Amazing Facts archive

• By 2010, electronically stored information was estimated at 1.2 billion terabytes (by IDC)
• If these information were stored on CDs, the stack would reach the moon and back.
• Our digital world grew by 2/3 in 2010 alone
• An estimated 15 per cent of that information would be stored in an internet cloud system

• Ice cream was originally made without sugar and eggs

• Igloos are actually made from a spiral of ice blocks, not rows of ice blocks
• The best ice blocks are from snowbanks formed by a single snowstorm, and not from a series of snowstorms which make the ice easy to break

• During World War I, the language of the Choctaw Indians was used to encode messages,
• But that in World War II, the language of the Navajo Indians was used. The Navajo language was considered by the Japanese to be an “unbreakable” code.
• During the battle of Iwo Jima, Navajo code-talkers sent and received over 800 messages without any errors and without computers. There were only 6 of them!

• According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the best time to spray household insects is 4:00 p.m. Insects are most vulnerable at this time. (It’s just like its better to water your plants in the early mornings or the evenings)
• An insect exerts so much energy in one hour of flying that it may lose as much as a third of its total body weight
• In rural areas, there are more insects in 1 square mile than there are humans on earth
• When the temperature drops, the eyesight reaction time of insects (like the dragonfly and some animals like tortoises) decrease and thats why they can be caught early in the morning or at night by predators like birds whose eyesight reaction times are unaffected by temperature. (from Animal Planet)

• The Internal Revenue Service audits 87% of women who claim breast implants as tax deductions

If you shut down your computer for 60 seconds, this is what you will miss online:

• 1500+ blog posts
• 98,000 tweets
• 12,000 new ads on Graigslist
• 20,000 new posts on Tumblr
• 600 new videos (25+ hours) on Youtube

• Food passes through the small intestine in just two hours, zipping along at 0.002 mph. Inside the large intestine, it takes about 14 hours, traveling at a more leisurely rate of 0.00007 mph

• In 2006, 2 in 3 mp3 players were iPods
• The iPod chip is not produced by Apple. It is from Portal Player
• The designer of the iPod, Jonathan Ive, was voted more influential than JK Rowlings
• The Queen owned her i-Pod in June 2005

• A good Irish birthday present is to lift the birthday child upside down and gently thump his head on the floor for good luck, corresponding to his age+1
• The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin has a 9,000 year lease on it’s property, at a perpetual rate of 45 Irish pounds per year
• According to some historians, over 40% of all American presidents have had some Irish ancestry
• Muhammad Ali has some Irish blood. His great grandfather was born in Ennis, County Clare
• Ireland has the highest ratio of midwives per capita in the world