Amazing Facts About Norway

• The distance from Oslo to Hammerfest is as far as Oslo to Athens
• Although Finland has been named “land of 1000 lakes”, Norway’s countless lakes does in fact far outnumber Finland’s. About 450,000 (half million) lakes in Norway are identified, compared to a mere 60,000 lakes in Finland!
• Regarded as the birth place of modern skiing
• Norwegians rejected EU membership twice in referendums, but the country have implemented more EU directives than any of the actual EU member states
• Food stores are not allowed to stay open on Sundays, but petrol stations and kiosks selling groceries are.
• The original cheese slicer (“ostehøvel”) was invented and patented by Bjørklund, a Norwegian carpenter, in 1925?
• One of the most popular cheeses in Norway is brown
• Grandiosa frozen pizza is unofficially named as the Norwegian national dish
• The Lærdal road tunnel on road E16 is the world’s longest road tunnel (24.5 kilometers/15 miles)
• The Internet web browser Opera is Norwegian
• The Norwegian national football team is one of the few teams to have never lost against Brazil? Two victories and one draw is our record against the five times World Champions.
  

Amazing facts about india

• India is the world's largest, oldest, continuous civilization.
• India is the world's Largest democracy.
• India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.
• India invented the number system. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.
• When many cultures were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization)
• There are 300,000 active mosques in India , more than in any other country, including the Muslim world
• Sanskrit is the mother of all the European Languages . Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software - a report in Forbes magzine July 1987.
• Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India.
• India is one of the few countries in the world, which gain independence without violence.
• India has the second largest pool of Scientist and Engineers in the World.
• India is the largest English speaking nation in the world.
• India is the only country other than US and Japan, to have built a super computer indeigenously.
• India has the largest number of Post Offices in the world
• One of the largest employer in the world is the Indian Railways , employing over a million people
• India was one of the richest countries till the time of British rule in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus, attracted by India's wealth, had come looking for a sea route to India when he discovered America by mistake.
• The Baily Bridge is the highest bridge in the world. It is located in the Ladakh valley between the Dras and Suru rivers in the Himalayan mountains. It was built by the Indian Army in August 1982
• The Vishnu Temple in the city of Tirupathi built in the 10th century, is the world's largest religious pilgrimagedestination. Larger than either Rome or Mecca, an average of 30,000 visitors donate $6 million (US) to the temple everyday.
• Varanasi, also known as Benaras, was called "the Ancient City" when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 B.C., and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today.
• Martial Arts were first created in India, and later spread to Asia by Buddhist missionaries.
• Yoga has its origins in India and has existed for over 5,000 years.

Amazing facts about finland

Fact 1:
Finland has over 188000 lakes with 98000 islands.

Fact 2:
Finland have a wife carring championship.

Fact 3:
Mobile company Nokia was founded in Finland.

Fact 4:
Finland is the only country in the world which broadcasts news in Latin.

Fact 5:
There are 1.8 million saunas in Finland.

Fact 6:
Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish.

Fact 7:
Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because Donald Duck doesn’t wear pants.

Fact 8:
Santa Claus has his office in the North of Finland.

Fact 9:
Finland is the seventh largest country in Europe, in terms of area.

Fact 10:
The population of Finland is about 5 million and about 1 million of them live in the capital Helsinki.

Fact 11:

Finland is the most sparsely populated country in the European Union, with only 16 inhabitants per km².

Fact 12:

The 120 km Päijänne Water Tunnel is Europe's longest tunnel and the world's second longest.

Fact 13:

Finland was one of the last region of Europe to be Christianised, in the 12th century.

Finland has only been an independent country since 1917. Before that it belonged to Russia or Sweden.

Fact 14:

Finnish athletes have won more Summer Olympic medals per capita than any other nation. As of 2012, Finland had won in total 302 Summer Olympic medals (incluidng 101 gold medals) for a population of only 5.4 million. That is an average of 55.9 medals (18.7 gold medals) per million people. Finland is only second to Norway for the number of Winter Olympic medals per capita (28.8 medals/million).

Fact 14:

Drivers from Finland have won more World Rally championships (14 titles) than any other country, and more Formula One championships compared to their country's population (4 titles for 5 million inhabitants - the next best being Austria with 4 titles for a population of 8 million).

Fact 15:

Finland has been at the top of the worldwide Press Freedom Ranking list every year since the publication of the first index by Reporters Without Borders in 2002.

Fact 16:

According to the 2007 UNICEF report on child well-being in rich countries, Finland has the highest level of academic achievements of all surveyed countries for reading, mathematics and sciences. However, it also has the lowest percentage of children 'liking school a lot' (only 8%).

Fact 17:

Since 2004, Finland has regularly been ranked as 2nd or 3rd best country for the State of the World’s Mothers bySave the Children.

Fact 18:

Finnish language (a.k.a. Suomi) is an non Indo-European language belonging to the Uralic family, along with Estonian and Hungarian.

Fact 19:

The Finns are the world's biggest coffee drinkers, gulping down no less than 12 kg of the black substance annually, twice more than the Italians, three times more than the Americans, and four times more than the Brits.

Fact 20:

Santa Claus (known in Finland as Joulupukki or "Yule Goat") officially resides in a house built right on top of the Arctic circle, near the town of Rovaniemi, in the northern province of Lappland. The Santa Claus Post Office (address: Santa Claus Village, FIN-96930 Arctic Circle) receives some 700,000 letters every year from children from 198 countries (so far).

Amazing facts about dead sea

FACTS ABOUT DEAD SEA

1. The Dead Sea isn’t actually a sea at all! The Dead Sea is a saltwater lake. 
2. Hence the name, there is no marine life in the Dead Sea. The high mineral and salt content of the waters make it impossible for fish or plants to live.
   
3. The Dead Sea is the second saltiest body of water in the world, with a salt content of 33%.
   
4. Cleopatra loved the Dead Sea so much, she ordered that cosmetic factories and resorts be built along its shores.
   
5. You can lay on the surface of the water without even trying to float. The high salt content makes you buoyant.

6. Water flows into the Dead Sea from streams and rivers, but does not flow out.

7. Dead Sea salt is super bitter and not at all like table salt.

8. The Dead Sea is filled with minerals including calcium, iodine, saline, potassium, and bromide.
   
9. The minerals in the Dead Sea all naturally occur within our bodies.

10. Egyptians used mud from the Dead Sea in their mummification of the deceased.

11. Centuries ago, one of the popular names of the Dead Sea was “The Stinky Sea”.

12. Asphalt often rises to the surface of the water in the Dead Sea.  The Greeks called it “Lake Asphaltites” after the strange phenomenon.

13. The climate of the Dead Sea region is sunny, warm and dry all year round.

14.  Both Jesus and John the Baptist are closely tied to the Dead Sea in biblical writings.
15.  In the Bible, it is said that the Dead Sea will one day come alive and fill with marine life.

16.  The shores of Dead Sea mark the lowest elevation on earth.

17.  Aristotle wrote about the Dead Sea in his writings.

18.  During the 20^th Century, the “Dead Sea Scrolls” were discovered.  These scrolls are the ancient writings of the Essenes.

19. The Dead Sea is 3 million years old.

20. The unique salt in the Dead Sea treats acne, psoriasis, hives, cellulite, dry skin, dandruff, stress, muscle aches, and more.

Amazing facts about north pole

• The North Pole is not on a land mass. The pole is actually exists in the middle of semi-permanent, constantly shifting masses of ice. 
• The depth of the sea at the North Pole is approximately 14,000 feet. The first exploration to the bottom of the sea at the North Pole was undertaken by the Russians in 2007. 
• The physical location of the North Pole varies, due to the "wobbling" effect that is caused by a shifting in the Earth's axis. 
• Scientists knew that the North Pole was located in the ocean as early as the 16th century. The still-controversial discovery of the North Pole is credited to American Robert Peary, in April 1909. 
• In the summer months, temperatures at the North Pole can reach up to 32F--the freezing mark. In winter months, temperatures range from -45 to -15F. 
• The North Pole is far from devoid of life, polar bears, fur seals and some sea birds have been seen around the North Pole area. There is little marine life, Russian underwater expeditions report no marine life at the seabed. 
• The standard method of telling time based on the position of the sun in the sky does not work at the North Pole. A day at the North Pole lasts the whole year.

Amazing facts about Amazon Rainforest

AMAZING AMAZON


1. Plant Diversity: In every 2.47 acres of Amazonia, there are 1500 plant species, 750 tree species, and 900 tons of living plants. According to Rain Tree, 438,000 species of plants have been registered as having economic or social interest.

2. Animal Diversity: There are 300 non-lizard reptile species, 175 lizard species, 500 mammalian species, and 1/3 of the world’s birds in the Amazon Rainforest. There are also 30 million insect species.

3. Human Destruction: It is estimated that in rainforests around the world, 150 acres of rainforest are burned every minute and 130 animal, plant, and insect species are lost every day. The destruction is due to logging, slash-and-burn agricultural techniques, cattle ranches, mining, and subsistence agriculture among other things.

4. Oxygen: An entire 20% of Earth’s oxygen is derived from the Amazon Rainforest alone.

5. Extreme Rainfall: The Amazon Rainforest receives an entire nine feet of rain every year.

6. The Amazon River: Most of the Amazon River’s water is from the glacial melt in the Peruvian Andes.The river has 16% of all of the world’s river water and empties 28 billion gallons into the Atlantic everyminute. It has 1100 tributaries and its drainage basin is 2,722,000 square miles.

7. It’s Huge: The rainforest covers 1.2 billion acres and is 2.5 million square miles. It covers more thanhalf of Brazil and 2/5ths of South America. If the rainforest was a country, it would be the 9th largest inthe world and be larger than the continental United States.

8. Unique and Specialized Ecosystem: The plants and animals in the Amazon have evolved in such a waythat they create a tight-knit ecosystem. Each plant and animal relies on another greatly for its survival,which means that the Amazon Rainforest’s ecosystem is very delicate.

9. Temperature: The rainforest is very humid and has a larger temperature difference between day and night than between seasons. Its temperature is an average of 79˚F.

10. Changing River Flow: The Amazon River once poured into the Pacific Ocean. When the Andes Mountains were formed 15 million years ago, the Amazon River’s flow was slowly blocked until freshwater lakes were forced to be formed. Approximately 10 million years ago, the river wound its wayback to pour into the Atlantic instead.

11. Forest Floor: The bottommost layer of the Amazon Rainforest. 2% of sunlight makes it to this layer which is filled with decomposing plants and tree roots. Large animals eat on this layer and decomposers are everywhere.

12. Understory: The layer of the rainforest that is second to the bottom. It receives 2-5% of sunlight and is packed with dense leaf cover.

13. Canopy: The layer that is second to the top. It has smooth, oval leaves that aren’t nearly as big as those in the understory, as these are closer to the sun.

14. Emergent Layer: The topmost layer of the Amazon Rainforest. It is made up of the tops of trees thatcan grow to be 200 feet tall. The leaves are very small at this level and are covered in wax so they canhold water.

15. Tribes: According to Rain Tree, there are approximately 200,000 natives living in Amazonia today. This is in stark contrast to the 10 million that are estimated to have lived there 500 years ago.

16. Money in the Rainforest: Harvesting an acre of timber from the rainforest nets $400/year. Ranching cattle on an acre gives $60/year. However, sustainably harvesting resources from an acre of rainforest nets $2400/year and employs local natives.

17. Countries: The rainforest stretches throughout Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Suriname, French Guiyana, Guyana, Peru, and Colombia.

18. The World’s Pharmacy: About 25% of all drugs are derived from rainforest ingredients. However, it is estimated that scientists have only tested 1% of tropical plants for medicinal uses. Plant species are becoming extinct every day due to deforestation, and with them, our ability to cure new diseases.

19. Forest Energy: Out of all the energy that goes into the Amazon, 9/10ths of it are stored in tree leaves and tissues.

20. Amazonian Soil: 99% of the soil’s nutrients are in the topsoil. The forest floor is porous and traps nutrients easily. The roots of trees and plants keep the nutrient-rich topsoil fromwashing away.

21. Amazon River Floods: The rainforest floods from June to October, as the snowmelt from thePeruvian Andes makes the water in the Amazon River rise 30-45 ft.

Amazing facts about America

AMAZING AMERICA

#1 The highest point in the state of Florida is only 345 feet (115 yards) above sea level.

#2 Today, 66 percent of all Americans are considered to be overweight.

#3 The state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island is. But Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than Alaska does.

#4 The average supermarket in the United States wastes about 3,000 pounds of food each year.

#5 Approximately 48 percent of all Americans are currently either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#6 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.

#7 In the UK, an average of about $3,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year. In the United States, an average of about $8,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year.

#8 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.

#9 The average U.S. citizen drinks the equivalent of more than 600 sodas each year.

#10 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.

#11 The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people. Japan only has 593 for every 1,000 people and Germany only has 540 for every 1,000 people.

#12 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California. But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.

#13 For many years it was the other way around, but today a majority of all Americans (including Pat Robertson) actually support the legalization of marijuana.

#14 Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital.

#15 In the middle of the last century, the United States was #1 in the world in GDP per capita. Today, the United States is #13 in GDP per capita.

#16 Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

#17 One survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit pornography websites while they are at work.

#18 In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.

#19 One out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#20 The city of Juneau, Alaska is about 3,000 square miles large. It is actually bigger than the entire state of Delaware.

#21 The United States puts a higher percentage of its population in prison than any other nation on earth does.

#22 There are more unemployed workers in the United States than there are people living in the entire nation of Greece.

#23 The original name of the city of Atlanta was “Terminus”.

#24 Sadly, more than 52 percent of all children that live in Cleveland, Ohio are living in poverty.

#25 The median price of a home in the city of Detroit is now about $6000.

#26 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#27 According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

#28 According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, approximately 167,000 Americans have more than $200,000 of student loan debt.

#29 There are three towns in the United States that have the name “Santa Claus”.

#30 There are 313 million people living in the United States. 46 million of them are on food stamps.

#31 In the United States as a whole, one out of every four children is on food stamps.

#32 In 1940, 68.0% of all women in the 20 to 34 year old age group in the United States were married. In 2010, only 39.2% of women in that age group were married.

#33 The United States has a teen pregnancy rate of 22 percent – the highest in the world. New Zealand is number two at 14 percent.

#34 According to the CDC, there are 19 million new cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia in the United States every single year.

#35 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin. Puerto Rico is number two. Perhaps Puerto Rico really would fit in as the 51st state.

#36 More people have been diagnosed with mental disorders in the United States than in any other nation on earth.

#37 The United States has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.

#38 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#39 The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

#40 It took from the founding of the nation until 1981 for the U.S. national debt to cross the one trillion dollar mark. Today, our national debt is well over 15 trillion dollars and we add more than a trillion dollars to our debt every single year.

Amazing facts about milk

Afghanistan. The habit of drinking milk first became popular 10,000 years ago, when the first animals were domesticated, initially in Afghanistan and Iran, and later in Turkey and Africa. Cows first arrived in the United States in the 1600s.

Breast feeding. The most precious kind of milk is mother’s milk. This nourishes new-born babies until they are old enough to be weaned onto other foods. The first artificial milks arrived in the mid 1800s: baby formulas were invented by Henry Nestlè.

Cows. Cows produce 90% of the world’s milk needs. Each cow provides an average of 90 glasses of milk a day, or over 200,000 glasses over the course of its lifetime. Working by hand, a farmer can milk around 6 cows an hour.

Dairy products. From cheeses, both fresh and mature, to yoghurt, cream, butter, and ice cream. Dairy products come in a wide variety of forms, and are produced the world over, with their names and recipes changing from country to country. They all have the same characteristic in common: they’re tasty and very wholesome.

Extra mucus. Some theories say that when you have a cold you shouldn’t drink milk or consume dairy products, as doing so will increase the production of mucus. However, the exact opposite advice is also often given: when you’re suffering from congestion, drink a nice glass of warm milk.

Flavored. Everyone, young and old, loves it: flavored and sweetened milk, whether strawberry-colored or with added chocolate. It’s impossible to resist – but watch out for those calories. 

Goats and camels. There is a wide variety of milk-producing animals in the world, from goat and sheep’s milk to camels and other dromedaries, via ape, yak, water buffalo, reindeer and horses. There are even vegetarian milks made from coconut, almond, hemp and soy.

Honey. Natural sugars are best for accompanying milk, and pairing the two together has even inspired many artists: Milk and Honey was, for example, the name of an album by John Lennon.

Ice cream. Milk is the most important ingredient in hand-made ice cream, making up around 60% of the finished product. An English ice cream maker has even produced a variety made with human breast milk. The ingredient was confiscated after only a few days, however.

Jet Li. Milk is good for martial arts champions too: the words of the ‘new Bruce Lee’, the martial arts expert and actor Jet Li, who in China is the face of a publicity campaign designed to boost milk consumption.

Kubrick. In Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece A Clockwork Orange, the ‘droogs’ meet up at the Korova Milk Bar, where they go to drink ‘milk-plus’ - a mixture of milk and mescaline.

Lactose intolerance. Lactose, the form of sugar found in milk, cannot always be easily dealt with by the stomach: those who suffer from lactose intolerance can, however, drink lactose-free milk, which is lighter and easier to digest.

Milky way. The Milky Way is the galaxy which our solar system forms a part of. Legend has it that it was created by drops of milk from the breast ofHera, the wife of Zeus, as she breast fed Hercules.

No milk! Here’s the other side of the debate: whether due to intolerance, allergies or personal choice, there are many people who say no to milk. The most common alternative is soy milk.

Osteoporosis. Rich in calcium, milk is recommended in order to combat a variety of conditions, including osteoporosis, which affects the bones of women, especially from a certain age onwards.

Pasteur. It’s thanks to Louis Pasteur, the 19th century French biologist, that the milk we drink today contains little or no bacteria. He initially applied his heating technique, known as pasteurization, to beer. The process is still used today.

Queen Elizabeth. The Queen Elizabeth II of England each day drinks milk from cows raised on her own Windsor estate. When her grandchildren William and Harry went to Eton, the famous public school, she instructed the estate manager to send milk from the Royal cows every day for the Prince’s breakfasts.

Raw milk. Raw milk is milk that has not undergone any form of treatment, and which is drunk fresh soon after being produced. Richer in protein, it is the subject of a debate on food safety. In many countries around the world, you can buy raw milk from street vendors.

Sleep. From birth to old age, there’s no better recipe for a good night’s sleep: a nice glass of warm milk, maybe with honey or sugar, is a sweet, nutritious kind of lullaby: a true natural calmative.

Tooth decay. Drinking milk and eating yogurt and cheese is a great way to protect that perfect smile. Milk reduces the level of acidity in the mouth, combats plaque formation and reduces the risk of cavities.

UHT. Ultra High Temperature treatment is the name of the method of sterilization used for milk. Liquid milk given UHT treatment is also often called long-life milk and, unlike fresh milk, it can be drunk up to 6 months after it was produced.

Vitamins. Vitamins A, D, and B12, minerals such as potassium, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, and also protein: milk is rich in nutrients essential for human health.

White Russian. The protagonist of The Big Lebowski, a film by the Cohen brothers, is very fond of milk: but he only ever drinks is as part of his favorite cocktail, the White Russian. Its recipe: 2 parts vodka, 1 partKahlua, milk or cream according to taste, and ice.

X-Men: Wolverine. Superheroes drink milk too. After Batman, the Fantastic Four, Superman and The Incredible Hulk, even Wolverine from the X-Menwas part of an American ad campaign aimed at convincing teenagers to drink more milk.

Yogurt. This is a milk derivative, but which is easy to digest, and very tasty. The word comes from the Turkish verb yogurtmak, meaning to mix. You can make it at home too, and it forms the base of many do-it-yourself beauty masks.

Zits. This theory has been the subject of debate for years, but various dermatological studies have shown that high consumption of milk is a cause of acne, and that it worsens the condition in people, above all the young, who already suffer from it. 

Amazing facts about space and universe

• 1. Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere.
• 2. Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars.
• 3. Most scientists say life's basic chemicals formed on the Earth. The astronomer Fred Hoyle said they came from space.
• 4. Oxygen is circulated around the helmet in space suits in order to prevent the visor from misting.
• 5. The middle layers of space suits are blown up like a balloon to press against the astronaut's body. Without this pressure, the astronaut's body would boil!
• 6. The gloves included in the space suit have silicon rubber fingertips which allow the astronaut some sense of touch.
• 7. The full cost of a spacesuit is about $11 million although 70% of this is for the backpack and the control module.
• 8. Ever wondered how the pull of gravity is calculated between heavenly bodies? It's simple. Just multiply their masses together, and then divide the total by the square of the distance between them.
• 9. Glowing nebulae are named so because they give off a dim, red light, as the hydrogen gas in them is heated by radiation from the nearby stars.
• 10. The Drake Equation was proposed by astronomer Frank Drake to work out how many civilizations there could be in our galaxy - and the figure is in millions.
• 11. SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - the program that analyzes radio signals from space for signs of intelligent life.
• 12. The Milky Way galaxy we live in: is one among the BILLIONS in space.
• 13. The Milky Way galaxy is whirling rapidly, spinning our sun and all its other stars at around 100 million km per hour.

• 14. The Sun travels around the galaxy once every 200 million years – a journey of 100,000 light years.
• 15. There may be a huge black hole in the very middle of the most of the galaxies.
• 16. The Universe is probably about 15 billion years old, but the estimations vary.
• 17. One problem with working out the age of the Universe is that there are stars in our galaxy which are thought to be 14 to 18 billion years old – older than the estimated age of the Universe. So, either the stars must be younger, or the Universe older.
• 18. The very furthest galaxies are spreading away from us at more than 90% of the speed of light.
• 19. The Universe was once thought to be everything that could ever exist, but recent theories about inflation (e.g. Big Bang) suggest our universe may be just one of countless bubbles of space time.
• 20. The Universe may have neither a centre nor an edge, because according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, gravity bends all of space time around into an endless curve.
• 21. If you fell into a black hole, you would stretch like spaghetti.
• 22. Matter spiraling into a black hole is torn apart and glows so brightly that it creates the brightest objects in the Universe – quasars.
• 23. The swirling gases around a black hole turn it into an electrical generator, making it spout jets of electricity billions of kilometers out into space.
• 24. The opposite of black holes are estimated to be white holes which spray out matter and light like fountains.
• 25. A day in Mercury lasts approximately as long as 59 days on earth.

• 26. Twice during Mercury’s orbit, it gets so close to the Sun and speeds so much that the Sun seems to go backwards in the sky.
• 27. Nicolaus Copernicus was the astronomer who first suggested that the Sun was the centre, and that the Earth went round the sun.
• 28. The ideas of Copernicus came not from looking at the night sky, but from studying ancient astronomy.
• 29. As the earth turns, the stars come back to the same place in the night sky every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.09 seconds. This is a sidereal day (star day).
• 30. When Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon for the first time, he said these famous words: “That’s one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.”
• 31. From the moon, astronauts brought back 380 kg of Moon rock.
• 32. During the moon landing, a mirror was left on the Moon’s surface to reflect a laser beam which measured the Moon’s distance from the Earth with amazing accuracy.
• 33. The stars in each constellation are named after a Greek alphabet.
• 34. The brightest star in each constellation is called the Alpha Star, the next brightest Beta, and so on.
• 35. The distance to the planets is measured by bouncing radar signals off them and timing how long the signals take to get there and back.
• 36. Spacecrafts have double hulls (outer coverings) which protect them against other space objects that crash into them.
• 37. Manned Spacecrafts have life support systems that provide oxygen to breathe, usually mixed with nitrogen (as in ordinary air). Charcoal filters out smells/
• 38. Spacecrafts toilets have to get rid of waste in low gravity conditions, Astronauts have to sit on a device which sucks away the waste. Solid waste is dried and dumped in space, but the water is saved.

• 39. A comet’s tail is made as it nears the Sun and begins to melt. A vast plume of gas millions of kilometers across is blown out behind by the solar wind. The tail is what you see, shining as the sunlight catches it.
• 40. The Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet smashed into Jupiter in July 1994, with the biggest crash ever witnessed.
• 41. Giant stars have burned all their hydrogen, and so burn helium, fusing helium atoms to make carbon.
• 42. The constellation of Cygnus, the Swan, contains the very biggest star in the known universe – a hyper giant which is almost a million times as big as the sun.
• 43. Planet Uranus was discovered by William Herschel, who wanted to name the planet George, after King George III, but Uranus was eventually chosen.
• 44. The first rockets were made 1,000 years ago in China.
• 45. Robert Goddard launched the very first liquid-fuel rocket in 1926.
• 46. Over 100 artificial satellites are now launched into space every year, a few of which are space telescopes.
• 47. The lower a satellite’s orbit, the faster it must fly to avoid falling back to the Earth. Most satellites fly in low orbits, 300 km from the earth.
• 48. Hipparchus was the first astronomer to try to work out how far away the Sun is.
• 49. The red color of Mars is due to oxidized (rusted) iron in its soil.
• 50. Mars’s volcano Olympus Mons is the biggest in the solar system. It covers the same area as Ireland and is three times higher than our Mount Everest.

• 51. Planets have magnetic field around them because of the liquid iron in their cores. As the planets rotate, so the iron swirls, generating electric currents that create the magnetic field.
• 52. Earth’s atmosphere is the only atmosphere discovered till date that human can breathe in.
• 53. Earth’s atmosphere was formed from gases pouring out from volcanoes.
• 54. Jupiter has no surface for a spacecraft to land on because it is made mostly from helium gas and hydrogen. The massive pull of Jupiter’s gravity squeezes the hydrogen so hard that it is liquid.
• 55. Jupiter spins right round in less than 10 hours which means that the planet’s surface is moving at nearly 50,000 km/hr.
• 56. The first successful planetary space probe was the USA’s Mariner 2, which flew past Venus in 1962.
• 57. Voyager 2 has flown over 6 billion km and is heading out of the solar system after passing close to Neptune in 1989.
• 58. To save fuel on journeys to distant planets, space probes may use a nearby planet’s gravity to catapult them on their way. This is called slingshot.
• 59. Hubble’s law showed that Universe is getting bigger – and so must have started very small. This led to the idea of Big Bang.
• 60. It’s believed that it was the impact of a big meteorite may have chilled the earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs.
• 61. The first astronomers thought the regular pulses from far space might be signals from aliens, and pulsars were jokingly called LGMs (short for Little Green Men).
• 62. Pulsars probably result from a supernova explosion - that is why most are found in the flat disc of the Milky Way, where supernovae occur.
• 63. Three moons have yet been found to have their own moons: Saturn’s moon Titan, Jupiter’s Lo, and Neptune’s Triton.

• 64. The largest moon in the Solar System is the Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
• 65. Saturn is not solid, but is made almost entirely of gas – mostly liquid hydrogen and helium. Only in the planet’s very small core is there any rock.
• 66. Winds ten times stronger than a hurricane on Earth swirl around Saturn’s equator reaching up to 1100 km/h – and they never let up: even for a moment.
• 67. The first space station was the Soviet Salyut 1 launched in April 1971; its low orbit meant it stayed up only five months.
• 68. In April 2001, Dennis Tito became the first space tourist, ferried up to the ISS by the Russian Soyuz space shuttle.
• 69. Einstein’s theory of general relativity shows that gravity not only pulls on matter, but also space and even ‘Time’ itself.
• 70. Since the star Deneb is 1800 light years away, we see it as it was when the emperor Septimus Severius was ruling the Rome (AD 200).
• 71. With powerful telescopes, astronomers can see galaxies 2 billion light years away. This means we see them as they were when the only life forms in Earth were bacteria.
• 72. The slowest rotating planet is Venus, which takes 243.01 days to turn around.
• 73. The fastest spinning objects in the Universe are neutron stars – these can rotate 500 times in just 1 second.
• 74. In summer in Uranus, the sun does not set for 20 years. In winter, darkness lasts for 20 years. In autumn, the sun rises and sets every 9 hours.
• 75. Uranus’s moon Miranda is the weirdest moon of all. It seems to have been blasted apart, and then put together again.

• 76. Solar flares reach temperatures of 10 million °C and have the energy of a million atom bombs.
• 77. True binary stars are two stars held together by one another’s gravity, which spend their lives whirling around together like a pair of dancers.
• 78. Halley predicted that a comet he had discovered would return in 1758, 16 years after his death, and it really did. It was the first time a comet’s arrival had been predicted, and the comet was named after him as Halley’s Comet.
• 79. Ceres is the biggest asteroid in the Solar System – 940 km across, and 0.0002% the size of the earth.
• 80. The sun is about 5 billion years old and half a way through its life – as a medium sized star it will probably live for around 10 billion years.
• 81. Neptune’s mood Triton is the coldest place in the Solar System, with surface temperatures of -236°C.
• 82. Voyager 2 will beam back data until 2020 as it travels beyond the edges of the Solar System.
• 83. The Pioneer 10 and 11 probes carry metal plaques with messages for aliens telling them about us.
• 84. Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity (1905) shows that all measurements are relative, including time and speed. In other words, time and speed depends upon where you measure them.
• 85. When things are falling, their acceleration cancels out gravity, which is why astronauts in orbits are weightless.
• 86. The first space telescope was the Copernicus, sent out in 1972.
• 87. Astronauts learn Scuba diving which helps them to deal with space walks.
• 88. Weightlessness makes astronauts grow several centimeters during a long mission.
• 89. The first living creature in space was the dog Laika on – board Sputnik 2 in 1957. Sadly, she died when the spacecraft’s oxygen supply ran out.

• 90. The first manned space flight was made in April 1961 by the Soviet Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1.
• 91. The heart of a star reaches 16 million °C. A grain of sand this hot would kill someone 150 km away.
• 92. Stars twinkle because we see them through the wafting of the atmosphere.
• 93. The sun weighs 2,000 trillion trillion tones – about 300,000 times as much as the Earth – even though it is made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, the lightest gases in the Universe.
• 94. The sun gets hot because it is so big that the pressure in its core is so tremendous – enough to force the nuclei of hydrogen atoms to fuse to make helium atoms. This nuclear reaction is like a gigantic atom bomb and it releases huge amounts of heat.
• 95. The nuclear fusion reactions in the Sun’s core send out billions of light photons every minute but they take 10 million years to reach its surface.
• 96. The Hiroshima bombs released 84 trillion joules of energy. A supernova releases 125,000 trillion trillion times as such.
• 97. The most distant galaxies (quasars) have red shifts so big that they must be moving away from us at speeds approaching the speed of light.
• 98. When light waves from distant galaxies are stretched out his way, they look redder. This is called red shift.
• 99. The moon’s gravity is 17% of the Earth’s so astronauts in space suits can jump 4 m high on the moon.
• 100. The moon is the only other world that humans have set foot on. Because the moon has no atmosphere or wind, the footprints planted in its dusty surface in 1969 by the Apollo astronauts are still there today, perfectly preserved.