Facts about Technology

160 billion emails are sent daily, 97% of which are spam.

Spam generates 33bn KWt-hours of energy every year, enough to power 2.4 million homes, producing 17 million tons of CO2.

9 out of every 1,000 computers are infected with spam.

Spammer get 1 response to every 12 million emails they send (yet it still makes them a small profit).

A twillionaire is a twitterer with a million or more followers.

There are some 1 billion computers in use.

There are some 2 billion TV sets in use.

There are more than 4 billion cell phones in use. About 3 million cell phones are sold every day.

The first known cell phone virus, Cabir.A, appeared in 2004.

Since 2008, video games have outsold movie DVDs.

Amazon sells more e-books than printed books.

Facebook has 500 million registered users… about 100 million less than QQ.

About 1.8 billion people connect to the Internet, 450 million of them speak English. See list of Internet languages.

Google indexed it’s 1 trillionth unique URL on July 25, 2008. That is thought to be about 20% of all the pages on the Internet but a high percentage of the World Wide Web (the public Internet).

One google search produces about 0.2g of CO2. But since you hardly get an answer from one search, a typical search session produces about the same amount of CO2 as does boiling a kettle.

Google handles about 1 billion search queries per day, releasing some 200 tons of CO2 per day.

The average US household uses 10.6 megawatt-hours (MWh) electricity per year.

Google uses an estimated 15 billion kWh of electricity per year, more than most countries. However, google generates a lot of their own power with their solar panels.

The first public cell phone call was made on April 3, 1973 by Martin Cooper.

The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X was the first cell phone sold in the US; launched on April 11, 1984, it was designed by Rudy Krolopp and weighed 2 pounds.

About 20% of the videos on YouTube are music related.

24 hours of video viewing is uploaded every minute on YouTube.

People view 15 billion videos online every month.

On average, US onliners view 100 videos per month each.

Flickr hosts some 5 billion photographs, Facebook hosts more than 15 billion.

1 Bit = Binary Digit
8 Bits = 1 Byte
1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
1000 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
1000 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte
Technically speaking, the sum is 1024 bytes.

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Facts about earth and space

The order of the planets, starting closest to the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

The one place where a flag flies all day, never goes up or comes down, and does not get saluted, is the moon.
Earth is not round; it is slightly pear-shaped. The North Pole radius is 44mm longer than the South Pole radius.

The ozone layer averages about 3 millimeters (1/8 inch) thick.

The crawler, the machine that takes the Space Shuttle to the launching pad moves at 3km/h (2 mph).
Summer on Uranus lasts for 21 years – but so does winter.

The Sahara desert expands at about 1km per month.

Oceanography, the study of oceans, is a mixture of biology, physics, geology and chemistry.

More than 70% of earth’s dryland is affected by desertification.

The US has one of the highest fire death rates in the industrialized world, with more than 2 million fires reported each year.

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth. See the size of the sun in comparison.

The largest iceberg ever recorded was 335km (208 miles) long and 97km (60 miles) wide.

Luke Howard used Latin words to categorize clouds in 1803.

Hurricanes, tornadoes and bigger bodies of water always go clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. This directional spinning has to do with the rotation of the earth and is called the Coriolis force.

Winds that blow toward the equator curve west.

Organist William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 with the first reflecting telescope that he built.

He named it Georgium Sidium in honour of King George III of England but in 1850 it was renamed Uranus in accordance with the tradition of naming planets for Roman gods.

Planets, meaning wanderers, are named after Roman deities: Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the god of love and beauty; Mars, the god of war; Jupiter, king of the gods; and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture; Neptune, god of the sea.

During a total solar eclipse the temperature can drop by 6 degrees Celsius (about 20 degrees Fahrenheit).

The tallest waterfalls in the world are Angel Falls in Venezuela. At 979 m (3,212 ft), they are 19 times taller than the Niagara Falls, or 3 times taller than the Empire State Building.

Although the Angel Falls are much taller than the Niagara Falls, the latter are much wider, and they both pour about the same amount of water over their edges – about 2,8 billion litres (748 million gallons) per second.

There are 1040 islands around Britain, one of which is the smallest island in the world: Bishop’s Rock.

All the planets in the solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

Earth is the densest planet in the solar system and the only one not named after a god.

Earth orbits the sun at an average speed of 29.79 km/s (18.51 miles/sec), or about 107 000 km/h (about 67,000 miles/hour).

One year on earth is 365.26 days long. One day is 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds long. The extra day in a leap year was introduced to compensate for the discrepancy in the Georgian calendar.

Plates carrying the continents migrate over the earth’s surface a few centimetres (inches) per year, about the same speed that a fingernail grows.

On average, 20,000 earthquakes are located each year.

The magnetic north pole is near Ellef Ringes Island in northern Canada.

The magnetic south pole was discovered off the coast of Wilkes Land in Antarctica.

There is zero gravity at the center of earth.

The deepest mine in the world is Western Deep Levels near Carltonville, South Africa. It is 4,2km (2.6 miles) deep.

The deepest point in the sea: the Mariana Trench off Guam in the Pacific Ocean; it is 10,9 km (6.77 miles) below sea level.

The tallest mountain on earth is under the ocean: Mauna Kea in Hawaii is 10,200 metres (33,465 ft) high. Mount Everest is 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) high.

Earth is slowing down – in a few million years there won’t be a leap year.

The tail of the Great Comet of 1843 was 330 million km long. (It will return in 2356.)

There are more than 326 million trillion gallons of water on Earth.

About 500 small meteorites fall to earth every year but most fall in the sea and in unpopulated areas.

There is no record of a person being killed by a meteorite but animals are occasionally hit.

The Dead Sea is 365 m (1,200 ft) below sea level.

A storm officially becomes a hurricane when cyclone winds reach 119 km/h (74 mph).

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Facts About Animals

Mammals are the only animals with flaps around the ears.

African elephants only have four teeth to chew their food with.

There are about one billion cattle in the world of which 200 million are in India.

A house fly lives only 14 days.

A dog was the first in space and a sheep, a duck and a rooster the first to fly in a hot air balloon.

The Big Five is a group of animals of Africa: cape buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhino.

The oldest breed of dog is the Saluki.

The bee hummingbird of Cuba is the smallest bird in the world.

An ostrich can run up to 43mph (70 km/h).

An annoyed camel will spit at a person.

The world’s smallest dog is the Chihuahua, which means “tiny dog in the sky.”

Pea crabs (the size of a pea) are the smallest crabs in the world.

75% of wild birds die before they are 6 months old.

Pork is the world’s most widely-eaten meat.

In Denmark there are twice as many pigs as people.

Dinosaurs did not eat grass: there weren’t any at that time.

The coyote is a member of the dog family and its scientific name, “canis latrans” means barking dog.

A giraffe can clean its ears with its 50cm (20 in) tongue.

A group of geese on the ground is a gaggle – a group of geese in the air is a skein.

More animal collective nouns

The South American giant anteater eats more than 30,000 ants a day.

It is impossible to out-swim a shark – sharks reach speeds of 44 mph (70 km/h). Humans can run about 21 mph (35 km/h).

The sailfish is the fastest swimmer, reaching 68 mph (109 km/h), although a black marlin has been clocked at 80 mph (128 km/h).

The slowest fish is the Sea Horse, which moves along at about 0.01 mph (0.016 km/h).
Dolphins can reach 37 mph (60 km/h).

Of the 650 types of leeches, only the Hirudo medicinalis is used for medical treatments.
The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

The tongue of a blue whale is as long as an elephant.

A blue whale weighs as much as 40 rhinos.

The eel is the only fish in the world that spawns in the middle of an ocean but spends its adult lives in rivers.

The scales of a crocodile are made of ceratin, the same substance that hooves and fingernails are made of.

A crocodile’s tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth and cannot move it.

A snail has two pairs of tentacles on its head. One pair is longer than the other and houses the eyes. The shorter pair is used for smelling and feeling its way around. (Some snail species have only one pair of tentacles, thus they have just one eye).

The heaviest crustacean ever found was a lobster weighing 42 lb (19 kg), caught in 1934.

The largest jellyfish ever caught measured 7’6″ (2,3 m) across the bell with a tentacle of 120 ft (36 m) long.

The largest giant squid ever recorded was captured in the North Atlantic in 1878. It weighed 4 tons. Its tentacles measured 10 m (35 ft) long.

The giant squid has the biggest eyes of any animal: its eyes measure 16 inches (40 cm) in diameter.

Domestic cats purr at about 26 cycles per second, the same frequency as an idling diesel engine.

Sharks are immune to almost all known diseases.

Sharks and rays also share the same kind of skin: instead of scales, they have small tooth-like spikes called denticles. The spikes are so sharp that shark skin has long been used as sandpaper.

Animals also are either right-handed or left-handed. Polar bears are left-handed – and so is Kermit the Frog.

There are 701 types of pure breed dogs. There are about 54 million dogs in the US, and Paris is said to have more dogs than people.

Some bird species, usually flightless birds, have only a lower eyelid, whereas pigeons use upper and lower lids to blink.

Fish and insects do not have eyelids – their eyes are protected by a hardened lens.

Flatfish (halibut, flounder, turbot, and sole) hatch like any other “normal” fish. As they grow, they turn sideways and one eye moves around so they have two eyes on the side that faces up.

Measured in straight flight, the spine-tailed swift is the fastest bird. It flies 106 mph (170 km/h). Second fastest is the Frigate, which reaches 94 mph (150 km/h).

Millions of trees are accidentally planted by squirrels who bury nuts and then forget where they hid them.

There are more than 150 million sheep in Australia, a nation of 21 million people.

New Zealand is home to 4 million people and 70 million sheep.

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