AMAZING FACTS AND FIGURES-COURTESY OF SRI NABAN

Facts and Figures.....All Amazing

JUST SPEND A A FEW MINUTES

1) If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.
2) If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
3) Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
4) Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.
5) The Mercedes-Benz motto is 'Das Beste oder Nichts' meaning 'the best or nothing'.
6) The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal.
7) The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.
8) The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.
9) Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.
10) The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
11) Dalmatians are born without spots.
12) Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
13) The 'v' in the name of a court case does not stand for 'versus', but for 'and' (in civil proceedings) or 'against' (in criminal proceedings) .
14) Men's shirts have the buttons on the right, but women's shirts have the buttons on the left.
15) The owl is the only bird to drop its upper eyelid to wink. All other birds raise their lower eyelids.
16) The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it's already been digested by a bee.
17) Roosters cannot crow if they cannot extend their necks.
18) The color blue has a calming effect. It causes the brain to release calming hormones.
19) Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.
20) Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
21) The verb "cleave" is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
22) When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red.
23) When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.
24) The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.
25) The lion that roars in the MGM logo is named Volney.
26) Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros.
27) Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan.
28) It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.
29) The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.
30) There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Towerl.
31) The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.
32) Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
33) It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
34) The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
35) Most soccer players run 7 miles in a game.
36) The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.
37) In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it is smiling).
38) Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command "go hang yourself."
39) The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.
40) Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
41) The average person laughs 13 times a day.
42) Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil).
43) Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
44) German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.
45) Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
46) Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.
47) The penguin is the only bird that can swim, but not fly. It is also the only bird that can walk upright.
48) If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural cause.
49) The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!!
50) It requires 30 muscles to raise your eyebrows.
51) In 1562 a man was dug up six hours after his burial, after he had been seen breathing by someone at the funeral - he lived for another 75 years.
52) The human body has fewer muscles in it than a caterpillar.
53) Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of plaster.
54) At birth, a panda bear is smaller than a mouse.
55) Baby whales grow at a rate of 10 lbs per hour!
56) The average office desk has 400 times more bacteria than a toilet.
57) A metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 of a second.
58) A ball-point pen is also called Biro after its inventor Lazslo Biro, a journalist who noted that new paper ink dried quickly.
59) Place head to toe, all the Barbie and family dolls sold since 1959, when Barbie made her debut, would circle the earth more than 7 times.
60) All polar bears are left-handed. They are also the only mammals with hair on the soles of their feet.
61) New York city, the oldest city in the US, was a Dutch colonial town and was known as New Amsterdam till 1665.
62) Raindrops are not actually teardrops shaped. They are rounded from the top and flat at the bottom. They fall at a speed of 11 kmph.
63) Artifacts found in Kandivali indicate that the 7 islands that constitute Mumbai have been inhabited since the Stone Age.
64) The national bird of New Zealand, the Kiwi, lays only 1 egg per year. Despite this, it has survived extinction.
65) Runrado May Day Stadium in North Korea is the world's largest football stadium and can seat upto 2,05,000 spectators.
66) Chopsticks were developed 5000 years ago in China. Today, 25 million trees are cut to make over 45 billion pairs a year.
67) Mexico city is the highest city in North America and world's largest capital. One-fifth of Mexico's population lives in the city.
68) A hummingbird flaps its wings upto 90 times per second or over 5000 times per minute making a humming like sound, of which it is named after.
69) Tequila is thought to be the first distilled liquor in the Americas. The Aztecs were known to have drank it before Cortez arrived.
70) Paris gets its name from the Parisii, a tribe of Gauls who settled on the Ile de le Cite between 250 and 200 BC.
71) Camels have three eyelids to protect their eyes from severe sand storms in the deserts.
72) The Goliath beetle is the heaviest insect in the world. It weighs 110 grams, almost the weight of an apple.
73) Greenland has more ice on it than Iceland and ironically, Iceland has more grass and trees than Greenland.
74) Termites build the largest animal homes. Moulds built by the termites can reach upto 39 ft, six times the size of an average adult human.
75) Aspirin went on sale as the first pharmaceutical drug in 1899. Felix Hoffman, a German chemist invented the drug.
76) The Codex Hammer, Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, was bought by Bill Gates in 1994 for a whopping 30.8 million US Dollars.
77) Mujava Desert in USA, houses 12,000 years old flowering shrubs called Creosote bushes, the oldest living flora on earth.
78) Tsunami travels at around 805 km/hr, slowing as it approaches land. When it strikes, the waves can be as high as 15 mt.
79) Toronto is home to the largest swimming pool in the world. The 2250 sq. ft. pool which can hold 2000 swimmers, opened in 1925.
80) An adult porcupine has approximately 30000 quills on its body, which are replaced every year. All porcupines can float in water.
81) The temperature inside the cylinder of an internal combustion car engine can reach upto 1700 degrees Celsius, which is as hot as molten lava.
82) La Paz, Bolivia is nearly fire-proof with its high altitude; the low oxygen content makes it difficult for a flame to sustain itself.
83) Araucana hens, first breed in Chlie, lay eggs that are blue, green, turquoise and even pink in colour.
84) Disney world in Florida covers 30,500 acres, making it twice the size of the island of Manhattan, New York.
85) The smallest airplane in the world is called Bumble Bee II. It is just 8.7 ft long and weighs 179.6 kg.
86) The Draco Volan lizard is known to escape predators by gliding from tree to tree. This lizard is popularly called the Flying Dragon.
87) Bhutan derives its name from the Indian word Bhotana, meaning the edge of Tibet.
88) The first full-length animated motion picture made in the United States, Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), was produced from more than 400,000 hand-drawn sketches.
89) The mosquito is the hardiest of all insects. It is found in the coldest region of Siberia as well as in equatorial jungles.
90) A fly moves 300 times its body length in a second, three times faster than a jet, which travels only 100 times its body length.
91) Bananas are one of the few fruits that ripen best off the plant. They split open and the pulp becomes cottony on the plant.
92) Too much of coffee can be fatal. 10 gm or 100 gm or 100 cups in four hours can kill an average of human beings.
93) Jelly Fish do not belong to the fish family. They are related to the Coral family, with no head, brain, heart, eyes or ears.
94) The Climbing Perch discovered in 1971, is a fish that walks from one body to another in water, surviving for days on land.
95) Ostriches lay the largest bird eggs. An egg can be 7.1 inches long, 5.5 inches wide and weighs approximately 1.2 kg.
96) The Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean is the deepest point in the earth's crust at 36198 ft below sea level.
97) Scuttling Huntress Spiders can move at 56 kmph and are responsible for over 2000000 deaths in Australia in last 10 years.
98) Damascus, in Syria, is the oldest inhabited city in the world. It flourished 2000 years before Rome was founded in 753 BC.
99) Gibson, the world's tallest dog is 977 kg of weight. More than 7 ft tall, he has a shoulder height of 42.6 inches.
100) Seikan Tunnel, the longest underwater tunnel is 51 km long. It links the Hokkaido and Honshu islands of Japan.
101) Although the largest Mackarel fish is rarely more than 1.68 metres long, each can lay as many as 500000 eggs at a time.
102) The famous marquee HOLLYWOOD is 50 feet tall, stretches 450 ft across and weighs over 204116 kg. It originally read HOLLYWOOD LAND.
103) Camels are known to stay for over 15 days without water, but rats can stay without water longer than camels.
104) The alloy, aluminium, was used in China as early as 300 AD. However, the western civilization did not discover it until 1827.
105) Despite its great strength, the octopus gets tired easily as the hemocyanin carrying oxygen in its blood is not sufficient.
106) Until the 1800s, as many as 60 million bison lived on the American Great Plains; by 1900 white settlers had reduced their number to fewer than 1,000.
107) The oldest-known skis were made some 5,000 years ago in Scandinavia, where skiing today is more popular than ever.
108) The word vaccine comes from the Latin word vacca, meaning a cow. The first vaccination was derived from cowpox.
109) Siberia grows so cold in winter that the moisture in a person's breath turns into ice crystals and can be heard when it falls down.
110) An original Persian ring has one million knots in every three sq. in. and can last for 500 years.
111) Each year green turtles swim more than 1,200 miles from Brazil to breed on Ascension Island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
112) Clams are one of the slowest growing yet the longest living species on earth. They can take up to 100 years to grow 0.8 cm in length.
113) The Hudson River along the island of Manhattan flows in either direction depending upon the tide.
114) A toad can catch and eat as many as 10,000 insects during the summer season.
115) New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 to 1790.
116) There are more than a million animal species. There are 6,000 species of reptiles, 73,000 kinds of spiders, and 3,000 types of lice. For each person there is about 200 million insects. The 4,600 kinds of mammals represent a mere 0,3% of animals and the 9000 kinds of birds only 0,7%. The most numerous bird specie is the red-billed quelea of southern Africa. There are an estimated 100 trillion of them.
117) Mammals are the only animals with flaps around the ears.
118) African elephants only have four teeth to chew their food with.
119) There are about one billion cattle in the world of which 200 million are in India.
120) A house fly lives only 14 days.
121) A dog was the first in space and a sheep, a duck and a rooster the first to fly in a hot air balloon.
122) The oldest breed of dog is the Saluki.
123) The bee hummingbird of Cuba is the smallest bird in the world.
124) An ostrich can run up to 70 km/h (43 mph).
125) An annoyed camel will spit at a person.
126) The world's smallest dog is the Chihuahua, which means "tiny dog in the sky."
127) Pea crabs (the size of a pea) are the smallest crabs in the world.
128) 75% of wild birds die before they are 6 months old.
129) The pig is rated the fourth most intelligent animal but is mentioned only twice in the Bible.
130) Pork is the world's most widely-eaten meat.
131) In Denmark there are twice as many pigs as people.
132) The coyote is a member of the dog family and its scientific name, "canis latrans" means barking dog.
133) A giraffe can clean its ears with its 50 cm (20 in) tongue.
134) The South American giant anteater eats more than 30,000 ants a day.
135) It is impossible to out-swim a shark - sharks reach speeds of 70 km/h (44 mph).
136) The sailfish is the fastest swimmer, reaching 109 km/h (68 mph).
137) The slowest fish is the Sea Horse, which moves along at about 0.016 km/h (0.01 mph).
138) The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.
139) The tongue of a blue whale is as long as an elephant.
140) The scales of a crocodile are made of ceratin, the same substance that hooves and fingernails are made of.
141) A crocodile's tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth and cannot move it.
142) A snail has two pairs of tentacles on its head. One pair is longer than the other and houses the eyes. The shorter pair is used for smelling and feeling its way around.
143) The heaviest crustacean ever found was a lobster weighing 19 kg (42 lb), caught in 1934.
144) The largest jellyfish ever caught measured 2.3 m (7'6") across the bell with a tentacle 36 m (120 ft) long.
145) The largest giant squid ever recorded was captured in the North Atlantic in 1878. It weighed 4 tons. Its tentacles measured 10 m (35 ft) long.
146) The giant squid has the biggest eyes of any animal: its eyes measure 40 cm (16 in) in diameter.
147) Domestic cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.
148) Sharks are immune to all known diseases.
149) Sharks and rays also share the same kind of skin: instead of scales, they have small tooth-like spikes called denticles. The spikes are so sharp that shark skin has long been used as sandpaper.
150) Animals also are either right-handed or left-handed.
151) There are 701 types of pure breed dogs.
152) There are about 54 million dogs in the US, and Paris is said to have more dogs than people.
153) Some bird species, usually flightless birds, have only a lower eyelid, whereas pigeons use upper and lower lids to blink.
154) Fish and insects do not have eyelids - their eyes are protected by a hardened lens.
155) Flatfish (halibut, flounder, turbot, and sole) hatch like any other "normal" fish. As they grow, they turn sideways and one eye moves around so they have two eyes on the side that faces up.
156) Measured in straight flight, the spine-tailed swift is the fastest bird. It flies 170 km/h (106 mph). Second fastest is the Frigate, which reaches 150 km/h (94 mph).
157) Millions of trees are accidentally planted by squirrels who bury nuts and then forget where they hid them.
158) There are more than 150 million sheep in Australia, a nation of 17 million people.
159) New Zealand is home to 4 million people and 70 million sheep.
160) In 1961, Matisse's Le Bateau (The Boat) hung upside-down for 2 months in the Museum of Modern Art, New York - none of the 116,000 visitors had noticed.
161) Picasso could draw before he could walk and his first word was the Spanish word for pencil.
162) The first book published is thought to be the Epic of Gilgamesh, written at about 3000 BC in cuneiform, an alphabet based on symbols.
163) The first history book, the Great Universal History, was published by Rashid-Eddin of Persia in 1311.
164) The first novel, called The story of Genji, was written in 1007 by Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu.
165) The German PJ Reuter started a foreign news agency in 1858. Today Reuters is one of the biggest news agencies in the world.
166) The oldest surviving daily newspaper is the Wiener Zeitung of Austria. It was first printed in 1703.
167) The Bible still is the world's best selling book.
168) In 1097, Trotula, a midwife of Salerno, wrote The Diseases of Women - it was used in medical schools for 600 years.
169) The world's longest nonfiction work is The Yongle Dadian, a 10,000-volume encyclopaedia produced by 5,000 scholars during the Ming Dynasty in China 500 years ago.
170) Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Meteorologica in 350 BC - it remained the standard textbook on weather for 2,000 years.
171) The first illustrated book for children was published in Germany in 1658.
172) Barbara Cartland completed a novel every two weeks, publishing 723 novels.
173) Ian Fleming's James Bond debuted in the novel "Casino Royale" in 1952.
174) Johannes Gutenberg is often credited as the inventor of the printing press in 1454. However, the Chinese actually printed from movable type in 1040 but later discarding the method.
175) The Statue of Liberty is the largest hammered copper statue in the world.
176) The largest statue in the world is Mount Rushmore, the heads of four US Presidents carved into the Black Hills near Keystone. The heads are 18 m (60 ft) tall.
177) The largest horse statue in the world, the Zizkov Monument in Prague, stands 9 metres (30 ft) tall.
178) Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist suffering from "locked-in" syndrome, wrote the book "The Driving Bell and the Butterfly" by blinking his left eyelid - the only part of his body that could move.
179) When Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1912, 6 replicas were sold as the original, each at a huge price, in the 3 years before the original was recovered.
180) When Auguste Rodin exhibited his first important work, The Bronze Period, in 1878 it was so realistic that people thought he had sacrificed a live model inside the cast.
181) Ernest Vincent Wright's 1939 novel Gadsby has 50,110 words, none of which contains the letter "e".
182) The shortest stage play is Samuel Beckett's "Breath" - 35 seconds of screams and heavy breathing.
183) There are more than ten billion web pages on the internet.
184) The world's libraries store more than a 100 million original volumes.
185) The Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, stores 18 million books on approximately 850 km (530 miles) of bookshelves. The collections include 119 million items, 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps and 53 million manuscripts.
186) The problem of missing teeth was first discussed at length in 1728 by Pierre Fauchard in his book The Surgeon Dentist.
187) The first colour photograph was made in 1861 by James Maxwell. He photographed a tartan ribbon.
188) The first English dictionary was written by Samuel Johnson in 1755.
189) Noah Webster, who wrote the Webster Dictionary, was known as a short, pale, smug, boastful, humourless, yet religious man.
190) The first Oxford English Dictionary was published in April 1928, 50 years after it was started. It consisted of 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes. The latest edition fills 22,000 pages, includes 33,000 Shakespeare quotations, and is bound in 20 volumes, all of which is available on a single CD.
191) When Jonathan Swift published 'Gulliver's Travels' in 1726, he intended it as a satire on the ferociousness of human nature. Today it is enjoyed as a children's story.
192) The length from your wrist to your elbow is the same as the length of your foot.
193) Your heart beats 101,000 times a day. During your lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 400 million litres (800 million pints) of blood.
194) Your mouth produces 1 litre (1.8 pints) of saliva a day.
195) On average, people can hold their breath for one minute. The world record is seven-and-a- half minutes.
196) On average, you breathe 23,000 times a day.
197) On average, you speak almost 5,000 words a day - although almost 80% of speaking is self-talk (talking to yourself).
198) Einstein's brain was of average size (1375 grams - 49 oz).
199) Over the last 150 years the average height of people in industrialised nations increased by 10 cm (4 in).
200) In the 19th century, American men were the tallest in the world, averaging 1.71m (5'6"). Today, the average height for American men is 1.75m (5'7"), compared to 1.77m (5'8") for Swedes, and 1.78m (5'8.5") for the Dutch.
201) The tallest nation in the world is the Watusis of Burundi.
202) If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, you'll feel thirsty.
203) A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water.
204) You'll drink about 75,000 litres (20,000 gallons) of water in your lifetime.
205) After a certain period of growth, hair becomes dormant. That means that it is attached to the hair follicle until replaced by new hair.
206) Hair on the head grows for between two and six years before being replaced. In the case of baldness, the dormant hair is not replaced with new hair.
207) Men loose about 40 hairs a day. Women loose about 70 hairs a day.
208) A person remains conscious for eight seconds after being decapitated.
209) The muscle that lets your eye blink is the fastest muscle in your body. It allows you to blink 5 times a second. On average, you blink 15,000 times a day. Women blink twice as much as men.
210) Unless food is mixed with saliva you cannot taste it.
211) The liver is the largest of the body's internal organs. The skin is the body's largest organ.
212) Not all our taste buds are on our tongue; about 10% are on the palette and the cheeks.
213) On average a hiccup lasts 5 minutes.
214) Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.
215) It takes about 3 months for the transplanted hair to start growing again.
216) About 13% of people are left-handed. Up from 11% in the past.
217) In 1900, a person could expect to live to be 47. Today, the average life expectancy for men and women in developed countries is longer than 70 years.
218) A newborn baby's head accounts for one-quarter of its weight.
219) The bones in your body are not white - they range in colour from beige to light brown. The bones you see in museums are white because they have been boiled and cleaned.
220) Our eyes are always the same size from birth.
221) Every person has a unique tongue print.
222) If all your DNA is stretched out, it would reach to the moon 6,000 times.
223) Approximately two-thirds of a person's body weight is water. Blood is 92% water. The brain is 75% water and muscles are 75% water.
224) The coloured part of the eye is called the iris. Behind the iris is the soft, rubbery lens which focuses the light on to a layer, called the retina, in the back of the eye. The retina contains about 125 million rods and 7 million cones. The rods pick up shades of grey and help us see in dim light. The cones work best in bright light to pick up colours.
225) We actually do not see with our eyes - we see with our brains. The eyes basically are the cameras of the brain. One-quarter of the brain is used to control the eyes.
226) A green diamond is the rarest diamond.
227) The ozone layer averages about 3 millimeters (1/8 inch) thick.
228) A diamond will break if you hit it with a hammer.
229) The crawler, the machine that takes the Space Shuttle to the launching pad moves at 3 km/h (2 mph).
230) Summer on Uranus lasts for 21 years - but so does winter.
231) The Sahara desert expands at about 1 km per month.
232) More than 70% of earth's dryland is affected by desertification.
233) The US has one of the highest fire death rates in the industrialised world, with more than 2 million fires reported each year.
234) The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth.
235) The largest iceberg ever recorded was 335 km (208 miles) long and 97 km (60 miles) wide.
236) Hurricanes, tornadoes and bigger bodies of water always go clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. This directional spinning has to do with the rotation of the earth and is called the Coriolis force.
237) Winds that blow toward the equator curve west.
238) Organist William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 with the first reflecting telescope that he built. He named it Georgium Sidium in honour of King George III of England but in 1850 it was renamed Uranus in accordance with the tradition of naming planets for Roman gods.
239) Planets, meaning wanderers, are named after Roman deities: Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the god of love and beauty; Mars, the god of war; Jupiter, king of the gods; and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture; Neptune, god of the sea.
240) During a total solar eclipse the temperature can drop by 6 degrees Celsius (about 20 degrees Fahrenheit).
241) The tallest waterfalls in the world are Angel Falls in Venezuela. At 979 m (3,212 ft), they are 19 times taller than the Niagara Falls, or 3 times taller than the Empire State Building.
242) Although the Angel Falls are much taller than the Niagara Falls, the latter are much wider, and they both pour about the same amount of water over their edges - about 2.8 billion litres (748 million gallons) per second.
243) There are 1040 islands around Britain, one of which is the smallest island in the world: Bishop's Rock.
244) All the planets in the solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
245) Earth is the densest planet in the solar system and the only one not named after a god.
246) Earth orbits the sun at an average speed of 29.79 km/s (18.51 miles/sec), or about 107,000 km/h (about 67,000 miles/hour).
247) One year on earth is 365.26 days long. One day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds long. The extra day in a leap year was introduced to compensate for the discrepancy in the Gregorian calendar.
248) Plates carrying the continents migrate over the earth's surface a few centimetres (inches) per year, about the same speed that a fingernail grows.
249) On average, 13,000 earthquakes are located each year.
250) The magnetic north pole is near Ellef Ringes Island in northern Canada.
251) The magnetic south pole was discovered off the coast of Wilkes Land in Antarctica.
252) There is zero gravity at the centre of earth.
253) The deepest mine in the world is Western Deep Levels near Charletonville, South Africa. It is 4.2 km (2.6 miles) deep.
254) The deepest point in the sea: the Mariana Trench off Guam in the Pacific Ocean; it is 10.9 km (6.77 miles) below sea level.
255) Earth is slowing down - in a few million years there won't be a leap year.
256) The tail of the Great Comet of 1843 was 330 million km long. (It will return in 2356.)
257) There are more than 326 million trillion gallons of water on Earth.
258) About 500 small meteorites fall to earth every year but most fall in the sea and in unpopulated areas.
259) There is no record of a person being killed by a meteorite but animals are occasionally hit.
260) The Dead Sea is 365 m (1,200 ft) below sea level.
261) A storm officially becomes a hurricane when cyclone winds reach 119 km/h (74 mph).
262) Thomas Cook, the world's first travel agency in the world, was founded in 1850.
263) There are more TV sets in the US than there are people in the UK.
264) There are no letters assigned to the numbers 1 and 0 on a phone keypad. These numbers remain unassigned because they are so-called "flag" numbers, kept for special purposes such as emergency or operator services.
265) For 3000 years, until 1883, hemp was the world's largest agricultural crop, from which the majority of fabric, soap, paper, medicines, and oils were produced.
266) The word malaria comes from the words mal and aria, which means bad air. This derives from the old days when it was thought that all diseases are caused by bad, or dirty air.
267) The names of all the continents end with the letter they start with.
268) On every continent there is a city called Rome.
269) The first city in the world to have a population of more than one million was London.
270) The most populated city in the world - when major urban areas are included - is Tokyo, with 30 million residents.
271) The Vatican is the world's smallest country, at 0.44 square km (0.16 square miles).
272) The US flag displays 13 stripes - for the original 13 states.
273) The words "electronic mail" might sound new but was introduced 31 years ago. Queen Elizabeth of Britain sent her first email in 1976.
274) Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing.
275) The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter of the alphabet.
276) Lightning strikes men about seven times more often than it does women.
277) Women make up 49% of the world population.
278) About 50% of Americans live within 50 miles of their birthplace. This is called propinquity.
279) The pleasant feeling of eating chocolate is caused by a chemical called anadamide, a neurotransmitter which also is produced naturally in the brain.
280) The living does not outnumber the dead: since the creation about 60 billion people have died.
281) Midday refers to the moment the sun crosses the local meridian.
282) Due to earth's gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 metres.
283) It is not true that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure that can be viewed from space - many man-made objects, including the Dutch polders, can be viewed from space.
284) An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine.
285) Coffee is the seed of a cherry from the tree genus Coffea
286) Three quarters of fish caught are eaten - the rest is used to make things such as glue, soap, margarine and fertilizer.
287) In September 1999 Dustin Philips of the US set a Guinness World Record by drinking a 400 ml (14-oz) bottle of tomato sauce through a straw in 33 seconds.
288) To make one kilo of honey, bees have to visit 4 million flowers, traveling a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.
289) Botanically speaking, the banana is a herb and the tomato is a fruit.
290) Bananas are the world's most popular fruit after tomatoes. In western countries, they could account for 3% of a grocer's total sales.
291) Bananas consistently are the number one compliant of grocery shoppers. Most people complain when bananas are overripe or even freckled. The fact is that spotted bananas are sweeter, with a sugar content of more than 20%, compared with 3% in a green banana.
292) The scientific term for the common tomato is lycopersicon lycopersicum, which means "wolf peach."
293) There are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.
294) The can opener was invented 48 years after cans were introduced.
295) Over the last 40 years food production actually increased faster than population.
296) The number of people who starved to death in the last 25 years of the 20th century is less than the number who starved to death in the last 25 years of the 19th century.
297) In the Middle Ages, sugar was a treasured luxury costing 9 times as much as milk.
298) Over 90% of all fish caught are caught in the northern hemisphere.
299) Wine is sold in tinted bottles because wine spoils when exposed to light.
300) Approximately one billion snails are served in restaurants annually.
301) Carrots have zero fat content.
302) Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.
303) The first European to encounter tea was the Portuguese Jesuit Jasper de Cruz in 1560.
304) Ice tea was introduced in 1904 at the World's Fair in St. Louis.
305) The tea bag was introduced in 1908 by Thomas Sullivan of New York.
306) An onion, apple and potato all have the same taste. The differences in flavour are caused by their smell.
307) Coca-Cola was invented in Atlanta, Georgia by Dr. John S. Pemberton in 1886.
308) Pepsi-Cola was invented by Caleb Bradham in 1890 as "Brad's Drink" as a digestive aid and energy booster. It was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1989.
309) In 1929, the Howdy Company introduced its "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas," which became 7 Up. 7 Up was invented by Charles Leiper Grigg.
310) The first diet soft drink, called the "No-Cal Beverage" was launched in 1952.
311) Aluminum cans were introduced in 1957 and two years later the first diet cola was sold.
312) The pull-ring tab was invented in 1962 and the re-sealable top in 1965.
313) Plastic bottles were first used for soft drinks in 1970.
314) Chocolate is the number one foodstuff flavour in the world, beating vanilla and banana by 3-to-1.
315) Watermelons are 97% water, lettuce 97%, tomatoes 95%, carrots 90%, and bread 30%.
316) The 16th century Escorial palace of King Phillip II of Spain had 1,200 doors.
317) Playing-cards were known in Persia and India as far back as the 12th century. A pack then consisted of 48 instead of 52 cards.
318) Excavations from Egyptian tombs dating to 5,000 BC show that the ancient Egyptian kids played with toy hedgehogs.
319) Julius Caesar was the first to encode communications, using what has become known as the Caesar Cipher.
320) The first animal in space was the female Samoyed husky named Laika, launched by the Soviets in 1957.
321) In 1969 the US launched a male chimpanzee called Ham into space.
322) In 1963 the French launched a cat called Feliette into space.
323) Great Britain was the first county to issue postage stamps, on 1 May 1840. Hence, UK stamps are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin.
324) Napoleon's christening name was Italian: Napoleone Buonaparte. He was born on the island of Corsica one year after it became French property. As a boy, Napoleon hated the French.
325) Only one of the Ancient Seven Wonders of the World still survives: the Great Pyramid of Giza.
326) The world's first skyscraper was the 10-storey Home Insurance office, built in Chicago in 1885. (During Roman times buildings were up to 8 storeys high.)
327) Charles Macintosh invented the waterproof coat, the Mackintosh, in 1823.
328) Air-filled tyres were used on bicycles before they were used on motorcars.
329) Traffic lights were used before the advent of the motorcar.
330) Optical fibre was invented in 1966 by two British scientists called Charles Kao and George Hockham working for the British company Standard Telecommunication.
331) The Monopoly game was invented by Charles Darrow in 1933. He sold the rights to George Parker in 1935, then aged 58. Parker invented more than 100 games, including Pit, Rook, Flinch, Risk and Clue.
332) One hour before Alexander Graham Bell registered his patent for the telephone in 1876, Elisha Gray patented his design. After years of litigation, the patent went to Bell.
333) The first vending machine was invented by Hero of Alexandria around 215 BC. When a coin was dropped into a slot, its weight would pull a cork out of a spigot and the machine would dispense a trickle of water.
334) Leonardo da Vinci never built the inventions he designed.
335) Thomas Edison filed 1,093 patents, including those for the light bulb, electric railways and the movie camera. When he died in 1931, he held 34 patents for the telephone, 141 for batteries, 150 for the telegraph and 389 patents for electric light and power.
336) Count Alessandro Volta invented the first battery in the 18th century.
337) During the 1860s, George Leclanche developed the dry-cell battery, the basis for modern batteries.
338) Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television in 1926 in Soho, London. Ten years later there were only 100 TV sets in the world.
339) Today there are almost a billion TV sets in the world.
340) China has the most TV sets (200 million).
341) In the US there are more TV sets than telephones.
342) The first TV commercial was a 20-second ad for a Bulova clock, broadcasted by WNBT, New York during a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies in July 1941.Bulova paid $9 for that first TV spot. Bulova also was the first watch in space.
343) The first regular TV soap was DuMont TV's A Woman to Remember, which began its run in February 1947.
344) The first televised sporting event was a Japanese elementary school baseball game, broadcast in September 1931.
345) The world's first TV news helicopter was introduced by KTLA Channel 5 in Los Angeles on 4 July 1958.
346) The largest movie theatre in the world, Radio City Music Hall in New York, opened in 1932 - it seats almost 6,000 people.
347) The Walt Disney company was founded in 1923, and in 1927 Walt came up with the idea for an animated mouse called Mortimer Mouse. His wife Lillian convinced him to change it to Mickey Mouse.
348) Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
349) Jack Mercer was the voice of Popeye the Sailor for 45 years.
350) The video recording machine was invented by the Ampex corporation of California in 1956. The first video recorder, the Ampex VR1000, stood 1,1 m (3 ft 3 in) high and weighed as much as a small car: 665 kg (1,466 lb).
351) Japanese company JVC introduced the VHS system in 1976.
352) About 80% of VCRs are made by Japanese companies.
353) The CD was developed by Philips and Sony in 1980.
354) About 2.4 billion CDs are sold annually. The number of recorded CDs and blank CDs sold has been about equal.
355) About one-third of recorded CDs are pirated.
356) In August 1983, Peter Stewart of Birmingham, UK set a world record by disco dancing for 408 hours.
357) Lebanon is the top movie-going country - 35.3 movies per person p.a. China is second with 12.3, followed by Georgia (5.6), India (5), Iceland (4.5), Australia is 6th at 3.9 then New Zealand and the US at just under 3.9.
358) The US has the most cinemas (23,662) while India [the country that produces the most movies - about 800 a year, twice as many as Hollywood] has about 9,000 cinemas and China has approximately 5,000 cinemas. - 300,000 people per cinema.
359) Indian comic actress Manorama has played the most leading roles of any performer in movie history. She began her career in 1958 and in 1985 had appeared in her 1,000th movie.
360) A piano covers the full spectrum of all orchestra instruments, from below the lowest note of the double bassoon to above the top note of the piccolo.
361) The harmonica is the world's best-selling music instrument.
362) DVD discs are the same diameter (120mm) and thickness (1.2mm) as a Compact Disc but a DVD can store 13 times or more data.
363) Bolivia holds the highest turnover of governments. Since their independence from Spain in 1825, Bolivia has had almost 200 governments. Since 1945, Italy saw more than 50 governments and more than 20 Prime Ministers.
364) Half the world's population earns about 5% of the world's wealth.
365) India is the world's largest democracy with more than 600 million voters.
366) The system of democracy was introduced 2,500 years ago in Athens, Greece.
367) The oldest existing governing body operates in Althing in Iceland. It was established in 930 AD.
368) About 50 Bibles are sold every minute.
369) Christianity is the world's most widespread religion (1.7 billion Christians).
370) Methuselah is the oldest man on record: 969 years old.
371) The 10 plagues of Egypt:
1. Water turns to blood
2. Frogs
3. Lice and fleas
4. Flies
5. Cattle die of diseases
6. Boils and sores
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Death of first-born
372) The 7 last plagues (Revelation 16):
1. Sores
2. Sea turns to blood
3. Rivers turn to blood
4. People schorched by heat of the sun
5. Darkness
6. River Euphrates dries up
7. Earthquake
373) During the 6th Century, it was customary to congratulate people who sneezed because it was thought that they were expelling evil from their bodies. During the great plague of Europe, the Pope passed a law to say "God bless you" to one who sneezed.
374) Sound travels through water 3 times faster than through air.
375) The typical bolt of lightning heats the atmosphere to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
376) A square piece of dry paper cannot be folded in half more than 7 times.
377) Air becomes liquid at about minus 190 degrees Celsius. Liquid air looks like water with a bluish tint.
378) A scientific satellite needs only 250 watts of power, the equivelant used by two hour light bulbs, to operate.
379) Radio waves travel so much faster than sound waves that a broadcast voice can be heard sooner 18,000 km away than in the back of the room in which it originated.
380) Hydrogen gas is the least dense substance in the world.
381) Water expands by about 9% as it freezes.
382) The surface of hot water freezes faster than cold water but the rest of the water will remain liquid longer than in a cold sample.
383) The smallest transistor is 50-nanometres wide - roughly 1/2000 the width of a human hair.
384) A compass does not point to the geographical North or South Pole, but to the magnetic poles.
385) The double-helix structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick. The length of a single human DNA molecule, when extended, is 1.7 metres (5 ft 5 in).
386) An electric oven uses one kilowatt-hour of electricity in about 20 minutes, but one kilowatt-hour will power a TV for 3 hours, run a 100-watt bulb for 12 hours, and keep an electric clock ticking for 3 months.
387) In the 6th century BC Greek mathematician Pythagoras said that earth is round - but few agreed with him.
Greek astronomer Aristarchos said in the 3rd century BC that earth revolves around the sun - but the idea was not accepted.
In the 2nd century BC Greek astronomer Erastosthenes accurately measured the distance around the earth at about 40,000 km (24,860 miles) - but nobody believed him.
In the 2nd century AD Greek astronomer Ptolemy stated that earth was the centre of the universe - most people believed him for the next 1,400 years.
388) Fishing is the biggest participant sports in the world.
389) Football (soccer) is the most attended or watched sport in the world.
390) In 1975 Junko Tabei from Japan became the first woman to reach the top of Everest.
391) The record for the most Olympic medals ever won is held by Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina. Competing in three Olympics, between 1956 and 1964, she won 18 medals.
392) The very first Olympic race, held in 776 BC, was won by Corubus, a chef.
393) The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 male but no female competitors.
394) The Major League Baseball teams use about 850,000 balls per season.
395) About 42,000 tennis balls are used in the plus-minus 650 matches in the Wimbledon Championship.
396) Golf is the only sport played on the moon - on 6 February 1971 Alan Shepard hit a golf ball.
397) The oldest continuous trophy in sports is the America's Cup. It started in 1851, with Americans winning for a straight 132 years until Australia took the Cup in 1983.
398) In 1750 there were about 800 million people in the world. In 1850 there were a billion more, and by 1950, another billion. Then it took just 50 years to double to 6 billion.
399) Half the world's population earns about 5% of the world's wealth.
400) There are more than 600 million telephone lines, yet almost half the world's population has never made a phone call on a land line. However, more than half the world's population has made a cell phone call. There are more than 2 billion cell phones in use.
401) One in ten people in the world live on an island.
402) The chance of being born on Leap Day is about 684 out of a million, or 1 in 1461. Less than 5 million people have their birthday on Leap Day.
403) The odds of being struck by lightning are about 600,000 to one.
404) About 27% of food in developed countries are wasted each year. It's simply thrown away.
405) US Post Office handles 43% of the world's mail. Its nearest competitor is Japan with 6%.
406) Since 1972, some 64 million tons of aluminum cans (about 3 trillion cans) have been produced. Placed end-to-end, they could stretch to the moon about a thousand times. Cans represent less than 1% of solid waste material.
407) More than a billion transistors are manufactured. .. every second.
408) The amount of time that people spend on travel has been consistent at 1.1 hours per person per day in all societies.
409) Traffic jams of New York, San Francisco and Paris are well known - beaten only by those in Seattle where a driver annually spends 59 hours stuck in traffic.
410) Traffic jams are nothing new. In 45 BC, Rome banned all vehicles from within the city - and in other cities vehicles, including horses, were allowed only at night... because of traffic jams.
411) The Wright Brothers tested the first aeroplane in a wind tunnel before flying it.
412) The shortest scheduled airline flight is made between the island of Westray to Papa Westray off Scotland. The flight lasts 2 minutes.
413) More than 60 million people annually visit France, a country of 60 million people.
414) About a quarter of the world still drives on the left, and the countries that do are mostly old British colonies.
415) The pilot with the most flying hours is American John Edward Long. From May 1933 to April 1977 he flew 62,654 hours, achieving a total of more than 7 years airborne.
416) The fewest aeroplane passengers killed in one year was 1 in 1993 and the most was 583 in 1977 when two Boeing 747s collided on the runway at Los Rodeos airport, Tenerife, the Canary Islands.
417) The world's oldest surviving boat is a simple 3 metre (10 feet) long dugout dated to 7400 BC. It was discovered in Pesse Holland in the Netherlands.
418) The shortest war on record took place in 1896 when Zanzibar surrendered to Britain after 38 minutes.
419) The longest war was the so-called 100-years war between Britain and France. It actually lasted 116 years, ending in 1453.
420) Since 1495, no 25-year period has been without war.
421) The very first bomb that the Allies dropped on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
422) The alligator snapping turtle fakes out its fishy prey with a small appendage on its tongue that looks like a worm.



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