10 facts about the Sahara desert

1. The countries which Sahara desert encompasses include Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara.
2. Sahara desert is the second largest desert in the world, after Antarctica, and the largest hot desert in the world.
3. Geographically, Sahara desert is rocky, with varied elevation. It contains underground rivers, which sometime penetrate the surface, resulting in oases.
4. The history of the desert dates back to 3 million years ago.
5. It might sound strange, but the peaks in the desert are snowcapped during the winter. The eastern part of Sahara - Libyan Desert, is dry and has very few oases.
6. There are some sand dunes in the desert which reach a height of about 180 meters.
7. Sahara desert receives only 8 inches of rainfall per annum. This is one of the reasons for the meager population in the region, with just 2 million people here.
8. The climate of Sahara desert is very hot and dry. During the day, it is very hot, while night brings along chill.
9. Earlier, the desert used to be a fertile area, in which elephants, giraffes and other animals grazed. Slowly it started becoming drier and the fertile landscape gave way to infertile region, as we see today.
10. Arabic is the most widely spoken language in the Sahara region, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.

Where does the koala come from?

The koala is a small mammal that looks like a cute teddy bear. It lives only in Australia, and even if some of these animals were taken elsewhere, they would not live for long unless the ideal type of eucalyptus was found, which is very difficult.

Koala can only eat the leaves of certain types of eucalyptus that grow almost entirely in Australia.

Koala spends most of its life on these trees, they eat only the leaves and tender shoots, and a koala, even if it is very hungry, would eat nothing except eucalyptus.

The eucalyptus provides the koala not only with its food, but also with the necessary water - so the koala does not drink water in all its life!

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What place was called the copper island?

Cyprus, the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, is located 70 kilometres south of Turkey and 96 kilometres off the coast of Syria.

With an area of 9,251 km² , the island is the size of Puerto Rico. Some 611,000 are Greek Cypriots, while some 142,000 are of Turkish origin.

In ancient times, Cyprus was famous for its copper mines. In fact, the name of the island gave rise to the word kypros which is what the Greeks called copper. This Latin word is Cuprum and from which comes our modern word for copper.

Over the centuries, Cyprus has been conquered and ruled by many peoples, including the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks and Crusaders. The British gained control of the island in the 19th century, and Cyprus did not become an independent nation until 1960.

After independence, many Greek Cypriots on the island wanted to be part of Greece, while the Turkish Cypriots wanted to divide the island between the Greeks and the Turks who lived there. A civil war in 1974 caused Turkish troops to invade Cyprus and conquer the northern part of the island.

Cyprus is still divided today. The southern part is populated by the Greeks and is called the Republic of Cyprus. The north, Turkish part was declared independent in 1975, and established a government of its own, although it is not recognized by the United Nations.

Today, Cyprus still produces small quantities of copper. But it is best known for its wine and cigarettes. In relation to its population, Cyprus produces more wine and cigarettes than many countries on Earth.

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Where did the first drive-in open?

Who invented the drive-in theater?

In 1932, a man named Richard Hollingshead placed a screen in front of his garage in Riverton, New Jersey, and sat in his car to watch a movie.

He did so so that he could become the first person in a car to watch a movie, and thus obtain a patent on the idea, which would prevent anyone else from using it.

Hollingshead created the first drive-in shortly after in a vacant lot in Camden, New Jersey. The lot had room for 400 vehicles. But then the government declared that Hollingshead did not have the patent on the idea, and many other people started creating their own drive-in movie theaters.

In 1948, there were 820 movie theaters in the United States, and in its heyday during the 1960s, the total had increased to more than 4,000.

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Where does the olive tree come from?

Nowadays, most of the olives we eat come from Spain or Italy. However, the origin of the olive tree is found in the Middle East, where it was common throughout the Mediterranean Sea in biblical times. Traders later introduced olive seeds and cuttings or shoots to Europe and North Africa.

They never eat fresh olives from the tree. Fresh olives have a bitter taste, so they must be tanned in salt water or using other methods before they can be consumed.

The most important product of the olive tree is not the fruit itself, but its oil. The famous olive oil was so valuable in ancient times that people sometimes measured their wealth by the number of bottles of olive oil they owned.

Olive trees live so long that some trees that are still alive today may have produced olives in Christ's time!

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What part of Siberia doesn't have mountains?

The Urals is a set of mountains that extends from north to south through Russia, which divides the European part of that nation from the Asian part.

But if you travel east from the Urals, you would leave the mountains behind for a long way. Since there are no mountains or hills between the Urals and the Yenisei River, there are about 2,000 kilometers of distance between one and the other.

This region, called the West Siberian Plain, is the largest flat expanse on Earth. Most of this plain is part of the Ob River basin, the fourth longest in the world, with a length of more than 5,000 kilometers.

The total area of the Western Siberian Plain is more than 2,590,000 square kilometers, twice the size of Alaska.

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Where do potatoes come from?

Potatoes are so popular and important that you might think they've been part of the world's diet for a long time. But that's not true. No one in Europe had actually seen a potato until a few hundred years ago.

When Spanish explorers arrived in South America in the sixteenth century, they realized that the Incas were growing and eating a tuber.

Explorers sent some of these tubers to Europe, where they were planted. The Spaniards thought the tuber looked a lot like the batata (sweet potato), so they called the new food patata. This word became potato in England.

It wasn't until the eighteenth century that people in England, France and the American colonies started eating potatoes often. In Germany, the king ordered all farmers to plant potatoes to help solve the country's food shortage. For farmers who refused, the king decreed that their noses and ears be cut off!

The average American eats about 55 kilos of potatoes a year. But Uganda is the country where this tuber is consumed the most, with 475 kilos per capita per year!

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Where are the highest sand dunes in the World?

The central part of Algeria, in the Sahara desert, is a region of large quantities of sand. The sand is accumulated by the wind in massive dunes.

In some places, these dunes are so large that the ridges of neighboring dunes can be five kilometers away. One particular sand dune in this region is the highest in the world, reaching a height of 420 meters, higher than the Empire State Building in New York!

Huge sand dunes are not only found in the desert. There is a sand dune near the village of Arcachon, in France, which is about 100 meters high.

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Where is the Alhambra?

During the Middle Ages, the Moors from North Africa conquered most of Spain and Portugal and established a kingdom there.

They chose as their capital the city of Granada, where they built a splendid palace fortress surrounded by red brick walls. The fortress came to be known as the Alhambra, from the Arabic word for "The Red".

The Alhambra is so large that it would take about an hour to walk around its walls. But the Alhambra is valued much more for its beauty than for its size. It has been called by many people as "the most beautiful structure on Earth".

Throughout the Alhambra one finds marble and alabaster sculptures, colorful mosaics, swimming pools, fountains, and tree-lined courtyards. One of the most beautiful parts of the Alhambra is the Patio of the Lions, named after the alabaster fountain in the middle of the courtyard, and adorned with 12 lions carved in white marble. Each lion is said to represent each of the twelve sons of Israel, as well as the zodiacal signs.

According to legend, the Alhambra is so beautiful that the people who lived there refused to go to heaven when they died, so it is no wonder that the Alhambra is frequented by the ghosts of its former residents!

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Where is the strangest house in the world?

 In the late 19th century, Sara Winchester moved to an ordinary home in San Jose, California.

For some reason, the wealthy woman began adding an additional room to the house each year. By the time she died in 1922, the house already had 160 rooms, covering six acres.

Most of the rooms in Mrs. Winchester's house were never used. Some were a few inches wide. The stairs led nowhere, and the windows opened over the white walls. The eight-story house was built with three elevators, 48 chimneys, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, and miles of secret corridors and lobbies.

A special room was also erected that was entirely dedicated to the thirteenth. It had thirteen windows, thirteen doors, thirteen lights, etc.

Winchester Mansion is today a museum, open to anyone who wants to see the strangest house on Earth!

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What is the deepest hole dug by hand?

Today engineers use machines of many kinds to dig holes for oil and to lengthen tunnels inside mines.

But before the invention of these machines, man had to use his own hands along with a pick and shovel to dig holes in the ground. The deepest hole in the world of this kind was a diamond mine in Kimberley, South Africa.

This well was 240 m deep and was about 460 m in diameter, and it took 43 years to make it. The workers started the hole in 1871, and it wasn't finished until 1914.

The amount of soil removed when digging the hole was more than 28 million tonnes. But only three tons of diamonds were obtained from all that land!

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Where is the world's largest gold mine?

California was once the Mecca of gold mining, but today the region that produces the most gold in the world is in South Africa, near the city of Johannesburg.

This mining area produces about half of the world's gold, and some years production has been over 1,000 tonnes!

The largest group of mines in South Africa is called East Rand Mine, covering an area of 12,000 acres. The largest mine in this group has tunnels extending more than 4,000 kilometres.

Where is the world's largest religious complex?

The nation of Cambodia, formerly known as Kampuchea, is the home of the Khmer people.

More than a thousand years ago, the Khmer (Khmer) built an empire in Southeast Asia, with its capital in Angkor, the largest and most magnificent city in the entire East. Then in the fifteenth century, the city was conquered by the enemies, and the Khmer abandoned it.

In 1861, a French butterfly collector accidentally found Angkor. The growth of the jungle had covered the buildings, where monkeys and panthers roamed freely in the corridors. Angkor had been forgotten in the jungle for four centuries!

Angkor covers almost 40 square miles, with immense palaces, temples, libraries, baths, and courtyards. The city's largest temple, called Angkor Wat, has five acorn-shaped towers - one as tall as a 25-story building.

Stone carvings of gods, men and animals cover the walls. Undoubtedly, Angkor Wat is the largest building in Asia, and the largest religious complex in the world.

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Which canal joins two oceans?

Although the Suez Canal in Egypt is the longest canal in the world, covering a distance of approximately 160 kilometers, the canal with the most traffic in the world and the only one that connects two oceans (the Atlantic and the Pacific) is the Panama Canal. In some years, more than 14,000 ships pass through this canal.

In 1881, a French company began building the canal in the Central American nation of Panama, but they gave up after eight years, when 20,000 workers died of malaria in that mosquito-infested region.

Then, in 1907, a U.S. company took over the job of building the canal (after fighting mosquitoes and malaria). Workers cleared the way through dense jungles and paved hills to build an artificial lake and huge locks to raise and lower the ships. 10 billion tons of earth were excavated before the canal was finished in 1914!

Strangely enough, a ship that travels from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through the Panama Canal actually travels east. Because of Panama's curved shape, the Atlantic end of the canal is more than 40 kilometers west of the Pacific end.

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Who was the first person to get to the North Pole?

No one knows for sure who reached the North Pole for the first time, but two men said they did so around the same time.

American explorer Frederick Cook, along with two Eskimos, two sleds, and 26 dogs, left Greenland on a march to the polo on February 19, 1908. Fourteen months later, he returned to Greenland, from where he left for Denmark, where he claimed to have reached the North Pole on April 21, 1908.

Another American explorer, Roberto Peary, left northern Canada for the Pole on February 22, 1909. When he returned from his trip, he claimed that he had reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909. His news came just two days after Frederick Cook had arrived in Denmark and claimed that he had reached the Pole.

But later explorers doubted whether any of them had reached the North Pole. Some said that both Peary and Cook had missed the exact spot of the Pole, and others said that they had both lied about their journey.

In 1926, the American Richard Byrd claimed that he had flown over the North Pole, but it could never be proved that he had done so.

The first man to lead an expedition that officially reached the North Pole was the American Ralph Plaisted, who reached the Pole on a snowmobile in 1968.

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Where does the pepper come from?

You've probably peppered your food thousands of times. But did you know that this spice comes from a fruit?

Black pepper is the product of a shrub that grows in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. The shrub is a plant that tangles and climbs over tree trunks in the same way an ivy does.

The workers pick the small fruits of this plant and dry them into the tiny peppercorns we know. White pepper comes from the same plant, but is produced from ripe fruits rather than dried ones.

Other kinds of pepper, such as cayenne pepper, come from different plants. Singapore is the capital of this spice trade.

A quarter of the world's spice trade is based on pepper.

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Where is the world's most powerful lighthouse?

The first lighthouse built in history was in ancient Egypt, and some of them had already been built in Europe before the time of Christ. The most famous lighthouse of the ancient era was the Alexandria Lighthouse in Egypt, which was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. This building is thought to be about 180 meters high, but historians today doubt that it was that high.

No matter how high the Alexandria Lighthouse was, it certainly was not as powerful as modern lighthouses, this was because in ancient times the light was provided by bonfires above the lighthouse. The most powerful lighthouse on Earth today is on an island off the coast of Brittany, France. This building, which is 50 metres high, has a light equivalent to 500 million candles.

But the lights that can be seen at the longest distance are the bulbs above the Empire State in New York. Each of these bulbs has a light equivalent to 450 million candles, and they can be seen at a distance of 125 km... and from an airplane at a distance of 480 km!

The highest lighthouse on Earth is in Yokohama, Japan, and is about 105 meters high.

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Where is the world's largest library?

The Library of Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest library in the ancient world, with about 750,000 volumes or rolls. Today, a public library like the one in New York City can hold up to eight million books.

But of all the libraries that ever existed, the largest is the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. This library contains more than 75 million items, including books, pamphlets, letters, manuscripts, films, photographs, recordings, and musical compositions. The Library of Congress opened April 24, 1800, with books worth just $5,000.

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Great facts about Machu Picchu

 The historic site of Machu Picchu in Peru is located at an altitude of 2,400 meters above sea level.

Once known as the "Lost City of the Incas", Machu Picchu is today the best known symbol of the Inca Empire.

The site is one of the Seven New Wonders of the World.

The place was built in 1460 by the Inca Pachacutec, but was abandoned a century later.

The site of Machu Picchu was forgotten by the world until 1911, when it was discovered by Hiram Bingham, an American historian.

Was declared a Historic Sanctuary of Peru in 1981.

Was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1983.

The city of Machu Picchu was built in the classic Inca style, with carved stone walls.

Its main buildings are Intihuatana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Three Windows.

Machu Picchu received world attention for the first time, when the National Geographic Society magazine dedicated its entire April 1913 issue to the newly discovered city.

An area of 325.92 kilometers around Machu Picchu was declared Peru's 'Historic Sanctuary' in 1981.

The place is probably the most important archaeological site in South America and an unavoidable tourist attraction in Peru.

This historic site comprises about 140 structures.

The name Machu Picchu means "Old Mountain".

The Intihuatana Stone located in the site is one of the many ceremonial stones found in South America.

Researchers believe that the Intihuatana Stone was built as an astronomical clock or calendar.

When in 1911, Machu Picchu was discovered, people were found living there, as well as some ancient mummies.

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Where is the coldest place on the planet?

 The average temperature in Antarctica, a cold desert with little precipitation, is -17 degrees Celsius.

It is quite cold, but it is not by far the lowest temperature remembered on the Antarctic continent.

In 1960, Russian scientists working at the Vostok Antarctic station, more than 1,200 km from the South Pole, recorded a temperature of -89.2 degrees Celsius!

Although hard to believe, they are 11 degrees cooler than dry ice (solid carbon dioxide).

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