Editorial Board - 501 Fascinating Facts

PUSTAK MAHAL

• Rats can survive without water longer than camels.
• T he sailfish can swim faster than a horse can gallop.
• The smallest known fish is the Pandaka Pygmaea, about the size of an ant and almost transparent.
• Men travelling through dense tropical forests often collect fireflies in jars and use them as lanterns, while women in Cuba and other tropical countries pin live fireflies on their gowns or hang them around their necks on chains as decorations.
• The most widely cultivated fruit in the world is the apple. The second is the pear.
• In the 1920s and 1930s, Charlie Chaplin was probably the most celebrated man in the world. On a visit to his native London, the motion picture comedian received 73,000 letters in just two days .
• There is a butterfly found in Brazil that has the smell and colour of chocolate.
• Neutron Bomb is a nuclear weapon, which kills people by radiation, even inside armoured vehicles, but leaves behind buildings, etc., intact.
• Plasma is a gas free of whole molecules and atoms and contains only ions and electrons.
• We blink our eyes once every six seconds i.e., in the course of a lifetime we blink about 250 trillion times.
• A dwarf, eighteen inches high, served as a captain of cavalry in the British Army. He was Jeffery Hudson and lived from 1619 to 1692.
• Girls tend to sleep more soundly than boys.
• The elephant is the only animal that has been taught to stand on its head.
• The rarest disease in the world, called Kuru, or laughing sickness, affects only the cannibals of New Guinea and is believed to be caused by eating human brains.
• If a rope were made out of strands of long hair, it would be strong enough to lift an automobile.
• Sucker fish (Remora) is natures hitchhiker. The upper fin of this fish is modified to form a complicated suction pad on the top of the head. The sucker fish attaches itself by means of its sucker to any passing turtle or shark, or any large fish, merely to get a free ride and in the hope of sharing a meal at the end of the journey.
• The hottest place in the world is Dallol, Ethiopia, which has hardly any seasonal relief from high temperature.

Mean daily maximum temperature
100F (37.8C).

Mean daily minimum temperature between 75F and 89F (24.4C and 31.7C).

• Perhaps you thought it was John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to be the busiest airport. Most people do! But the busiest airport in the entire world is Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport, Atlanta. The total movements at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport every year is 950,119.
• Your brain will stop growing in size when you are about 15 years old.
• If the liver ever stops working, a person will die within 8 to 24 hours.
• No one knows why, but more men than women are colour blind, about 8 out of
  every 200 men, as compared to 1 out of every 200 women.
• The human heart pumps 1.5 million gallons of blood a year.
• In the state of Minnesota it is against the law to hang male and femaleunderwear on the same washing line.
• During an eight hour sleep, most people have three to five dreams, each lasting 10 to 30 minutes and they are in colour!
• The shortest human being was a Dutch midget called Princess Pauline, who at the age of 12 was only 23.2 tall or only 3 to 5 inches taller than a newborn baby.
• One psychological study has revealed that women talk about men three times as often as men talk about women.
• The left side of your brain controls the right side of your body and vice versa.
• An average person drinks about 16,000 gallons of water during his lifetime.
• A sound wave travels through air at a speed of more than 300 metres per second, or 1,100 kilometres per hour. Some jet-propelled aeroplanes far exceed the velocity of sound.

In water, sound travels roughly five times as fast as in the air. The velocity of a sound wave in water is about 1,500 metres per second, or 5,400 kilometres per hour. So far no man-made apparatus, with the exception of rockets, has attained this velocity.

• A full moon is nine times brighter than a half moon.
• It takes about 48 hours for your body to completely digest the food from one meal.
• Stuttering is 4 to 6 times more common in boys than in girls.
• The worlds most popular hobby is stamp collection.
• The nerve system in the human brain has a greater number of possible connections than there would be in a unilateral telephone exchange that provided one line to every person living on earth.
• A snail can travel over a razor-blade without cutting itself.
• 96 percent of babies arrive at times different from those predicted by the medical profession.
• Our height varies not only with years of our life, but in the course of every day. It is greatest when we get up in the morning and after the nights rest. Between morning and evening, it generally shrinks about three-quarters of an inch, sometimes even more. If we have done much walking during the day, our height may shrink as much as two or three-quarters of an inch. This is due to compression of the cartilage in our spine.