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Facebook
  • Turns out Facebook wasn’t always called Facebook. It originally launched as TheFacebook on thefacebook.com with Zuckerberg claiming he was “Founder, Master and Commander, Enemy of the State”. It didn’t become Facebook.com until 2005 when the fledgling site bought the domain for $200,000 from aboutface.com a web and intranet directory software company
  • Over 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States with all those people spending a whopping 5703 years (3 billion minutes) on the site each day.
  • The website is built on PHP-MySQL and is the second most-trafficked PHP site in the world
  • In April 2006, revenue was rumored to be over $1.5 million per week
  • The company already rejected a $975 million offer for the site
  • Facebook is valued at 8 billion according to Peter Thiel
  • It currently hosts over 1.7 Billion photos
  • Facebook is the 5th most valuable US Internet company, yet with only $150 million in annual revenue.
  • With this success, Zuckerberg (founder), Moskowitz and Hughes moved out to Palo Alto for the summer and rented a sublet. A few weeks later, Zuckerberg ran into the former cofounder of Napster, Sean Parker. Parker soon moved in to Zuckerberg’s apartment and they began working together. Parker provided the introduction to their first investor, Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and managing partner of the Founders Fund. Thiel invested $500,000 into Facebook.

shoe
  • In 1927, X-rays were used to help people find a fitting shoe. It was known as the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope but was later destroyed due to health hazards
  • Shoes were made over 4000 years ago
  • Heels were invented in the Middle East to help lift the foot from the burning sand
  • In 16th and 17th century Europe, heels on shoes were always colored red
  • Sneakers were originally called keds
  • The first lady’s boot was designed for Queen Victoria in 1840
  • Before the 19th century, there wasn’t a left or right shoe. Both sides were identical
  • In Biblical times a sandal was given as a sign of an oath
  • In Hungary the groom drinks a toast to his bride out of her wedding slipper
  • In the Middle Ages a father passed his authority over his daughter to her husband in a shoe ceremony. At the wedding, the groom handed the bride a shoe, which she put on to show she was then his subject

beer
  • There are more than 20,000 brands of beer
  • Beer was created as early as 4,300 BC
  • The egyptians used to have over 100 medicinal purposes for beer
  • The biggest beer fest is Octoberfest. It started out as a wedding ceremony
  • In old Germany, beer was made by monks

Oscars
  • The oscar statuettes were once made of plaster - during the war
  • Only one wooden statuette was ever presented. It was to a ventriloquist dummy (Charlie McCarthy)

Playboy
  • Playboy has already been seen on the moon

noodles
  • Australians consume more than 18 million kilograms of noodles a year. That is almost 1kg of noodle per person
  • For Chinese people, thin long noodles are eaten during their birthdays to symbolyze longevity
  • In Japan, it is polite to slurp loudly while eating noodles or soba. They will even tell you to slurp instead of eating quietly

newspaper
  • Less than 30% of people read an entire newspaper
  • The first newspapers were either distributed in China or in Rome where they were made out of stone or metal

Ukraine
  • In Ukraine, a woman’s shirt/blouse is very important. Every woman was supposed to know how to make a shirt. Average women had around 15-20 shirts while well-to-do women had over 50 shirts
  • Traditionally in summer, unmarried Ukrainian women do not wear hats or bonnets and walk bare-headed, with their hair usually braided

Twinkle twinkle
  • Twinkle twinkle little star has been around for over 200 years
  • The song twinkle twinkle little star is a combination of an English poem “The Star” and a French tune “Ah! vous  dirai-je, Maman”
  • In the French tune, the original lyrics told the story of a girl telling her mother that she was being seduced by a man called “Silvandre”
  • Mozart has also used the tune of twinkle twinkle little star as inspiration for 12 variations of his own work

Olympics
  • The Olympics was once outlawed as a pagan celebration
  • The Olympic torch relay was actually not part of the ancient games but was introduced as part of Nazi propoganda during the 1936 Berlin Olympics
  • In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, only people from the “Aryan race” were allowed to represent Germany. That year, they also topped the medal tally and won the Olympics
  • In the 1956 Melbourne Games, there was a hoax by 9 students where a fake torch made out of a burning pair of underpants and a plum pudding can on the end of a chair leg was presented to the Mayor instead of the Olympic torch
  • The Olympic flame traces back to the original Olympia flame and has never been extinguished (due to several backup fires)
  • The Olympic flame in Olympia, Greece is rekindled every two years using the sun’s rays and a concave reflective mirror
  • At the start of the modern Olympics in 1896, winners were actually awarded Silver instead of Gold
  • The ancient Olympiads only had one race, the first of which was won by a chef. In 2008, there are over 300 events
  • The youngest Olympic athlete participated at the age of 10 (Dimitrios Loundras in 1896) and the oldest was 72 (Oscar Swahn, 1972)
  • The Olympic rings represent the five major regions of the world – Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania
  • Poland’s Stanislawa Walasiewiczowna (Stella Walsh) was the first women to break the 12 second barrier in the 100-meter race at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. She later died in a robbery attempt, after which an autopsy declared her to be a male


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