501 Fascinating Facts by Editorial Board

Author:Editorial Board
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pustak Mahal
Published: 2011-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

Intermediate colours are obtained when one primary and one secondary colours are mixed together in equal amounts. There are in all six intermediate colours.

When they would raid Siberia in the months of darkness, the Mongols had an ingenious method for finding their way home in the dark. They would leave at their camp the young foals of their mares. After the raid, the riders would drop the reins, and the mares instinctively carried them straight back to the foals.

After Spartacus’s gladiatorial revolt had been suppressed in 71 B.C. no less than 6000 recaptured slaves were crucified on miles of crosses all along Rome’s main highway, the Appian Way.

The silkworm is not a worm. It is a caterpillar.

The fourth mughal Emperor, Jahangir who ruled from 1605 to 1627, had a harem of 300 royal wives, 5,000 more women, and 1,000 young men for alternate pleasures. Outside the palace, he stabled other kinds of pets: 1,000 elephants, 10,000 oxen, 2,000 camels, 3,000 deer, 4,000 dogs, 100 tame lions, 500 buffaloes and 10,000 carrier pigeons.

Each square inch of human skin consists of 19 million cells, sixty hairs, ninety oil glands, nineteen feet of blood vessels, 625 sweat glands, and 19,000 sensory cells.

The driest place on Earth is Calama, in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Not a drop of rain has been seen there.

Every year more than 50,000 earthquakes take place on earth. Of these most are too slight to be noticeable to man.

There are 2,500,000 rivets in the Eiffel Tower.

People who have never married are 7½ times more likely to be hospitalised in a state or community psychiatric facility than those who are married.

Peter the Great had his wife’s lover executed and his head put into a jar of alcohol. She had to keep it in her bedroom.

Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one, the Pyramids of Egypt is still in existence. Others have crumbled and disappeared. The great reason of the duration of the pyramid above all other forms is that it is most fitted to resist the force of gravitation.

The royal house of Saudi Arabia may at present have as many as 5,000 princes and an equal number of princessess. King Abdul Aziz Saud, who ruled from 1932 until his death in 1953, had 300 wives.

Coffee is the world’s second largest item of international commerce (Petroleum is first).

House lizards are perfectly harmless. They neither bite nor are they aggressive. In fact, they help man by eating insects like flies and mosquitoes.

A popular misconception seems to be that filtered cigarettes are less dangerous than unfiltered ones. According to a study the opposite would be the case: people who prefer filtered cigarettes are in danger of dying two to almost four years earlier than smokers of filterless cigarettes. Filters prevent the dilution of the smoke by oxygen so that the bloodstream builds up higher levels of carbon monoxide in the form of carboxyhemoglobin.

Egyptian embalmers used to remove a dead person’s brains through his nostrils.

The heaviest bell in the world, the Tsar Kolokol Bell, was cast in 1733 in Moscow, Russia.

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