Interesting Facts

31st July 1498 - On his third voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus "discovered" the island of Trinidad. 1703 - Daniel Defoe was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. He had ruthlessly satirised the High Church Tories in a pamphlet, but allegedly, instead of throwing rotten veg and fruit at him, the crowd threw flowers. 1741 – Charles Albert of Bavaria invaded Upper Austria and Bohemia. 1790 – The first U.S. patent was issued to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process. 1792 - Director David Rittenhouse laid the cornerstone in Philadelphia for the U.S. Mint, the first building of the federal government. 1895 – The Basque Nationalist Party (Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea-Partido Nacionalista Vasco) was founded by Basque nationalist leader Sabino Arana. 1913 – The Balkan States signed an armistice at Bucharest. 1919 – The German national assembly adopted the Weimar constitution. 1938 – Bulgaria signed a non-aggression pact with Greece an...

30th July 762 – Baghdad was founded. 1866 – New Orleans's Democratic government ordered police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150. 1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Act of 1965 into law, establishing Medicare and Medicaid. 1975 – Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He was never seen or heard from again. 2003 – In Mexico, the last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line. 2006 – The world's longest running music show, Top of the Pops, was broadcast for the last time on BBC Two. The show had aired for 42 years. 2006 – At least 28 civilians, including 16 children were killed by the Israeli Air Force in Lebanon. 2005 - Anthony Walker, a British student was murdered in a racially motivated crime. 2007 - The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to ...

28th June 1922 - 18 year old Ralph Samuelson slapped a pair of sticks on his feet, grabbed hold of a rope behind a boat, and became the world's first waterskier. (His brother Ben operated the powerboat that pulled Ralph along. He broke the original skis in one landing, but his slightly-modified second pair still can be seen at the Water Ski Hall of Fame museum in Winter Haven, Florida.) 1960 - 45 men were killed in a gas explosion at a coal mine in Monmouthshire, Wales. 2004 - The United States handed power back to the Iraqi people at a low-key ceremony in Baghdad.

In the 17th century, in Boston USA, the Puritan PTB banned Christmas for over two decades: from 1659 until 1681. (It was illegal to observe Christmas by taking the day off from work, feasting or celebrating in any other way, and anyone caught doing so was fined five shillings, which was a lot of money back then. The ban was finally lifted in 1681, but many Puritans continued to rally against the holiday, some would even march through the streets on Christmas Eve shouting, "No Christmas! No Christmas!"   In 1870, Ulysses S. Grant was the first president to declare Christmas a national holiday, but even then some schools stayed open on Christmas day until as late as 1870, with harsh punishments for any children who bunked off. I knew that Cromwell banned Christmas in the UK in the 1640s, but seemingly 8 countries have done so, and not just in the past. It is currently banned in 3 other countries, and "discouraged" in several others.  Suffice to say I...

According to the International Benchmarking Study of UK Research Performance, 8% of the world's scientific papers are written in the UK. (In 2009, the UK produced 91,723 scientific papers, third only to the US and China. The most prolific country is the USA and China now produces more scientific papers than the UK, but they are cited less frequently by other scientists.  That said, China is expected to overtake the USA by 2012.) 

Haggis from Scotland has been banned in the USA for 40 years. (It was banned because the US Food Standards Agency prohibits sheep lung in food products.   You see!  Sometimes America gets it right!)

New York City has over 28,000 acres of parks and 14 miles of beaches. (This really surprised me! I don't think of New York as green ( or yellow!) at all.) xx Source - Wikipedia

More than than 1,000 blackbirds died and fell from the sky over a small USA town on New Year's Eve. (Apparently, the birds fell across a 1-mile area of Beebe, Arkansas.  According to an aerial survey, no other dead birds were found except those in that particular area.  The birds showed some signs of physical trauma, and officials say that a flock could have been hit by lightning, high-altitude hail, or even been startled by fireworks resulting in death from stress.  Whatever the real reason I am sure the conspiracy theorists and Armageddon watchers will be having a field day.)

The US president has the authority to disconnect computer systems and servers from the internet in the event of a national emergency. (Seemingly a law was passed in 1942, when after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt was given the broad power to commandeer or shut down telephone and telegraph networks. 70 years on there are no telegraph networks, and the telephone is only one of many means of communication. Although the 1942 law makes no mention of the internet it does say "any facility or station for wire communication". The good news is wifi should be safe.)

The University of Texas in San Antonio (UTSA) has opened the first completely bookless library on a university campus in the US. (The library in the engineering department seats 80 people and holds 425,000 e-books and 18,000 e-journal subscriptions. And the students don't have to worry about books already being out on loan, they simply download whatever they want, whenever they want. What bliss!)

According to research by Microsoft, more than 2.2 million US PCs were found to be part of botnets, in just the first six months of 2010. (A botnet is a network of hijacked home computers that criminals use to send spam, phishing e-mails and to launch attacks on websites. They are also used to search the infected machines for information that can be sold on underground auction sites and markets found online. The really scary thing is the US doesn't have the highest rate of infections, that dubious honour goes to South Korea where 14.6 out of every 1000 machines were found to be enrolled in botnets. Brazil had the second highest level of infections at 550,000. It's really important to protect your computer against these people. Sign up for automatic updates of your software (especially your operating system and browser(s), use anti-virus software (again keep it updated) and run a firewall. It's a bit like locking your front door rather than leaving it wide open wi...

Criminal trials in Japan have a 99% conviction rate. (Seemingly their conviction rate soared after their jury system was done away with, it has since been reintroduced, but only for serious crimes. Even China only has a conviction rate of about 98 percent and Russia a rate of about 90% (virtually unchanged in spite of the end of communism). Britain has a conviction rate of about 74 percent, and in America it's around 80%, but in both countries it's a lot lower for serious crimes.)

Maywood is America's (and possibly the world's) first completely outsourced city. (Following major cash-flow problems and the threat of bankruptcy, the city of Mayfield in the USA has outsourced every single public service; from the management of parks and libraries, to the book-keeping at City Hall, and even the running of its police department. The number of people it now has on its payroll? A big, fat zero. I think I would like to outsource my housework.) Source: The Independent

According to the UK's Office for National Statistics Britons went on 10 million fewer trips abroad in 2009. (This was a drop of 15% and meant that altogether Brits saved £5.1 billion. The destinations worst hit were Spain, France, Italy and Portugal, and the USA saw a drop of 20%. I guess the "staycation" is here to stay.)

In the US, nearly 1,400 Pacific salmon populations have been wiped out since the arrival of European settlers. (The most important factors that affect salmon are the "four Hs"—hydropower, habitat, harvest, and hatcheries. To help reduce mortality of juvenile salmon as they encounter dams and hydroelectric turbines on their downstream migration, fishery managers and biologists transport critical populations in barges and trucks. Hitch Hiking Salmon - Madness.) Source: Salmon Decline and Recovery - http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Re-St/Salmon-Decline-and-Recovery.html#ixzz0q6gCzZXH

An evangelical Christian family with five children were granted asylum in Tennessee this week after a judge ruled that their fundamental human rights were being violated back home. (What makes this interesting is that "back home" was in Germany. The reason that the Romeike family applied for asylum is that they were unable to homeschool their children, as school attendance in Germany is mandatory. A US immigration judge said that Germany was violating their basic human rights. I'd like to know how the children feel.)

Americans consume three times more paper per person than the average European, and 100 times more than the average person in China. (The average per capita paper use in the USA in 2001 was 700 pounds (320 kg). The average per capita paper use worldwide was 110 pounds (50 kg). Barely a third of the paper products sold in America are from recycled sources — most of it comes from virgin wood. There's nothing wrong with recycled paper, the United States Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) found that recycling causes 35% less water pollution and 74% less air pollution than making virgin paper.)

Scientists led by Eiriki Sunamura of the University of Tokyo, have discovered that a single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world. (The species, Argentine ants, are living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan and they belong to the same interrelated colony. They will even refuse to fight one another. In Europe, one vast colony is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles), while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. The colony could rival humans in the scale of world domination. After all, we never seem to refuse to fight one another.)

According to a survey by the Washington-based Pew Internet and American Life Project 11% of Internet-connected US adults updated their status online using Twitter or another social network in December, nearly twice as many as in May, a survey released on Thursday said. (My status online is usually online or offline. I don't need to update it.)

According to the Living Planet Report there are 2.1 hectares of land per person actually available for the global population. (The problem is that the developed world actually uses up far more than this and this means that we are using the agricultural land, forests, seas and resources of other countries to sustain ourselves. The countries with the biggest impact on the planet are the USA and China. Together they account for around 40% of the global footprint. And per person the USA and United Arab Emirates have the largest ecological footprint, while Malawi and Afghanistan have the smallest. The old adage comes to mind, consume less, live more.)