Amazing facts website


Amazing Facts archive


Entries Comments



Petabyte

  • 1024 GIGABYTES is 1 TERABYTE. 1024 TERABYTE is 1 PETABYTE
  • 1 petabyte is worth 13.3 years of HD movies
  • 20 petabytes is the amount of data google processes daily
  • 50 petabytes equates to mankind’s entire written work since the beginning of recorded text… written in all languages
  • In order to process the world’s data needs, worldwide data centers consume the same amount of energy as Sweden

Jules Verne

  • A manuscript by Jules Verne predicted camera phones as far back as 1874

Harry Potter

  • Hagrid is said to be twice the height of a human but in the films he is mentioned to be 8 feet 6 inches.
  • Hermione’s cat Crookshanks is no ordinary cat as he is half-kneazle. Kneazles are intelligent cat-like creatures who can sniff out suspicious characters and if a kneazle takes a liking to a witch or wizard, they make for excellent pets.
  • Members of the Order of the Pheonix are the only wizards who know how to communicate using their patronuses. A wizard’s patronus is the individual’s unique spirit guardian and is effective in use against the dark arts.
  • Dementors don’t breed. They grow where there’s decay, like fungus.
  • The tattoos on Sirius Black’s body are borrowed from Russian prison gangs. These are to identify a person as one to be feared and respected.
  • The command that makes the Dark Mark (the mark of the Dark Lord) appear is “Morsmorde” which appropriately means ‘take a bite out of death in French.
  • Harry’s middle name is James, Hermione’s is Jane and Ron’s is unfortunately, Bilius.
  • Garden gnomes are considered to be pests in the wizarding community because they eat the roots of plants and make little piles of earth, very much like moles.
  • The ghost Nearly-Headless Nick was beheaded because a botched dentistry job. He was trying to straighten Lady Grieve’s teeth but instead she sprouted a tusk.
  • Dumbledore has a scar in the shape of the London Underground above his knee.
  • The secret code Arthur Weasley must dial into a telephone keypad to access the Ministry of Magic is 62442. The letters underneath those numbers on a standard phone spell out the word ‘magic’.
  • You can only see a thestral when you can appreciate what death really means. This is why Harry could not see them until he witnessed the death of Cedric Diggory.
  • The original snitch used in early Quidditch matches was actually a fat bird called a snidget. When some wizards thought this to be too cruel, the wizard Bowman Wright invented the Golden Snitch.
  • Hogwarts’ school motto is ‘Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus’ which is Latin for ‘Never Tickle a Sleeping Dragon’.
  • Harry Potter, JK Rowling and the actor Daniel Radcliffe all share the same birthday – July 31st
  • Hermione’s patronus is an otter because Rowling likes otters and sees herself in Hermione
  • JK Rowling named the driver and conductor of the Knight Bus after her grandfathers, Ernie and Stanley
  • Dumbledore is an old English word for a bumble-bee. JK Rowling says she believes this suits the Hogwarts head because “one of his passions is music and I imagined him walking around humming to himself.”
  • The four houses at Hogwarts correspond to the four elements. Ravenclaw is air, Gryffindor is fire, Slytherin is water and Hufflepuff is earth
  • Death Eaters were once called the Knights of Walpurgis
  • Harry Potter’s middle name is James, Hermione’s is Jane, Ginny’s is Molly – after her mother – and poor old Ron’s is Bilius
  • A magical quill detects the birth of every magical child, and records it in a book. Then Professor McGonagall sends an owl to each child when he or she turns 11
  • JK Rowling wrote the final chapter and the final word “scar” before she wrote the final book.
  • Ron was amazed to hear that Tom Riddle received an award for special services to Hogwarts, saying jokingly: “Maybe he murdered Myrtle; that would’ve done everyone a favour.” He DID murder Myrtle, through the Basilisk
  • Snape hates Neville because Neville could have also been the chosen one, and Lily would not have died
  • Voldemort cannot feel love because he was born under a love potion
  • After the Horcrux in Harry was destroyed, he lost the ability to speak Parseltongue
  • Severus is the only death eater who can produce a patronus
  • George would never be able to produce a patronus after Fred’s death
  • JK Rowling got sick of being asked how to pronounce Hermione, so they made Hermione teach Krum in the Goblet of Fire
  • Both Harry Potter and Dumbledore have been in possession of all three Deathly Hallows
  • Ron’s Patronus is a Jack Russel

Chess

  • Chess was invented in Iran
  • There are more than a thousand trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion ways a chess game can be played. ( 10120). That is more than the number of electrons in the universe
  • The Queen in chess was originally a male prime minister and could only move 1 square diagonally. Her power grew during the Renaissance period.
  • The folding chess board was invested by a priest
  • The rook is named from an Arabic word rukh, meaning chariot. During the Middle Ages, when chariots were no longer in use, the rook was gradually modified to look more like the turret of a castle.
  • The word “checkmate” comes from the Persian phrase “shah mat,” which means “the king is defeated.”
  • Lewis Carrol’s novel “Through the Looking Glass” was based on a chess game, much the way “Alice in Wonderland” was based on playing cards

Sherlock Holmes

  • The phrase ‘Elementary my dear Watson’ was never mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes books
  • Sherlock means blonde, but the main characters are all dark haired
  • Holmes is modeled after the Scottish physician Joseph Bell
  • Holmes’ famous deerstalker cap was not created by Doyle, but by the illustrator, Sidney Paget
  • “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” is the most famous true quote written by Conan Doyle
  • Watson has a bullet wound that was first described as being in the shoulder, but in another story the wound had moved to the leg
  • The only woman to have beaten Holmes was Irene Adler
  • Sherlock Holmes’ creator ironically believed in and was committed to spiritualism, fairies and ghosts
  • There are more than 260 movies, 2 musicals and a ballet based on the book
  • In 1964, Sherlock Holmes books were the best sellers second only to the Bible
  • Sherlock abused cocaine and morphine in “The Sign Of Four”

nightingale

  • The Nightingale sings much louder and move varied at night, unlike other birds that sing at dawn
  • A poem written by John Clare in 1832 is done entirely in the nightingale’s lyrics – “Chew chew chee chew chee – chew – cheer cheer cheer…”

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

nerd

  • The word “nerd” was first coined by Dr. Seuss in “If I Ran the Zoo.”

Bible

  • Camel is considered unclean meat in the Bible
  • The Bible has been translated into Klingon
  • The Bible was written by over 40 authors over a period of 1500 years
  • In 1631, two London bible printers accidentally left the word “not” out of the seventh commandment, which then read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” This legendary book is now known as the “Wicked Bible.”

Shakespear

  • In Shakespeare, Rosalind, the heroine of “As You Like It”, has more lines than any of Shakespeare’s female characters. Cleopatra comes in second with 670 lines and third place belongs to Imogen (“Cymbeline”), with 591 lines
  • It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear