects, keeping both a still subject and a moving background in proper alignment.";

function randomFact()
{
   var date = new Date();
   var factNum = date.getSeconds() % numOfFacts;
   document.getElementById('fact').innerHTML = facts[factNum];
}

function showButton() {
   document.write("<center>");
   document.write('<input type="button" value="More Factoids!" onclick="randomFact()" style="background-color:228b22; font-weight: bold">');
   document.write("</center>");
}