interesting facts about space

* Any free-moving liquid in outer space will form itself into a sphere, because of its surface tension.
* Mercury, Venus, earth and Mars are called the inner planets as they are closest to the sun!
* December 21st 1968, was the first time that humans truly left Earth, when Apollo 8 became the first manned space vehicle to leave Earth orbit and to orbit the Moon.
* Olympus Mons, a volcano found on Mars, is the largest volcano found in solar system. It is 370 miles (595 km) across and rises 15 miles (24 km).
* We know more about space than we do about our deep oceans!
* The space age began on the 4th October 1957.
* If you attempted to count all the stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second it would take around 3,000 years to count them all.
* The one and only satellite that Britain has launched was called Black Arrow.
* The odds of being killed by space debris - 1 in 5 billion.
* The Earth's revolution time increases .0001 seconds annually.
* Driving at 75 miles (121 km) per hour, it would take 258 days to drive around one of Saturn's rings.
* Astronaut Neil Armstrong (the first man on the moon) first stepped on the moon with his left foot.
* "Moon" was Buzz Aldrin's (second man on the moon) mother's maiden name.
* The first conventional use for rockets was rocket mail and catching whales and deer.
* The only married couple to fly together in space were Jan Davis and Mark Lee, who flew aboard the Endeavour space shuttle from September 12-20, 1992.
* The first millennium, 1 - 1000 AD, consisted of 365,250 days. Our current millennium, 1001 - 2000 AD, will consist of 365,237 days. The third millennium, 2001 - 3000 AD, will consist of 365,242 days. The reason for the differences is the calendar system that was in use during the milleniums.
* If you shouted in space even if someone was right next to you they wouldn't be able to hear you.
* Feb 1865 and Feb 1999 are the only months in recorded history not to have a full moon.
* The first man-made satellite in space was called sputnik.
* Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
* Just 20 seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
* The first woman in space was a Russian called Valentina Tereshkova.
* One Day on the planet Pluto is about the length of a week on Earth.

interesting facts about plants

# An African bugleweed synthesises in its tissues a substance similar to the hormone that controls the development of caterpillars. If a caterpillar is persuaded, experimentally, to ingest that substance, then when it turns into a butterfly it will develop two heads and die. -David Attenborough, The Private Life of Plants, p70

# 84% of a raw apple and 96% of a raw cucumber is water. Source of this fact and the next fourteen.

# A notch in a tree will remain the same distance from the ground as the tree grows.

# A pineapple is a berry.

# Arrowroot, an antidote for poisoned arrows, is used as a thickener in cooking (so if you ever get shot with a poison arrow, do not go to a doctor, look in your kitchen cabinet.

# Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred grams.

# Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew cannabis sativa (marijuana) on their plantations.

# In the Netherlands, in 1634, a collector paid 1,000 pounds of cheese, four oxen, eight pigs, 12 sheep, a bed, and a suit of clothes for a single bulb of the Viceroy tulip.

# No species of wild plant produces a flower or blossom that is absolutely black, and so far, none has been developed artificially.
# Nutmeg is extremely poisonous if injected intravenously.

# Peanuts are beans.

# Quinine, one of the most important drugs known to man, is obtained from the dried bark of an evergreen tree native to South America.

# The California redwood - coast redwood and giant sequoia - are the tallest and largest living organism in the world.

# The largest single flower is the Rafflesia or "corpse flower". They are generally 3 feet in diameter with the record being 42 inches.

# The oldest living thing in existence is not a giant redwood, but a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains of California, dated to be aged 4,600 years old.

# The rose family of plants, in addition to flowers, gives us apples, pears, plums, cherries, almonds, peaches and apricots.

# Asparagus is a member of the lily family, which also includes onions, leeks, and garlic. Source of this fact and the next three.

# The bright orange color of carrots tell you they are an excellent source of Vitamin A which is important for good eyesight, especially at night. Vitamin A helps your body fight infection, and keeps your skin and hair healthy.

# Onions contain a mild antibiotic that fights infections, soothes burns, tames bee stings and relieves the itch of athletes foot.

# One bushel of corn will sweeten more than 400 cans of pop.

interesting facts about birds

* The oldest bird was known as an Archaeopteryx and lived about 150 million years ago. It was the size of a raven, was covered with feathers, and had wings.
* The most yolks ever found in a single chicken's egg is nine.
* An ostrich egg needs to be boiled for 2 hours to get a hard-boiled egg.
* The Royal Albatross' eggs take 79 days to hatch.
* The egg of the hummingbird is the world's smallest bird's egg; the egg of the ostrich, the world's largest.
* The now-extinct elephant bird of Madagascar laid an egg that weighed 27 pounds.
* Precocial birds like chickens, ostriches, ducks, and seagulls hatch ready to move around. They come from eggs with bigger yolks than altricial birds like owls, woodpeckers, and most small songbirds that need a lot of care from parents in order to survive.
* Air sacs may make up 1/5 of the body volume of a bird.
* A bird's normal body temperature is usually 7-8 degrees hotter than a human's. Up to three-quarters of the air a bird breathes is used just for cooling down since they are unable to sweat.
* A bird's heart beats 400 times per minute while resting and up to 1000 beats per minute while flying.
* The world's only wingless bird is the kiwi of New Zealand.
* Migrating ducks and geese often fly in V-shape formations. Each bird flies in the upwash of its neighbor's beating wings and this extra bit of supporting wind increases lift, thereby saving energy.
* Pigeons can reach speeds up to 100 mph.
* Swifts, doves, falcons, and sandpipers can approach 200 mph.
* Penguins, ostriches, and dodo birds are all birds that do not fly.
* Hummingbirds eat about every ten minutes, slurping down twice their body weight in nectar every day.
* The homing pigeon, Cher Ami, lost an eye and a leg while carrying a message in World War I. Cher Ami won the Distinguished Service Cross. Its leg was replaced with a wooden leg.
* The only known poisonous bird in the world is the hooded pitohui of Papua, New Guinea. The poison is found in its skin and feathers.
* The American turkey vulture helps human engineers detect cracked or broken underground fuel pipes. The leaking fuel smells like vulture food (they eat carrion), and the clustered birds show repair people where the lines need fixing.

Interesting facts about science

1 – The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 299,792,458 m/s (equal to 186,287.49 miles per second).

2 – It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.

3 – 10 percent of all human beings ever born are alive at this very moment.

4 – The Earth spins at 1,000 mph but it travels through space at an incredible 67,000 mph.

5 – Every year, over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.

6 – When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.

7 – Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

8 – Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

9 – In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf .

10 – If you could drive your car straight up you would arrive in space in just over an hour.

11 – Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.

12 – The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.

13 – The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.

14 – Female black widow spiders eat their males after mating.

15 – When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.

16 – If our Sun were just inch in diameter, the nearest star would be 445 miles away.

17 – Astronauts cannot belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.

18 – The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level.

19 – One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a …pea.

20 – DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler.

21 – The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953.

22 – The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997.

23 – The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo.

24 – Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.

25 – Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895.

26 – The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus – In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall.

27 – Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant in 1967 – the patient lived for 18 days.

28 – An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.

29 – ‘Wireless’ communications took a giant leap forward in 1962 with the launch of Telstar, the first satellite capable of relaying telephone and satellite TV signals.

30 – The Ebola virus kills 4 out of every 5 humans it infects.

31 – In 5 billion years the Sun will run out of fuel and turn into a Red Giant.

32 – Giraffes often sleep for only 20 minutes in any 24 hours. They may sleep up to 2 hours (in spurts – not all at once), but this is rare. They never lie down.

33 – There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.

34 – An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.

35 – On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.

36 – The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.

37 – A quarter of the world’s plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010.

38 – Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.

39 – At 15 inches the eyes of giant squids are the largest on the planet.

40 – The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.

41 – Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.

42 – More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.

43 – The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is 18mph.

44 – It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink 6.7 miles down to the deepest part of the ocean.

45 – Around a million, billion neutrinos from the Sun will pass through your body while you read this sentence.

46 – The deepest part of any ocean in the world is the Mariana trench in the Pacific with a depth of 35,797 feet.

47 – Every hour the Universe expands by a billion miles in all directions.

48 – Somewhere in the flicker of a badly tuned TV set is the background radiation from the Big Bang.

49 – Even traveling at the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach the nearest large galaxy, Andromeda.

50 – A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons.

Interesting facts about computer

(1). An Amd 1400 chip running without a heatsink gets as hot as 370 degrees.

(2). Seagate introduced the first hdd for pcs in 1979.It held 5 M.B of data.

(3). If u opened up the case of the original Macintosh, u will find 47 signatures
one for each member of Apple's Macintosh divison as of 1982.

(4). The first computer company to register for a domain name was digital
equipment corporation.

(5). Did u know Apple & Sun came very close to a merger in 1996.

(6). The technology contained in a single game boy unit in 2000 exceeds all
the computing power that was used to put the first man on moon in 1969.

(7). Hewlett Packard was started at a garage in Palo Alto in 1939.

interesting facts about animals

# Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 liter bottles.
# Cows can have regional accents
# A domestic cat can frighten a black bear to climb a tree.
# Bonobos are the only non human primates that engage in oral sex, tongue kissing, and face-to-face genital sex.
# In a fight between a polar bear and a lion, the polar bear would win.
# US Secret Service sniffer dogs are put up in five-star hotels during overseas presidential visits.
# Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
#Bulls are color blind.
#A cow's only sweat glands are in its nose.
# Mosquitoes have 47 teeth.
# The Poison Arrow frog has enough poison to kill 2,200 people.
# Emus can't walk backwards.
# A group of unicorns is called a blessing.
# A group of kangaroos is called a mob.
# A group of owls is called a parliament.
# A group of ravens is called a murder.
# A group of bears is called a sleuth.
# Twelve or more cows is called a flink.
# A baby oyster is called a spat.
# Some fleas have split penises like a Y shape
# An elephant can be pregnant for up to 2 years
# Chickens can't swallow while they are upside down.
# The average garden-variety caterpillar has 248 muscles in its head.
# A goldfish has a memory span of 3 seconds.
# A mule won't sink in quicksand but a donkey will.
# More people are killed annually by donkeys than in airplane crashes.
# Animal breeders in Russia once claimed to have bred sheep with blue wool.
# Penguins are the only bird that can leap into the air like porpoises.
# India has 50 million monkeys.
# By some unknown means, an iguana can end its own life.
# Americans spend around $3 billion for cat and dog food a year.
# Pigs can cover a mile in 7.5 minutes when running at top speed.
# The shell constitutes 12 percent of an egg's weight.
# A squid has 10 tentacles.
# A snail's reproductive organs are in its head.
# When a horned toad is angry, it squirts blood from its eyes.
# The typical hen lays 19 dozen eggs a year.
# The ostrich has a 46-foot long small intestine.
# A scallop has 35 blue eyes.
# A swan is the only bird with a penis
# The left leg of a chicken in more tender than the right one.
# The only dog that doesn't have a pink tongue is the chow.
# Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.
# The giraffe has the highest blood pressure of any animal.
# Zebras can't see the color orange.
# There are more insects in ten square feet of a rain forest than there are people in Manhattan.
# It is possible to lead a cow upstairs but not downstairs.
# The smartest dogs are the Jack Russell Terrier and Scottish Border collie. Dumbest: Afgan hound.
# A rat can go without water longer than a camel can.

Interesting Facts about india

The name `India’ is derived from the River Indus, the valleys around which were the home of the early settlers. The Aryan worshippers referred to the river Indus as the Sindhu.

The Persian invaders converted it into Hindu. The name `Hindustan’ combines Sindhu and Hindu and thus refers to the land of the Hindus.

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

Sanskrit is considered as the mother of all higher languages. This is because it is the most precise, and therefore suitable language for computer software. ( a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987 ).

Chess was invented in India.

Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus are studies which originated in India.

The' place value system' and the 'decimal system' were developed in 100 BC in India.

The first six Mogul Emperor's of India ruled in an unbroken succession from father to son for two hundred years, from 1526 to 1707.

The World's First Granite Temple is the Brihadeswara temple at Tanjavur in Tamil Nadu. The shikhara is made from a single ' 80-tonne ' piece of granite. Also, this magnificient temple was built in just five years, (between 1004 AD and 1009 AD) during the reign of Rajaraja Chola

India is.......the Largest democracy in the world, the 6th largest country in the world AND one of the most ancient and living civilizations (at least 10, 000 years old).

The game of snakes & ladders was created by the 13th century poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called 'Mokshapat.' The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices. The game was played with cowrie shells and dices. Later through time, the game underwent several modifications but the meaning is the same i.e good deeds take us to heaven and evil to a cycle of re-births.

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


India has the most post offices in the world !

The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people !.

The World's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to mankind. The father of medicine, Charaka, consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago.

Although modern images & descriptions of India often show poverty, India was one of the richest countries till the time of British in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India's wealth and was looking for route to India when he discovered America by mistake.

The art of Navigation & Navigating was born in the river Sindh 6000 over years ago. The very word 'Navigation' is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word 'Nou'.

Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. His calculations was - Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: ( 5th century ) 365.258756484 days.

The value of "pi" was first calculated by the Indian Mathematician Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, which was long before the European mathematicians.

Algebra, trigonometry and calculus also orignated from India. Quadratic equations were used 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 ( i.e 10 to the power of 53 ) with specific names as early as 5000 B.C. during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera: 10*12( 10 to the power of 12 ).

Until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world. ( Source . Gemological Institute of America )

The Baily Bridge is the highest bridge in the world. It is located in the Ladakh valley between the Dras and Suru rivers in the Himalayan mountains. It was built by the Indian Army in August 1982.

Sushruta is regarded as the father of surgery. Over 2600 years ago Sushrata & his team conducted complicated surgeries like cataract, artificial limbs, cesareans, fractures, urinary stones and also plastic surgery and brain surgeries.



Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India medicine. Detailed knowledge of anatomy, embryology, digestion, metabolism, physiology, etiology, genetics and immunity is also found in many ancient Indian texts.

Countries that are Least Affected by Recession

This world map shows a list of countries that are considered least affected by the global economic crisis.



Australia takes the top spot followed by China with India and Singapore in equal third place. Qatar is the only gulf nation that figures in this "relatively" recession-proof list.

The data is based on the results of a business confidence survey that was done on international business people of 24 nations to identify which countries they believe are surviving the crisis the best.

The countries perceived to be surviving the economic crisis the best, as voted by international businesspeople are: