Classmate Facts # 122 - Listen and Silent

1. The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent’!

2. All the planets in our solar system rotate anti clockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet which rotates clockwise.

3. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words.

4. A jiffy is an actual unit of time for 1/100^th of a second.

5. The whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.

6. 55 per cent of people yawn within 5 minutes of seeing someone else yawn.

7. India has never invaded any country in her last 10,000 years of history.

8. Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? Mizaru (see no evil), Mikazuru (Hear no evil) and Mazaru (Say no evil)!

Classmate Facts # 121 - India Ah!

1. Sanskrit is considered the mother of all higher languages. This is because it is the most precise, and therefore the most suitable language for computer software.

2. The place value system and the decimal system were developed in 100 B.C. in India.

3. The first six Mughal Emperors of India ruled in an unbroken succession from father to son for almost 200 years, from 1526 to 1707.

4. The number system was invented by India. Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero.

5. The world’s first granite temple is the Brihadeswara Temple at Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. The shikara is made from a single 80-tonne piece of granite.

6. The game of snakes and ladders was created by 13^th century poet saint Gyandev. The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes were vices. Later the game underwent several modifications but the meaning remained the same i.e. good deeds take us to heaven and evil to a cycle of rebirths.

7. Until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world.

8. Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated the time taken by Earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the European Astronomers. His calculations were – time taken by earth to orbit the sun: 365.258756484 days.

Classmate Facts # 120 - Global Warming

1. The number of Emperor penguins in the Antarctic Peninsula have dropped from 300 breeding pairs to just nine!

2. About 2,000 of Indonesia’s islands could disappear by 2030 due to rising sea levels. Many islands in the Sundarbans in India have already disappeared. According to one study, in the last 30 years, nearly 31 square miles of the Sundarbans have vanished entirely!

3. Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing. The region might have its first completely ice free summer by 2040 or even earlier.

4. Globally, electricity generation is the biggest source of CO2 emissions, amounting to 37 per cent.

5. An average home is responsible for more harmful CO2 emissions than an average car produces every year.

6. The amount of ice in the Arctic at the end of summer 2005 was the smallest seen in 27 years!

Classmate Facts # 119 - Global Warming

1. While their mothers hunt for food walrus pups rest on sea ice. Now as ice melts, walrus pups are being stranded!

2. Grass has started to grow in Antarctica in areas that were covered by ice sheets and glaciers previously. Warmer temperatures are allowing grass to survive through winter for the first time!

3. In the Swiss alps, a rock twice as big as the Empire State Building collapsed on the canyon floor, nearly 700 feet below. The reason? Melting glaciers!

4. In 2002, a chunk of ice in Antarctica, larger than the state of Rhode Island, weakened by warm winds, collapsed into the sea!

5. Up to 72% of bird species in Australia and more than a third in Europe could go extinct due to global warming!

Classmate Facts # 118 - Global Warming

1. The entire species of Aldabra banded snail died out after warmer weather cut off rainfall in its habitat!

2. The pine beetle, which feeds on pine trees spread through an area as big as Ireland, and killed off entire Canadian forest within a year! The beetles have been present in these forests for thousands of years, but their population was checked by the winter cold!

3. If all of the ice in Antarctic melts, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 metres!

4. 22% of world’s carbon emissions is produced by 5% of the world population.

5. 1% of India’s land area for solar power could meet all its electricity needs.

6. Humans are pouring Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.

Classmate Facts # 117 - Global Warming

1. More than half of the 110 known Harlequin frog species have vanished due to climate change and global warming!

2. Globally, the 1990s were the warmest decade and the year 1998 was the warmest year recorded since 1861.

3. 14.6 million hectares of natural forest are lost each year – an area larger than England. This is a rate of 30 hectares every minute!

4. Because of rising temperatures, polar bears are waking up early from their winter slumber. When they are not able to hibernate, they become grouchy and increasingly aggressive.

Classmate Facts # 116 - Chemistry Facts

Happy Christmas to all our Readers!

1. Every atom of an element contains the same number of protons. For example, Carbon has 6 protons. Bu sometimes the number of neutrons in elements varies and this results in isotopes. Sometimes, Carbon atoms have 8 neutrons and we get Carbon 14, an Isotope of Carbon 12.

2. Fission occurs when one element breaks into several others, releasing energy in the process. When a neutron strikes Uranium it disintegrates into Krypton, Barium, a few neutrons and lots of energy. This energy is also used by nuclear reactors. In fusion, two elements fuse together to form another element and also release energy. Tritium and Deuterium fuse to form Helium and release enormous amounts of energy in the bargain! That's fission and fusion for you!

Classmate Facts # 115 - Global Warming

1. One person travelling by plane for one hour produces as much as carbon dioxide as an average Indian produces in one year!

2. The airplane meadows are disappearing due to higher temperatures. Bighorn sheep, mountain goats, and grizzly bears are becoming homeless!

3. The plastic bottles that you use today will break down completely in your great-great-great grandson’s time! (It takes about 450 years just for one plastic bottle to break down in the ground.)

4. Between 34 to 80 fish species have become extinct since the late 19^th century. 6 since 1970. The reason: Global Warming!

5. If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save about 250,000,000 trees each year!

6. In 1999, just eight nations were responsible for nearly 50% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Classmate Facts # 114 - Global Warming

1. If you lined up all the polystyrene foam cups made in just one day, they would circle the earth. Can you calculate the amount of waste generated in a year?

2. In Glacier National Park, the number of glaciers has dropped from 150 to 26. None will be left within the next 30 years!

3. Warmer winters mean skiers have more trouble finding places to train!

4. The present Carbon Dioxide concentration is the highest in the past 420,000 years and possibly in the past 20 million years.

5. The Mediterranean Sea is quickly turning into a stagnant sea affecting many of the sea’s plant and animal species!

6. Recycling a single plastic bottle can conserve enough energy to light a 60W bulb for up to 6 hours.

Classmate Facts # 113 - Global Warming

1. By eating less meat you can reduce the amount of methane that is sent into the atmosphere! Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas. Cows exhale methane with every breath because of their grassy diet and multiple stomachs.

2. At the rate our climate is changing, the world will soon be warmer than it has ever been in the last 10,000 years.

3. The amount of oxygen produced by an acre of trees per year equals the amount consumed by 18 people annually.

4. Do you know that if our earth gets any warmer, forty years from now we will only be able to grow half the almonds and walnuts that we are growing now! Wouldn’t we miss our crunchy, nutty ice-creams?

5. You can stop the release of 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide gas, if you cut down your garbage by 10%.

Classmate Facts # 112 - Global Warming

1. Global Warming means living underwater (don’t forget to carry your oxygen masks)! If Greenland’s entire ice were to melt, global sea levels would rise by 7.2 metres.

2. Between 34 and 80 fish species have become extinct since the late 19^th century, 6 since 1970. The reason: global warming!

3. Some indoor plants can remove 87% of the indoor toxic air in just 24 hours!

4. Warmer temperatures mean malaria carrying mosquitoes are now able to live in climates beyond the tropics, in areas they were not found earlier.

5. India is the 4^th Largest producer of Windpower in the world.

Classmate Facts # 111 - Global Warming

1. Four out of Five of the world’s beaches are eroding away! The culprit? Global Warming!

2. The world’s richest countries, with 20 per cent of the global population, use about 80 percent of the world’s resources.

3. In Tibet, the ice records indicate that the last 50 years have been the warmest in 1,000 years.

4. Around half of all carbon dioxide produced by humans, since the industrial revolution, has dissolved into the world’s oceans.

5. Ice/snow cover cools the earth by reflecting sunlight.

6. The famous Indian River, the Ganges is beginning to run dry. Because the glacier from which the river gets its water, is shrinking at the rate of 34 metres per year, twice as fast as two years ago. The glacier could disappear by 2030!

7. A quarter of all the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed in the past 20 years, by the soaring sea temperatures. In the Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific, more than three quarters coral reefs are thought to have died!

Classmate Facts # 110 - Global Warming

1. Igloos are no longer keeping the Eskimo warm! Rising temperatures in the Arctic are causing igloo walls to melt and re-freeze, thereby losing their heating properties!

2. Greenland is melting at a rate of 52 cubic miles per year. If Greenland’s entire 2.5 million cubic kilometers of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 metres, or more than 23 feet!

3. One hundred ton of ancient plant life is required to create just 3.8 litres of petrol.

4. Because of warming oceans sharks are coming closer to the shores.

Classmate Facts # 109 - Global Warming

1. For every one degree Celsius rise in temperature, Alaska’s boreal forests have been expanding northward by about 100 kms.

2. When shopping, use a reusable bag instead of a disposable one. Plastic bags pollute the air, groundwater and soil.

3. The major seal breeding grounds in the Bering Sea have seen fur-seal pup numbers fall by 50% between the 1950s and 1980s.

4. The extent of sea-ice in the Nordic seas have shrunk by 30% over the last 130 years.

5. Extreme weather conditions like heat waves and strong tropical storms will become more frequent, if temperatures continue to rise.

Classmate Facts # 108 - Global Warming

1. Humans send Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.

2. One 500 MW coal fired plant produces approximately 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

3. Shortage of food, have made polar bears attack their own kind.

4. The concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere has increased by 31% and 149% respectively above pre-industrial levels since 1750 – higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years!

Classmate Facts # 107 - Global Warming

1. Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo and computer when you’re not using them will stop the release of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

2. Do you know, if the temperature of our Earth rises, almost 7 million people in India will have to move their homes, because the sea levels will rise and cover some parts of Chennai and Mumbai.

3. Making cans from recycled aluminum uses 90% less energy than making cans from scratch. We can watch TV for 3 hours from the energy saved from recycling one can!

4. The glacial lake in Southern Chile was sighted in March, but two months later it had completely disappeared! The culprit: global warming.

5. Take shorter hot water showers. Heating water uses energy.

6. It’s true – the oceans are turning to acid! Oceans absorbs CO2 which, when mixed with water, turns to weak Carbonic Acid!

Classmate Facts # 106 - Global Warming

1. Warmer temperatures are killing eucalyptus trees, the main food source for Koalas. It is feared that because of this Koalas could become extinct in the next few decades!

2. Lousiana, a state in USA, about the size of Orissa, is losing an acre of its land, to the rising sea levels, every 24 minutes!

3. Between 1961 and 1997, the world's glaciers lost 890 cubic miles of ice.

4. Global Warming means bad news for baseball lovers! Ash tree from which all baseball bats are made, is in the danger of disappearing because of warmer temperatures.

5. As rising ocean temperatures are killing off their food supply, more number of gray whales are being washed up on beaches after starving to death.

Classmate Facts # 105 - Olympics Trivia

1. At the World Eskimo Indian Olympics, one notable game is "ear pulling". In this event, two people sit down facing each other with twine looped around each other's ear - right ear to right ear, left to left. The two then begin their own unique version of tug-of-war!

2. Q. What's common between Flamingo, Crane and Fishtail? A. They are all positions in the Olympic event Synchronized Swimming.

3. Emperor Nero was declared the winner of the chariot race in A.D. 67 even though there were no other entrants in the race and he didn't even finish!

Classmate Facts # 104 - Olympics Trivia

1. Tug-pf-War was an Olympic event from 1900 to 1920.

2. The Sydney 2000 Olympics was the only second Olympic Games to be held in the Southern Hemisphere.

3. In the ancient Olympics, the philosopher Plato was a double winner of the Pankriation (a form of ancient martial arts).

Classmate Facts # 103 - Olympics Trivia

1. For many years, the ancient Olympics Games consisted of only one race, a sprint of 192 metres called the "stadian." A second race of 400 metres was added 50 years later.

2. You will be surprised at some of the odd and even weird events that have been part of the Olympic Games at some time. Some of the discontinued events are tug-of-war, Live pigeon shooting, rope climbing and one-hand weightlifting!

3. For his victory in the long jump, in the 1900 Summer Olympics , Alvin Kraezlein was ounched in the face by his rival Myer Prinstein! (Prinstein was allegedly annoyed because he was prevented from competing in the final scheduled for Sunday.

Classmate Facts # 102 - Olympics Trivia

1. Which country's Olympic basketball team does Chicago Bulls star Toni Kukoc play for? A. Croatia's.

2. Olympic Swimmer Dawn Fraser startled the Japanese at Tokyo when she climbed the flagpole at the emperor's palace to talk the flag as a souvenir! (Later she was penalized for this misdemenour).

3. When Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn won his sixth Olympic medal at the 1920 Antwerp Games he was 72 years and 280 days old!

Classmate Facts # 101 - Olympics Trivia

1. In his boxing career of 62 fights Wilfred Benitz won 52 matches! He is the youngest person ever to have won a world boxing championship!

2. Gymnasiums were introduced in 900 B.C. and Greek athletes practised there to the accompaniment of music.

3. The last Olympic gold medals that were made entirely out of gold were awarded in 1912.

4. Most athletes at the 1900 Olympic Games held in Paris had a tough time! The discus and hammer throwers found that there wasn't enough room to throw, so their shots landed in the trees! No track was laid, races took place on an uneven field of grass littered with trees, also for the hurdle races, the hurdles were made out of broken telephone poles! The Olympics were organised that year because Paris was also hosting the World Exhibition at the same time. This caused extra pressure on their infrastructural resources.

Classmate Facts # 100 - Olympics Trivia

A 100 POSTS IN THIS SERIES!!!! WAY TO GO @ THE FACTORIUM!!

1. In 648 B.C. horses were first introduced into sports with the entrance of riders in the Olympic Games.

2. Sports command the biggest television audience, led by the Summer Olympics, World Cup (Soccer) and Formula One Racing.

3. The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896. There were 311 males but no female competitors.

Classmate Facts # 99 - That's Funny!

1. Queen Elizabeth II has a rubber duck that wears a crown. When this quirky fact became public knowledge, the sales of rubber ducks increased by 80%!

2. 85% of people can curl their tongue into a tube. The remaining 15% get annoyed that they can't.

3. Coca-Cola was invented by a pharmacist, and during his lifetime the soft drink had been used nly for medical purposes!

4. The call of a blue whale is louder than a jumbo-jet!

5. Koala bears and human beings have so similar looking fingerprints that they could be easily confused at a crime scene.

Classmate Facts # 98 - Tickle me, please!

1. Humans and chimpanzees share similar ticklish areas of the body, such as the armpits and belly!

2. Rats can live without water longer than camels can!

3. The inventor of coca-cola originally intended the soft drink to be a medicine available without prescription!

4. A cat's nose print is as unique as our fingerprint!

5. The United States and Russian militaries have trained dolphins to rescue lost divers!

Classmate Facts # 97 - Amazing Facts!

1. Crocodiles swallow stones to help them dive deeper.

2. The typewriter was invented by Hungarian Immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard.

3. In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

Classmate Facts # 96 - Amazing Facts!

1. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

2. Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with his ability to send any more spam.

3. A female mackeral (a fish) can lay 500,000 eggs at one time!

Classmate Facts # 95 - Believe it or Not

1. Paper was invented early in the second century by a Chinese Eunuch.

2. The first person to receive a singing telegram was singer Rudy Vallee, in honour of his 32nd birthday, July 28th 1933.

3. The longest one-word syllable in the English language is Screeched.

4. In Shakesphere's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes, the mattresses tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "Goodnight, Sleep Tight."

Classmate Facts # 94 - Think Practical

1. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

2. Beware! Your bed at home could have more than 6 billion dust mites.

3. Americans today consume 17.3 billion quarts of popcorn per year! The average American eats about 68 quarts!

Classmate Facts # 93 - Remember the Time

1. Did you know that the first living creature to travel to space was Laika, a Russian Dog, in 1957?

2. Alexander the Great discovered the banana in 327 B.C. when he conquered India.

3. Pumpkin was once recommended for removing freckles and curing snake bites!

Classmate Facts # 92 - Silence Please

1. Only human beings sleep on their backs.

2. In Alaska, it is legal to shoot bears. However, waking a sleeping bear for the purpose of taking a photograph is prohibited.

3. Table cloths were originally meant to be used as towels with which dinner guests could wipe their hands and faces after eating.

Classmate Facts # 91 - Get Crazy

1. The global average efficiency of vehicles is 5km to a litre, Japan and Western Europe manage an average of upto 11 km.

2. More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

3. An average human loses about 200 head hairs per day.

Classmate Facts # 90 - All For a Fact...

1. Wine is sold in tinted bottles because wine spoils when expose to light.

2. Water, water everywhere! Watermelons are 97% water, lettuce 97%, tomatoes 95%, carrots 90% and bread 30%.

3. There are about 150 million sites on the web, with more than one billion web pages.'

4. The thin fine line of cloud that forms behind an aircraft at high altitudes is called a contrail.

5. By age 65, an average American would have watched the equivalent of 9 years uninterrupted TV, viewing more than 20,000 TV commercials per year.

6. There are more than 7 million millionaires in the world.

Classmate Facts # 89 - Chattering Magpies?

1. Dieting? Carrots have zero fat content!

2. About 42,000 tennis balls are used at the Wimbledon championships, every year.

3. The very first bomg that the Allies dropped on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

4. In the 1950s some of the new words coined were aerospace, alphanumeric, brainstorming, car wash, cha-cha, digitize, do-it-yourself, ethno-history, in-house and meter maid!

5. The world's best selling musical instrument is the Harmonica.

6. Did you know that while Geese cackle, hippos bray and rhinos snort? and when its magpies that open their mouth, it's called 'Chatter!'

Classmate Facts # 88 - Gibber's and Coo's!!

1. Did you know that Elephants trumpet, Eagles scream and Apes gibber? The sounds made by Doves are Coos and Moans!

2. The word carat derives from the carob bean. Gem dealers balance their scales with carob beans because these beans all have the same weight!

3. Collective nouns anyone> A culture of bacteria, a quiver of cobras, a smack of jellyfish and a plague of locusts!

4. In 1913, the Russian airline became the first to introduce a toilet on board!

5. Botanically speaking, the banana is an herb and the tomato is a fruit!

6. In Seattle, a driver spends 59 hours per year in a traffic jam!

Classmate Facts # 87 - For the Record...

1. In september 1999 Dustin Phillips of US set a Guinness World Record by drinking a 400 ml (14-oz) bottle of tomato sauce through a straw in 33 seconds.

2. The world's largest industry is tourism affecting 240 million jobs.

3. Americans and Europeans spend over $ 17 billion per year on pet food!!

4. The word millionaire was first used by Benjamin Disraeli in his 1826 novel 'Vivian Grey'.

5. Tobacco is a $ 200 Billion industry, producing six trillion cigarettes a year - about 1,000 cigarettes for each person on the earth.

6. To make one kilo of honey, bees have to visit 4 million flowers, travelling a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.

Classmate Facts # 86 - Titanic Tidbits!

1. On board the Titanic were 13 couples, celebrating their Honeymoon!

2. The Titanic used up 14,000 gallons of drinking water and 825 tons of coal every day!

3. The price of the finest first class suite on board the titanic in 912 was US $ 4,550 for the voyage! A third class ticket was just US$ 30!

4. Did you know that cats were often brought aboard ships as a sign of good luck? They also kept rats at bay. There were no cats on the Titanic!

5.To put the magnificent ship together more than 3 million rivets were used!

6. The Titanic carried 7,500 pounds of bacon and ham, 2,200 pounds of coffee, 11,000 pounds of fresh soda, 16,000 lemons, 40 tons of potatoes and 20,000 bottles of beer!

Classmate Facts # 85 - That's Entertainment!

1. The 1981 film “Raiders of the Lost Ark” features over 7,500 boas, cobras and pythons and over 50 tarantulas!

2. Ever watched the Simpsons? Well.. the writers of the series have never revealed what state Springfield is in.

3. In Seoul, South Korea, a theater manager felt that the "Sound of Music" was too long, so he shortened it by cutting out all the songs!

4. In "Rear Window", a movie made by Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart plays a character wearing a leg cast from the waist down. In one scene, the cast switches legs, and in the other, the signature on the cast is missing.

5. A motion picture which is 2 hours long uses 10,800 feet of film. That's not including the movie previews and the commercials!

6. The creator of Muppets, Jim Henson first made Kermit from his mother's coat and two halves of a ping-pong ball!

Classmate Facts # 84 - Delightful Details!

1. France, a country of about 60 million people has 60 million tourists every year!

2. Animal sounds!! Dolphins click, Peacocks scream, Tortoises grunt and Hyenas laugh!

3. Water expands by about 9% as it freezes. Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.

4. The Chinese use about 45 billion chopsticks per year. 25 million trees are chopped down to make the sticks.

5. The world's oldest surviving boat is a simple 10-foot long Dugout dated to 7400 B.C. It was discovered in Pesse, Holland.

6. Groups of Animals? A float of crocodiles, a swarm of flies, a pride of lions and a crash of rhinos!

Classmate Facts # 83 - Simple Specifics

1. Chocolate is the number one food flavouring in the world, beating vanilla and banana by 3-to-1.

2. Nuclear ships are basically steamships and are driven by steam turbines. The nuclear reactor just develops the heat to boil the water.

3. Everyday an average human being spends about 1 hour on travel!

4. The PET bottle or the Polyethylene Terephthalate bottle was introduced in 1973.

5. Mel Blanc, who played the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.

6. The world's best selling book is the bible! It is also the most shop-lifted book in the world!

Classmate Facts # 82 - Splendid Science!

1. Today's Silicon chip, a quarter-inch square, has the same capacity as the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied an entire city block.

2. 98% of all the atoms in the human body are replaced every year!

3. In the production of paper, starch is used as a binder. This helps the right amount of ink to get in while printing!

4. Did you know that Uranus' orbital axis is tilted at 90 degrees?

5. Hot water is heavier than cold water!

6. A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber!

Classmate Facts # 81 - Plant Power

1. Six Feet! That's the size the leaves of the Victorian water lily can sometimes grow to!

2. 3,000 of the world's 15,000 species of orchids are found in Brazil!

3. Some trees in California are believed to be four-thousand years old or more. Trees continue to live and grow as long as the conditions are right!

4. The fastest growing plant is the bamboo. Some varieties can grow up to three feet in a day!

5. In a single year, you would get just about one pound of roasted ground coffee from one tree!

6. 200 years! Yes, that's what a Giant Sequoia could take to flower for the first time in its life!

Classmate Facts # 80 - Music Mania!

1. A Pink Floyd Album "Dark Side of the Moon" stayed on top 200 billboard charts for 741 weeks! That is 14 years!

2. A German, Geoff Graff wrote the song "When Irish Eyes are Smiling". Geoff had never been to Ireland in his life!

3. In the song Jingle Bells the horses's name is Bobtail!

4. 35 cents! That was the price of tickets for Frank Sinatra's first solo performance at the Paramount Theatre in New York City in 1942!

5. The copyright to the song "Happy Birthday" was bought over by Warner Communicaions for $ 28 Million!

Classmate Facts # 79 - 15th Century Did-You Knows...

1. 1495 - Leonardo Da Vinci begins painting The Last Supper!

2. 1450 - Johannes Gutenberg puts his printing machine to action. The first book he prints is the Bible.

3. 1429 - Not even one year old, Henry VI becomes King of England!

4. 1486 - The world's first known copyright is granted in Venice.

5. 1410 - The first English Christmas carol comes intobeing!

6. 1470 - The first printed poster is published by Peter Schoeffer! It's an advertisement for a bookseller!

Classmate Facts # 78 - It Happened in the 14th Century...

1. 1302 - Romeo and Juliet marry in Shakesphere's play! They are 14!

2. 1360 - The Leaning Tower of Pisa is finished!

3. 1314 - Soccer is banned in England because it is too violent!

4. 1380 - The Bible is translated into English by John Wycliffe! He works into the next year to finish his hand written manuscript!

5. 1350 - The Aztecs brew up the world's first drinking chocolate!

6. 1387 - Chaucer publishes his Canterbury Tales!

Classmate Facts # 77 - What's in a Myth?

1. Ancient myth has it that if you stole someone's shadow, they would turn into a vampire!

2. In Greek culture, brides carry a lump of sugar in their wedding glove. It's supposed to bring sweetness to their married life.

3. The US $ 1 Bill is considered unlucky by many a folk! It has 13 stars, 13 stripes, 13 steps, 13 arrows and an olive branch with 13 arrows on it!

4. You can't gift straw sandals in China. Associated with funerals, these footwear bring bad luck!

5. Medieval farmers looked to their pigs for signs of rain. If the pigs were to pick up sticks and walk around with them in their mouths, then the heavens would surely open up!

6. If a girl leaves her house early on Valentine's Day and the first person she meets is a man, then they will be married within three months! Now that's a myth hat needs no breaking!

Classmate Facts # 76 - Inventions Galore!

1. The toothbrush was invented in 1498. Do give a thought to what people were using before that!

2. Norwegian Inventor Johan Valler patented his paper clip in 1899. He had to travel to Germany to receive his patent because Norway had no Patent Laws!

3. In 1938, Teflon was discovered. Its use as a non-stick coating has bought cooking pleasure to many a housewife since!

4. The world's first VCR made in 1956 was the size of a piano!

5. The eyeglass was invented by the Chinese way back in time. In fact Marco Polo reported its use in 1275 A.D.

6. At the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, Richard Blechyden, an Englishman, found no takers for hot tea on a very hot day. So he served tea cold and Iced Tea was born!

Classmate Facts # 75 - In the 18th Century...

1. 1879 - Thomas Edison invents the incandescent lamp.

2. 1838 - The Morse Code is introduced by Samuel Morse.

3. 1853 - The first jeans are made by Levi Strauss for Califonia gold miners!

4. 1800 - World Population crosses one billion for the first time!

5. 1848 - The California Gold Rush begins!

6. 1815 - The first three verses of "Mary had a Little Lamb" are written by John Roulstone after his classmate, Mary Sawyer, who came to school followed by her pet lamb.

Classmate Facts # 74 - 200,000 Glasses of Milk?

1. The vocabulary of an average person consists of 5,000 to 6,000 words.

2. A chimpanzee can learn to recognise itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.

3. Unprosperousness, 16 letters long, is the longest word in which each letter occurs atleast twice.

4. The average person walks equivalent of twice around the world in a lifetime.

5. A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.

6. One of the world's rarest and most sought after collector coins, the 1933 Double Eagle, was sold at Sotheby's auction house in New York on 30th July 2002 for the record sum of $ 7.59 million.

Classmate Facts # 73 - Particulars & Details!

1. An adult porcupine has approximately 30,000 quills on its body which are replaced every year.

2. The longest words that are reversed images of each other are Stressed and Desserts.

3. Among all shapes with the same perimeter a circle has the largest area.

4. The earliest gold jewellery dates from the Sumer civilisation between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Southern Iraq around 3000 B.C.

5. The world's smallest mammal is the Bumblebee bat of Thailand, weighing less than a penny.

6. The general agreement seems to be that the origin of the word "Bonfire" was from bonefire, a fire in which bones were burnt.

Classmate Facts # 72 - The Rich and The Famous!

1. Charlie Chaplin was so popular during the 1920s and 1930s, he received over 73,000 letters in just 2 days during a visit to London.

2. The most superstitious American President was Roosevelt. He lever left home on a Friday and never sat at a table with 13 people.

3. The highest paid governor in the United States is the governor of California, he makes US $ 131,000 per year!

4. Julius Caesar definitely had one worry in his glorious lifetime - his receding hairline!

5. Andy Warhol, the acclaimed artist became famous for his painting of Campbell's soup cans!

6. Paul Cezanne, the great painter, had an admirer whom he coached! His pet parrot had been taught to say "Cezanne is a great Painter!"

Classmate Facts # 71 - Super Statistics

1. 200 babies are born across the world every minute!

2. 7 year olds have the highest ability to see ghosts!

3. Two out of every three people prefer to sleep on their sides!

4. Do you use a blue toothbrush? Well, more people use blue toothbrushes then red ones!

5. An UFO is reportedly sighted by someone or the other every three minutes!

6. The average human being has 100,000 hairs on the scalp!

Classmate Facts # 70 - The Lord God made then All...

1. Not everyone is ticklish! It just depends on how your brain interprets the signals!

2. People born in the month of January are believed to be steadfast and firm. Nothing can shake them once they have made up their minds!

3. Turtles have been on Mother Earth for more than 180 million years!

4. The Chameleon's tongue is as long as its body! It swiftly shoots out its tongue to capture insects for food!

5. All the data contained in a DNA would fill a 1000 volume encyclopaedia!

6. Crocodiles cannot tear their meat. They just hold their prey and spin around till the part twists off and then they swallow it!

Classmate Facts # 69 - Collector's Collectibles!

1. Van Gough rules! His portrait of Dr. Gachet was the most expensive painting ever sold. The masterpiece fetched US $ 82.5 Million!

2. Bill Gates bought Leonardo Da Vinci's notebook, called the Codex Hammer, in 1994 for US $ 30.8 Million.

3. US $ 946,000! That's what the Stradivari Kreutzer violin sold for in 1988.

4. The action comic with Serial No.1, published in June 1938, was sold in the 1990s for US $ 185,000.

5. A 1925 Patek Philippe watch, priced in 1925 at $ 15,000, was sold in the late 1990s for US $ 11 Million.

Classmate Facts # 68 - Can it be a Koala?

1. The Koala only eats Eucalyptus leaves and it eats so many leaves, it smells like them, too!

2. Did you know that Koalas aren't like Bears? They are related to kangaroos and wombats!

3. Across the continent of Australia, the fur of koalas has a different texture in different parts!

4. A new born koala is about three quarters of an inch long and weighs one fifth of an ounce!

5. Over 2 million Koalas were killed between 1908 and 1927! Today only about 8,000 survive!

6. Koalas communicate with each other with each other by making a noise like a snore and then a belch, known as a "bellow"!

Classmate Facts # 67 - Matter of Fact!

1. The word 'set' has more definitions than any other word in the English Language.

2. The longest one-syllable word in the English Language is "Screeched".

3. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is 'Uncopyrightable'.

4. There are only four words in the English Language which end in "dous" - tremendous, horrendous, stupendous and hazardous.

5. The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle!

6. Ever visited Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakit natahu? That's a hill in New Zealand with the longest place name!

Classmate Facts # 66 - Money, Money, Money!

1. Seen a millionaire? Well, there are over 7 million millionaires all across the globe!

2. If a million dollars were stacked in US $ 1 bills, the stack would be 110 m high!

3. Money sounds good but good sound makes money! Music sales all across the globe total more than US $ 40 Billion!

4. Countries around the world spend about US $ 80 Billion on education in a single year!

5. What makes money notes? Not paper, but mostly a blend of cotton and linen fibres!

6. Americans and Europeans spend US $ 17 Billion per year on food for their pets!

Classmate Facts # 65 - Priceless Art and Literature Facts!

1. Ian Fleming's James Bond debuted in the novel 'Casino Royale' in 1952.

2. The world's best-selling book is the Holy Bible.

3. Greek philosopher Aristotle write Meteorologica in 350 B.C. - it remained the standard textbook on weather for 2,000 years.

4. Barbara Cartland completed a novel every two weeks, publishing 723 novels.

5. In 1961, a Matisse masterpiece titled 'The Boat' hung upside-down in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, for 2 months. None of the 116,000 visitors who admired the painting noticed.

Classmate Facts # 64 - Seen and Heard it all?

1. The Gorilla weighs at least three or four times as much as a human being, but the human brain is at least ten times larger than a gorilla's!!

2. People born in the month of December are destined to be prosperous, come what may. At least more prosperous than the rest!

3. Candy was made and enjoyed in ancient Egypt over 4,000 years ago! Honey, figs and dates were the chief sweeteners!

4. The monkey has two brains, one to control its body, the other to control its tail!

5. The trumpets used by the Lamas in Bhutan in certain religious services are made from human thigh bones.

Classmate Facts # 63 - Isn't it Amazing...

1. Each time a pole vaulter lands, he absorbs up to 20,000 pounds of pressure per square inch on the joints of his tubular thighbones!

2. The world's largest flower is the Rafflesia. A single bloom can measure 3 feet across. They have no stems or leaves and are parasites on other plants.

3. If all the blood vessels in the body were straightened out and placed end-to-nd, they would be 100,000 miles long!'

4. The Chinese guarded the secret of making silk for 3,000 years. Anyone found revealing the truth would be put to death as a traitor!

5. Piranhas are Fish known for their ferocity. Did you know that the South American natives use their sharp teeth as arrowheads?

The Month ends on a note!

Ahoy there readers!

Enjoying the facts that you read behind the classmate notebooks? Well, there are a more to come!!! We will be continuing the Classmate Facts series till the new year and beyond!! The month of October saw another 200 facts!!!! The Factorium has surely kept up with its promise of "A Fact a Day"!

Some of the facts posted under the series may not be factually correct, and their authenticity is doubted, but I am still posting them so as to not modify the actual Classmate page. Again, I want this series to be one of the biggest projects that the Factorium has undertaken after the FactBook... that of putting all the classmate facts online @ a page a day!!

With October done, let us head on to the lovely winter month of November!

Classmate Facts # 62 - Veggie Facts!

1. The Mexican jumping bean is not a bean! It is actually a thin shelled section of a seed capsule containing larva of a small grey moth called the Jumping Bean moth!

2. If you dream of a cucumber in a night, a new romance will blossom soon in your life!

3. Did you know that some people have the fear of Vegetables! And it is called Lahnaphobia!

4. An average ear of corn has 800 kernels arranged in sixteen rows!

5. In ancient Greece and Rome, people put parsley on the graves of their dead. The parsley was supposed to ward off the devil!

6. The Hindus consider the Basil Plant or "Tulsi" as sacred. The plant is worshipped as Lord Vishnu's wife!

Classmate Facts # 61 - The Many Wonders of the Universe!!

1. Ever seen water spin? Hurricanes, Tornadoes and bigger bodies of water always go clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. This is due to the rotation of the Earth.

2. Ever wondered how big the sun is? Well... only about 330,330 times larger than the earth.

3. The radius of the Earth at the North Pole is 44 mm longer than at the South Pole!

4. All the planets in the solar system are named after gods, except the one we live on, Earth! Did you know that there is zero gravity at the centre of the earth?

5. Ever experienced a Solar Eclipse? Be sure to wear something warm! During a total solar eclipse the temperature can drop by 6 degrees celcius.

6. On Uranus, summer lasts for 21 years. And so does Winter!

Classmate Facts # 60 - The times that were...

1. 105 A.D. - Paper as we know it is invented by a Chinese government servent named Ts'ai Lun. The first paper is made from hump waste, mulberry fibres, rags and other materials.

2. 850 A.D. - Toilet Paper is first used in China.

3. 71 A.D. - The construction of the Colosseum begins in Rome.

4. 43 A.D. - The first London bridge is built by the Romans. It is a temporary pontoon bridge!

5. 542 A.D. - The great plague of Europe. It would last until 593, killing half the population of Europe.

6. 440 A.D. - December 25th begins to be celebrated as the birthdate of Jesus Christ!

7. 748 A.D. - First printed newspaper appears in Peking, China.

Classmate Facts # 59 - Fun Facts!

1. 6 years is what it took Leo Tolstoy to write "War & Peace".

2. In Britain's House of Commons, the government and the opposition sides of the house are separated by two red lines. The distance between the lines is called two swords' lengths!

3. The new Boeing 767 aircraft is made from 3.1 million parts from 800 different suppliers around the world!

4. About 50 billion dollars worth of Monopoly money is printed by Parker Brothers in one year!

5. The wire in a standard paper clip is 1 millimeter in diameter!

6. All citizens officially becomes an year older on New Year's Day, regardless of their birthdays, in Bhutan!

Classmate Facts # 58 - Tiger Trivia

1. A Buddhist Temple in Western Thailand called the 'Tiger Temple' keeps numerous animals, including several tigers that can be petted by visitors!

2. Tigers can spend up to eighteen hours sleeping!

3. Tigers have eyes that are the brightest of any other animal in the world.

4. Tigers will occasionally eat vegetarian for dietary fiber!

5. The Tungusic people (people of Siberia and northern China who speak Tungusic Languages) often referred to the Siberian Tiger as "Grandfather" or "Old Man".

Classmate Facts # 57 - A Tiger's Trick?

1. Tigers have a white spot on the back of both ears, which look like eyes. These spots are called "eye spots" trick predators into thinking that the tiger is looking at them, even when it is not!

2. Pug marks can help to judge a tiger's gender and age - even its weight and mood!

3. In his autobiography 'Jahangir Nama' Mughal Emperor Jahangir mentioned that captive tigers roamed his palace grounds with chains!

4. Tigers can run with three legs in the air simultaneously!

5. The Bengal Tiger's roar can be heard from up to 3 km away.

Classmate Facts # 56 - Food, Glorious Food!

1. The first ice-cream soda was sold in 1874 in the US.

2. There are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.

3. Did you know that an onion, apple and potato all have the same taste? The differences in flavour are caused by their smell!

4. China uses 45 billion chopsticks per year. 25 million trees are chopped down to make the sticks!

5. The Chinese first discovered tea. Actually it was a Chinese Emperor who first tasted the brew in 2737 B.C. when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.