I Didn't Know Zat! # 1

Welcome to this brand new series titled 'I Didn't Know Zat'. In this series, 5 facts will be displayed everyday. These facts have been selected such that they will help budding quizzers, displaying facts that are suited for trivia quizzes. Let us get this epic series started off, after the success of the Classmate Facts series, which featured 135 posts spanning 4 and a half months!

As a measure to make the blog more attractive, I will make an attempt to add more visuals along with the dry facts! The "I Didn't Know Zat!" series will continue till April 1.

1. Che Guevera's real name was EErnesto Rafael Guevara Lynch De La Serna.

2. The price of every DVD disc includes a small royalty to Philips, which developed the format.

3. CS Lewis's full name is Clive Staples Lewis.

4. The King of Pop holds a patent! US patent No. 5,255,452 covering a "system for allowing a shoe wearer to lean forwardly beyond his center of gravity by virtue of wearing a specially designed pair of shoes" was granted in 1993 to Michael L. Bush, Dennis Tompkins and the king of pop - Michael J. Jackson.

5. The meaning of Nintendo in Japanese is "Leave luck to heaven."

Classmate Facts # 135 - Did you Know?

The last in the series of Classmate Facts. Do write to me on thefactorium@gmail .com about the series and your views on it. Enjoy!

1. How far does regular dust blow in the wind? A. A 1999 study showed that African dust finds its way to Florida and can help push parts of the state over the prescribed air quality limit for particulate matter set by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency. The dust is kicked up by high winds in North Africa and carried as high as 20,000 feet (6,100 metres), where it is caught up in the trade winds and carried across the sea. Dust from China makes its way to North America too.

2. Where is the world’s highest waterfall? A. The water of Angel falls in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet (979 metres).

3. What two great American cities are destined to merge? A. The San Andreas fault, which runs north-south, is slipping at the rate of about 2 inches (5 centimetres) per year, causing Los Angeles to move towards San Francisco. Scientists forecast that LA will be a suburb of the City by the Bay in about 15 million years.

Classmate Facts # 134 - Did you Know?

1. Can Rocks float? A. In a volcanic eruption, the violent separation of gas from lava produces a “frothy” rock called pumice, loaded with gas bubbles. Some of it can float, geologists say.

2. Can Rocks grow? A. Yes, but observing the process is less interesting than watching paint dry. Rocks called iron-manganese crusts grow on mountains under the sea. The crusts precipitate material slowly from seawater, growing about 1 millimeter every million years. Your fingernails grow about the same amount every two weeks.

3. How much space dust falls to Earth each year? A. Estimates vary, but the USGS says that at least 1,000 million grams or roughly 1,000 tons of material enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earth’s surface. One group of scientists claims microbes rain down from space, too, and that extraterrestrial organisms are responsible for flu epidemics. There’s been no proof of this.

Classmate Facts # 133 - Did you Know?

1. What is the hottest place on Earth? A. Count one wrong if you guessed Death Valley in California. True enough on many days. But Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 degree Celsius) on Sept. 13 1922, the hottest ever measured. In Death Valley, it got up to 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.

2. And the Coldest place around here? A. Far and Away, the coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 degrees Fahrenheit (-89 degree Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

3. What makes thunder? A. If you thought, “Lightning”, then hats off to you. The air around a lightning bolt is superheated to about five times the temperature of the Sun. This sudden heating causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound, which compresses the air and forms a shock wave; we hear it as thunder.

Classmate Facts # 132 - Believe Or Not!

1. Bees visit over 2000 flowers and fly over 55,000 miles to produce just 1 lb. of honey.

2. Four out of every ten people who come to a party in your home will look in your bathroom cabinet.

3. The taboo against whistling backstage comes from the pre-electricity era when a whistle was the signal for the curtains and the scenery to drop. An unexpected whistle could cause an unexpected scene change!

Classmate Facts # 131 - Believe Or Not!

1. The distance between cities are actually the distance between city halls. When you see a sign “Sheffield – 40 miles” it means it is 40 miles to the city hall of that city sign (and I expect town halls too!!)

2. The name Canada is believed to come from the Iroquois Indian word “Kanata”, meaning “village” or “community”. The word Canada was first used in a 1534 text written by Jacques Cartier describing the Indian Village of Stadacona.

3. The longest non-medical word in the English language is floccipausinihilipilification (29 letters), which means “The act of estimating as worthless.”

4. Dominica, Mexico, Zambia, Kiribati, Fiji and Egypt all have birds on their flags.

Classmate Facts # 130 - Believe Or Not!

1. The word “Trivia” comes from the Latin “Trivium”, which is the place where three roads meet. People would gather and talk about all sorts of matters. Also in medieval universities, the trivium comprised the three subjects taught first – Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, and the Roman Goddess, Trivia, is the goddess of crossroads, witchcraft and harvest moon.

2. In 1935, the police in Atlantic City, New Jersey, arrested 42 men on the beach. They were cracking down on topless bathing suits wore by men.

3. During lunch breaks in Carlsbad, New Mexico, no couple should engage in an ‘act’ while parked in their vehicle, unless their car has curtains.