Fishing is the biggest participant sports in the world. Football (soccer) is the most attended or watched sport in the world. Boxing became a legal sport in 1901. More than 100 million people hold hunting licenses. Jean Genevieve Garnerin was the first female parachutists, jumping from a hot air balloon in 1799. In 1975 Junko [...]

Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Kikazaru – Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Iwazaru – Speak no evil). The fourth wise monkey is called Shizaru (Do no evil). An atomic clock is accurate to within 1 second in 1,7 million years. Barbie was introduced [...]

Music was sent down a telephone line for the first time in 1876, the year the phone was invented. Sound travels through water 3 times faster than through air. A square piece of dry paper cannot be folded in half more than 7 times. Air becomes liquid at about minus 190 degrees Celsius. Liquid air [...]

The word millionaire was first used by Benjamin Disraeli in his 1826 novel Vivian Grey. If you stack one million US$1 bills, it would be 110m (361 ft) high and weight exactly 1 ton. A million dollars’ worth of $100 bills weighs only 10 kg (22 lb). One million dollars’ worth of one-cent coins (100 [...]

The shortest war on record took place in 1896 when Zanzibar surrendered to Britain after 38 minutes. The longest was the so-called 100-years war between Britain and France. It actually lasted 116 years, ending in 1453. It was during the 100-years war that direct taxation on income was introduced, a British invention designed to finance [...]

Milk chocolate was invented by Daniel Peter, who sold the concept to his neighbor Henri Nestlé. An ounce of chocolate contains about 20 mg of caffeine. Forks, mostly being two-tined, used to known as “split spoons.” TIP is the acronym for “To Insure Promptness.” The world’s oldest existing eateries are the Stiftskeller St. Peter in [...]

In 1750 there were about 800 million people in the world. In 1850 there were a billion more, and by 1950, another billion. Then it took just 50 years to double to 6 billion. Half the world’s population earns about 5% of the world’s wealth. There are more than 600 million telephone lines, yet almost [...]

The order of the planets, starting closest to the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. The one place where a flag flies all day, never goes up or comes down, and does not get saluted, is the moon. Earth is not round; it is slightly pear-shaped. The North Pole radius is 44mm [...]

In the West the most popular male names are James and John. The most popular female name is Mary. The name Wendy was first used in JM Barrie’s Peter Pan. There are about 5,000 prince and princesses in each Saudi Arabian royal. Merit-Ptah (2700 BC) of Ancient Egypt  is the world’s first known female physician. [...]

In 1894, Lord Kelvin predicted that radio had no future; he also predicted that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. The word “sneaker” was coined by Henry McKinney, an advertising agent for N.W. Ayer & Son. Charles Macintosh invented the waterproof coat, the Mackintosh, in 1823. Air-filled tyres were used on bicycles before they were used [...]