10 Interesting Facts You Should Know

Over the period of time I have come across various interesting facts while reading newspapers, magazines or watching tv. I used to note them down wherever I could find some writing space- back of notebook, loose sheets of papers, as a draft in cell phone and many other weird places! Yesterday while dusting my room I came across that collection and thought of sharing some of those with you.

So let’s get started with some of the interesting facts.

(Note: I have personally verified all the below mentioned facts, and only those facts that I am completely sure to be true have been written here. I assure you of the authenticity of these facts. You can find millions of sites on internet having thousands of such facts and trivia but you can never be sure which of those are actually true. As I mentioned in the post “Reverse ATM PIN-Hoax or Truth”, Internet is a place where it is very easy to spread false information. At KnowledgeHub our aim is to present the correct and authentic facts to our readers.)

1) US flag is popularly known as “Stars and Stripes” .There are 50 stars in it. Do these stars represent the states of USA (which are also 50 in number)? Maybe one of our US readers can throw some light on this.
UPDATE: Bettyl & Karan have confirmed through their comments that the stars represent 50 states of the US. Thanks for the information Bettyl & Karan.

2) Asia’s oldest stock exchange is Bombay Stock Exchange which was set up in 1875.

3) Reserve Bank of India acted as banker for about 7 years for Burma, from 1937 to 1942 and 1945 to 1947.

4) “TataNagars” were extensively used by the British in North Africa during the Second World War. These “TataNagars” were nothing but armored cars, so called as they were built by TISCO in Tata Nagar (India).

5) Though discovered by Columbus in 1492, America is not named after him, but after another explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus discovered America in 1492, but he thought that it was India. In 1501 an Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci reached the same place and realized that it was not India but some unknown place. And thus America got its name after him.

6) All the planet in our solar system rotates anticlockwise, except Venus which rotates clockwise.
Update: Someone commented below that Uranus also rotates clockwise. For those who have this doubt please refer to http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/solarspin.htm. Uranus is tilted on its side about 90° so its direction of rotation is ambiguous. Its angle of inclination is usually given as 98° which would mean that its direction of rotation is not clockwise. If its direction of rotation is presumed clockwise then its angle of inclination would be 82°.

7) The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s chewing gum.

8) The names of all the continents end with the same letter with which they start (considering six continents- Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Antarctica, Australia. There are different naming conventions used for continents, based on which there are five, six or seven continents).

9) Polar bears with white, fluffy fur actually have black skin.

10) Earth is the only planet not named after a pagan God.

Stay tuned for more interesting facts in the coming weeks.

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