Facts of Universe

• Uranus is visible to the naked eye.
• Benjamin Franklin was first to suggest daylight saving.
• The most abundant metal in the Earths crust is aluminium.
• It snowed in the Sahara desert on 18 February 1979.
• On average, an iceberg weighs 20 million tons.
• The far side of the moon was first photographed by a Russian satellite in 1959.
• Captain Cook was the first man to set foot on all continents except Antarctica.
• The diameter of the Moon is 3 476 km.
• The pressure at the Earths inner core is 3 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure.
• 200 million years ago Earth contained 1 land mass called Pangaea
• At the deepest point, an iron ball would take more than an hour to sink to the ocean floor. ( 11.034 km )
• The largest wave ever recorded was near the Japanese Island of Ishigaki in 1971. It was recorded at 85 metres high.
• Antarctic means ' opposite the Artic '.
• The largest iceberg recorded ( in 1956 ) was 200 miles long and 60 miles wide, larger that the country of Belgium.
• The surface of the Dead Sea is 400 metres below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, which is only 75 km away.
• The moon orbits the Earth every 27.32 days.
• The country of Benin changed its name from Dahomey in 1975.
• The Nova Zemlya Glacier in the (former) USSR is over 400 km long.
• Canada ( 9 970 610 sq km) is larger than China ( 9 596 961 sq km) which is larger than the USA ( 9 363 130 sq km).
• The coldest temperature ever recorded was -70 deg Celsius, in Siberia.
• The second largest US state in the 1950's was California.
• The US state Maryland was named after Queen Henrietta Maria.
• The only country to register zero births in 1983 was the 'Vatican City'.
• The US state of Florida first saw the cultivation of oranges in 1539.
• The world's largest National park is 'Wood Buffalo National Park' in Canada.
• The world's largest exporter of sugar is Cuba.
• There are no rivers in Saudi Arabia.
• England's Stonehenge is 1500 years older than Rome's Colosseum.
• In 1896, Britain and Zanzibar were at war for 38 minutes.
• The Eskimo language has over twenty words to describe different kinds of snow.
• Numbering houses in London streets only began in 1764.
• More than 75% of all the countries in the world are north of the equator.
• Less than 1% of the Caribbean Islands are inhabited.
• On average, an iceberg weighs 20 million tons.
• Fulgurite is formed when lightning strikes sand.
• Mountains are formed by a process called orogeny.
• Obsidian, used by American Indians for tools, weapons and ornaments, is dark volcanic glass.
• It takes 8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to earth.
• 82% of the workers on the Panama Canal suffered from malaria.
• In May 1948, Mt Ruapehu and Mt Ngauruhoe, both in New Zealand, erupted simultaneously.
• The Incas and the Aztecs were able to function without the wheel.
• The tree dictated on the Lebanese flag is a Cedar.
• Tokyo was once called Edo.
• The Atlantic Ocean covers the world's longest mountain range.
• In 1825 Upper Peru became Bolivia.
• New York City contains 920 kilometres of shoreline.
• There are 3 Great pyramids at Giza.
• The southwestern tip of the Isle of Man is called 'The Calf of Man'.
• The world's largest Delta was created by the river Ganges.
• The Scottish city Edinburgh is nicknamed 'Auld Reekie' meaning 'Old Smoky'
• The inhabitants of Papa New Guinea speak about 700 languages, approx. 15% of the world's total. ( including localised dialects, which are known to change from village to village )
• The world's first National Park was Yellowstone National Park
• 60% of all US potato products originate in Idaho.
• The northern most country claiming part of Antarctica is Norway.
• The D.C. in Washington D.C. stands for District of Columbia.
• The inhabitants of Monaco are known as 'Monegasques'.
• The East Alligator River in Australia's Northern Territory, was misnamed. It contains crocodiles not alligators.
• New York's Central Park opened in 1876.
• France contains the greatest length of paved roads.
• The city of Istanbul straddles two separate continents, Europe and Asia.
• At the nearest point , Russia and America are less than 4 km apart.
• 99% of the solar systems mass is concentrated in the sun.
• Rio de Janeiro translates to ' River of January'.
• The furthest point from any ocean would be in China.
• The Tibetan Mountain people use yak's milk as their form of currency.
• Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits'.
• Underneath the great icy plains of the Antarctic can sometimes be found little pools of unfrozen water.
• Ten per cent of the salt mined in the world each year is used to de-ice the roads in America.
• The Spanish Inquisition once condemned the entire Netherlands to death for heresy.
• The Sun's mass decreases by 4 000 000 tonnes per second due to conversion of Hydrogen to Helium by thermonuclear reaction, this conversion will continue for another 5000 million years before the Sun's energy supply is exhausted.
• The River Nile has frozen over only twice in living memory - once in the ninth century, and then again in the eleventh century.
• Earth is the only planet not named after a God.
• The Angel falls in Venezuela are nearly 20 times taller than Niagara falls.
• The Scandinavian capital, Stockholm, is build on nine islands connected by bridges.
• La Paz in Bolivia is so high above sea level that there is barely enough oxygen in the air to support a fire.
• The Forth railway bridge in Scotland is a metre longer in summer than in winter, due to thermal expansion.
• The Channel between England and France grows about 300 millimetres each year.
• In the Andes, time is often measured by how long it takes to smoke a cigarette.
• On a clear night over 2 000 stars are visible to the naked eye.
• Until the 18th century India produced almost all the worlds diamonds.
• On 30 March 1867, Alaska was officially purchased from Russia for about 2 cents an acre. At the time many politicians believed this purchase of ' wasteland to be a costly folly '.
• During winter, the skating rinks in Moscow cover more than 250 000 square metres of land.
• As the Pacific plate moves under its coast, the North Island of New Zealand is getting larger.
• Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.
• If you travel from east to west across the Soviet Union, you will cross seven time zones.
• Sahara means 'desert' in Arabic.
• On the 15 January 1867, there was a severe frost in London, and over 40 people died in Regent's Park when the ice broke on the main lake.
• The water in the Dead Seas is so salty that it far easier to float than to drown.
• The State flag of Alaska was designed by a 13 year old boy.
• Every litre of water taken from the Red Sea would contain about 200 grams of salt.
• Lighting strikes the Earth about 200 times a second.
• Very hard rain would pour down at the rate of about twenty miles per hour.
• Discounting Australia , which is generally regarded as a continental land mass, the world's largest island is Greenland.
• No rain has ever been recorded falling in the Atacama desert in Chile.
• The background radiation in Aberdeen is twice that of the rest of Great Britain.
• About 2 million hydrogen atoms would be required to cover the full stop at the end of this sentence.
• The southern most tip of Africa is not the 'Cape of Good Hope' but 'Cape Agulhas'.
• Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.
• The tower of London, during its lifetime has served many purposes, including a zoo.
• There is a village near the Somme in France which is simply called Y.
• The planet Uranus was only discovered 215 years ago, by Sir William Herschel on 13 March 1781.
• Two minor earthquakes occur every minute somewhere in the world.
• In the north of Norway, the sun shines constantly for about 14 weeks each summer.
• The Polynesian country of Niue is a 170 square kilometre limestone rock emerging 60 metres from the Pacific.
• Sahara means 'desert' in Arabic.
• The United States, which accounts for six per cent of the population of the world, consumes nearly sixty per cent of the world's resources.
• The temperature of the planet Mars can go as high as eighty degrees Fahrenheit during the day, and as low as minus one hundred and ninety degrees at night.
• The world's longest fresh water beach is located in Canada.
• Over the years the Niagara Falls have moved more than 11 kilometres from its original site.
• The number of births in India each year is greater than the entire population of Australia.
• Yugoslavia is bordered by seven other countries.
• Greenland, named this to attract settlers, was discovered by Eric the Red in the 10th century.
• The Milky Way galaxy contains 5 billion stars larger than our sun.
• Within a few years of Columbus' discovery of America, the Spaniards had killed one and a half million Indians.
• Hawaii officially became apart of the US on June 14, 1900.
• Hawaii's Mt Waialeale is the wettest place in the world - it rains about ninety per cent of the time, about 480 inches per annum.
• If the population of China walked past you in single file, the line would never end because of the rate of reproduction.
• Our galaxy is 75 000 light years in diameter and our sun is 26 100 light years from the centre.
• Based on various cosmological techniques the universe is estimated at 10 - 18 gigayears old.
  (1 gigayear = 1 000 000 000 000 years)
• The smallest star found to date is a neutron star with a diameter of 59 km but a mass of 10 times that of our sun. This star is more commonly known as a black hole,
• The earth's average velocity orbiting the sun is 107 220 km per hour.
• The sun has a core temperature of 154 000 000 Kelvin
• A day on Jupiter is about 9 hours, 50 minutes, 30 seconds at the equator.
• Because of a large orbital eccentricity, Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune between January 1979 and March 1999.
• Mars has a volcano (Olympus Mons) which is 310-370 miles in diameter and 16 miles high.
• The Future's Museum in Sweden contains a scale model of the solar system. The sun is 105 meters in diameter and the planets range from 3.5 mm to 6 km from the 'sun'. This particular model also contains the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, still to scale situated in the Museum of Victoria ... in Australia.
• The maximum possible duration of an eclipse is 7 minuets and 31 seconds (when the observer is land based and stationary)
• Carolyn Shoemaker has discovered 32 comets and approximately 800 asteroids.
• The Earth is pear shaped, the North Pole radius being 44mm longer than the South Pole radius..
• Scientists at Australia's Parkes Observatory thought they had positive proof of alien life, when they began picking up radio-waves from space. However, after investigation, the radio emissions where traced to a microwave oven in the building.
• In 1908 the Moskva River in Russia rose nine meters, flooding 100 streets and 2,500 houses.
• 'Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu'
  is the name of a hill in New Zealand.
• The book by Copernicus, which suggested that the Sun and not the Earth was the centre of the solar system, was banned officially banned by the Papacy until 1835.
• There is about 200 time more gold in the worlds oceans, than has been mined in our entire history.
• A quarter of Russia is covered by forest.
• There is a Rocking Stone in Cornwall which, though it weighs many tonnes, can be rocked with ease.
• South Africa produces two-thirds of the world's gold.
• The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined.
• The Earth is the densest planet in the solar system.
• There is no point in England more than 75 miles from the ocean.
• The Red sea is not mentioned in the Bible.
• England is smaller than New England
• Nearly a quarter of the population of Poland was killed in World War II.
• The number of UFO sightings constantly increase when Mars is nearest the Earth.
• The first city in the world to have a population of over one million was London.
• Our own galaxy is minute compared to the radio galaxies being discovered at the edge of the universe.
• There is a town in West Virginia USA called Looneyville
• So far in the twentieth century, two objects have hit the earth's surface with enough force to destroy a medium size city. By pure luck both have landed in sparsely populated Siberia.
• One of the greatest natural disasters of recent centuries occurred when an earthquake hit Tangshan, China killing three quarters of a million people.
• New York was once New Amsterdam.
• On Picarn Island, it is a criminal offence it shout ' ship ohoy' when there is in fact no ship in sight.
• The Dead Sea is in fact an inland lake.
• Icelandic phone books are listed by the given name not the surname.
• Dirty snow melts quicker than clean snow.
• It is illegal to swim in Central Park.
• The fastest tectonic movement on earth is 240 mm per year, at the Tonga micro-plate near Samoa.
• The earth's magnetic field is not permanent,
• There are six million trees in The Forest of Martyrs near Jerusalem, symbolising the Jewish death toll in World War Two.
• In 1980 Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe.

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