Septermbarr MMX

WHOA!!! Another month down!

The first batch of facts from the classmate notebooks is done with. 2 more to go!! After a breif hiccup, the series went well and the visits to the blog zoomed up too!!! I thank Google for providing the amazing stats bar that enables the blogger to view his blog stats!! Amazing!!

As promised, I am working on the different pages for the blog, which are to come. These may include Amateur Astronomy, Quizzing, My Universe and Solving the Rubix Cube!!! So stay tuned and visit the factorium, for there are always Amaing, Interesting and Elusive facts round the click of your mouseonly @ The Factorium!!

That's all from September, lets arrr into October!!!

@@J

Classmate Facts # 30 - Facts are Fun!

1. It takes painters 50 tons of dark brown paint to paint the Eiffel tower in France every seven years. 50 tons is equal to the weight of eight elephants!

2. The Brachiosauras dinosaur weighed as much as 12 elephants.

3. Try as you might, you just cannot lick your elbows. Try it!!

4. Forget earbuds, did you know that giraffes clean their ears with their tongues that are 21 inches long.

Classmate Facts # 29 - Sport Animals

1. Did you know that a joey - a kangaroo baby is as small as a coffee bean?

2. A red kangaroo can jump more than 6 metres in one hop.

3. The soccer referee's whistle that you see today was introduced only in 1878. Until then, he had to wave a handkerchief to communicate with the players.

Classmate Facts # 28 - Did you Know?

1. Apartheid, Atom Bomb, Baby Sit, Barf, Bazooka, Cheeseburger, Crash-Land, Flying Saucer, Gobbledygook - Just some of the words that originated in the 1940s.

2. The first novel sold through a vending machine - At the Paris Metro - Was Murder on the Orient Express.

3. About 30% of Christmas presents bought all over the world are brought using credit cards.

4. Golf is the only sport that has been played on the moon - On 6 February 1971 Alan Shepard hit a golf ball.

5. The largest web bookshop, Amazon.com, stores 2.5 million books.

6. The Nasdaq stock exchange was totally disabled one day in December 1987 when a squirrel burrowed through a telephone line.

Classmate Facts # 27 - Exciting Essentials

1. Hummingbirds are the only birds that can also fly backwards.

2. Cabbaged and Fabaceae, each 8 letters long, are the longest words that can be played on a musical instrument.

3. In 1990, the word 'recession' appeared in 1,583 articles in the Wall Street Journal.

4. Didaskaleinophobia is the fear of going to school.

5. 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 which it originated.

Classmate Facts # 26 - Did You Know?

1. A Giraffe's tongue is 21 inches long and the animal can use it to clean its ears!

2. Of the seven wonders of the ancient world, only the pyramids still stand today. All the rest have been either completely destroyed or stand in ruins!

3. The jackrabbit can broad jump up to 15 feet, when racing at top speed!

4. The first bar code was used on Wrigley's chewing gum!

5. A single drop of water is made up of 1,700,009,000,000,000 molecules!

6. The island of Manhattan was sold by the Red Indians to the Dutch Settlers for a princely sum of US$24!

Classmate Facts # 25 - Crime Never Pays...

1. A philatelist from Paris, Gaston Leroux murdered a man called Hector Giroux for a Hawaiian stamp of 1851 with a face value of 2 cents!

2. 10% of the United States' national income comes from organised crime!

3. Airport Security personnel find about 6 weapons a day searching passengers travelling in the United States!

4. A man suspected of robbing a jewellery store in Belgium denied having committed the crime because he said that he was breaking into a school at the same time!

5. A Texan convicted of Robbery offered to pay US$9600 in damages rather than serve a two-year prison sentence. His check bounced and he got 10 years in jail!

Classmate Facts # 24 - Get This!

1. The maximum number of solar eclipses (Partial, Annual and Total) is 5 per year.

2. The lighthouse with the most doors was an old roman lighthouse known as the Tour D'Orde and built at Boulogne in France - it had 96!

3. The animal with the Largest brain in proportion to its size is the Ant!

4. Hans Christian Anderson, creator of fairy tales, was Word-Blind. He never learned to spell correctly!

5. It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.

6. An average person is born with 300 bones, which fuse to become 206 in adults.

Classmate Facts # 23 - Wonderful, Amazing History!

1. Coding of messages isn't as modern as we think! Julius Caesar used to code his communication. The code was called the Caesar Cipher!

2. The world's first parachute jump from an airplane was made by Captain Berry at St. Louis, Missouri in 1912.

3. The Episcopal Palace of King Philip II of Spain of the 16th Century had 1,200 doors!

4. Heard of Nessie? The legendary monster who is supposed to have inhabited the Loch Ness? Well... the first written account of the Loch Ness Monster was made in 565 A.D.

5. Persians and Indians were using playing cards as far back as the 12th Century. Only their packs had 48 cards instead of 52!

Classmate Facts # 22 - Did you Know this about your Body...

1. The length from the wrist to the elbow is same as the length of the foot.

2. The heart beats 101,000 times a day. During an average lifetime it will beat about 3 billion times and pump about 400 million litres of blood!

3. On an average a bout of hiccup lasts 5 minutes!

4. An average person will drink about 75,000 litres of water in his or her lifetime.

5. On an average, a human being breathes 23,000 times a day.

6. 13% of the people on earth are left-handed.

Classmate Facts # 21 - Music, Anyone?

1. Elvis "The King" Presley? Rings a bell? Well, "The King" collected police badges from every city where he performed.

2. Heard of Artistes winning gold discs and platinum discs? To win a gold disc, an album needs to sell 100,000 copies in Britain and 500,000 copies in the United States!

3. How old is the compact disc? Fondly called the CD by music enthusiasts all over the world, the compact disc was developed by Phillips and Sony in 1980.

4. The world's best selling music instrument is the Harmonica!

5. Been to the disco? The world's largest discotheque was held at the Buffalo Convention Centre, New York in 1979. 13,000 people danced to create Disco history!

Classmate Facts # 20 - History Hysteria

1. Seat Belts were installed in early airplanes only after several pilots fell to their death while flying upside down!

2. Each king in the deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades - King David; Clubs - Alexander the Great; Hearts - Charlemagne and Diamonds - Julius Caesar!

3. The pharaohs of Egypt wore garments made with thin threads of beaten gold.

4. The first person to use the elevator was Louis XV! n 1743 his "flying chair" carried him between the floors of the Versailles Palace!

5. In the last 70 days of his life, Vincent Van Gogh painted a picture a day!

6. In 1739, Britain went to war against Spain because a Spanish officer sliced off the ear of a British captain named Robert Jenkins!

Classmate Facts # 19 - How About Some Geography

1. Pacific Ocean contains 46% of the world's water! The Atlantic has 23.9%; the Indian 20.3% and the Arctic 3.7%.

2. The only country whose name begins with an "A" but doesn't end with an "A" is Afghanistan.

3. The only continent which does not have land areas below sea level is Antarctica.

4. At 840,000 square miles, Greenland is the largest island in the world. In comparison Iceland is only 39,800 square miles.

5. The most populated country in the world, China has only about 200 family names in all!

6. Did you know that the surface area of Earth is 197,000,000 square miles?

Classmate Facts # 18 - Did You Know?

1. The Sun, the Moon, the planets and the stars, all rise in the east and set in the west. And that's because the Earth spins --- towards the east. The lunar month is the 29.53 days it takes to go from one new moon to the next.

2. Sometimes as the Earth orbits the sun, it comes between the sun and the moon. When this happens, the earth throws a dark shadow across the moon. This is known ad a lunar eclipse.

3. Sometimes the Moon passes between the earth and the sun. The moon blocks the light of the sun and a shadow of the moon is cast on the earth's surface. This is an eclipse of the sun or solar eclipse.

Classmate Facts # 17 - Did You Know?

1. A 'Falling star' or a 'Shooting star' has nothing at all to do with a star! These amazing streaks of light you can sometimes see in the night sky, are caused by tiny bits of dust and rock called meteoroids falling into the Earth's atmosphere and burning up.

2. The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1781.

3. The planet Neptune was discovered by John Couch Adams in 1846.

4. The planet Pluto was discovered by Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.

5. Only 3 of the 9 planets in our solar system have official 'discoverers' because all of the other planets are easily seen by the unaided human eye.

6. A Light Year is a unit of distance. It is the distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometres (km) each second. So in one year, it can travel 9,500,000,000,000 kilometres.

Classmate Facts # 16 - Can Hummingbirds Walk?

1. The oldest lighthouse in the UK still stands in the grounds of the Dover Castle. The Roman Emperor Caligula ordered the tower to be built there in AD 90.

2. During the Solar Eclipse, the eclipse shadows travel at 1,100 miles per hour at the equator and up to 5,000 miles per hour near the poles.

3. Did you know that whales can't swim backwards, tarantulas can't spin webs, crocodiles can't chew and hummingbirds can't walk?

4. Ants make up 1/10 of the total world animal tissue!!

5. The world's highest cricket ground is in Chail, Himachal Pradesh. Built in 1893 after levelling a hilltop, this cricket pitch is 2444 metres above sea level.

6. You have to be atleast 58.5 inches to be an astronaut.

Classmate Facts # 15 - Entertainment Anyone

1. The world's first TV commercial was a 20 second ad for a Bulova clock, broadcast by WNBT, New York!

2. Walt Disney came up with the idea for an animated mouse in 1927. He named it Mortimer Mouse. His wife Lilian convinced him to change the name to Mickey Mouse.

3. The voice of Popeye the Sailor was Jack Mercer for 45 years.

4. There are almost a billion TV sets in the world, today!

Classmate Facts # 14 - Birds: Citius, Altius and Fortius!

1. The deepest diving bird in the world is the Emperor Penguin. Emperor Penguins have been recorded underwater at depths of more than 250 metres.

2. The highest flying bird is the bar-headed goose. Some flocks fly over the world's highest mountain range, the Himalayas in Asia, at an altitude of more than 7,500 metres.

3. The largest bird is the male African Ostrich. It can grow nearly 2.5 metres tall and weigh as much as 140 kilograms.

4. The smallest bird is the bee hummingbird. When fully grown, it measures about 5 centimetres long and weighs about 3 grams.

5. The greatest travelling bird is the Arctic Tern. these terns migrate farther than any other bird, travelling about 18,000 kilometres each way between their breeding grounds in the Arctic and winter homes in the Antarctic.

6. The fastest diving bird is the Peregrine Falcon. The bird has broad, powerful wings and a streamlined body that enables it to swoop down on its prey at the speed of more than 300 kilometres per hour.

Classmate Facts # 13 - Space A-Z

1. Rendezvous is a space manoeuvre in which one spacecraft meets another.

2. Stage is a section of a rocket having its own engine.

3. Microgravity is when a spacecraft's contents and crew float freely, without the feeling of weight that gravity normally produces.

4. Launch Window is the time period when a spacecraft's target - such as a planet or satellite - is properly lined up with the launch point, creating an efficient flight path.

5. Orbital Velocity is the minimum velocity needed to maintain an orbit around the earth or some other body.

6. Payload is the cargo carried into space aboard a spacecraft, including passengers and instruments.

Classmate Facts # 12 - Rare Collectibles

1. The placement of a donkey's eyes on its head enables it to see all four feet at all times!!

2. Warner communications paid $ 28 million for the copyright to the song "Happy Birthday"!

3. The sound you hear when people crack their knuckles is actually the sound of Nitrogen Gas bubbles bursting.

4. It takes only 8 minutes for the sunlight to travel from the sun to the earth.

5. If you were at 0 degree Latitude and 0 degree longitude, you would be standing in the Atlantic Ocean.

6. If you walked 80 Kilometers, your legs would get the same amount of exercise that your eyes get in a day!

Classmate Facts # 11 - Run! A Cockroach!!

1. The cockroach is the fastest animal on 6 legs, covering a meter a second. If it were human size, it could run at speeds of 300 mph.

2. The horseshoe crab has blue blood, which can be used to kill bacteria.

3. If all the gold in the ocean were mined, each person on Earth would get about 20 kgs of gold each.

4. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

5. When glass breaks, it showers towards and not away from the force that broke it.

6. A "hairbreadth away" is 1/48th of an inch. A "jiffy" is actually a proper time unit for 1/100th of a second!

Classmate Facts # 10 - Delightful Data!!

1. There are more than 40000 characters in the Chinese script.

2. In the US, more babies are born in July than in any other month.

3. Australia's box jellyfish have toxins more potent than the venom in cobras!

4. Butterflies taste with their feet.

5. A dragonfly is also known as "Devil's Darning needle", "Horse Stinger" and "Devil's steelyard."

6. In the deck of cards the King of Hearts is the only king without a mustache.

Classmate Facts # 9 - Of Bricks and Bees

1. The Inventor of the Light Bulb - Thomas Edison was afraid of the dark!

2. The Burramundy, a fish, grows up as a male, but after 2 years or so, turns into a female to breed!

3. A bee could travel 4 million miles at 7 mph on the energy it would obtain from 1 Gallon of Nectar.

4. There are approximately 10 million bricks in the Empire State Building!

5. If a single pair of flies were to breed and all the offspring survived, there would be 190,000,000,000,000,000,000 flies in 4 months.

6. Baby elephants can drink over 80 litres of milk a day.

Classmate Facts # 8 - Universe Facts

1. Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

2. Snails have nearly 25000 teeth.

3. Walt Disney was afraid of mice.

Classmate Facts # 7 - Field of View

1. The Average person's field of vision encompasses a 200 degree wide angle.

2. Apples wake you up faster than coffee in the morning.

3. Today, American dentists use nearly 13 tons of gold each year for crowns, bridges, inlays and dentures.

Classmate Facts # 6 - 007!

1. Did you know that the very first bomb dropped by the Allies in Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin zoo?

2. The average adult male can bench press 88 percent of his body weight, having 70 to 80 pounds of muscle.

3. Tongue Prints are as unique as fingerprints.

Classmate Facts # 5 - It's Not Funny

1. The most popular first name in the world is Mohammed.

2. A few years back, a Chinese soap hit it big with consumers in Asia. The ads claimed that the user would lose weight with defat seaweed scented soap. Simply by washing with it. The soap in violation of the Japanese Pharmaceutical Affairs Law was banned.

3. The Japanese way of Bowing carries different meanings at different angles, 15 degree is a common salutation, a bit more formal, it means "Good Morning", 30 degree - is a respectful bow to indicate appreciation for a kind gesture, 45 degree - is used to convey deep respect or an apology.

Classmate Facts # 4 - The Fact Is...

1. Due to gravity on Earth, it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15000 metres!

2. The world's smallest country is Vatican City, with an area of 0.44 sq.km!

3. Before the year 1000 A.D., the word 'she' did not exist in the English language!

4. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, he put his left foot down first!

5. The first city in the world to have a population of one million was London! Today the most populated city is Tokyo with 30 Million residents!

6. The word malaria comes from the words mal and aria, meaning bad air! This dates back from the days when people thought that all disease was caused by bad or unclean air!

Classmate Facts # 3 - Mountains of Fire!

1. The Pacific Ocean has what is called a 'Ring of Fire'! With 600-700 active volcanoes around it! In fact the volcanoes form not one, but several rings!

2. The world's first recorded volcanic eruption was not at Pompeii. Archaeologists have found a painting of a volcano erupting in Ancient Turkey. It is believed that this village was lived in around 6200 B.C.

3. There are over 1500 active volcanoes in the world today!

4. Volcanoes get their name from the Roman god of fire, Vulcan!

5. The world's most active volcano is the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii. It has been in near-continuous eruption since 1983!

Classmate Facts # 2 - Super Statistics

1. There are more than 2700 languages spoken in the world.

2. The Tomato is the world's popular fruit, selling more than bananas and oranges.

3. The world's average egg consumption per capita is 230.

4. The oldest encyclopaedia in the world in existence was written in the 1st century by Pliny the Elder. His encyclopaedia, called Natural History contains 37 volumes.

5. The world's first stone lighthouse was lit by only 24 candles!

6. About 800 movies are released annually in India, about twice the output of Hollywood!

Classmate Facts # 1 - The Whole Story

1. Three quarters of Fish caught all through the world are eaten - the rest are used to make things like glue, soap, margarine and fertiliser.

2. The word 'chincherinchee' is the only known word that has one letter occurring once, two letters occurring twice and three letters occurring thrice.

3. The 12 disciples of Jesus were not allowed to carry food, money or extra clothing.

4. In 1909, while waiting for King Edward VII who was getting dressed, a German band played the British anthem 17 times.

5. The world's earliest known plank built ship, made from cedar and sycamore wood dating to 2600 BC was discovered next to the Great Pyramid in 1952.

6. The female lion does more than 90% of the hunting while the male lion simply prefers to rest.