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Interesting - yes, well to me anyway but then I am a factoid geek. Useless - maybe. Honestly I think all knowledge is in someway useful. Here are twenty random facts for your interest:

1. There are about 6000 languages in the world, 96% of which are spoken by only 4% of the worlds population

2. If a pair of human lungs were opened out completely flat they would cover a tennis court.

3. The fastest boxing knock out in the world was in 1946. Ralph Walton was knocked out by Al Couture in ten and a half seconds including the ten second count.

4. It takes 2,200,000 years for light from the Andromeda galaxy to reach Earth.

5. Most people only make use of 1% of the English language (thats about 10,000 words).

6. An antarctic iceberg once floated almost as north as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

7. If travelling at the speed of light you could orbit the Earth 7 times a second.

8. There are about 16million thunderstorms on Earth every year.

9. The first pinhole hole camera was invented by a Chinese scholar in 400BC.

10. On November 7 1918 the World War 1 armistace was signed. It was later dicovered that the document was back-to-front and for the most part unreadable. All the war leaders failed to notice.

11. In 1976 a Swiss seller of pornographic material was found guilty of supplying materials that were insufficiently pornographic.

12. In New Hampshire, U.S.A., it is against the law to dye margarine pink.

13. Slovenia is the only country in the world to have 'love' in its name. It is also the only country that has a seperate language for people in love.

14. In the Guiness World Records McFly are the youngest band to debut their album at the number one spot. They gained this record in 2004 from The Beatles.

15. If Canada's 250,000km coastline was straightened out it would circle the earth 6 times.

16. If the sun were a ball with a 6ft diameter then Pluto would be the size of a pea about 5 miles away.

17. When the sun dies it will first become a red giant. It will become so big it will consumer Mercury, Venus and Earth.

18. In Alaska you can go to jail for serving alcholoic beverages to a moose.

19. In 2005 the world's poorest countries paid $43 billion in debt repayments to the world's richest countries(thats $118 million a day). The debt is still about $2.6 trillion.

20. If you could lay out a line of $1 bills at a rate of 2 bills per second it would take you over 653 years to lay out Bill Gates worth. This line of bills would go to the moon and back 8.3 times (http://www.angelfire.com/az2/ webenglish/gates).

Learn more about this author, Helen Abbott.
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