amazing things
Amazing things you need to know about the world to look cultured.
You should come across as educated, like you really know the topics covered. Then you'll be ready to quote one of the 50 facts listed below and surprise your interlocutors.
Master your body language like a seasoned academic with this simple technique:
purse your lips
raise an eyebrow (thus activating an interesting aura)
swirl the drink in the glass for a while (testing and refinement)
relax your back slightly in the chair (indicating your level of confidence)
Category 1: Nature
The deepest place on Earth is the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Its depth is 36,201 feet (11,034 m). It's almost 11 km!
At 6,853 km, the Nile is the longest river in the world. Its water resources are also shared by 11 different countries.
Lobsters aren't "biologically immortal," but they do produce an enzyme that repairs their cells and helps their DNA replicate indefinitely. Hence the myth.
Baikal, located in Siberia, is the deepest freshwater lake in the world. (1,620 m).
Pineapples take two years to grow.
In Africa, acacias communicate. They emit gases to alert each other and thus encourage them to produce the toxic tannin that protects them from hungry animals.
Niagara Falls never freezes over.
Each block of limestone or granite that makes up the Great Pyramid of Giza weighs 2.5 tons. And there are 2.3 million.
It would take about 18 months to traverse the entire length of the Great Wall of China (that's over 8,000 km long).
Category 2: History
Consisting of 12 colors, the national flag of Belgium (1981) is the most colorful in the world.
The first mobile phone was made on April 3, 1973 in New York.
In Ancient Egypt, the word "cat" was actually pronounced "meow."
The American Revolution (1765-1783) preceded the French Revolution (1789-1799).
The Anglo Zanzibar War (1896) was the shortest ever: only 38 minutes!
The printing press, which revolutionized the exchange of information, was invented by Gutenberg around 1440.
The largest empire in history is the Mongol Empire (13th and 14th centuries).
Egypt, dating from 3100 BC. C., is considered the oldest country in the world.
Tim Berners-Lee is the inventor of the first web browser (World Wide Web) in 1990.
Category 3: Art and Culture
In 2019, scientists discovered the world's oldest work of art on an Indonesian island called Sulawesi. It was made 44,000 years ago.
The word "sandwich" comes from an 18th-century aristocrat called the 4th Earl of Sandwich.
9310 tweets are sent every second.
At $450.3 million, "Salvator Mundi" by Leonardo da Vinci is the most expensive painting in the world.
With 90 million visitors, according to UNWTO data, France was the most visited country on the planet in 2018. Who is in second place? Spain.
92% of the world's currency is digital.
With a gross of over $2.7 billion, "Avengers: Endgame" is the highest-grossing film of all time!
In 2020, the richest company in the world was Saudi Aramco.
Standing 182m tall, the Statue of Unity in China's Henan Province is the tallest in the world. Note: For comparison, the Statue of Liberty is 93 m tall.
With over 50,000 species of plants and trees, Brazil has the most biodiversity of any country on the planet.
Category 4: Peoples and Countries
According to scientists, tears indicate the cause of a person's crying. If the first drop comes out of the right eye, there are tears of joy. Otherwise, they are tears of pain.
In 2019, for the first time in the UK, renewables generated more electricity than fossil fuels. Also, did you know that Norway does not produce electricity from coal? And that Germany has installed 1 kW of renewable capacity per person in the last decade? (Climate change is the biggest global problem of our time, but there are other things that keep us positive!)
King Louis XIV of France was the longest-lived monarch of all time. 72 years and 110 days.
Marie Curie was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes: one in physics in 1903 and one in chemistry in 1911 for her work on radioactivity.
King Henry VIII of England had servants called "Stool Grooms" to dry him after going to the bathroom.
0.5% of the male population is descended from Genghis Khan (in 2003, scientists conducted a study that revealed that about 16 million men shared a Y chromosome with the famous emperor).
Iceland, the Faroe Islands and the Isle of Man claim their parliaments are the oldest in history, all founded in the 9th and 10th centuries.
With 815 million hectares of forest, Russia is the most forested country in the world.
China is the most populous country in the world.
The youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is Malala Yousafzai (aged just 17 in 2014), honored for her work as a child rights activist and advocate for women's right to education.
Category 5: "It's impossible!
In fact, sunset only exists under the action of the earth's atmosphere, which acts as a prism for light. In scientific terms, this is called "diffusion". Molecules and particles in the atmosphere (which are more numerous at sunset) scatter short-wavelength violet and blue light, revealing the other colors in the spectrum, such as yellow and blue.
The most remote place in the world is the Tristan da Cunha archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is 2,434 km from Sant'Elena, the nearest city.
During a Google query, 1,000 computers are mobilized to find the answer in 0.2 seconds.
The number of Internet users in the world is close to 5 billion.
The average age of the world's population was about 30 years old in 2019.
In fact, we produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet; the problem is distribution.
In 2010, Google tried to count the number of books in the world. This was estimated at around 130,000,000.
A tiger roar can be heard up to three kilometers away.
The Earth is 147.2 million kilometers from the Sun, it is about 4.5 billion years old.
Owls do not have eyeballs.
