What A Place This Planet Of Ours Is

We live on a sphere of extremes and oddities. In fact it's not really a sphere, but it is a wild planet, mottled with deadly volcanoes, rattled by killer earthquakes, drenched in disastrous deluges. But do you know which were the worst?

Some of Earth's valleys dip below sea level. Mountains soar into thin air. Can you name the lowest spot? The tallest peak? Do you know how far it is to the center of the planet or what's there?

Where are the planet's hottest, coldest, driest and windiest places?

The following list of Earth's extremes and other amazing facts is presented in Q&A format, so you can cover the answers to test your knowledge of the home planet.

1. What is the hottest place on Earth?

Count one wrong if you guessed Death Valley in California. True enough on many days. But El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 -- the hottest ever measured. In Death Valley, it got up to 134 Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.

2. And the coldest place around here?

Far and away, the coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

3. What makes thunder?

If you thought, "Lightning!" then hats off to you. But I had a more illuminating answer in mind. The air around a lightning bolt is superheated to about five times the temperature of the Sun. This sudden heating causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound, which compresses the air and forms a shock wave; we hear it as thunder.

4. Can rocks grow?

Yes, but observing the process is less interesting than watching paint dry. Rocks called iron-manganese crusts grow on mountains under the sea. The crusts precipitate material slowly from seawater, growing about 1 millimeter every million years. Your fingernails grow about the same amount every two weeks.

5. How much space dust falls to Earth each year?

Estimates vary, but the USGS says at least 1,000 million grams, or roughly 1,000 tons of material enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earths surface. One group of scientists claims microbes rain down from space, too, and that extraterrestrial organisms are responsible for flu epidemics. There's been no proof of this, and I'm not holding my breath.

6. Where is the world’s highest waterfall?

The water of Angel Falls in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).

7. Is Earth a sphere?

Because the planet rotates and is more flexible than you might imagine, it bulges at the midsection, creating a sort of pumpkin shape. The bulge was lessening for centuries but now, suddenly, it is growing, a recent study showed. Accelerated melting of Earth's glaciers is taking the blame for the gain in equatorial girth.

8. What would a 100-pound person weigh on Mars?

The gravity on Mars is 38 percent of that found on Earth at sea level. So a 100-pound person on Earth would weigh 38 pounds on Mars. Based on NASA's present plans, it'll be decades before this assumption can be observationally proved, however.

9. What is the largest volcano?

The Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii holds the title here on Earth. It rises more than 50,000 feet (9.5 miles or 15.2 kilometers) above its base, which sits under the surface of the sea. But that's all volcanic chump change. Olympus Mons on Mars rises 16 miles (26 kilometers) into the Martian sky. Its base would almost cover the entire state of Arizona.

10. What was the deadliest known earthquake?

The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China. It struck a region where most people lived in caves carved from soft rock. The dwellings collapsed, killing an estimated 830,000 people. In 1976 another deadly temblor struck Tangshan, China. More than 250,000 people were killed.

11. What was the strongest earthquake in recent times?

A 1960 Chilean earthquake, which occurred off the coast, had a magnitude of 9.6 and broke a fault more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) long. An earthquake like that under a major city would challenge the best construction techniques.

12. What is the highest mountain?

Climbers who brave Mt. Everest in the Nepal-Tibet section of the Himalayas reach 29,035 feet (nearly 9 kilometers) above sea level. Its height was revised upward by 7 feet based on measurements made in 1999 using the satellite-based Global Positioning System.

13. Where is the lowest dry point on Earth?

The shore of the Dead Sea in the Middle East is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) below sea level. Not even a close second is Bad Water in Death Valley, California, at a mere 282 feet below sea level.

14. What is the longest river?

The Nile River in Africa is 4,160 miles (6,695 kilometers) long.

15. What's the driest place on Earth?

A place called Arica, in Chile, gets just 0.03 inches (0.76 millimeters) of rain per year. At that rate, it would take a century to fill a coffee cup.

16. What causes a landslide?

Intense rainfall over a short period of time can trigger shallow, fast-moving mud and debris flows. Slow, steady rainfall over a long period of time may trigger deeper, slow-moving landslides. Different materials behave differently, too. Every year as much as $2 billion in landslide damage occurs in the United States. In a record-breaking storm in the San Francisco area in January 1982, some 18,000 debris flows were triggered during a single night! Property damage was over $66 million, and 25 people died.

17. Do things inside Earth flow?

You bet. In fact, scientists found in 1999 that molten material in and around Earth's core moves in vortices, swirling pockets whose dynamics are similar to tornadoes and hurricanes. And as you'll learn later in this list, the planet's core moves in other strange ways, too.

18. What is the wettest place on Earth?

Lloro, Colombia averages 523.6 inches of rainfall a year, or more than 40 feet (13 meters). That's about 10 times more than fairly wet major cities in Europe or the United States.

19. Is air mostly oxygen?

Earth's atmosphere is actually about 80 percent nitrogen. Most of the rest is oxygen, with tiny amounts of other stuff thrown in.

20. What is the highest waterfall in the United States?

Yosemite Falls in California is 2,425 feet (739 meters).

21. What percentage of the world’s water is in the oceans?

About 97 percent. Oceans make up about two-thirds of Earth's surface, which means that when the next asteroid hits the planet, odds are good it will splash down.

22. Which two landmasses contain the vast majority of the Earth’s fresh water supply?

Nearly 70 percent of the Earth's fresh-water supply is locked up in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland. The remaining fresh-water supply exists in the atmosphere, streams, lakes, or groundwater and accounts for a mere 1 percent of the Earth's total.

23. Which of the Earth’s oceans is the largest?

The Pacific Ocean covers 64 million square miles (165 million square kilometers). It is more than two times the size of the Atlantic. It has an average depth of 2.4 miles (3.9 kilometers).

24. How much surface area does Earth contain?

There are 196,950,711 square miles (510,100,000 square kilometers).

25. What is the largest lake in the world?

By size and volume it is the Caspian Sea, located between southeast Europe and west Asia.

Some Class Definitions And Amazing Meanings, Funny

1. Cigarette : A pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end & a fool at the other.

2. Love affairs : Something like cricket where one-day internationals are more popular than a five day test.

3. Marriage : It's an agreement in which a man loses his bachelor degree and a woman gains her master.

4. Divorce : Future tense of marriage

5. Lecture : An art of transferring information from the notes of the lecturer to the notes of the students without passing through "the minds of either".

6. Conference : The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.

7. Compromise : The art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest piece.

8. Tears : The hydraulic force by which masculine will-power is defeated by feminine water-power.

9. Dictionary : A place where divorce comes before marriage and success before work.

10. Conference Room : A place where everybody talks, nobody listens & everybody disagrees later on.

11. Ecstasy : A feeling when you feel you are going to feel a feeling you have never felt before.

12. Classic : A book which people praise, but do not read.

13. Smile : A curve that can set a lot of things straight.

14. Office : A place where you can relax after your strenuous home life.

15. Yawn : The only time some married men ever get to open their mouth.

16. Etc. : A sign to make others believe that you know more than you actually do.

17. Committee : Individuals who can do nothing individually and sit to decide that nothing can be done together.

18. Experience : The name men give to their mistakes.

19. Atom Bomb : An invention to end all inventions.

20. Philosopher : A fool who torments himself during life, to be spoken of when dead.

21. Diplomat : A person who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

22. Opportunist : A person who starts taking bath if he accidentally falls into a river.

23. Optimist : A person who while falling from Eiffel Tower says in midway "See I am not injured yet."

24. Pessimist :- A person who says that O is the last letter in ZERO, Instead of the first letter in word OPPORTUNITY.

25. Miser : A person who lives poor so that he can die rich.

26. Father : A banker provided by nature.

27. Criminal : A guy no different from the rest... except that he got caught.

28. Boss : Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early.

29. Politician : One who shakes your hand before elections and your Confidence after.

30. Doctor : A person who kills your ills by pills, and kills you with his bills.

Even More Amazing Facts You Lucky People

• The Nobel Prize's resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered as a propagator of violence-he invented dynamite.
• Whoopi Goldberg was a mortuary cosmetologist and a bricklayer before becoming an actress..
• Guinness Book Of Records holds the record for being the book most stolen from Public Libraries.
• Charlie Chaplin won third place in a Charlie Chaplin look alikecontest.
• Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated for some time. Another story states that: Mickey mouse was not named after Mickey Rooney he was made on a train ride from New York after Walt found out he didn't actually own Oswald the lucky rabbit. The mouse Walt drew was originally named Mortimor But his wife Lilly didn't like that name so she suggested Mickey and the name stuck.
• Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he didn't wear pants.
• Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made out of wood.
• A person afflicted with hexadectylism has six fingers or six toes on one or both hands and feet.
• Pamela Lee-Anderson is Canada's Centennial Baby, being the first baby born on the centennial anniversary of Canada's independence.
• Tokyo has had 24 recorded instances of people either killed or
  receiving serious skull fractures while bowing to each other with the traditional Japanese greeting.
• Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music.
• The cockroach has a high resistance to radiation and is the creature most likely to survive a nuclear war.
• In the southern hemisphere, water always swirl anti-clockwise down into a pipe.
• About 8 million blood cells die in the human body every second, and the same number are born each second.
• Eighteen per cent of all global carbon dioxide emissions are from cars.
• Every year, the Moon moves a further 3.82cm from the Earth.
• It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
• 35 meters of hair fibre is produced every day on the average adult scalp.

Some More Rather Interesting Little Nuggets Of Information

1. The first product that Sony came out with was the rice cooker.

2. The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com.

3. The most dangerous job in the United States is that of an Alaskan Crab Fisherman.

4. Business.com is currently the most expensive domain name sold for $7.5 million.

5. An apple, potato, and onion all taste the same if you eat them with your nose plugged.

6. All babies are color blind when they are born.

7. There is a giant mushroom in Oregon that is over 2,400 years old, covers 3.4 square miles of
land, and is still growing!

8. A volcano has enough power to shoot ash as high as 50 km into the atmosphere.

9. Bill Gates' house was designed using a Macintosh computer.

10. SONY was originally called 'Totsuken'.

Some Pretty Amazing Facts

If you're bored, then here are some amazing facts to keep you amused.

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long

2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile

3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.

4. A Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.(the Wright brother's invented the airplane)

5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.

6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny

7. The word "set " has the most number of definitions in the English language - 192

8. Slugs have four noses

9. Sharks can live up to 100 years

10. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.

11. Kangaroos can't walk backwards

12. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday

13. The largest recorded snowflake was 15in wide and 8in thick. It fell in Montana in 1887

14. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.

15. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency

16. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints

17. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human

18. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.

19. The world's largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002

20. Octopus have three hearts

21. If you ate too many carrots, you'd turn orange

22. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.

23. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old

24. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands

25. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs

26. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother's womb. The survivor is born.

27. Most cats are left pawed

28. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa

29. A Blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant

30. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling!

31. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours

32. An eyeball weighs about 1 ounce

33. Bone is five times stronger than steel.

Strange Coincidences Between Abe Lincoln And John F Kennedy

Strange coincidences & Amazing Facts between Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy

Abraham Lincoln

John F Kennedy

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

The names Lincoln and Kennedy each contain seven letters.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.

Both of their wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.

Both were shot in the head.

Both were shot with one bullet.

Both were rumored to be killed in a conspiracy.Neither was confirmed to be a conspiracy.

Lincoln was shot in the Ford Theater.
Kennedy was shot in a card made by the Ford Motor Company (a Lincoln no less)

Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.

Both were succeeded by Southerners.

Both successors were named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

Their first names both contain six letters.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.

Both names comprise fifteen letters.

Booth ran from the theater and was caught in a warehouse.
Oswald ran from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.

Both assassins were assassinated before their trials.

The only complete filming of Kennedy's assasination was shot by Abraham Zapruder.
The only complete account of Lincoln's assasination was written by John Zelfindorfer.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was with friends in Monroe, Maryland.
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with his friend Marilyn Monroe.

Lincoln's last child, Tad, had his funeral held on July 16, 1871. Later he was exhumed and moved to a different grave site.
Kennedy's son JFK Jr. was lost at sea on July 16, 1999. Later he was found, brought up, and then re-burried at sea.

Other interesting facts:

Apparently Lincoln had a dream several days before the assassination that he had been killed.
He told his wife that he had seen himself in a casket.

Also, Lincoln's son Tad had a pet turkey named Jack. Tad asked his father not to kill the turkey for Thanksgiving.

Although Harry S Truman started the official tradition, Lincoln was the first to "pardon" a Thanksgiving turkey.

Now what would be real interesting is if Kennedy had a pet named Abe or had pardoned someone by that name. Thus far, I haven't heard of that. Skeptics disagree

Some skeptics say that you could take any two famous people and find a number of similar-type coincidences between them.

The only problem with that theory is that there really haven't been any listings of such comparisons.

And certainly none has been as extensive as the Lincoln-Kennedy similarities.

Summary:

Facts concerning the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy are amazingly similar. It is uncertain if such coincidences have any meaning, but they certainly are strange.

Strange..........But True

A single share of Coca-Cola stock, purchased in 1919, when the company went public, would have been worth $92,500 in 1997.

Americans consume 42 tons of Aspirin per day.

Americans spend more than $5 billion a year on cosmetics, toiletries, beauty parlors and barber shops.

Bayer was advertising cough medicine containing Heroin in 1898.
Carbonated soda water was invented in 1767 by Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen.

Cheerios cereal was originally called Cheerioats.
Chewing gum was patented in 1869 by William Semple.

Coca-Cola was so named back in 1885 for its two medicinal ingredients: extract of coca leaves and kola nuts. As for how much cocaine was originally in the formula, it's hard to know.
Cocaine used to be sold to cure sore throat, neuralgia, nervousness, headache, colds and sleeplessness in the 1880s.

During the Prohibition, at least 1565 Americans died from drinking bad liquor, hundreds were blinded, and many were killed in bootlegger wars. Federal agents and the Coast Guard made 75,000 arrests per year.

False eyelashes were invented by film director D.W. Griffith while he was making the 1916 epic, "Intolerance." He wanted actress Seena Owen to have lashes that brushed her cheeks.

For two years, during the 1970s, Mattel marketed a doll called "Growing Up Skipper". Her breasts grew when her arm was turned.

Gatorade was named for the University of Florida Gators, where it was first developed.

Hershey's Kisses are called that, because the machine that makes them looks like its kissing the conveyor belt.

The ball-point pen was invented by two hungarian brothers: Georgo and Lazlo Biro.

If you put a raisin in a glass of champagne, it will keep floating to the top and sinking to the bottom, over and over again.

In 1965, LBJ enacted a law requiring cigarette manufacturers to put health warnings on their packages.

In 1984, a Canadian farmer began renting out advertising space on his cows.
In 4000 BC Egypt, men and women wore glitter eye shadow made from the crushed shells of beetles. Men and women walked around topless, and marriages between brothers and sisters were not uncommon in the Royal families. Cleopatra was married to her older brother, until he drowned in the Nile. Then she married her 11-year-old younger brother.

In the 1700s, European women achieved a pale complexion by eating "Arsenic Complexion Wafers", which contained the actual poison.