Interesting Facts About Italy
Almost 20% of Italy's population is over 65 years old.
Italy borders Austria, France, Vatican City, San Marino, Slovenia, and Switzerland.
Its longest border is with Switzerland.
The average Italian family has 1.27 children.
Everybody 18 and over can vote, however you have to be at least 25 to vote in Senate elections.
The Italian flag is inspired by the French flag introduced during Napoleon's 1797 invasion of the peninsula.
The average Italian makes $26,700 a year, however those in the more prosperous north make almost $40,000
The thermometer is an Italian invention.
Italy's unemployment rate is around 8.6%, but it is as high as 20% in the more impoverished south.
Italian farms produce grapes, potatoes, sugar beets, soybeans, grain, olives, beef, and dairy.
The average life expectancy at birth for an Italian is 79.54 years.
The famous children's story, Pinocchio , was written by an Italian.
The city of Naples gave birth to the pizza .
The piano hails from Italy.
The longest river in Italy is the Po.
The average Italian consumes half a pound of bread a day.
Italy's contributions to science include the barometer, electric battery, nitroglycerin, and wireless telegraphy.
Famous Italian explorers include Christopher Columbus, Marco Polo, John Cabot, and Amerigo Vespucci.
Today's modern Italian language originated in the region of Tuscany.
Enrico Fermi, inventor of the nuclear reactor, was an Italian.
The automobile, Fiat , is one of Italy's greatest products.
With almost 40 million visitors, Italy is the fourth most visited country in the world.
Italy is home to two microstates, San Marino and Vatican City .
Besides Julius Caesar, Shakespeare also set in Italy ( entirely or partially):
Romeo and Juliet, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline,Much Ado About Nothing, Othello,The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, The Two Gentlemen of Verona,The Winter's Tale
Cologne came out of Italy.
The ice cream cone is an Italian invention.
The majority of Italian-American immigrants came from Naples and southern Italy.
The ancient city of Pompeii was destroyed by the volcano Mt. Vesuvius.
Mt. Vesuvius last erupted in 1944, destroying a number of neighboring villages.
Eyeglasses are an Italian invention.
The average Italian is 41 years old.
Italy has 16 regions and 4 autonomous regions.
Before adopting the euro, Italy's currency was known as the lira.
The average Italian consumes 26 gallons of wine a year.
Italy's major industries include tourism, machinery, iron and steel, chemicals, food processing, textiles, motor vehicles, clothing, footwear, and ceramics.
Italy has more hotel rooms than any other nation in Europe.
The espresso machine hails from Italy.
Italy is the world's fifth largest industrial economy.
Barely a third of Italy's land is arable and suitable for farming.
Over 40% of Italy's labor force is unionized.
The telephone was created by an Italian (Meucci) *Note.
Most of Italy's industry is centered around the northern cities of Milan, Turin and Genoa .
Since the end of WWII, Italy has seen almost 60 governments come and go.
The area around Venice is the wealthiest region in Europe.
Over 75% of Italy is mountainous or hilly.
The typewriter is an Italian invention.
Italians used to be known for having large families, however Italy is now known for having Europe's lowest birthrate.
Italy owes much of its prosperity to thousands of small private family enterprises.
Italian families save more money than the Japanese and Germans, and three times more than Americans do.
The average Italian consumes 25 kilograms of pasta a year.
With over
5 million people, Rome is Italy's largest Italy.
Italy has a population of over 58 million.
Italians refer to their country as Italia.
Italy imports over 75% of its energy.
The service sector accounts for almost 70% of the Italian economy.
Agriculture used to make up over a third of Italy's economy. It now makes up less than three percent.
The official language is Italian, but German and French are also spoken in some regions.
Italy's north has warm summers and cool winters. Italy's south has hot summers and mild winters.
The Seven Hills of Rome are Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal, and Viminal.
The symbol SPQR can be found on many ancient buildings in Rome. It stands for "the senate and people of Rome."
Rome was founded in 753 BC.
Italy did not become a united country until 1861
The national protest song of Italy is Bella Ciao. It was made famous by Italian partisans in WWII, and can be heard at almost any protest.
Before Rome became a republic and an empire, it had seven kings.
The first king of Rome was its legendary founder, Romulus.
"Ars longa, vita brevis" is a common saying in Italy. It means "art is long, life is short" and reflects the Italian love of leisure.
An engineering marvel of the ancient world, Cloacus Maxima, is the sewer of Rome.
The first Roman Emperor was Augustus Octavian, who came to power in 27 BC.
The Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, after its last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was forced to abdicate by barbarian invaders.
A Roman Centurion commanded 100 hundred men.
A Roman Legion was made up of 6,000 men.
Italy has a resident foreign population of 1.27 million.
Italy's current constitution took effect January 1, 1948
The president of Italy is a ceremonial figure.
The prime minister serves as the head of government and is the one who runs the country.
Since October 1946, the national anthem of Italy has been Inno de Memeli .
The Italian flag is green, white, and red.
The colors of the Italian flag represent three virtues: hope (green), faith (white), and charity (red).
St. Francis of Assissi and Saint Caterina of Siena are the patron saints of Italy.
98% of Italians are Roman Catholic.
The Roman Catholic Church is based in Italy.
Italy has over 3,000 museums.
The national sport of Italy is soccer (known as football outside of America).
Italy's national dish is pasta.
The Italian language evolved from the Latin of the Roman Empire.
The Italian peninsula is surrounded by five seas (the Adriatic, Ionian, Tyrrhenean, Ligurian, and Mediterranean).
Italy has two large islands, Sicily and Sardinia , as well as a number of smaller islands.
The Italian island of Sicily is famous for being home of the illicit Mafia criminal organization.
Napoleon spent his first exile on the Italian island of Elba.
The Alps mountain range form part of Italy's northern border, and for a long time, protected the peninsula from invasion.
Italy has three active volcanoes: Vesuvius, Etna, and Stromboli.
Naples is the largest city in southern Italy.
Next to Rome, Milan is the second-largest city in Italy.
Milan is home to Italian fashion and finance.
Rome's nickname is "The Eternal City."
Florence is home to Italian art.
A vespa is an Italian-made motor scooter that many people ride around busy city streets on.
Amazing Facts About The Human Body
- Children grow faster in the springtime.
- It takes the human stomach an hour to break down cow's milk.
- Your stomach needs to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it would digest itself.
- It takes 72 different muscles to produce human speech.
- Relative to size, the strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.
- There are 10 human body parts that are only 3 letters long - eye, jaw, rib, hip, arm, leg, ear, toe, lip and gum.
- If you go blind in one eye you only lose about one fifth of your vision but all your sense of depth.
- Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.
- You were born with 300 bones. When you get to be an adult, you have 206.
- Your nose and ears never stop growing.
- After you die, your body starts to dry out creating the illusion that your hair and nails are still growing after death.
- The length of the finger dictates how fast your fingernails grow. The nail on your middle finger grows the fastest, and on average, your toenails grow half the speed of your fingernails.
- A healthy adult can draw in about 200 to 300 cubic inches (3.3 to 4.9 litres) of air at a single breath, but at rest only about 5% of this volume is used.
- 15 million blood cells are destroyed in the human body every second.
- The average human will shed over 18 kilograms or 40 pounds of skin in a lifetime.
Interesting Facts About Egyptian Pyramids
Some people have said that the pyramids are more than simply large graves; they were granaries or treasure houses.
All of the pyramids were probably robbed of their treasures within a couple of hundred years of the burials. The only tombs to escape until modern times were those dug into rock, not placed in pyramids. They belonged to Tutankhamun and Queen Heterpheres.
The Egyptians mummified more than their pharaohs. They also mummified the Pharaoh's pets and buried them in the pyramids to keep the dead kings company.
If you could weigh an average pyramid it would be around 5,400,000 tons. The average stone block weighs as much as 2 modern cars (2.5 tons). The largest single stone block (in the pyramid of mycerinus ) must weigh about 285 tons- that’s 200 to 250 cars.
Pyramid -builders tried to fool thieves by placing a blocking stone at the end of a passageway and plastering it in. If thieves broke through the plaster then they would come to the stone and give up. The real way into the tomb would then be through a hidden trapdoor in the ceiling.
The Egyptians didn’t have accurate measuring tape. They used fibre-cords that could shrink or stretch. Still, the greatest mistake in the Great pyramid in just 20cm on the side of 230 metres. They were even accurate in building a flat base. The Southeast corner is just one centimetre higher than the North-west corner.
Early tombs were flat-topped. These were called Mastabas because they looked like the mud brick seat found outside Egyptian peasant homes. Mastaba tombs were easily robbed. So someone built a slightly smaller Mastaba on top of the first one then another on top of that, then another, and they ended up with a step pyramid.
It is forbidden to climb the pyramids today. There have been to many accidents, so now you have to have special permission.
15 Fun Facts about Christmas
1. The Christmas tree was first introduced by Queen Victoria in 1846.
2. The word Christmas is Old English and comes from the terms Christ's Mass.
3. Franklin Pierce is the first president to decorate the white house Christmas tree.
4. Electric lights Christmas trees were first used in 1895.
5. The movie "It's a Wonderful Life" appears on TV more often than any other holiday movie.
6. The most famous Christmas ballet is "The Nutcracker".
7. The song "Jingle Bells" was first written for Thanksgiving but become popular around Christmas time.
8. You would receive a total of 364 presents if you were to receive every gift listed on the "The Twelve Days of Christmas" song.
9. Do not eat a Holly berry, they are poisonous.
10. Alabama was the first state to recognize the Christmas holiday.
11. It wasn't until 1870 that Christmas became a national holiday in America.
12. Candy canes were originally white straight sticks of sugar used to decorate a tree.
13. Many of the needless, pine nuts and pine cones found on Christmas trees are actually edible.
14. In the United States alone, Visa cards are used an average of 5,500 a minute during the holiday season.
15. Each year over 3 billion Christmas cards are sent out in the United States.
Interesting Facts about Mount Everest
1. Everest was formed 60 million years ago
2. It is the highest mountain in the world at 29,035 feet, although its exact height is often disputed
3. George Everest, Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843, discovered Everest in 1841.
4. In 1865 the mountain was renamed in his honour from its original name of Peak XV
5. Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to conquer Everest, on May 19 1953
6. It is almost 28 times the size of the Burj Al Arab, and will be 12.5 times the height of the Burj Dubai tower
7. Everest lies between Nepal and Tibet and climbers can scale the mountain from either side
8. It rises a few millimetres each year due to geological forces
9. Over 2000 people have reached the top of Everest
10. There are around 120 dead bodies of climbers on the mountain
11. Avalanches are the greatest cause of death for climbers scaling Everest
12. The summit is just below the cruising height of a jet
13. The youngest person to reach summit was 13 and the oldest 70
14. In Nepal the mountain is called Sagarmatha, meaning 'forehead of the sky'.
15. In Tibetan the mountain is known as Chomolangma for 'mother of the universe'
Death zone:
Above 25,000 feet, the air at Everest holds only a third of oxygen of sea level. This results in an increased chance of hypothermia, frostbite, high-altitude pulmonary, when lungs fill with fluid, and high altitude cerebral edema, when the brain swells up.
Even with bottled oxygen climbers experience symptoms such as fatigue, impaired judgment and coordination, headaches, nausea, double vision and sometimes hallucinations. Some experienced climbers have braved conquering Everest without the need of oxygen.
it is not lava Read more about it down
Horsetail Fall is seasonal waterfall that flows in winter and early spring in Yosemite National Park of California. every year during the last two weeks of February as the sun sets behind the horizon line and everything begin to go dark, sunlight will hit and reflect off the falls at the exact right angle creating a spectacular albeit short lived effect, which looks like a beautiful lava fall.
The world's longest lasting light bulb
The world's longest lasting light bulb is at least 110 years old and is still glowing.
The Centennial Light is the world's longest-lasting light bulb. It is at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, and maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department
The Centennial Light is the world's longest-lasting light bulb. It is at 4550 East Avenue, Livermore, California, and maintained by the Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Department
Laura Williams Photography
This is how giraffes drink water
The transparent-headed fish:
The fish, discovered alive in the deep water off California's central coast by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), is the first specimen of its kind to be found with its soft transparent dome intact.
The 6-inch (15-centimeter) barreleye (Macropinna microstoma) had been known since 1939--but only from mangled specimens dragged to the surface by nets.
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