Quite Interesting Facts 7

-Arabic numerals were not invented by Arabs, but were invented in India by the Hindus.

-China is the world’s oldest known continuous civilization.

-In the year 1900, for a women to be a telephone operator she had to be between

the ages of 17 and 26 and not be married.

-New York City was the first U.S. capital from 1789 to 1790, not Philadelphia.

-It is estimated that by the end of 2000, there 193000 metric tons gold mined in the world.

-Ralph J. Bunche, not Martin Luther King, was the first African American to win a Nobel Peace Prize,

for his involvement in the Arab-Israeli Conflict in 1947

-The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes .

-There are 47 czars buried within the Kremlin .

-There was an army general during the Liberia Civil War who used to lead his army into battle naked.

His nickname was “General Butt Naked.”

Joshua Milton Blahyi (his real name) is now an evangelical preacher in Monrovia

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-Ukrainian monk, Dionysius Exiguus, created the modern day Christian calendar (AD and BC)

-India used to be the richest country in the world until the British invasion in the early 17th Century.

-Persia changed its name to Iran in 1935

-Some asteroids, like 69230 Hermes, have other asteroids orbiting them

-The actual smallest sovereign entity in the world is the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M.O.M.).

It is located in the city of Rome, Italy, has an area of two tennis courts,

and as of 2001 has a population of 80, 20 less people than the Vatican.

It is a sovereign entity under international law, just as the Vatican is.

-When explorers first arrived in Venezuela, the native huts on water reminded them of Venice.

They named the country “Little Venice”, which translated into Spanish is Venezuela

-In Czechoslovakia, there is a church that has a chandelier made out of human bones.

-A jiffy is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second. Thus the saying, I will be there in a jiffy.

-A rhinoceros’ horn is made of compacted hair and keratin.

-Every single hamster in the United States today comes from a single litter captured in Syria in 1930