Strange But True Facts...

The world's largest palace has 1788 rooms. It was built for the Sultan of Brunei. The world's largest recorded gathering of people was at a Hindu religious festival in India in 1989. It was attended by about 15 million people. Abraham Lincoln went to school for less than a year. He taught himself to read and write. The longest recorded swim was 2938 km down the Mississippi River in 1930. The swimmer spend 742 hours in the water. Humans are no match for some animals. The rhinoceros beetle can carry 850 times its own weight on its back. The Emperor moth can detect smells 11 km away. The cheetah can run at 70 km/h. The Polyphemus moth eats 86,000 its own birth weight in 48 hours. The cries of South American howler monkeys can be heard 16 km away. The longest jail sentence passed was in the United States - 10,000 years for a triple murder. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. Try it! Levi Strauss made the first pair of blue jeans in 1850. They were intended as work trousers for American miners looking for gold. In Ancient Rome only important people wore purple clothes. This is because the purple dye came from a particular kind of shellfish and was very expensive.

The ancient Greeks called our galaxy the Milky Way because they thought it was made from drops of milk from the breasts of the Greek goddess Hera. Yuri Gagarin survived the first manned spaceflight but was killed in a plane crash seven years later. Astronauts become a little taller in space. There is less gravity, so their bones are less squashed together. Astronauts' footprints and Lunar Rover tyre tracks will stay on the moon for millions of years as there is no wind to blow them away. About 1500 stars are visible at night with the naked eye in a clear, dark sky. There are 88 constellations altogether. The smallest star measures about 1700 km across. It is a white dwarf called LP 327-16. The first object to orbit earth was Sputnik 1, launched by the USSR in October 1957. The first animal in space was the Soviet dog, Laika, in November 1957. It died on the flight. The first animals to survive in orbital spaceflight were the Soviet dogs, Strelka and Belka, launched in Sputnik 5 in August 1960.

The first person to orbit earth was Yuri Gagarin, from the USSR, in April 1961. The first American to orbit earth was John Glenn in February 1962. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova, from the USSR, in June 1963. The first person to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong in July 1969. In 1783 an Icelandic eruption threw up enough dust to temporarily block out the sun over Europe. About 20 to 30 volcanoes erupt each year, mostly under the sea. A huge underground river runs underneath the Nile, with six times more water than the river above. Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana formed in a hollow made by a meteorite. Beaver Lake, in Yellowstone Park, USA, was artificially created by beaver damming. Off the coast of Florida there is an underwater hotel. Guests have to dive to the entrance. Venice in Italy is built on 118 sea islets joined by 400 bridges. It is gradually sinking into the water. The Ancient Egyptians worshipped a sky goddess called Nut. The world's windiest place is Commonwealth Bay, Antartica. In 1934, a gust of wind reached 371 km/h on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA. American Roy Sullivan has been struck by lighting a record seven times. The desert baobab tree can store up to 1000 litres of water in its trunk. The oldest living tree is a California bristlecone pine name 'Methuselah'. It is about 4600 years old. The largest tree in the world is a giant sequoia growing in California. It is 84 meters tall and measures 29 meters round the trunk. The fastest growing tree is the eucalyptus. It can grow 10 meters a year. The Antartic notothenia fish has a protein in its blood that acts like antifreeze and stops the fish freezing in icy sea. The USA uses 29% of the world's petrol and 33% of the world's electricity. The industrial complex of Cubatao in Brazil is known as the Valley of Death because its pollution has destroyed the trees and rivers nearby. Tibet is the highest country in the world. Its average height above sea level is 4500 meters.

Some of the oldest mountains in the world are the Highlands in Scotland. They are estimated to be about 400 million years old. Fresh water from the River Amazon can be found up to 180 km out to sea. The White Sea, in Russia, has the lowest temperature, only -2 degrees centigrade. The Persian Gulf is the warmest sea. In the summer its temperature reaches 35.6 degrees centigrade. There is no land at all at the North Pole, only ice on top of sea. The Arctic Ocean has about 12 million sq km of floating ice and has the coldest winter temperature of -34 degrees centigrade. The Antarctic ice sheet is 3-4 km thick, covers 13 million sq km and has temperatures as low as -70 degrees centigrade. Over 4 million cars in Brazil are now running on gasohol instead of petrol. Gasohol is a fuel made from sugar cane.