"Some amazing facts",series-2

The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the persian phrase "Shah Mat", which means "the king is dead".
The dollar symbol ($) is a U combined with an S (U.S.)
Full name of city Los Angeles is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de porciuncula". In English this means 'The City of Angeles'.
Peanuts are one of the ingedients of dynamite.
Contrary to belief the British flag is not called " The Union Jack" its actually called " The Union Flag".It is only called the Union Jack when out at sea on navy ships.
In Alaska, it is legal to shoot bears.However, waking a sleeping bear for the purpose of taking a photograph is prohibited.
In 1879, a mail service in Belgium emoyed 37 cats to carry bundles of letters to villages around the town of Liege.
Camels were first imported to Australia in 1840 and now Australia has the biggest number of wild-humped camels in the world.
The first ballot boxes in the world to be used in an election were used in Victiria in 1856.
Swimming during the day was illegal in New South Wales from 1833 to 1903.
One cubic inch of bone can withstand a two ton force.
It is not possible to sneeze with your eyes open.
A cow has no upper front teeth.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great Phaoroh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
The construction of Great China wall had started as back aa 770-476 BC.
12 % of scientists in America are Indians.
38 % of doctors in America are Indians.
36 % NASA employees are Indians.
14 % of all facts and statistics are manipulated and 27 % of the people know about it.
India never invaded any country in her last 10,000 years of history.
India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.
Until 1896,India was the only country for diamonds to the world.
Chess (Shataranja or Asthapada) was invented in India.
The decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.
Alexander Bain pattented the first fax process in 1843,but fax machines went into service only in 1964.
The first helicopter that could carry a person was flown by Paul Cornu in 1907.
Tanks were first used during world war one in Cambrai,France in 1917.
The computer was launched in 1943,more than 100 years after Charles Babbage designed the first programmable device.
The internet was launched in 1979. Tim Berners Lee introduced the WWW in 1989.
In a group of 23 people,at least two have the same birthday with the probability greater than 1/2.
The human body is composed of about 36 litres or eight gallons of water.
Ocean waves have been known to toss rocks weighing even more tjan 100 tons.
There are fishes that live more than 800 meters below the ocean surface and don't have eyes.
Grasshoppers hear through their knees.
Some snakes hear through their tongues.
Elephant is the onlt mammal that can't jump. Every other mammal can.
The cigarette lighter was invented even before the match sticks.
Only one person in two billion will live to be 116 years or older.
The shortest complete sentence in the English language is ,"I am."
The Saturn V moon rocket consumes 15 tons of fuel per second.
Cats have two different sets of vocal cords,one to meow and one to purr.
There are 8,00,000 different kinds of insects.
In their lifetime,150 bees will gather only 25 milliliters of honey.
Our eyes can distinguish nearly eight million different colours.
Our digestive tract is ten meters long.(Approx.30 feet).
If all 600 muscles in our body are pulled in one direction,we could lift 25 tons.
We have skin cells in our stomach,eyes and lungs.
More than half of our body's 206 bones are in our hands and feet.
Our eyes and brain build colour from of energy.
Our body produces one billion red blood cells every day.
Our ears can discriminate more than 3,00,000 tones.
The heaviest body organ is the skin. The average mass is 3.2 kg or seven pounds.
It takes 625 grapes to make one bottle of wine.
The elephant is the only mammal in the world with four knees.
A woodpecker can peck upto 500 times per minute or 8 times per second.
During a lifetime a tiger Shark will produce,use and then shed some 24,000 teeth.
Each sugar crystal has 16 sides.
The chalk used in schools inn't chalk at all....It is plaster of Paris.
The Great Wall of China is the largest man made object that can be seen from a sattellite going around the earth.
Goats and Octopus' eyes have rectangular pupils.
No piece of square dry paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.
1 in every 200 people is a psychopath and they look just like everyone else.
Sharks never get sick; they are immune to all known diseases.
Mexico city sinks about 10 inches a year.
Pigs can't sweat.
Eskimos have over 15 words for the English word of 'Snow'
To survive,every bird must eat at least half its iwn weight each day.
Human birth control pills work on gorillas also.
Some Ribbonworms eat themselves if they don't find any food.
Humans and Dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.
In France,even a five-year -old child can buy an alcohlic drink in a bar.
The sentence,"the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.
The world's youngest parents were 8 and 9 and lived in China in 1910.

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