Some more trivia !

• The Soviet Sukhoi-34 is the first strike fighter with a toilet in it.

• S.O.S. doesn't stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls" -- It was just chosen by an 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters S and O were easy to remember and just about anyone could key it and read it, S = dot dot dot, O = dash dash dash.

• Many years ago, in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only...Ladies Forbidden"..and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language

• The shoestring was invented in England in 1790. Prior to this time, all shoes were fastened with buckles.

• A polar bears skin is black. Its fur is not white but actually clear.

• There are over 600 muscles in the body which account for 40% of the body's weight.

• Income tax was first introduced in India in 1860 by James Wilson, who became India's 1st finance member.

• Snakes that live or spend most of their time in trees are called Arboreal.

• In 1974, Lata Mangeshkar became the First Indian to have performed in the Royal Albert Hall, London.

• It has been calculated that in the last 3,500 years, there have only been 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world.

• "Freelance" comes from a knight whose lance was free for hire, i.e. not pledged to one master.

• The average adult stands 0.4 inch taller in the morning than in the evening because the cartilage in the spine compresses during the day.

• Fingernails grow four times faster than toenails - about two hundredths of an inch per week.

• The hyoid bone, in your throat, is the only bone in the body not attached to another bone.

• The inventor of chewing gum, a dentist named William Semple, intended it mainly as a means of exercising the jaws.

• The rings of Saturn are made up of primarily water ice, with particles or rock.

• Air conditioning wasn’t invented to cool homes or offices. It was invented to control humidity in a printing plant.

• The Associated Press introduced the first system for routinely transmitting "wire photos" in 1934.

• Venice in Italy is built on 118 sea islets joined by 400 bridges.

The word denim comes from 'de Nimes', or from Nimes, a place in France.

• A large cumulonimbus cloud can hold enough water for 500,000 baths. Most of the water droplets in a cloud re-evaporate and never reach the ground, only one-fifth actually falling as rain.

• The first diamond engagement ring was presented in 1477 by Archduke Maximillian of Austria to Mary of Burgundy.

• Every square inch of the human body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.

• The pound cake got its name from the pound of butter it contained.

• Neck ties were first worn in Croatia. That's why they were called cravats (CRO-vats).

• The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova, from the USSR, in June 1963.

• When Albert Einstein left Germany in 1933, the Nazis put a price of 20,000 marks on his head.

• Without any greenhouse effect, Earth would be cold and lifeless with an average temperature of 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

• If you cut a redwood tree, its root system will create "angel rings" around the stump and as many as 100 trees will grow around it in a circle.

• The Kiwi, national bird of New Zealand, can't fly, lives in a hole in the ground, is almost blind and lays only one egg each year. Yet it has survived for 70 million years.

• Levi Strauss made the first pair of blue jeans in 1850. They were intended as work trousers for American miners looking for gold.

• The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants.

• Kissing releases the same neurotransmitters as intense exercise, like parachuting or distance running. The heart beats faster and breathing becomes deep and irregular.

• If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

• The first manned spacecraft to be launched was the Soviet’s Vostok 1, which left Earth in 1961.

• As we get older the brain loses almost one gram per year because its nerve cells die and cannot be replaced.

• Agalmatophilia is an attractions to statues or mannequins.

• The world's tallest mountains, the Himalayas, are also the fastest growing. Their growth - about half an inch a year - is caused by the pressure exerted by two of Earth's continental plates (the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate) pushing against one another.

• Walt Disney got the idea for Mickey Mouse from watching mice play in a garage, where he was forced to work, because he could not afford to rent an art studio

The bow used by Olympic archers measures a max of 6ft for men, 5¼ ft for women. It is made of laminated wood, and is coated with graphite or fiberglass.

• According to scientific tests on cricketers the batsmen who are most likely to hit a cricket ball for six are those who watch it for the shortest period of time.

• Fat has nine calories per gram, while protein and carbohydrate have four, Alcohol has seven.

• Napoleon's christening name was Italian: Napoleone Buonaparte. He was born on the island of Corsica one year after it became French property. As a boy, he hated the French.

• The first Olympic Games were held in 776 BC. They began as a religious festival, were held every four years and continued for a thousand years.

• The most sensitive parts of the body are the fingers and lips whilst the least sensitive part is the middle of the back.