Interesting Facts

American Revolutionary War – interesting facts

 

 

 

Nobody knows who fired the “shot heard round the world,” but it launched the American Revolutionary War. The shot was fired at Lexington in 1775. Here 73 British soldiers, marching to capture rebel guns and powder, met colonial farmers and townspeople called “Minutemen.” The Minutemen were trained to be ready at a minute’s notice to fight.

The British tried to march past the Minutemen when someone fired a shot. There was panic; the British returned fire and soon eight Minutemen were dead. In nearby Concord, Minutemen attacked British soldiers, killing 73 and wounding 174.

The Second Continental Congress met on May 10th, in Philadelphia, and voted Virginian George Washington as commander of the Continental Army.

The American Revolutionary War lasted eight years, ending in 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. Unlike the British, American soldiers were untrained and under-armed. Much like the Vietnamese whom the Americans fought almost 200 years later, the Americans had the advantage since the war was fought on their turf. They knew how to get around and could get support from local families.

Also, the French gave America lots of support with money and gunpowder. France didn’t like England and wanted to get back at England for the French-Indian War.



Interesting Facts About Credit Cards

 

 

Credit cards become popularly successful in the 1920s.

Visa was originally called BankAmericard, a card offered by Bank of America in 1958 in California.

78 percent of American households — about 91.1 million — had one or more credit cards at the end of 2008. A year earlier, there were 90.4 million households with cards.

41 percent of college students have a credit card.

Eighty percent of American households have at least one credit card. (Source: cardweb.com)

The average level of debt for a middle-class American family is $9,827 (out-of-pocket medical expenses account for $2,194 of that, on average).


Interesting Facts About The Ivory Coast


Côte d’Ivoire is a republic with a strong executive power personified in the President. Its de jure capital is Yamoussoukro and the official language is French. The country is divided into 19 regions and 81 departments.

Most people in the Ivory Coast live near the beaches and coastlines of the country, while some live in the forested areas.

17 million people live in the Ivory Coast, with birth average of 4 per women and literacy rate of over 50% .

The Ivory Coast is among the world’s largest producers of cocoa, coffee beans and palm oil.

The Ivory Coast is known to be a country that loves Soccer, this can be seen by it’s great soccer team that has reached the world cup twice in recent years.



Largest island and the longest river on Earth

 

 

 

 

 Largest island – Greenland, 839,999 square miles (2,175,600 square kilometers), seems to have been misnamed by Vikings hoping to attract settlers to a colony on the southern coast, which, to be fair, is green for a short time in summer.

Longest river – Africa’s Nile River, at 4,241 miles (6,825 kilometers) long, barely beats out the Amazon in South America (approximately 4,000 miles; 6,437 kilometers) as the world’s longest river. The Nile runs north—through Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt—into the Mediterranean Sea.

Largest river system – The Amazon wins hands down with a drainage basin of approximately 2.5 million square miles (6.7 million square kilometers), an area equal to three-fourths the contiguous United States. It also carries the greatest flow of water—around six million cubic feet per second, or one-fifth of all the river water in the world.

Red Blood Cells Functions – interesting facts

 

 

 

Red blood cells function by carrying oxygen to every part of the body, and then carrying carbon dioxide back to the lungs. Red blood cells are very well designed to perform this important job. First, they are packed full of hemoglobin, which is an iron-bearing protein that transports oxygen to other cells. Interestingly, red blood cells have no nuclei, a feature which makes even more room for hemoglobin. Red blood cells are the only cells in the body that do not have a nucleus.

Second, they are shaped like disks. This shape greatly increases their surface area compared with a sphere of the same volume. The large surface area is important because it improves the efficiency of oxygen transfer between hemoglobin and the tissues where the oxygen is needed. Red blood cells are formed in the bone marrow, where special cells called stem cells divide repeatedly, then lose most of their internal parts before they are released into the blood. Red blood cells have an average life span of about 120 days. After this, they tend to become misshapen and they are removed from the circulation system by the spleen. A typical human body makes about 2.5 million red blood cells every second, or about 200 billion every day!

Red cells normally comprise about 40% of the blood volume. When doctors measure this number, it is called the hematocrit. Sometimes the number of red blood cells drops too low. This condition is called anemia. Generally, anemia results either because too few red blood cells are being made, or because they are being destroyed prematurely. The most common cause for underproduction of red blood cells is iron deficiency. Iron is a necessary component of hemoglobin, so iron deficiency results in inadequate formation of new red blood cells.

Interesting facts about Mount Everest

 

 

 

 

Mount Everest – also called Qomolangma Peak or Mount Chomolungma – is the highest mountain on Earth, and the highest point on the Earth’s continental crust, as measured by the height above sea level of its summit, 8,848 metres (29,029 ft).

Everest was formed about 60 million years ago.

First man who ascent Everest: Sir Edmund Hillary, NZ and Tenzing Norgay, NP, via the South Col Route in May 29,1953.

Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain, is growing!
Millions of years ago, India was an island. Due to the motion of continental plates, India drifted North and crashed (very slowly!) into Asia about forty million years ago. Its northward motion created the Himalayan mountain range, and continues today. As a result of this motion, Mount Everest is growing by an average of about four centimeters (or one and a half inches) per year!

First person to summit Everest twice was Nawang Gombu-Nepal(once with Whitaker in ’63,and again two years later in ’65)Gombu now works for the Himalayan mountaineering institute.

About 120 corpses remain on Everest.




Courtesy:  http://www.strange-facts.info