7 facts about Fidel Castro

 1. As a schoolboy in 1940, Fidel Castro wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt asking for a ten-dollar bill and offering to lead him to Cuban iron mines that could provide ore for use in American shipbuilding.

2. Fidel Castro holds the Guinness Book of Records title for the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations: 4 hours and 29 minutes, on September 29, 1960. His longest speech on record in Cuba was 7 hours and 10 minutes in 1986 at the III Communist Party Congress in Havana.

3. Fidel Castro was the world's third longest-serving head of state, after Britain's Queen Elizabeth and the King of Thailand. He was not been seen in public since illness forced him to hand over day-to-day control of the country to his brother Raul Castro in July 2006.

4. Despite the CIA plots, a U.S.-backed exile invasion at the Bay of Pigs and four and a half decades of economic sanctions, Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents, from Eisenhower to Clinton, and faced increased hostility under President George W. Bush, who tightened enforcement of financial sanctions and a travel ban.

5. Fidel Castro claims he survived 634 attempts on his life, mainly masterminded by the Central Intelligence Agency. They allegedly included poison pills, a toxic cigar, exploding mollusks, and a chemically-tainted diving suit as well as powder to make his beard fall out so as to undermine his popularity.

6. Fidel Castro, once a cigar-chomping guerrilla fighter, gave up cigars in 1985. Years later he summed up the harm of smoking tobacco by saying: "The best thing you can do with this box of cigars is to give them to your enemy."

7. One of Castro's pet projects was a cow called Ubre Blanca, or "White Udder", that produced prodigious quantities of milk and became a propaganda tool for Cuba's collectivized agriculture in the 1980s. Ubre Blanca is in the Guinness Book of Records for the highest milk yield by a cow in one day: 110 liters.

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Facts about Benito Mussolini

 1. Benito Mussolini was born in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in the province of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna in 1883

2. Benito Mussolini began using the title Il Duce by 1925

3. Mussolini was born in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in the province of Forlì in Emilia-Romagna

4. Benito Mussolini also created and held the supreme military rank of First Marshal of the Empire along with King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy

5. In 1902, Mussolini emigrated to Switzerland to work on his political horizons

6. Benito Mussolini was among the founders of Italian fascism, which included elements of nationalism, corporatism, national syndicalism, expansionism, social progress and anti-communism

7. He was also head of the all-powerful Fascist Party and the armed local fascist militia, the MVSN or "Blackshirts," who terrorised incipient resistances in the cities and provinces

8. In 1915, he had a son with Ida Dalser, a woman born in Sopramonte, a village near Trento

9. At various times after 1922, Benito Mussolini personally took over the ministries of the interior, foreign affairs, colonies, corporations, defense, and public works

10. Since 1927, and more even after 1929, Mussolini, with his anti-Communist doctrines, convinced many Catholics to actively support him

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8 interesting facts about emeralds

1. The name emerald is a derivative of an ancient Persian word, coming to us through the corruption of the Latin « Smaragdus ».

2. The first emerald mines recorded in history are the famous « Cleopatra » mines rediscovered in 1818 in Northern Egypt. These ancient mines were exhausted long ago.

3. Emerald is the birthstone for May.

4. The ancients prized it as the symbol of love, rebirth and eternal youth. Because the rich green color of emerald reminds of spring, it has been treasured for at least the past 4,000 years by different cultures all around the world.

5. Emerald is said to give a supernatural ability to foretell future events.

6. Pliny wrote, «nothing is more intense than the green of emerald» and «sight is refreshed and restored by gazing upon this stone». Following his advise, Roman emperor Nero wore emerald sunglasses to watch the gladiators.

7. The extreme rarity of transparent emerald is why inclusions in emeralds are tolerated.
These inclusions are like a fingerprint, giving each emerald a distinct personality. They are called garden from the French « jardin ».

8. The Moguls of India loved emeralds so much that they inscribed them with sacred texts and wore them as talismans. This led to the flourishing Jaipur cutting industry.

15 interesting facts about Charlie Sheen

1. Born: September 3, 1965 in New York City

2. Charlie Sheen earns $350,000 an episode for Two and Half Men

3. He loves his 1970 Buick GS 455

4. Charlie Sheen accidentally shot then fiancé Kelly Preston in the arm

5. Father is Martin Sheen and brother is Emilio Estevez. He went to school with Rob Lowe and Sean Penn.

6. He was expelled from high school for not showing up and bad grades.

7. Charlie Sheen has supposedly had sex with more than 5000 women, many of whom were prostitutes. Additionally he has had sex with 5 women at one time and is considered a living sex legend.

8. Charlie was listed in the books of Hollywood madame Heidi Fleiss.

9. Despite his flaws, Charlie Sheen seems like a very lovable character.

10. Charlie Sheen loves barbeque sauce, and has even thought about releasing his own brand someday.

11. In 2006, a prostitute, using only the name of Olivia, released a tell-all book, claiming Charlie had a prostitute dress up as a cheerleader in order to fulfil his alleged young-girl fantasies.

12. Charlie Sheen has dated porn stars Ginger Lynn Allen and Heather Hunter.

13. Charlie Sheen loves deep-sea fishing.

14. Charlie Sheen is Roman Catholic.

15. In 1994 Charlie Sheen got a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

10 facts about Belgium

1. Belgium was the scene of Napoleon's final defeat, at Waterloo, south of Brussels.

2. The St Nicholas Church, one of the oldest churches in Brussels, was named after the patron saint of traders.

3. Since the fifteenth century Belgium has been famous for tapestry-making. Lace is also a notable local product.

4. Brussel sprouts have been grown in the Brussels area for over four hundred years.

5. Belgium has around four hundred different kinds of beer; some of the most famous are made by Trappist monks.

6. Belgium is famous for its high quality chocolates.

7. King Albert I led the defence of his country against the German invasion during the First World War.

8. Bruges is known as the "Venice of the North" because of its many canals.

9. The Channel Tunnel opened up direct rail connections between London and Brussels.

10. The Atomium was built for the 1958 Brussels exhibition in the shape of the atomic structure of iron, with nine steel spheres connected by tubes which contain escalators to carry visitors to the top.


Facts about tourism
Facts about airports
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Which African country can be seen from Spain?

Five nations in Africa border the Mediterranean Sea, and many other African countries border the Atlantic Ocean. But only one African nation has a coastline on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean: Morocco.

Morocco is located in the northwest corner of Africa, where the Mediterranean joins the Atlantic. With its western coast, bathed by the Atlantic, Morocco is the only Arab country that touches the ocean. It is also the closest Arab country to Europe, as part of the Moroccan coast is within sight of Spain.

This African nation has an area of 446,550 square kilometers, larger than California, and a population of more than 35 million people. Most Moroccans live in the fertile strips of land along both coasts, the rest of the country is covered by mountains and deserts.

Morocco was conquered by Arab invaders in the 7th century. The Muslim people of Morocco, whose inhabitants were called Moors, finally conquered most of Spain and formed a kingdom that stretched from Spain to the borders of Egypt.

In later times, the paintings were reversed: Morocco was conquered by the Europeans and divided between France and Spain. In 1956, Morocco gained its independence.

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Interesting facts about hurricanes

The hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. It is rare, but hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic as early as March or as late as December.

The average life span of a hurricane is 9 days.

Apart from hurricane this natural phenomenon is also known by the names of cyclone and typhoon.

Florida has had more hurricanes than any other state in the United States. More than 60 have played there since 1900.

The 'perfect storm' of 1991, made famous by the book and film, was created from the remains of Hurricane Grace.

Hurricanes turn clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.

Hurricane Katrina killed at least 1,836 people, making it the deadliest hurricane in the United States since Hurricane Okeechobee in 1928.

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Interesting facts about volcanoes

The word "volcano" has its origin in the name of Vulcan (the Greek Hephaestus), god of fire in Roman mythology.

The Earth has more than 1,500 active volcanoes.

Fact: The largest volcano in the world is the Mauna Loa (Hawaii). It has a volume of about 40,000 cubic kilometers, and has an area above sea level of 5,125 square kilometers.

The most common type of lava - called basaltic - usually has erupting temperatures of around 1150-1200 degrees Celsius.

The highest volcano in the world is Ojos del Salado in Chile. It is 6,891 meters high.

More than 80% of the earth's surface is of volcanic origin.

Some 500 million people live in the vicinity of active volcanoes!

Great fact: As you read this, there are 20 active volcanoes erupting in various parts of the world. Between 50-70 volcanoes erupted last year, and 160 in the last decade.

The names of some famous volcanoes are: Mount St. Helena, Mauna Loa, Vesuvius, Mount Rainier and Mount Olympus (on the planet Mars).

The oldest volcano is probably Etna (350,000 years).

The Indonesian volcano, Tambora, which exploded in 1815, threw so much ash into the atmosphere that temperatures dropped considerably the following year around the world. New England, in the eastern United States, suffered severe frost in August.

Fact: The loudest sound in human history was caused by a volcanic eruption in Krakatoa, near Java, in 1883. The sound was so powerful that it was even heard in Australia, about 5,000 kilometers from the Krakatoa volcano.

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Some facts about soap

Maybe you've ever felt that it wasn't necessary to use a soap to wash your hands and that with just water you could wash just as well. Most kids think that way. But water can only remove part of the dirt from the surface of the skin, but water and soap together clean better.

If you look under the microscope at a cross section of the skin, you will see that it has many hollow areas or valleys, where particles of grease and dirt can be penetrated. Water alone can get some of that dirt out, but when water hits the grease, there's not much it can do against it.

But if you add soap to that same water it has a totally different action. The action of mixing soap and water sends air into the water and forces it to spread, as it creates bubbles. A bubble is actually an air balloon with a thin outer cover of soap and water.

While the bubbles appear to be very delicate and weak, they actually function as countless powerful magnets. Just as magnets attract metal to them, soap bubbles pick up dirt and pull it out of the skin. The dirty bubbles are then washed away by the stream of water, leaving the skin clean.

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What causes an echo?

Sound travels in waves, in the same way that waves of water travel in the ocean. When you make a sound, the sound waves travel through the air. You will first hear the sound when those waves reach your ear.

However, if sound waves hit an obstacle such as a building or the walls of a cave, they will bounce off the air because such objects do not absorb sound. Instead, they reflect or bounce the sound back, and you will hear it a second time. This second sound is called an echo.

If it is only an obstacle that reflects the sound, you will hear only one echo, a simple echo. But if many surfaces reflect the echo bouncing from surface to surface, like in a valley or canyon surrounded by mountains, you hear the sound of the echo over and over again, but it gets weaker with each repetition. This repeated echo is called a compound echo or reverberation.

Heavy clouds close to the ground can also reflect sounds and create echoes.

Echoes can measure how far a person is from the surface that the echoes bounce off, as the sound waves travel at about 300 m per second.

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Facts about laughs

If someone laughs 100 times, it's like riding a 15-minute bike. An energetic laugh increases your heart rate, deepens your breathing and brings into play the muscles of your face, stomach and diaphragm.

In addition to improving our mood, laughter can reduce stress, help fight infections, and reduce pain.

Laughter generates positive changes in brain chemistry through the production of endorphins, and brings more oxygen to the body with deeper inhalations.

Laughter is contagious and instinctive. Our laughter is under minimal conscious control, which challenges the hypothesis that we are in full control of our behavior.

Pietro Aretino, was an Italian author who in 1556 died of asphyxiation from "laughing too much".

Laughter naturally produces killer cells that attack viruses, certain types of cancer and some tumour cells.

The brain can identify a false laugh from an authentic. When the brain senses a false laugh, it increases activity in the area of the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This brain zone gives us the ability to understand the emotions of others. Therefore, no false laughter is worth it.

A good dose of laughter increases energy expenditure and helps eliminate more calories. In addition, some facts suggest that it's a great help in losing weight, although some say the difference isn't much.

Until long ago it was thought that laughter was a quality acquired at birth. However, the obstetrician Stuart Campbell discovered, thanks to 4D ultrasounds, that the first smiles occur when the baby is still in the womb.

According to some facts, you can avoid wrinkles. Want to keep your face younger and wrinkle-free? Start laughing! It's also a simple, natural beauty treatment.

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Facts that will surely frighten you

You are more likely to be infected by meat-eating bacteria (necrotizing fasciitis) than to be struck by lightning.

According to some facts, daily you breathe a liter of other people's farts.

Our eyes are the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

The electric chair was invented by a dentist (it had to be).

In the fast food a person eats a year there will be an average of 12 pubic hairs.

The sense of taste of butterflies is found in the legs.

In an hour you swim in a public swimming pool you will have ingested 1½ liters of urine.

All kinds of sweets, drinks and desserts are red and that dye is obtained from the shells of a female beetle.

According to the facts of the meat industry, the meat you eat on a fast food burger can come from 100 different cows.

Approximately 2,500 left-handers die every year from occupying things made for right-handed people.

The FDA says that 450 grams of peanut butter has more than 150 bug fragments and at least 5 rodent hairs.

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What's called an artesian well?

In an artesian well, water springs from the ground by itself, without the need for a pump. The name comes from Artois, an area of France where this kind of well was first used. The Latin name for this region was Artesium.

Rainwater penetrates the earth until it reaches a layer of rock or soft sand. The water in this layer is under great pressure from the rock layers over it.

When a well or a fracture in the rock breaks through to the water table, the water flows forcefully upwards through the well to the surface, and can be used as drinking water.

Some desert oases are artesian wells.

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What's the most spacious building in the world?

Saturn V's rocket, which brought the first men to the Moon, was as tall as a 35-story building. This rocket was built into an assembly building so large that several of these huge rockets could easily fit into it in a vertical position.

This structure, called the Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, is in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It covers ten acres - almost nine soccer fields - and rises to the height of a 50-story building, making the VAB the most spaciously built interior building ever.

When the rockets were finished, they were moved from the VAB through gigantic gates that were 140 meters high - the largest gates ever built.

The VAB is the largest single-story building in the world, and was Florida's tallest building until 1974, and is still the tallest building in the United States outside of an urban area.

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When did an army of elephants cross the Alps?

Hannibal

The legendary Hannibal was born in 247 B.C. in Carthage, a city in North Africa, founded centuries earlier by Middle Eastern merchants.

At the age of 25, Hannibal led the Carthaginian army against Hispania (Spain), a province of Rome, with which the Romans declared war on Carthage.

During his conquests through Hispania and Gaul (France), Hannibal used African elephants to carry men and supplies. Hannibal even dared his army of elephants to march on the snowy Alps to invade Italy.

Hannibal defeated the Roman armies and pillaged northern Italy, coming within 160 km of Rome itself.

The invasion of Italy was the greatest threat the Romans ever faced.

Hannibal's army spent 15 years in Italy, but was unsuccessful in conquering Rome. Eventually they had to return to Africa to defend Carthage from a Roman invasion. In 146 B.C., the Romans conquered the city of Carthage, which they totally destroyed.

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Is Fiberglass Really Glass?

The substance called fiberglass is used for a wide range of things: boats, bodies, skates, curtains, and even yo-yos.

One may wonder why it is called this way, since it doesn't look like glass.

But fiberglass is made from the same substances as ordinary glass. Glass is heated, and with the molten material fine yarns are made, which can be woven together to make fiberglass fabrics. Fiberglass threads are often used to reinforce plastics, making them stronger without adding extra weight.

This reinforced plastic is what many people call "fiberglass.

Known fiberglass was originally a brand, FIBERGLASS, and could only be used by the company that first made it. But in the United States today, anyone who makes fiberglass can call it that.

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The importance of the Rosetta Stone in understanding Egyptian texts

The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian artifact that was crucial in the modern understanding of hieroglyphic writing.

The stone itself is a stele from the Ptolemaic period with a carved text in three languages: two scriptures in Egyptian language (hieroglyphics and demotic) and one in classical Greek. The stone was discovered by the French in 1799 in the Egyptian locality of Rashid (called by the French as Rosette), which contributed significantly to the decipherment of the principles of hieroglyphic writing in 1822 by the British scientist Thomas Young and the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion.

Comparative translations of the stone helped to understand some indecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. The text of the Rosetta Stone is a decree of Ptolemy V, announcing the revocation of various taxes and instructions to erect new statues in temples.

Apart from classical Greek, the decree was ordered to be published in the language of the gods (hieroglyphics) and in the writing of the people (demotic).

The stone is 114.4 cm at its highest point; 72.3 cm wide and 27.9 cm thick. Its weight is 760 kg. The Rosetta Stone has been on display in the British Museum since 1802.

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When was an electric chair used as a throne?

History is full of curious cases such as the following case we present:

Menelik II, who called himself "king of kings", became emperor of Ethiopia in 1889.

A year after his enthronement, news reached the Ethiopian nation of the first use of an electric chair to execute a criminal in New York. Menelik decided that his country should also have an electric chair, and ordered three of the new execution devices to be sent to Ethiopia.

Only that there was a small problem about the purchase, and that was that Ethiopia still did not have electricity. So what Menelik did after receiving the chairs was turn one of them into a throne for him.

It is difficult to know whether Menelik II wanted to prevent his purchase from being useless, or vainly took advantage of it to show his people that he was brave enough to sit on such a throne.

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Great facts about the Alps mountain range

The Alps range comprises around 180 mountains from 1,200 m to 4,810 m of Mont Blanc.

Mont Blanc is not only the highest mountain in the Alps, but also in Western Europe.

The Matterhorn is a popular mountain in the mountain range. It has the shape of a pyramid and it is considered that the ascent to its top is much more difficult than that of Mont Blanc due to its slope and habitual avalanches.

Mont Blanc was first climbed by Jacques Belmat and Dr Michel Packard on August 8, 1786.

In the Italian part of Mont Blanc, this is known as Monte Bianco.

In the mountain range the vine grows to an elevation of 1,600 feet. Below 1,000 feet, figs, oranges and olives do.

Chestnut grows to 2,800 m, oak to 3,800 feet, pine to 6,500 feet. Beyond 8,200 feet there are only perpetual snows...

The largest city in the Alps is Grenoble. The city has about 500,000 inhabitants. The city is nicknamed 'The Capital City of the Alps'.

Insssbruck in Austria is the second largest city in the Alps.

Switzerland is world famous for its beautiful alpine scenery. It offers plenty of options for tourists such as hiking, mountaineering, skiing as well as other adventure sports and winter sports.

The Austrian Alps have the largest and most accessible caves in the world. These huge caves are adorned with frozen stalagmites, and are located in the vicinity of Werfen.

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Natural body coats

An effective insulator is needed to maintain body temperature in an icy climate. Mammals have hair or fat that isolates their bodies, but humans lack the necessary fat and their body hair is relatively scarce, so it is necessary to protect themselves with clothing.

Mammals are characterized by two types of hair. The longest, protective, is erectile: erectile when the animal is afraid or angry, as in the neck of dogs. Underneath, the shorter hair is soft and dense, and retains air close to the skin. The air is a bad conductor of heat, so the trapped layer receives heat from the body and keeps the animal warm.

When it rains or if the animal gets into the water, the outer coat becomes tangled and forms a waterproof layer, which prevents the shorter hair and skin from getting wet and losing their insulating properties. When it stops raining or the animal comes out of the water, a simple shake removes the water retained in the body.

By taking advantage of qualities such as wool, man can imitate what mammals do. Clothing close to the skin traps the air, which is kept warm and creates a protective layer. Raincoats prevent clothes from getting wet and losing their insulating properties.

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