50 THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW
(or 50 Completely Useless Facts!)


The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon.
Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions!
What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France.
"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.
"Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.

In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child

A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off!

Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.

You can't kill yourself by holding your breath

There is a city called Rome on every continent.

It's against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland!

Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day!
Horatio Nelson, one of England's most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness.
The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London
Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people

Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe!

The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump!

One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet!

Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different!

The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man

Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!

Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin!

The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.
Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle. Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible.

Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th."
Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.

On average a hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute.

More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes.
The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words.
More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food.

Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.

The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times!
The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish.
Earth is the only planet not named after a god.

It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.

You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206.
Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food!

Dolphins sleep with one eye open!

It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds
Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
Slugs have 4 noses.

Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue.
A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!

A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!
The average person laughs 10 times a day!
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain
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One of these amazing, but useless facts is false. Do you know which one?
You can see the correct answer THE FACTS ABOUT DOGS IN ICELAND IS CORRECT

 

AMAZING FACTS ABOUT INDIA:

1. India is the world's largest, oldest, continuous civilization.
2. India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.
3. India is the world's largest democracy.
4. Varanasi, also known as Benares, was called "the ancient city" when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 B.C.E, and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today.
5. India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.
6. The World's first university was established in Takshashila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.
7. Sanskrit is the mother of all the European languages. Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software - a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987.
8. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans. Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in our civilization.
9. Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India's wealth.
10. The art of Navigation was bornin the river Sindhu 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from Sanskrit 'Nou'.
11. Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: (5th century) 365.258756484 days.
12. The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians.
13. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10**53(10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5000 BCE during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera 10**12(10 to the power of 12).
14. IEEE has proved what has been a century old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of wireless communication was Prof. Jagdish Bose and not Marconi.
15. The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.
16. According to Saka King Rudradaman I of 150 CE a beautiful lake called Sudarshana was constructed on the hills of Raivataka during Chandragupta Maurya's time.
17. Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India.
18. Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted complicated surgeries like cesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery and brain surgery. Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India. Over 125 surgical equipment were used. Deep knowledge of anatomy, physiology, etiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many texts.
19. When many cultures were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization).
20. The four religions born in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, are followed by 25% of the world's population.
21. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.
22. India is one of the few countries in the World, which gained independence without violence.
23. India has the second largest pool of Scientists and Engineers in the World.
24. India is the largest English speaking nation in the world.
25. India is the only country other than US and Japan, to have built a super computer indigenously.
Famous Quotes on India (by non-Indians)
• Albert Einstein said: We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
• Mark Twain said: India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.
• French scholar Romain Rolland said: If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.
• Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to USA said: India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.
Facts to make every Indian proud
Q. Who is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems?
A. Vinod Khosla
Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the
today's computers run on it)?
A. Vinod Dahm
Q. Who is the third richest man on the world?
A. According to the latest report on Fortune Magazine, it is Aziz Premji,
who is the CEO of Wipro Industries. The Sultan of Brunei is at 6th
position now.
Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world's No.1 web
based email program)?
A. Sabeer Bhatia
Q. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT & T-Bell Labs is the creator
of program languages such as C, C++, Unix to name a few)?
A. Arun Netravalli
Q. Who is the GM of Hewlett Packard?
A. Rajiv Gupta
Q. Who is the new MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000,
responsible to iron out all initial problems?
A. Sanjay Tejwrika
Q. Who are the Chief Executives of CitiBank, Mckensey & Stanchart?
A. Victor Menezes, Rajat Gupta, and Rana Talwar.
We Indians are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America, even
faring better than the whites and the natives.
There are 3.22 millions of Indians in USA (1.5% of population). ,
Sixty Amazing-but-True Facts!

o In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi.
o The increased electricity used by modern appliance parts is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.
o The idea for "tribbles" in "Star Trek" came from gerbils, since some gerbils are actually born pregnant.
o Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises.
o Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch.
o Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling.
o The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren't for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.
o The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man was owned by Frank Sinatra.
o The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there's no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.
o Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say "gesundheit" to a sneezer was never repealed.
o Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.
o SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below.
o Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers.
o Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.
o Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.
o The first McDonald's restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.
o The Air Force's F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered during research into how bumblebees fly.
o You *can* get blood from a stone, but only if contains at least 17 percent bauxite.
o Silly Putty was "discovered" as the residue left behind after the first latex condoms were produced. It's not widely publicized for obvious reasons.
o Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.
o The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver.
o The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.
o A cat's purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the voice of singer Barry White.
o The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard.
o The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a 24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave 17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway.
o King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe.
o Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.
o In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box and consequently died of starvation.
o Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system.
o Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.
o Calvin, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.
o Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game.
o Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real camels.
o You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.
o To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine.
o Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a tooth during a game. For Canadians who don't play hockey, that figure drops to five out of ten.
o A dog's naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when pressed against carpet.
o A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study promoting the practice of picking one's nose, claiming that the health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations.
o Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader.
o Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel.
o At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper and leather.
o Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas.
o If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go blind and leave behind its weight in honey.
o Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain, staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the intensity of orgasms.
o Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.
o Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an expensive purchase was said to cost "an arm and a leg."
o When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine.
o Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during summer months.
o Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to be almost identical to the recipe used today.
o If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian.
o When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby.
o In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.
o Although difficult, it's possible to start a fire by rapidly rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos.
o Napoleon's favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut.
o The world's smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.
o Due to the natural "momentum" of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards.
o In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.
o It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville to Amarillo.
o The "nine lives" attributed to cats is probably due to their having nine primary whiskers.
o The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun.
o The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.

 

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FACTS 1-10
1. There are 1792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
2. You would have to drink 100 cups of coffee in four hours to get the lethal dose of caffeine which is 10 grams.
3. Flamingos get their pink colour from the shrimp they eat The more shrimp they eat the deeper pink they become.
4. Dolphins don't automatically breathe they have to tell themselves to.
5. The average heart beats 100,000 times each day.
6. When you crack your knuckles the pop you hear is a bubble of gas bursting.
7. An elephant's penis is about 1.5 metres long, the longest of any animal.
8. No word in the English language rhymes with silver, month, orange or purple.
9. Just 20 seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
10. One can see the stars during the day from the bottom of a well.

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FACTS 11-20
11. The Australian emu holds the land speed record for birds at about 50 kilometres per hour.
12. Generally, a dog's mouth has fewer germs and bacteria than a human's mouth.
13. A cockroach can live nine days without its head before it starves to death.
14. The aeroplane Buddy Holly died in was the American Pie. Thus the title of the Don McLean song.
15. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.
16. In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere.
17. Scissors were invented by Leonardo da Vinci.
18. The number of births in India each year is greater that the entire population of Australia.
19. Two million hydrogen atoms might just cover the full stop at the end of this sentence.
20. More people are killed by donkeys each year than are killed in plane crashes.

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FACTS 21-30
21. On average, an iceberg weighs 20 million tonnes.
22. The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma in an emergency.
23. Try to say the alphabet without moving your lips or your tongue. Every letter should sound exactly the same.
24. Apples are more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in the morning.
25. The king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing card.
26. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Renaissance Florence to shave them off.
27. Tablecloths were originally meant to be served as towels with which dinner guests could wipe their hands and faces after eating.
28. Until the nineteenth century, solid blocks of tea were used as money in Siberia.
29. When glass breaks, the cracks move faster than 3,000 miles per hour. To photograph the event, a camera must shoot at a millionth of a second.
30. A lightning bolt generates temperatures five times hotter than those found at the sun's surface.

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FACTS 31-40
31. Forest fires move faster uphill than downhill.
32. Skepticisms is the longest word that alternates hands when typing.
33. A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle, a group of geese in the air is a skein.
34. Over 2500 left handed people a year are killed from using products made for right handed people.
35. If you counted 24 hours a day, it would take 31,688 years to reach one trillion.
36. A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
37. Pinocchio is Italian for "pine eye".
38. A violin contains about 70 separate pieces of wood.
39. The names of Popeye's four nephews are Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye, and Poopeye.
40. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable".

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FACTS 41-50
41. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
42. Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.
43. A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night.
44. Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone.
45. The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year.
46. It's against the law to pawn your dentures in Las Vegas.
47. You're born with 300 bones, but when you get to be an adult, you only have 206.
48. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
49. Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it's known as Tennessee.
50. The state of Florida is bigger than England.

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FACTS 51-60
51. Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark.
52. Slugs have 4 noses.
53. Recycling one glass jar, saves enough energy to watch TV for 3 hours.
54. A company in Taiwan makes dinnerware out of wheat, so you can eat your plate.
55. In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II was named an "Honorary Harlem Globetrotter.".
56. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel, "Gadsby", which contains over 50,000 words -- none of them with the letter E.
57. The poison-arrow frog has enough poison to kill about 2,200 people.
58. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue.
59. A lump of pure gold the size of a matchbox can be flattened into a sheet the size of a tennis court.
60. Did you know you share your birthday with at least 9 other million people in the world?

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FACTS 61-70
61. The Pentagon, in Arlington Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary.
62. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.
63. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.
64. Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
65. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
66. The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.
67. "I am." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
68. The longest word in the English language is 1909 letters long and it refers to a distinct part of DNA.
69. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.
70. Feb 1865 is the only month in recorded history not to have a full moon.

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FACTS 71-80
71. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.
72. Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.
73. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
74. Cat's urine glows under a black light.
75. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
76. Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
77. Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.
78. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
79. The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
80. Michael Jordan makes more money from Nike annually than all of the Nike factory workers in Malaysia combined.

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FACTS 81-90
81. One of the reasons marijuana is illegal today is because cotton growers in the 30s lobbied against hemp farmers...they saw it as competition.
82. You know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider.
83. Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 or older.
84. There are 2 credit cards for every person in the US.
85. The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan.".
86. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.
87. If you fart consistently for 6 years and 9 months, enough gas is produced to create the energy of an atomic bomb.
88. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, dogs only have about ten.
89. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.
90. If Barbie were life-size her measurements would be 39-23-33. She would stand seven feet, two inches tall and have a neck twice the length of a normal human's neck.

FACTS 91-100
91. In the 1400's a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have "the rule of thumb".
92. Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"...and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.
93. The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time TV were Fred and Wilma Flintstone!
94. It is impossible to lick your elbow.
95. If a statue 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 causes.
96. If you were to spell out numbers starting at number 1, you wouldn't use the letter "A" until you got to 1000.
97. Bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windscreen wipers and laser printers were all invented by women.
98. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase......... "goodnight, sleep tight."
99. In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts... So in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them "Mind your pints and quarts, and settle down." It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's and Q's!"
100. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month...which we now know today as the honeymoon!
CRICKET FACTS, TEST-MATCH CRICKET FACTS: DID YOU KNOW?
A selection of cricketing facts, ranging from the first tour by Australia in 1868 up to the present day.

• In 1868, when Australia first toured England under Charles Lawrence to play cricket, each player was wearing a different coloured cap so that the spectators could identify them.
• The only man to score two test triple centuries is Brian Lara. He scored 375 runs playing against England in 1994. In 2004, Mathew Hayden of Australia broke Lara's world record with 380 against Zimbabwe in Perth 2003. Lara reclaimed the record with a massive 400 not out against England in Antigua 2004.
• The first Test match began on 15 March 1877 and had a timeless format with four balls per over. It ended on 19 March 1877 with Australia winning by 45 runs.
• England’s Alfred Shaw was the bowler to bowl the first delivery in a Test match. He took 3 wickets in the first innings and 5 in the second.
• England’s Allen Hill had both the first Test wicket and the first catch. He dismissed Nat Thomson for 1.
• Australia’s Charles Bannerman faced the first delivery in a Test match and he also went on to be the first Test centurion.
• Charles Bannerman scored 165 in his first Test innings and was retired hurt. Incidentally, he did not take field. W.Newing fielded for him, thus becoming the first substitute fielder in Test cricket.
• Australia’s W E Midwinter became the first bowler to get a 5 wicket haul in a Test innings. He dismissed 5 English batsmen in his 54 over spell in the first Test ever played.
• C A Reid and R B Terry were the two on-field officials or umpires for the first ever Test match in the history of cricket.
• Noone has completed an innings at the score of 228!
• South Africans were the first to introduce TV run outs!
• Graham Yallop, in 1978 was the first man to wear a helmet!
• Wasim Akram is the first (an only?) man to perform a hat-trick in both one days and tests!
• England and Australia played the first ever one day international at Melbourne in 1971!
• Sachin Tendulkar was the first victim of the third umpire in a Test match.
• Hollywood actor Russell Crowe is Martin Crowe's cousin!
• Sourav Ganguly is the only cricketer to have won four successive Man of the Match awards in One-day Internationals.
• The first Twenty20 international was between Australia and New Zealand in 2005.
• The Test match between England and South Africa at Durban in 1939 was finally abandoned as a draw on the tenth day because England players had to catch their ship home.
• The First Test between Young Sri Lanka and Young England at Columbo in 1987 was held up when a large iguana crept across the wicket.
• Pakistan Railways beat Dera Ismail Khan by an innings and 851 runs in 1964. In reply to the railwaymens 910 for 6 declared, Dera Ismail Khan were bowled out for 32 and 27.
• Mohammed Azharruddin is the only player in the history of Test cricket to score a century in each of his first three tests.
• India is the only international team to be dismissed twice in a single day of test match cricket. They were dismissed for 58 and 82 against England in 1952.
• M.L.Jaisimha of India was the first batsman to bat on all five days of a Test.
• India had to wait for a period of 19 years & 230 days before registering its first victory.
• The legendary captain of the West Indies, Clive Lloyd was the first captain to win 25 Test Matches.
• Narendra Hirwani took 16 wickets on his debut versus West Indies.
• Allen Hill was the first player to hold a catch in Test cricket.
• Sunil Gavaskar has featured in a record 52 century partnerships.
• Greg Chappell hit a century both on his debut and his final match.
ANIMAL FACTS: DID YOU KNOW?
Some of the worlds most amazing animal facts!...read and enjoy! Got a weird, amazing, incredible animal fact?...then why not: tell us about it and we'll compile the next installment!
E-mail this page to a friend
Other facts:
100 Amazing facts
Animal facts
Cricket/test match cricket facts
Golf facts-golfing records
World Cup facts, 100 fascinating facts, the finals, tournament facts
World Cup countries, 2010 World Cup qualification, facts and details

ANIMAL FACTS: DID YOU KNOW?

• Humpback whales create the loudest sound of any living creature.
• A giant squid’s eyes have a diameter of 15 inches which are the largest of any animal.
• 3 out of 10 Dalmation dogs suffer from hearing loss due to inbreeding.
• The African Elephant has a gestation period of 22 months while a short-nosed bandicoot gestates for 12 days.
• The mortality rate if bitten by a Black Mambo snake is over 95%.
• A dog’s sense of smell is 1,000 times stronger than humans.
• Hummingbird’s consume half of their weight in food daily.
• A cockroach can survive for about a week without its head before dying of starvation.
• The whale shark has over 4,000 teeth. Each tooth is only 3mm long.
• Polar Bears are capable of jumping as high as 6 feet and can run as fast as 25mph.
• The ‘crosshairs’ of gun sights were made of spider web filaments until the 1960’s.
• Mosquitos are attracted most to the color blue.
• The heart of a shrimp is located in its head.
• Some frogs are able to be frozen and then thawed, and continue living.
• A goldfish is the only animal that can see infrared and ultraviolet light.
• A snail can sleep for 3 years.
• There are 701 types of pure breed dogs.
• The fastest bird, the spine-tailed swift, can fly as fast as 106mph.
• A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
• A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length.
• In 1872, a virus epidemic killed a quarter of all the horses in the United States.
• A woodpecker can peck 20 times per second.
• An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
• Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
• Cojo, the 1st gorilla born in captivity, was born at the Columbus, Oho Zoo in 1956 and weighed 3 1/4 pounds.
• Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.
• Every year, $1.5 billion is spent on pet food. This is four times the amount spent on baby food.
• It takes a lobster about seven years to grow to be one pound.
• Large kangaroos can cover over 30 feet with each jump.
• Of all known forms of animals life ever to inhabit the Earth, only about 10 percent still exist today.
• On average, pigs live for about 15 years.
• Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. They are immune to every type of disease including cancer.
• A chameleon’s tongue is twice the length of its body.
• Male seahorses produce offspring.
• Giraffes have no vocal cords.
• Elephants have been known to remain standing after they die.
• An albatross can sleep while flying.
• A mosquito has 47 teeth.
• Research indicates that mosquitoes are attracted to people who have recently eaten bananas.
• The sex organ on a male spider is located at the end of one of its legs.
• Armadillos, opossums, and sloth’s spend about 80% of their lives sleeping.
• The ears of a cricket are located on the front legs
Fact & Fiction

Top 20 Amazing Science Facts

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Another trivia list! This list explores a variety of fascinating scientific facts that you probably are unaware of. Science is still a very mysterious subject so there are millions of trivial facts about it – this will be the first of many scientific fact lists in the future.
Facts 1 – 5

1. There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body – laid end to end they would circle the earth 2.5 times
2. At over 2000 kilometers long The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth
3. The risk of being struck by a falling meteorite for a human is one occurrence every 9,300 years
4. A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons
5. A typical hurricane produces the energy equivalent to 8,000 one megaton bombs
Facts 6 – 10

6. Blood sucking hookworms inhabit 700 million people worldwide
7. The highest speed ever achieved on a bicycle is 166.94 mph by Fred Rompelberg
8. We can produce laser light a million times brighter than sunshine
9. 65% of those with autism are left handed
10. The combined length of the roots of a Finnish pine tree is over 30 miles

 

Facts 11 – 15

11. The oceans contain enough salt to cover all the continents to a depth of nearly 500 feet
12. The interstellar gas cloud Sagittarius B contains a billion, billion, billion liters of alcohol [JFrater is planning to move there in the near future]
13. Polar Bears can run at 25 miles an hour and jump over 6 feet in the air
14. 60-65 million years ago dolphins and humans shared a common ancestor
15. Polar Bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras, due to their transparent fur
Facts 16 – 20

16. The average person accidentally eats 430 bugs each year of their life
17. A single rye plant can spread up to 400 miles of roots underground
18. The temperature on the surface of Mercury exceeds 430 degrees C during the day, and, at night, plummets to minus 180 degrees centigrade
19. The evaporation from a large oak or beech tree is from ten to twenty-five gallons in twenty-four hours
20. Butterflies taste with their hind feet and their taste sensation works on touch – this allows them to determine whether a leaf is edible
15 Most Amazing Facts About The Human Body
This article brings together some amazing facts – fifteen to be precise – about the human body that perhaps were previously unknown to many out there. They have been carefully compiled, so if you are eager to know more about the fifteen most amazing things about our own bodies, just read on.
1. The skin is the largest organ of the human body, spanning roughly about 1.9m² or 20 sq.ft. in an adult male. Another characteristic of the skin is that it constantly flakes away, so that a person sheds about 18 kgs or 40 lbs of skin in a lifetime.
2. The testicle of a man produces 10 million new sperm cells each day. That is enough to restore the entire world’s population in just 6 months.
3. About half-a-million egg cells constitute the average female ovaries, though just about 400 of them ever get the chance to create a new life.
4. Human bone is comparable to granite when it comes to supporting weight. In fact, a matchbox-sized block of bone can support a mammoth 9 tonnes, which is 4 times the weight that concrete can support.
5. The digestive acids present in our stomach are strong enough to dissolve zinc. However, the good thing is that the cells lining the stomach wall renew themselves at a rate that is faster than what it would take for the acid to dissolve them.
6. It is about 100,000 times that the focusing muscles of our eyes move everyday. A daily walk of around 80 km or 50 miles is what is required to give our leg muscles the same amount of workout.
7. The combined heat given off by the average human body in just 30 minutes is enough to bring to a boil half a gallon of water.
8. There are over 300,000 million capillaries or tiny blood vessels inside the lungs. Taken another way, they would stretch for 2400km or 1500 miles if laid end to end.
9. A postage stamp sized foreskin sourced from circumcised babies takes just 3 weeks to grow skin that can cover 3 basketball courts. Fortunately for us, the laboratory grown skin comes in handy for treating burn patients.
10. It is about 50 tonnes of food and 50,000 liters or 11,000 gallons of liquid that a person in the west will consume on an average in his lifetime.
11. As many as one million individual filters constitute each kidney, together filtering about 1.3 litres or 2.2 pints of blood every minutes and can expel about 1.4 liters or 2.5 pints of urine each day.
12. It is our eyes through which we receive virtually 90 percent of all the information that reaches us, making us to be basically visual creatures.
13. The time taken for each finger and toe nail to grow from base to tip is 6 months.
14. The human body tends to grow by about 8mm or 0.3in during sleep. This gain in height is however temporary, only to shrink back to the original size the next day. The reason for this behavior is that the force of gravity acts to squeeze the cartilages like sponge during standing or sitting.
15. Just 60 seconds is what it takes for a single human blood cell to make one complete circuit of the entire body.
10 Most Amazing Facts About Space That You Don’t Know
never thought of. And its all happening right now.
1. Ever heard of a process called cold welding? It’s a process when two metals are stuck together in space. Two pieces of metal without coating on them will then begin to form as one. It’s not a big problem to space stations because their already coated with material from Earth.
2. Did you know the sound of the sunspots can sing? Scientists believe that sunspot activity might be the reason for the beautiful sound of stringed violins. Antonio Stradivari, a famous violin maker, made the most special voilin ever in his life and it was the most beautiful sound that everyone ever heard. And the sunspots—they sound 3 times better.
3. Can you believe that Earth has at least 4 moons? In 1986, Duncan Waldron discovered an asteroid, about 5 kilometers across, that is gradually orbiting around the sun with a period of revolution that is similar to Earth and it seems to be following Earth. The three other asteroids have an unusual relationship with Earth as well. These asteroids enters Earths orbit and begins to revolve it. Of course you won’t see it out at night, because it’s too far away.
4. Uranus was also called George’s Star. Sir William Herschel discovered Uranus and was given the honor to name it George’s Star.
5. Most people think that the Big Dipper is a constellation, but it is not! It is believed to be an asterism. An asterism can be one of the brightest stars. The Big Dipper is also one of the seven brightest stars in the Great Bear constellation.
6. Ever heard of solar diet? Well, the sun loses up to a billion of grams a second due to solar winds .Solar winds are charged particles that are naturally given off by the sun. Scientists don’t know why, but it has something to do with the high temperature.
7. The light hitting Earth right now is at least a third of the sun’s age. When the sun’s core was born, the light would travel through atoms.30,000 years ago, when the sun was at least half its size, the sunlight use to reach Earth 8 minutes because it took most of its time passing through dense particles found in the sun.
8. Did you know that the moon is slowly drifting away from us 3.8 cm every year? And the Earth is also slowing in rotation .002 seconds per day per century.
9. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is constantly moving through space at the spinning rate of 225 kilometers a second and traveling through space at 305 kilometers. So, every second, we are moving through space at the speed of 530 kilometers per second.
10. Saturn’s density is so low that if you put it into a glass of water, it would float.