General Interesting Facts

· No piece of paper can be folded more than 7 times.

· The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley's gum.
· Earth is the only planet not named after a pagan God.
· A Boeing 747s wingspan is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.
· Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.
· Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning
· The first owner of the Marlboro company died of lung cancer.
· All US Presidents have worn glasses. Some just didn't like being seen wearing them in public.
· Walt Disney was afraid of mice.
· The inventor of the flushing toilet was Thomas Crapper.
· The average bed is home to over 6 billion dust mites.
· Plastic lawn flamingos outnumber real flamingos in the U.S.A.
· Ernest Vincent Wright wrote a novel with over 50,000 words, none of which containing the letter "e."
· Apples are more effective at keeping people awake in the morning than caffeine.
· The largest pumpkin weighed 377 pounds.
· The largest cabbage weighed 144 pounds.
· Pinocchio was made of pine.
· Alfred Hitchcock had no belly button for it was eliminated during surgery.
· A quarter has 119 grooves around the edge.
· A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
· Cranberry Jell-0 is the only kind that contains real fruit.
· The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
· Maine is the toothpick capital of the world.
· New Jersey has a spoon museum with over 5,400 spoons from almost all the states.
· There was once a town in West Virginia called "6."
· The parking meter was invented in North Dakota.
· Napoleon made his battle plans in a sandbox.
· Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
· The green stuff on the occasional freak potato chip is chlorophyll.
· Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon with his left foot first.
· There are 333 toilet paper squares on a toilet paper roll.
· The Eiffel Tower has 2,500,000 rivets in it.
· "Jaws" is the most common name for a goldfish.
· On an average work day, a typist's fingers travel 12.6 miles.
· Every minute in the U.S. six people turn 17.
· 2,500 lefties die each year using products designed for rightists.
· Ten tons of space dust falls on the Earth every day.
· On average, a 4-year-old child asks 437 questions a day.
· Blue and white are the most common school colors.
· Swimming pools in Phoenix, Arizona, pick up 20 pounds of dust a year.
· In a normal lifetime an American will eat 200 pounds of peanuts and 10,000 pounds of meat.
· A new book is published every 13 minutes in America.
· America's best selling ice cream flavor is vanilla.
· Every year the sun loses 360 million tons.
· Because of Animal Crackers, many kids until they reach the age of ten, believe a bear is as tall as a giraffe.
· The Gulf Stream could carry a message in a bottle at an average of 4 miles per hour.
· The bulls-eye on a dartboard must be 5 feet 8 inches off the ground.
· The doorbell was invented in 1831.
· The electric shaver was patented on November 6, 1928.
· Japan is the largest exporter of frog's legs.
· There are seven points on the Statue of Liberty's crown.
· Napoleon was terrified of cats.
· The first Lifesaver flavor was peppermint.
· The typical American eats 263 eggs a year.
· The parking meter was invented by C.C. Magee in 1935.
· The oldest known vegetable is the pea.
· Jack is the most common name in nursery rhymes.
· The avocado has the most calories of any fruit.
· The first zoo in the USA was in Philadelphia.
· France has the highest per capita consumption of cheese.
· The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is "feedback."
· The state of California raises the most turkeys out of all of the states.
· George Washington Carver invented peanut butter.
· Iceland was the first country to legalize abortion in 1935.
· The dumbest domesticated animal is the turkey.
· Russia has the most movie theaters in the world.
· The most fatal car accidents occur on Saturday.
· The Eiffel Tower has 1792 steps.
· The mongoose was barred live entry into the U.S. in 1902.
· Goldfish swallowing started at Harvard in 1939.
· Dry fish food can make goldfish constipated.
· The stall closest to the door in a bathroom is the cleanest, because it is the least used.
· Toilet paper was invented in 1857.
· Alaska could hold the 21 smallest States.
· Before Prohibition, Schlitz Brewery owned more property in Chicago than anyone else, except the Catholic church.
· If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom.
· Kermit the Frog is left-handed.
· Nondairy creamer is flammable.
· The car in the foreground on the back of a $10 bill is a 1925 Hupmobile.
· If you can see a rainbow you must have your back to the sun.
· The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
· It's rumored that sucking on a copper penny will cause a breathalyzer to read 0.
· The ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, should always be written as QE2. QEII is the actual queen.
· The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."
· Columbia University is the second largest landowner in New York City, after the Catholic Church.
· When the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers play football at home to a sellout crowd, the stadium becomes the state's third largest city.
· Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is Number 47. Until August 7, 1953, Congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.
· When Saigon fell, the signal for all Americans to evacuate was Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" being played on the radio.
· The pet ferret was domesticated more than 500 years before the house cat.
· The dome on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, conceals a billiards room. In Jefferson's day, billiards were illegal in Virginia.
· The most common speed limit sign in the United States is 25 m.p.h.
· At any one time, there are 100 million phone conversations going on in the United States.
· The world's record for continuous pogo stick jumping is 41 hours.
· The Ottoman Empire once had seven emperors in seven months. They died of (in order): burning, choking, drowning, stabbing, heart failure, poisoning and being thrown from a horse.
· You can make edible cheese from the milk of 24 different mammals.
· Sir Isaac Newton, who invented Calculus, had trouble with names to the point where he would forget his brothers' names.
· In medieval Thailand, they had moveable type printing presses. The type was made from baked oxen dung.
· By law, employees do not have to wash hands after sneezing.
· The average American consumes enough caffeine in one year to kill a horse.
· More American workers (18%) call sick on Friday than any other day of the week. Tuesday has the lowest percent of absenteeism (11%).
· Enough beer is poured every Saturday across America to fill the Orange Bowl.
· A newborn expels its own body weight in waste every 60 hours.
· Whales die if their echo system fails.
· Florida's beaches lose 20 million cubic yards of sand annually.
· Naturalists use marshmallows to lure alligators out of swamps.
· It takes a ton of water to make a pound of refined sugar.
· Weevils are more resistant to poisons in the morning than at night.
· Cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate is the most pest-ridden tree in the jungle.
· In deep space most lubricants will disappear.
· America once issued a 5-cent bill.
· The average person can live 11 days without water.
· In 1221 Genghis Khan killed 1,748,000 people at Nishapur in one hour.
· There are 35 million digestive glands in the stomach.
· In 1800 on 50 cities on earth had a population of more than 100,000.
· More steel in the US is used to make bottle caps than to manufacture automobile bodies.
· It is possible for any American citizen to give whatever name he or she chooses to any unnamed mountain or hill in the United States.
· King Henry III of France, Louis XVI of France and Napoleon all suffered from ailurophobia--fear of cats.
· Before 1850 golf balls were made of leather and stuffed with feathers.
· Clocks made before 1687 had only one hand, and hour hand.
· The motto of the American people, "In God We Trust," was not adopted as the national slogan until 1956.
· More Americans have died in automobile accidents than have died in all the wars ever fought by the United States.
· The ampersand (&) was once a letter of the English alphabet.
· The principality of Monaco consists of 370 acres.
· There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.
· During the time of Peter the Great, any Russian man who had a beard was required to pay a special tax.
· The first couple to be shown in bed together on prime time television was Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
· Coca-Cola was originally green.
· Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the U.S. treasury.
· The Hawaiian alphabet has 12 letters
· Men can read smaller print than women; women can hear better.
· The amount American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: $40,000.
· City with the most Rolls Royces per capita: Hong Kong.
· State with the highest percentage of people who walk to work: Alaska.
· Percentage of Africa that is wilderness--28%. Percentage of North America that is wilderness--38%.
· Average number of days a German goes without washing his underwear: 7.
· Percentage of American men who say they would marry the same woman if they had it to do all over again: 80%.
· Percentage of American women who say they'd marry the same man: 50%.
· Cost of raising a medium size dog to the age of 11: $6,400.
· Average people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000.
· Average lifespan of a major league baseball: 7 pitches.
· The only President to win a Pulitzer Prize: John Kennedy for "Profiles in Courage."
· The youngest Pope was 11 years old.
· Iceland consumes more Coca-Cola per capita than any other nation.
· First novel ever written on a typewriter: "Tom Sawyer."
· A duck's quack doesn't echo, and no one knows why.
· The main library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.
· Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Spades--King David, Clubs--Alexander the Great, Hearts--Charlemagne and Diamonds--Julius Caesar.
· If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one leg front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all 4 legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.
· Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. The last signature wasn't added until 5 years later.
· The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight. These straight sections are useable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.
· The cruise liner, Queen Elizabeth II, moves only six inches for each gallon of diesel that it burns.
· The highest point in Pennsylvania is lower than the lowest point in Colorado.
· The first airline, DELAG, was established on October 16, 1909, to carry passengers between German cities by Zeppelin airships. Up to November 1913, more than 34,000 people had used the service.
· Titanic was running at 22 knots when she hit the iceberg
· The citrus soda 7-UP was created in 1929; '7' was selected because the original containers were 7 ounces. 'UP' indicated the direction of the bubbles
· Francis Scott Key was a young lawyer who wrote the poem, 'The Star Spangled Banner', after being inspired by watching the Americans fight off the British attack of Baltimore during the War of 1812. The poem became the words to the national anthem
· Because radio waves travel at 186,000 miles per second and sound waves saunter at 700 miles per hour, a broadcast voice can be heard sooner 13,000 miles away than it can be heard at the back of the room in which it originated
· Mosquito repellents don't repel. They hide you. The spray blocks the mosquito's sensors so they don't know your there
· The bagpipe was originally made from the whole skin of a dead sheep
· Inventor Samuel Colt patented his revolver in 1836.
· It has been recommended by dentists that a toothbrush be kept at least 6 feet (two meters) away from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush!
· In ancient Rome it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose
· It is possible to drown and not die. Technically the term 'drowning' refers to the process of taking water into the lungs, not to death caused by that process.
· The first known heart medicine was discovered in an English garden. In 1799, physician John Ferriar noted the effect of dried leaves of the common foxglove plant, digitalis purpurea, on heart action. Still used in heart medications, digitalis slows the pulse and increases the force of heart contractions and the amount of b lood pumped per heartbeat. <>
· Dry cereal for breakfast was invented by John Henry Kellogg at the turn of the century
· During World War II, a German U-boat was sunk by a truck. The U-boat in question attacked a convoy in the Atlantic and then rose to see the effect. The merchant ship it sank had material strapped to its deck including a fleet of trucks, one of which was thrown in the air by the explosion, landing on the U-boat and breaking its back
· Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher who died in 1832,left his entire estate to the London Hospital provided that his body be allowed to preside over its board meetings. His skeleton was clothed and fitted with a wax mask of his face. It was present at the meeting for 92 years.
· Diet Coke was only invented in 1982.
· Methane gas can often be seen bubbling up from the bottom of ponds. It is produced by the decomposition of dead plants and animals in the mud.
· There are more than 1,700 references to gems and precious stones in the King James translation of the Bible.
· The E. Coli bacterium propels itself with a 'motor' only one-millionth of an inch in diameter, a thousand times smaller than the tiniest motors built to date by man. The rotation of the bacterial motor comes from a current of protons. The efficiency of the motor approaches 100 per cent.
· Henry Ford produced the model T only in black because the black paint available at the time was the fastest to dry.
· At - 40 degrees Centigrade a person loses about 14.4 calories per hour by breathing.
· Pet superstores now sell about 40 percent of all pet food
· One million Americans, about 3,000 each day, take up smoking each year. Most of them are children.
· In 1933, Mickey Mouse, an animated cartoon character, received 800,000 fan letters.
· There are only four words in the English language which end in '-dous': tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
· If you attempted to count to stars in a galaxy at a rate of one every second it would take around 3,000 years to count them all.
· Less than 3% of Nestlé's sales are for chocolate.
· The average person will spend two weeks over their lifetime waiting for the traffic light to change
· More than 2500 left handed people are killed every year from using right handed products
· It is estimated that at any one time, 0.7% of the world's population are drunk
· The tip of a 1/3 inch long hour-hand on a wristwatch travels at 0.00000275 mph
· Less than one per cent of the 500 Chinese cities have clean air, respiratory disease is China's leading cause of death.
· The number of cars on the planet is increasing three times faster than the population growth
· The X's that people sometimes put at the end of letters or notes to mean a kiss, actually started back in the 1000's when Lords would sign their names at the end of documents to other important people. It was originally a cross that they would kiss after signing to signify that they were faithful to God and their King. Over the years though, it slanted into the X
· Nova Scotia is Latin for 'New Scotland.'
· The term Cop comes from Constable on Patrol. It's from England.
· The collecting of Beer mats is called Tegestology.
· Even though it is widely attributed to him Shakespeare never actually used the word 'gadzooks'.
· Only 2 blue moons (the saying 'only once in a blue moon ' refers to the occurrence of two full moons during one calendar month) are to occur between now and 2001. Those times are January 1999 and March 1999
· There are only 12 letters in the Hawaiian alphabet
· "Naked" means to be unprotected. "Nude" means unclothed
· Upper and lower case letters are named 'upper' and 'lower', because in the time when al original print had to be set in individual letters, the 'upper case' letters were stored in the case on top of the case stored smaller, 'lower case' letters
· In the 40's, the Bich pen was changed to Bic for fear that Americans would pronounce it 'Bitch.'

End of an era: Kolkata bans hand rickshaws

Kolkata’s ubiquitous hand-pulled rickshaws have been part of the city for as long as one can remember. In fact author Dominique Lapierre wove his masterpiece City of Joy around a hand rickshaw-puller. The novel brought to fore the tribulations of the impoverished lot and the life they represent.
One can’t help but wonder how such a mode of transport not only came into existence, but also thrived among Kolkatans for so long. History has it that Chinese traders in Kolkata introduced these rickshaws in the late 19th century, primarily to carry goods. But with time, British rulers made them a cheap mode of transport, eventually turning them into a symbol of the city. While China banned these hand-pulled rickshaws after the communists came to power in 1949, the system continued to exist in Kolkata.Kolkata is one of the only places in the world where such rickshaws are used as everyday means of transport. According to a recent study, the number of hand-rickshaw pullers stands at 18,000 with more than 1,800 joining the profession every year.

In the wake of such statistics, the announcement by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya banning these rickshaws by the year-end has caused quite a stir. “They may be environment-friendly but they are also a symbol of an inhuman practice. Nowhere in the world will you find one human being pulling another human being with his hands,” says Bhattacharya.

Poor conditions
These rickshaw pullers live in unhygienic conditions and often suffer from malnutrition and tuberculosis. They are also susceptible to skin diseases, since they wade through contaminated waters carrying people through the city’s old bylanes. But all that is set to change with the Chief Minister’s diktat. "Westerners try to associate beggars and these rickshaws with Kolkata's tradition, but this is not our tradition," claims the Chief Minister. But while some see the move as solely to revamp India’s global image, others admit that the move had long been in the offing. Until a few years ago, there were about 6,000 licensed owners of hand-pulled rickshaws in the city, but their numbers shrunk to around 1,800 after the authorities stopped issuing new licences.

Alternate jobs
While announcing the decision, the Buddhadeb government has assured the rickshaw pullers that they will be provided with an alternative means of livelihood.Officials in Kolkata said they would look into replacing the hand-pulled rickshaws with motorized three-wheel versions or bicycle rickshaws. While some of the Kolkatans have welcomed the decision, others have objected strongly to the move, on grounds that thousands will be rendered jobless by the decision.

However, the apex body of rickshaw pullers, All Bengal Rickshaw Pullers' Union (ABRPU), has said that they are not totally averse to the idea as long as they have an alternative livelihood. "We hope the government will make suitable arrangements and thousands of people who are involved with this trade are not left in the lurch," said Mohammad Aslam of ABRPU.Whether the ban is part of India’s new makeover campaign, or as the Chief Minister says, is taken on “humanitarian grounds”, if the rickshaw pullers are provided substitute employment, then there will be no reason for anyone to protest. But one thing is for sure; the ‘City of Joy’ will never be the same without these rickshaws.