. If you are struck by lightning, your skin will be heated to 28,000 degrees Centigrade, hotter than the surface of the Sun.
2. If you trace your family tree back 25 generations, you will have 33,554,432 direct ancestors – assuming no incest was involved.
3. The average distance between the stars in the sky is 20 million miles.
4. It would take a modern spaceship 70,000 years to get to the nearest star to earth.
5. An asteroid wiped out every single dinosaur in the world, but not a single species of toad or salamander was affected. No one knows why, nor why the crocodiles and tortoises survived.
6. If you dug a well to the centre of the Earth, and dropped a brick in it, it would take 45 minutes to get to the bottom – 4,000 miles down.
7. Your body sheds 10 billion flakes of skin every day.
8. The Earth weighs 6,500 million million million tons.
9. Honey is the only food consumed by humans that doesn’t go off.
10. The Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters.
11. A donkey can sink into quicksand but a mule can’t.
12. Every time you sneeze your heart stops a second.
13. There are 22 miles more canals in Birmingham UK than in Venice.
14. Potato crisps were invented by a Mr Crumm.
15. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in their correct order.
16. Eskimoes have hundreds of words for snow but none for hello.
17. The word “set” has the most definitions in the English language.
18. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating its letters is uncopyrightable.
19. Windmills always turn counter-clockwise.
20. The “Sixth Sick Sheik’s Sixth Sheep’s Sick” is the hardest tongue-twister.
21. The longest English word without a vowel is twyndyllyngs which means "twins".
22. 1 x 8 + 1 = 9; 12 x 8 + 2 = 98; 123 x 8 + 3 = 987; 1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876; 12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765; 123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654; 1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543; 12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432; 123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321
23. The word "dreamt" is the only common word in the English language that ends in "mt".
24. Albert Einstein never wore any socks.
Read more: http://www.funonthenet.in/forums/index.php?topic=133979.0#ixzz1TCxvzC5a
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
ANIMALS ANIMALS ANIMALS
Homing pigeons are renowned for their ability to return home over great distances, even if they are flying over territory that they are unfamiliar with. Researchers believe that they do this by navigating using the Earth’s magnetic field, just as we do with a compass. It’s still not clear exactly how they achieve this, but it may be due to tiny particles of magnetic material in their neck muscles and skulls.
We’ve all marvelled at intricate spider webs in the garden. Spiders make them from silk, a liquid protein ejected from abdominal nozzles, which hardens on contact with air. Spiders produce various types of silk, and some of them are stronger than a steel wire of the same diameter and are the strongest of all known natural fibres.
And spiders don’t just use silk for making the beautiful orb webs we’re familiar with. They also use it for lining their nests, wrapping trapped victims, making egg-sacs, as abseiling lines when they jump, and to create tents for their offspring
. Some male nursery web spiders pretend to be dead when they want to mate, and those that do get more sex than their honest counterparts. Researchers in Denmark have observed the male spiders offering a gift of food to prospective mates, holding the food in their mouth and feigning death by remaining completely still. When the female takes the food, the male moves into the copulation position. While only 40 per cent of spiders that didn’t feign death successfully mated, 89 per cent of the pretenders enjoyed success. Furthermore, the pretenders enjoyed longer mating sessions than their non-pretending counterparts.
When a bee finds flowers full of nectar, it wants to spread the word to its friends. It flies back to its hive and performs a complex dance for the other bees, which incredibly explains to the other bees where to fly to find the flowers. During the dance, the angle of the bee’s body indicates the direction of the nectar source in relation to the Sun’s position, and the vigour with which the bee waggles its body indicates how far along that path the flowers are located.
Scientists have shown that Cataglyphis ants in the Saharan Desert use the sun to navigate back to their nest-hole. As they zig-zag across the sand in a journey away from their nest, they lift their head every few seconds and look at the sun.
When they pick up some food, they don’t zig-zag on their return journey, but head directly back to their nest in a straight line. Amazingly, they seem to record their position relative to the sun with each glance upwards on their outward journey, and from this they calculate the direction they need to take to make a straight-line return trip to their nest.
Most marine creatures live in the upper 200 metres (656 feet) of the ocean. Here, light can penetrate the water, allowing plant life to grow. Some hardy creatures live in the zone between 200 metres and 1000 metres (656 - 3281 feet). They are dependent on food descending from the shallower waters above. Very few marine creatures manage to survive below 1000 metres.
Phytoplankton are tiny plant-like organisms that live in the upper layers of the ocean. Most of them can’t be seen without a microscope. Amazingly, these tiny creatures produce half the oxygen in the world, more than is produced by all the plant life on Earth.
Deep trenches form in the oceans at the points where oceanic plates plunge beneath heavier continental plates. The deepest trench, the Mariana (or Marianas) Trench, is in the western Pacific Ocean. It plummets to 11,034 metres (36,201 feet) beneath the ocean’s surface at a location called Challenger Deep - the deepest place on Earth.
Here, the water exerts a pressure that is the equivalent of having 50 jumbo jets pushing down on you. Despite this, amazingly, scientists have found life on the seafloor. A remotely-operated vehicle removed a plug of dirt from the sea floor, in which researchers found abundant soft-walled, single-celled organisms.
Incredibly, if you put Mount Everest into the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, its peak would still be would still be over 2 kilometres (around 7,000 feet) below the surface.
Insect-eating bats produce high-pitched clicks to help them navigate. In a remarkable demonstration of rapid fire, some bats can generate two hundred clicks per second. Each click lasts for just one-thousandth of a second, and is followed by a short gap just long enough for the bat to hear the returning echo before the next click is produced.
Scientists have discovered that macaque monkeys can recognise each other’s voices, in much the same way that we can distinguish other people by their voices. Humans have a region in the auditory cortex of the brain that activates when we hear other people speak. Researchers played a variety of sounds to macaque monkeys and used functional MRI scanning to measure their brain activity. Intriguingly, the macaques had a brain region, close to the corresponding voice region in the human brain, that was activated in response to the chattering sounds of other macaques but much less active when they were hearing other animals and other sounds from nature.
When swimming in murky waters, dolphins use sonar to navigate. By forcing air through sinuses in their heads, they generate a stream of clicks that fire forward into the water in front of them. Amazingly, a dolphin can generate up to 700 clicks per second. By measuring the time taken for the click to bounce back, the dolphin can calculate the distance between itself and solid objects in the water around it. Researchers have shown that dolphins can not only determine objects’ location in the water, but what sort of objects they are.
Homing pigeons are renowned for their ability to return home over great distances, even if they are flying over territory that they are unfamiliar with. Researchers believe that they do this by navigating using the Earth’s magnetic field, just as we do with a compass. It’s still not clear exactly how they achieve this, but it may be due to tiny particles of magnetic material in their neck muscles and skulls.
We’ve all marvelled at intricate spider webs in the garden. Spiders make them from silk, a liquid protein ejected from abdominal nozzles, which hardens on contact with air. Spiders produce various types of silk, and some of them are stronger than a steel wire of the same diameter and are the strongest of all known natural fibres.
And spiders don’t just use silk for making the beautiful orb webs we’re familiar with. They also use it for lining their nests, wrapping trapped victims, making egg-sacs, as abseiling lines when they jump, and to create tents for their offspring
. Some male nursery web spiders pretend to be dead when they want to mate, and those that do get more sex than their honest counterparts. Researchers in Denmark have observed the male spiders offering a gift of food to prospective mates, holding the food in their mouth and feigning death by remaining completely still. When the female takes the food, the male moves into the copulation position. While only 40 per cent of spiders that didn’t feign death successfully mated, 89 per cent of the pretenders enjoyed success. Furthermore, the pretenders enjoyed longer mating sessions than their non-pretending counterparts.
When a bee finds flowers full of nectar, it wants to spread the word to its friends. It flies back to its hive and performs a complex dance for the other bees, which incredibly explains to the other bees where to fly to find the flowers. During the dance, the angle of the bee’s body indicates the direction of the nectar source in relation to the Sun’s position, and the vigour with which the bee waggles its body indicates how far along that path the flowers are located.
Scientists have shown that Cataglyphis ants in the Saharan Desert use the sun to navigate back to their nest-hole. As they zig-zag across the sand in a journey away from their nest, they lift their head every few seconds and look at the sun.
When they pick up some food, they don’t zig-zag on their return journey, but head directly back to their nest in a straight line. Amazingly, they seem to record their position relative to the sun with each glance upwards on their outward journey, and from this they calculate the direction they need to take to make a straight-line return trip to their nest.
Most marine creatures live in the upper 200 metres (656 feet) of the ocean. Here, light can penetrate the water, allowing plant life to grow. Some hardy creatures live in the zone between 200 metres and 1000 metres (656 - 3281 feet). They are dependent on food descending from the shallower waters above. Very few marine creatures manage to survive below 1000 metres.
Phytoplankton are tiny plant-like organisms that live in the upper layers of the ocean. Most of them can’t be seen without a microscope. Amazingly, these tiny creatures produce half the oxygen in the world, more than is produced by all the plant life on Earth.
Deep trenches form in the oceans at the points where oceanic plates plunge beneath heavier continental plates. The deepest trench, the Mariana (or Marianas) Trench, is in the western Pacific Ocean. It plummets to 11,034 metres (36,201 feet) beneath the ocean’s surface at a location called Challenger Deep - the deepest place on Earth.
Here, the water exerts a pressure that is the equivalent of having 50 jumbo jets pushing down on you. Despite this, amazingly, scientists have found life on the seafloor. A remotely-operated vehicle removed a plug of dirt from the sea floor, in which researchers found abundant soft-walled, single-celled organisms.
Incredibly, if you put Mount Everest into the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, its peak would still be would still be over 2 kilometres (around 7,000 feet) below the surface.
Insect-eating bats produce high-pitched clicks to help them navigate. In a remarkable demonstration of rapid fire, some bats can generate two hundred clicks per second. Each click lasts for just one-thousandth of a second, and is followed by a short gap just long enough for the bat to hear the returning echo before the next click is produced.
Scientists have discovered that macaque monkeys can recognise each other’s voices, in much the same way that we can distinguish other people by their voices. Humans have a region in the auditory cortex of the brain that activates when we hear other people speak. Researchers played a variety of sounds to macaque monkeys and used functional MRI scanning to measure their brain activity. Intriguingly, the macaques had a brain region, close to the corresponding voice region in the human brain, that was activated in response to the chattering sounds of other macaques but much less active when they were hearing other animals and other sounds from nature.
When swimming in murky waters, dolphins use sonar to navigate. By forcing air through sinuses in their heads, they generate a stream of clicks that fire forward into the water in front of them. Amazingly, a dolphin can generate up to 700 clicks per second. By measuring the time taken for the click to bounce back, the dolphin can calculate the distance between itself and solid objects in the water around it. Researchers have shown that dolphins can not only determine objects’ location in the water, but what sort of objects they are.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
The World's first university
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.
The largest employer
The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people!
Post Offices
India has the most post offices in the world!
Nautical mile
A mile on the ocean and a mile on land are not the same distance. On the ocean, a nautical mile measures 6,080 feet. A land or statute mile is 5,280 feet.
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace in England has over six hundred rooms.
Paper fold
No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half.
Dice cube
The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven.
Pure gold
Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold; there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
Cruise liner - QE2
The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
Joseph Niepce developed the world's first photographic image in 1827. Thomas Edison and W K L Dickson introduced the film camera in 1894. But the first projection of an image on a screen was made by a German priest. In 1646, Athanasius Kircher used a candle or oil lamp to project hand-painted images onto a white screen.
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.
The largest employer
The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system, employing over a million people!
Post Offices
India has the most post offices in the world!
Nautical mile
A mile on the ocean and a mile on land are not the same distance. On the ocean, a nautical mile measures 6,080 feet. A land or statute mile is 5,280 feet.
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace in England has over six hundred rooms.
Paper fold
No piece of square dry paper can be folded more than 7 times in half.
Dice cube
The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven.
Pure gold
Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold; there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
Cruise liner - QE2
The cruise liner, QE2, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
Joseph Niepce developed the world's first photographic image in 1827. Thomas Edison and W K L Dickson introduced the film camera in 1894. But the first projection of an image on a screen was made by a German priest. In 1646, Athanasius Kircher used a candle or oil lamp to project hand-painted images onto a white screen.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Snakes are true carnivorous because they eat nothing but other animals. They do not eat any type of plant material.
There are no poisonous snakes in Maine.
The poison arrow frogs of South and Central America are the most poisonous animals in the world.
A new born blue whale measures 20-26 feet (6.0 - 7.9 meters) long and weighs up to 6,614 pounds (3003 kg).
The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.
Porcupines float in water.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds
Shrimp's hearts are in their heads.
Starfish don't have brains.
The temperature can be determined by counting the number of cricket chirps in fourteen seconds and adding 40.
The highest temperature on Earth was 136°F (58°C) in Libya in 1922.
The North Atlantic gets 1 inch wider every year.
Hawaii is moving toward Japan 4 inches every year.
Every year in the US, 625 people are struck by lightning.
Just twenty seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
There are no poisonous snakes in Maine.
The poison arrow frogs of South and Central America are the most poisonous animals in the world.
A new born blue whale measures 20-26 feet (6.0 - 7.9 meters) long and weighs up to 6,614 pounds (3003 kg).
The human eye blinks an average of 4,200,000 times a year.
Porcupines float in water.
Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.
Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards.
The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds
Shrimp's hearts are in their heads.
Starfish don't have brains.
The temperature can be determined by counting the number of cricket chirps in fourteen seconds and adding 40.
The highest temperature on Earth was 136°F (58°C) in Libya in 1922.
The North Atlantic gets 1 inch wider every year.
Hawaii is moving toward Japan 4 inches every year.
Every year in the US, 625 people are struck by lightning.
Just twenty seconds worth of fuel remained when Apollo 11's lunar module landed on the moon.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
I AM SURPRISED!!!
NATURE
Stars in the galaxies are 2.5 trillion and blood vessels in human body are 250 trillion.
Lightning is a very powerful source of energy and a single lightning can light up the bulb for 3 months.
Heart is the best pumping machine. It pumps enough blood within a year to fill up a Olympic Game standard swimming pool.
Planes
Birds and Planes
A commercial plane can fly at the altitude of maximum 35,000ft and a bird can fly at the altitude of 37,000ft.
Stars in the galaxies are 2.5 trillion and blood vessels in human body are 250 trillion.
Lightning is a very powerful source of energy and a single lightning can light up the bulb for 3 months.
Heart is the best pumping machine. It pumps enough blood within a year to fill up a Olympic Game standard swimming pool.
Planes
Birds and Planes
A commercial plane can fly at the altitude of maximum 35,000ft and a bird can fly at the altitude of 37,000ft.
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