Mind Blowing Facts for General Knowledge

1. Turtles have no teeth.
2. Prehistoric turtles may have weighed as much as 5,000 pounds.
3. Only one out of a thousand baby sea turtles survives after hatching.
4. Sea turtles absorb a lot of salt from the sea water in which they live. They excrete excess salt from their eyes, so it often looks as though they’re crying.
5. Helium is a colorless, odorless, tasteless inert gas at room temperature and makes up about 0.0005% of the air we breathe.
6. Helium Balloon Gas makes balloons float. Helium is lighter than air and just as the heaviest things will tend to fall to the bottom, the lightest things will rise to the top.
7. Helium Balloon Gas makes balloons float. Helium is lighter than air and just as the heaviest things will tend to fall to the bottom, the lightest things will rise to the top.
8. Camels can spit.
9. An ostrich can run 43 miles per hour (70 kilometers per hour).
10. Pigs are the fourth most intelligent animal in the world.
11. Dinosaurs didn’t eat grass? There was no grass in the days of the dinosaurs.
12. Dolphins can swim 37 miles per hour (60 kilometers per hour).
13. A crocodile’s tongue is attached to the roof of its mouth? It cannot move. It cannot chew but its Digestive juices are so strong that it can digest a steel nail, Glass pieces, etc.
14. Sharks are immune to disease i.e. they do not suffer from any Disease.
15. Animals are either right- or left-handed? Polar bears are always left-handed, and so is Kermit the Frog.
16. Paris, France has more dogs than people.
17. New Zealand is home to 70 million sheep and only 40 million people.
18. Male polar bears weigh 1400 pounds and females only weight 550 pounds, on average.
19. Bison are excellent swimmers? Their head, hump and tail never go below the surface of the water.
20. There are 6 to 14 frog?s species in the world that have no tongues. One of these is the African dwarf frog.
21. A frog named Santjie, who was in a frog derby in South Africa jumped 33 feet 5.5 inches.
22. The longest life span of a frog was 40 years
23. The eyes of a frog flatten down when it swallows its prey
24. The name `India’ is derived from the River Indus
25. The Persian invaders converted it into Hindu. The name `Hindustan’ combines Sindhu and Hindu and thus refers to the land of the Hindus.
26. Chess was invented in India.
27. The’ place value system’ and the ‘decimal system’ were developed in 100 BC in India.
28. The game of snakes & ladders was created by the 13th century poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called ‘Mokshapat.’ The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices.
29. India has the most post offices in the world
30. ‘Navigation’ is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH
31. The word navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Nou’.
32. Until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world
33. The’ place value system’ and the ‘decimal system’ were developed in 100 BC in India.
34. A snail can sleep for 3 years.
35. The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start
36. Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold since there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.
37. Electricity doesn’t move through a wire but through a field around the wire.
38. The first bicycle that was made in 1817 by Baron von Drais didn’t have any pedals? People walked it along
39. The first steam powered train was invented by Robert Stephenson. It was called the Rocket.
40. A cheetah does not roar like a lion – it purrs like a cat (meow).
41. The original name for the butterfly was ‘flutterby’
42. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
43. Ants don’t sleep.
44. Dolphins usually live up to about twenty years, but have been known to live for about forty.
45. Dolphins sleep in a semi-alert state by resting one side of their brain at a time
46. A dolphin can hold its breath for 5 to 8 minutes at a time
47. Bats can detect warmth of an animal from about 16 cm away using its “nose-leaf”.
48. Bats can also find food up to 18 ft. away and get information about the type of insect using their sense of echolocation.
49. The eyes of the chameleon can move independently & can see in two different directions at the same time.
50. Cockroach: Can detect movement as small as 2,000 times the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
51. Dragonfly: Eye contains 30,000 lenses.
52. Pig’s Tongue contains 15,000 taste buds. For comparison, the human tongue has 9,000 taste buds.
53. The number system was invented by India. Aryabhatta was the scientist who invented the digit zero.
54. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
55. Earth weighs 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons
56. Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.
57. A duck’s quack doesn’t echo anywhere
58. Man is the only animal who’ll eat with an enemy
59. The average woman uses about her height in lipstick every five years.
60. The first Christmas was celebrated on December 25, AD 336 in Rome.
61. A Cockroach will live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.
62. A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can’t
63. A rat can last longer without water than a camel can
64. About 10% of the world’s population is left-handed
65. Dolphins sleep with one eye open
66. Snakes have no external ears. Therefore, they do not hear the music of a “snake charmer”. Instead, they are probably responding to the movements of the snake charmer and the flute. However, sound waves may travel through bones in their heads to the middle ear.
67. Many spiders have eight eyes.
68. The tongue of snakes has no taste buds. Instead, the tongue is used to bring smells and tastes into the mouth. Smells and tastes are then detected in two pits, called “Jacobson’s organs”, on the roof of their mouths. Receptors in the pits then transmit smell and taste information to the brain.
69. Birds don’t sweat
70. The highest kangaroo leap recorded is 10 ft and the longest is 42 ft
71. Flamingo tongues were eaten common at Roman feasts
72. The smallest bird in the world is the Hummingbird. It weighs 1oz
73. The bird that can fly the fastest is called a White it can fly up to 95 miles per hour.
74. The oldest living thing on earth is 12,000 years old. It is the flowering shrubs called creosote bushes in the Mojave Desert
75. Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water.
76. A person can live without food for about a month, but only about a week without water. If the amount of water in your body is reduced by just 1%, one will feel thirsty. If it’s reduced by 10%, one will die.
77. Along with its length neck, the giraffe has a very long tongue — more than a foot and a half long. A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue
78. Ostriches can kick with tremendous force, but only forward. Don’t Mess with them
79. An elephant can smell water three miles away
80. If you were to remove your skin, it would weigh as much as 5 pounds
81. A hippopotamus can run faster than a man
82. India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history
83. The world’s known tallest man is Robert Pershing Wadlow. The giraffe is 5.49m (18 ft.), the man is 2.55m (8ft. 11.1 in.).
84. The world’s tallest woman is Sandy Allen. She is 2.35m (7 ft. 7 in.).
85. The only 2 animals that can see behind themselves without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.
86. The blue whale is the largest animal on earth. The heart of a blue whale is as big as a car, and its tongue is as long as an elephant.
87. The largest bird egg in the world today is that of the ostrich. Ostrich eggs are from 6 to 8 inches long. Because of their size and the thickness of their shells, they take 40 minutes to hard-boil. The average adult male ostrich, the world’s largest living bird, weighs up to 345 pounds.
88. Every dolphin has its own signature whistle to distinguish it from other dolphins, much like a human fingerprint
89. The world’s largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons i.e. 50000 Kg at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons i.e. 150000 Kg.
90. 90 % of all the ice in the world in on Antarctica
91. Antarctica is DRIEST continent. Antarctica is a desert
92. Antarctica is COLDEST continent, averaging minus 76 degrees in the winter
93. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and it doesn’t have a moon. Its atmosphere is so thin that during the day the temperature reaches 750 degrees, but at night it gets down to -300 degrees.
94. Jupiter is the largest planet. If Jupiter were hollow, you could fit 1000 earths inside! It is made up of gas and is not solid. The most famous feature on Jupiter is its Red Spot, which is actually an enormous hurricane that has been raging on Jupiter for hundreds of years! Sixteen moons orbit Jupiter.
95. Saturn is a very windy place! Winds can reach up to 1,100 miles per hour. Saturn is also made of gas. If you could find an ocean large enough, it would float. This planet is famous for its beautiful rings, and has at least 18 moons.
96. Uranus is the third largest planet, and is also made of gas. It’s tilted on its side and spins north-south rather than east-west. Uranus has 15 moons.
97. Neptune takes 165 Earth years to get around the sun. It appears blue because it is made of methane gas. Neptune also has a big Spot like Jupiter. Winds on Neptune get up to 1,200 mile per hour! Neptune has 8 moons.
98. Pluto is the farthest planet from the sun… usually. It has such an unusual orbit that it is occasionally closer to the sun than Neptune. Pluto is made of rock and ice.
99. Just about everyone listens to the radio! 99% of homes in the United States have a least one radio. Most families have several radios.
100. Sound is sent from the radio station through the air to your radio by means of electromagnetic waves. News, music, Bible teaching, baseball games, plays, advertisements- these sounds are all converted into electromagnetic waves (radio waves) before they reach your radio and your ears.
101. At the radio station, the announcer speaks into a microphone. The microphone changes the sound of his voice into an electrical signal. This signal is weak and can’t travel very far, so it’s sent to a transmitter. The transmitter mixes the signal with some strong radio signals called carrier waves. These waves are then sent out through a special antenna at the speed of light! They reach the antenna of your radio. Your antenna “catches” the signal, and the radio’s amplifier strengthens the signal and sends it to the speakers. The speakers vibrate, and your ears pick up the vibrations and your brain translates them into the voice of the radio announcer back at the station. When you consider all the places the announcer’s voice travels.
102. Every radio station has its own frequency. When you turn the tuning knob on your radio, you are choosing which frequency you want your antenna to “catch.”
103. Mountain lions are known by more than 100 names, including panther, catamount, cougar, painter and puma. Its scientific name is Felis concolor, which means “cat of one color.” At one time, mountain lions were very common!
104. The large cats of the world are divided into two groups- those that roar, like tigers and African lions, and those that purr. Mountain lions purr, hiss, scream, and snarl, but they cannot roar. They can jump a distance of 30 feet, and jump as high as 15 feet. It would take quite a fence to keep a mountain lion out! Their favorite food is deer, but they’ll eat other critters as well. They hunt alone, not in packs like wolves. They sneak up on their prey just like a house cat sneaks up on a bird or toy- one slow step at a time. A lion can eat ten pounds of meat at one time!
105. Queen ants can live to be 30 years old
106. Dragonflies can flap their wings 28 times per second and they can fly up to 60 miles per hour
107. As fast as dragonflies can flap their wings, bees are even faster… they can flap their wings 435 times per second
108. Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.
109. You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath
110. Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day
111. Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people
112. The elephant is the only mammal that can’t jump!
113. Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails!
114. Women blink nearly twice as much as men
115. Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible
116. Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it.
117. More people are allergic to cow’s milk than any other food.
118. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand
119. Earth is the only planet not named after a god.
120. It?s against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA.
121. Some worms will eat themselves if they can’t find any food!
122. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open
123. Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not
124. Slugs have 4 noses.
125. Owls are the only birds that can see the blue colour.
126. Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end
127. More than 1,000 different languages are spoken on the continent of Africa.
128. There was once an undersea post office in the Bahamas.
129. Abraham Lincoln’s mother died when she drank the milk of a cow that grazed on poisonous snakeroot
130. After the death of Albert Einstein his brain was removed by a pathologist and put in a jar for future study.
131. Penguins are not found in the North Pole
132. A dentist invented the Electric Chair.
133. A whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound
134. Alexander Graham Bell’s wife and mother were both deaf
135. Cockroaches break wind every 15 minutes.
136. Fish scales are an ingredient in most lipsticks
137. Canada” is an Indian word meaning “Big Village”.
138. 259200 people die every day.
139. 11% of the world is left-handed
140. 1.7 liters of saliva is produced each day
141. The world?s oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old!
142. The largest beetle in the Americas is the Hercules beetle, which can be 4 to 6 inches in length. That’s bigger than your hand!
143. A full-grown male mountain lion may be 9 feet long, including his tail!
144. There are two kinds of radio stations: AM and FM. That’s why there are two dials on your radio. AM is used mostly for stations that specialize in talking, such as Christian stations at have Bible stories and sermons; sports stations that broadcast live baseball and football games; and stations that specialize in news programs and “talk shows,” where listeners call the station and discuss various topics. FM is used mostly for stations that specialize in music.
145. The average lead pencil can draw a line that is almost 35 miles long or you can write almost 50,000 words in English with just one pencil
146. The Wright Brothers invented one of the first airplanes. It was called the Kitty Hawk.
147. The worst industrial disaster in India occurred in 1984 in Bhopal the capital of Madhya Pradesh. A deadly chemical, methyl isocyanate leaked out of the Union Carbide factory killing more than 2500 and leaving thousands sick. In fact the effects of this gas tragedy are being felt even today.
148. Mars is nicknamed the “Red Planet,” because it looks reddish in the night sky. Mars has 2 moons.
149. Venus is nicknamed the “Jewel of the Sky.” Because of the greenhouse effect, it is hotter than Mercury, even though it’s not as close to the sun. Venus does not have a moon but it does have clouds of sulfuric acid! If you’re going to visit Venus, pack your gas mask!
150. Tens of thousands of participants come from all over the world, fight in a harmless battle where more than one hundred metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are thrown in the streets.

Amazing 57 Facts

1. People who ride on roller coasters have a higher chance of having a blood clot in the brain.
2. Black bears are not always black they can be brown, cinnamon, yellow and sometimes white.
3. People with blue eyes see better in dark.
4. Each year 30,000 people are seriously injured by exercise equipment.
5. The placement of a donkey?s eyes in its head enables it to see all four feet.
6. The sun is 330330 times larger than the earth.
7. The cow gives nearly 200000 glass of milk in her lifetime.
8. There are more female than male millionaires in the U.S.A.
9. A male baboon can kill a leopard.
10. When a person dies, hearing is usually the first sense to go.
11. Bill gates house was designed using Macintosh computer.
12. Nearly 22,000 cheques will be deducted from the wrong account over the next hour.
13. Almost all varieties of breakfast cereals are made from grass.
14. Some lions mates over 50 times a day.
15. American did not commonly use forks until after the civil war.
16. The most productive day of the week is Tuesday.
17. In the 1930?s America track star Jesse Owens used to race against horses and dogs to earn a living.
18. There is a great mushroom in Oregon that is 2,400 years old. It Covers 3.4 square miles of land and is still growing.
19. Jimmy Carter is the first USA president to have born in hospital.
20. Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.
21. Cleopatra married two of her brothers.
22. Human birth control pill works on gorillas.
23. The right lung takes in more air than the left.
24. It is illegal to own a red car in shanghai china.
25. A hard-boiled egg will spin. An uncooked or soft-boiled egg will not.
26. Astronauts cannot burp in space.
27. The snowiest city in the USA is Blue Canyon, California.
28. Lake Nicaragua in Nicaragua is the only fresh water lake in the world that has sharks.
29. Kite flying is a professional sport in Thailand.
30. The great warrior Genghis khan died in bed while having sex.
31. No matter how cold it gets gasoline will not freeze.
32. SNAILS have 14175 teeth laid along 135 rows on their tongue.
33. A BUTTERFLY has 12,000 eyes.
34. Dolphins sleep with 1 eye open.
35. A BLUE WHALE can eat as much as 3 tones of food everyday, but at the same time can live without food for 6 months.
36. The EARTH has over 12,00,000 species of animals, 3,00,000 species of plants & 1,00,000 other species.
37. The fierce DINOSAUR was TYRANNOSAURS which has sixty long & sharp teeth, used to attack & eat other dinosaurs.
38. DEMETRIO was a mammal like REPTILE with a snail on its back. This acted as a radiator to cool the body of the animal.
39. CASSOWARY is one of the dangerous BIRDS that can kill a man or animal by tearing off with its dagger like claw.
40. The SWAN has over 25,000 feathers in its body.
41. OSTRICH eats pebbles to help digestion by grinding up the ingested food.
42. POLAR BEAR can look clumsy & slow but during chase on ice, can reach 25 miles / hr of speed.
43. KIWIS are the only birds, which hunt by sense of smell.
44. ELEPHANT teeth can weigh as much as 9 pounds.
45. OWL is the only bird, which can rotate its head to 270 degrees.
46. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.
47. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.
48. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
49. Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.
50. Tapeworms range in size from about 0.04 inch to more than 50 feet in length.
51. German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.
52. A female mackerel lays about 500,000 eggs at one time.
53. Crane sleeps standing on one leg.
54. Shark cannot see, they are very sensitive to sound.
55. Sneezing stops heart beat for a second and then continues.
56. Shape of the backbone is important to have sufficient breathing.
57. Tortoise has very sharp teeth it can rip open the stomach of whale with its teeth.

Do you know the answers to these tricky questions?

1. There is one word in the English language that is always pronounced incorrectly. What is it?
2. A man gave one son 10 cents and another son was given 15 cents. What time is it?
3. A boat has a ladder that has six rungs; each rung is one foot apart. The bottom rung is one foot from the water. The tide rises at 12 inches every 15 minutes. High tide peaks in one hour. When the tide is at its highest, how many rungs are under water?
4. There is a house with four walls. Each wall faces south. There is a window in each wall. A bear walks by one of the windows. What color is the bear?
5. Is half of two plus two equal to two or three?
6. There is a room. The shutters are blowing in. There is broken glass on the floor. There is water on the floor. You find Sloppy dead on the floor. Who is Sloppy? How did Sloppy die?
7. How much dirt would be in a hole 6 feet deep and 6 feet wide that has been dug with a square edged shovel?
8. If I were in Hawaii and dropped a bowling ball in a bucket of water which is 45 degrees F, and dropped another ball of the same weight, mass, and size in a bucket at 30 degrees F, both of them at the same time, which ball would hit the bottom of the bucket first? Same question, but the location is in Canada?
9. What is the significance of the following: The year is 1978, thirty-four minutes past noon on May 6th.
10. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field, how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in the center field?
11. What is it that goes up and goes down but does not move?

Scroll down for answers

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* Answers to Tricky Questions

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1. The word “incorrectly” itself.
2. 1:45, the man gave away a total of 25 cents. He divided it between two people. Therefore, he gave a quarter to two.
3. None, the boat rises with the tide.
4. White. If all the walls face south, the house is at the North Pole, and the bear, therefore, is a polar bear.
5. Three. Well, it seems that it could almost be either, but if you follow the mathematical orders of operation, division is performed before addition. So, half of two is one. Then add two, and the answer is three.
6. Sloppy is a gold fish. The wind blew the shutters in, which knocked his goldfish-bowl off the table, and it broke, killing him.
7. None. No matter how big a hole is, it’s still a hole: the absence of dirt.
8. Both questions, same answer: the ball in the bucket of 45 degree F water hits the bottom of the bucket last. Did you think that the water in the 30 degree F bucket is frozen? Think again. The question said nothing about that bucket having anything in it. Therefore, there is no water or ice to slow the ball down.
9. The time and month/date/year American style calendar are 12:34, 5/6/78.
10. One. If he combines all of his haystacks, they all become one big stack.
11. The temperature.

61 Amazing True Facts

1. In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi.
2. The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing a shift in the Earth’s magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.
3. The idea for “tribbles” in “Star Trek” came from gerbils, since some gerbils are actually born pregnant.
4. Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises.
5. Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch.
6. Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling.
7. The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren’t for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.
8. The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man was owned by Frank Sinatra.
9. The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there’s no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.
10. Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say “gesundheit” to a sneezer was never repealed.
11. Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don’t do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.
12. SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below.
13. Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers.
14. Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender’s system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.
15. Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.
16. The first McDonald’s restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.
17. The Air Force’s F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered during research into how bumblebees fly.
18. You can get blood from a stone, but only if contains at least 17 percent bauxite.
19. Silly Putty was “discovered” as the residue left behind after the first latex condoms were produced. It’s not widely publicized for obvious reasons.
20. Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.
21. The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver.
22. The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.
23. A cat’s purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the voice of singer Barry White.
24. The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his “signature” on the keyboard.
25. The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a 24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave 17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway.
26. King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe.
27. Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.
28. In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box and consequently died of starvation.
29. Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system.
30. Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.
31. Calvin, of the “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.
32. Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game.
33. Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real camels.
34. You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.
35. To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine.
36. Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a tooth during a game. For Canadians who don’t play hockey, that figure drops to five out of ten.
37. A dog’s naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when pressed against carpet.
38. A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study promoting the practice of picking one’s nose, claiming that the health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations.
39. Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden’s headquarters in Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader.
40. Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel.
41. At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper and leather.
42. Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas.
43. If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go blind and leave behind its weight in honey.
44. Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain, staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the intensity of orgasms.
45. Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.
46. Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an expensive purchase was said to cost “an arm and a leg.”
47. When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine.
48. Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during summer months.
49. Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to be almost identical to the recipe used today.
50. If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian.
51. When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby.
52. In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models’ turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.
53. Although difficult, it’s possible to start a fire by rapidly rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos.
54. Napoleon’s favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut.
55. The world’s smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.
56. Due to the natural “momentum” of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards.
57. In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.
58. It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville to Amarillo.
59. The “nine lives” attributed to cats is probably due to their having nine primary whiskers.
60. The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun.
61. The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.

Interesting Facts about Earth & World

1. Louisiana loses about 30 square miles (78 square kilometers) of land each year to coastal erosion, hurricanes, other natural and human causes and a thing called subsidence, which means sinking.

2. Each Wonder (in 7 wonders) has its own intrigue. Historian agree that the Pyramids stood the test of time, the Lighthouse is the only Wonder that has a practical secular use, and the Temple of Artemis was the most beautiful of all Wonders.

3. About 400 billion gallons water is used worldwide each day.

4. The industrial complex of Cubatao in Brazil is known as the Valley of Death because its pollution has destroyed the trees and rivers nearby.

5. From a distance, Earth would be the brightest of the 9 planets. This is because sunlight is reflected by the planet’s water.

6. The deepest depth in the ocean is 36,198 feet (6.9 miles or 11 kilometers) at the Mariana Trench, in the Pacific Ocean well south of Japan near the Mariana Islands.

7. In 1934, a gust of wind reached 371 km/h on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, USA.

8. Nearly 70 percent of the Earth’s fresh-water supply is locked up in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland. The remaining fresh-water supply exists in the atmosphere, streams, lakes, or groundwater and accounts for a mere 1 percent of the Earth’s total.

9. Earth travels through space at 66,700 miles per hour.

10. The total surface area of the Earth is 197 million square miles.

11. The gravity on Mars is 38% of that found on Earth. So a 100 pounds person on Earth would weigh 38 pounds on Mars.

12. The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China, more than 830,000 people were killed.

13. Angel Falls in Venezuela is the worlds highest waterfall, The water of Falls drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).

14. The Earth is the densest major body in the solar system.

15. Asia Continent is covered 30% of the total earth land area, but represent 60% of the world’s population.

16. The greatest tide change on earth occurs in the Bay of Fundy. The difference between low tide and high tide can be as great as 54 ft. 6 in. (16.6 meters).

17. Earth’s atmosphere is actually about 80 percent nitrogen. Most of the rest is oxygen, with tiny amounts of other stuff thrown in.

18. The Persian Gulf is the warmest sea. In the summer its temperature reaches 35.6 degrees centigrade.

19. Earth is tipped at 23 and 1/2 degrees in orbit. That axis is what causes our seasons.

20. Only 3% water of the earth is fresh, rest 97% salted. Of that 3%, over 2% is frozen in ice sheets and glaciers. Means less than 1% fresh water is found in lakes, rivers and underground.

21. The largest recorded snowflake was 15in wide and 8in thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.

22. The top three countries have the greatest number of historically active volcanoes are Indonesia, Japan, and the United States in descending order of activity.
The Pacific Ocean has an average depth of 2.4 miles (3.9 kilometers).

23. The people who live on Tristan da Cunha are over 2,000km (about 1,300 miles) from their nearest neighbours on the island of St. Helena. That’s nearly as far as Moscow is from London.

24. A 1960 Chilean earthquake was the strongest earthquake in recent times, which occurred off the coast, had a magnitude of 9.6 and broke a fault more than 1000 miles (1600 kilometers) long.

25. The moon is one million times drier than the Gobi Desert.

26. Each winter there are about 1 septillion (1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 or a trillion trillion) snow crystals that drop from the sky.

27. Tibet is the highest country in the world. Its average height above sea level is 4500 meters.

28. In January and February, the average temperature in the high Arctic is -29 F.

29. The hottest planet in the solar system is Venus, with an estimated surface temperature of 864 F (462 C).

30. There is no land at all at the North Pole, only ice on top of sea. The Arctic Ocean has about 12 million sq km of floating ice and has the coldest winter temperature of -34 degrees centigrade.

31. The deepest hole ever made by humans is in Kola Peninsula in Russia, was completed in 1989, creating a hole 12,262 meters (7.6 miles) deep.

32. The Arctic stays black and fiercely cold for months on end. In the High Arctic, the sun sets in October and does not rise again until late February.

33. Sunlight can penetrate clean ocean water to a depth of 240 feet.

34. A huge underground river runs underneath the Nile, with six times more water than the river above.

35. Chile (Africa) is the driest place on Earth, gets just 0.03 inches (0.76 millimeters) of rain per year.

36. At least 1,000 million grams, or roughly 1,000 tons of material (dust) enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earths surface.

37. Lake Bosumtwi in Ghana formed in a hollow made by a meteorite.

38. Antarctica is the highest, driest, and coldest continent on Earth.

39. The origin of the word “volcano” is derives from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

40. The temperature of Earth near the center, its thought to be at least 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit (3,870 Celsius).

41. The largest eggs in the world are laid by a shark.

42. About 540 volcanoes on land are known. No one knows how many undersea volcanoes have erupted through history.

43. The Antarctic ice sheet is 3-4 km thick, covers 13 million sq km and has temperatures as low as -70 degrees centigrade.

44. Only 11 percent of the earth’s surface is used to grow food.

45. The flower with the world’s largest bloom is the Rafflesia arnoldii. This rare flower is found in the rainforests of Indonesia. It can grow to be 3 feet across and weigh up to 15 pounds.

46. Australia, (7,617.930 sq km) is widely considered part of a continental landmass, not officially an island. But without doubt it is the largest island on the planet, and when combined with Oceania, the smallest continent on Earth.

47. The blue whale, Balaenoptera musculus, is the largest known animal ever to have lived on sea or land. Individuals can reach more than 110 feet and weigh nearly 200 tons, more than the weight of 50 adult elephants.

48. The coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

49. The age of the earth is Loudly proclaimed by the scientific establishment of evolution believers and the mass media as being around 4.6 billion years old.

50. Monaco is the Highest Density Country of the world, 16,205 people per square k.m. live in Monaco.

51. The lowest dry point on earth is the Dead Sea in the Middle East is about 1300 feet (400 meters) below sea level.

52. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

53. Total fertility rate of the world is 2.59 children born/woman. Niger is 7.46 (highest), India is 2.73, US is 2.09 & Hong Kong is 0.95 only (Lowest).

54. The water that falls on a single acre of land during one inch of rainfall, it would weigh 113 tons that is 226,000 pounds.

55. Life began in the seas 3.1 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. Land dwellers appeared 400 million years ago, a relatively recent point in the geologic time line.

56. The Peregrine Falcon around 200mph (320 km/h) is the fastest bird on the planet, the top speed recorded is 242.3mph (390 km/h).

57. About one-third surface of the Earth’s land is desert.

58. The world’s windiest place is Commonwealth Bay, Antartica with winds regularly exceeding 150 miles per hour.

59. The Angel Falls in Venezuela is the world’s highest waterfall (979 meters / 3212 ft.), three times the size of the Eiffel Tower.

60. Earth’s oceans are an average of 2 Miles deep

61. The temperature of Earth increases about 36 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) for every kilometer (about 0.62 miles) you go down.

62. The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is about 3,963 miles (6,378 kilometers).

63. The sunrays reached at the earth in 8 minutes & 3 seconds.

64. The warmest sea in the world is the Red Sea, where temperatures range from 68 degrees to 87.8 degrees F depending upon which part you measure.

65. Average 100 lightning strikes occur worldwide every second.

66. One-tenth of the Earth’s surface is always under the cover of ice. And almost 90 per cent of that ice is to be found in the continent of Antarctica.

67. Baikal Lake in Russian Fed. is the deepest lake (5315 ft) in the world.

68. The Skylab astronauts grew 1.5 – 2.25 inches (3.8 – 5.7 centimeters) due to spinal lengthening and straightening as a result of zero gravity.

69. The total water supply of the world is 326 million cubic miles (1 cubic mile of water equals more than 1 trillion gallons).

70. About 70% of the world’s fresh water is stored as glacial ice.

71. Lake Baikal is about 20 million years old and contains 20 percent of Earth’s fresh liquid water.

72. The Sahara Desert in northern Africa is more than 23 times the size of southern California’s Mojave Desert.

73. Laika (dog) became the world’s first space traveler. Russian scientists sent the small animal aloft in an artificial earth satellite in 1957.

74. The Sarawak Chamber in Malaysia is the largest cave in the world is 2300 feet (701 meters) long, 1300 feet (400 meters) wide, and more than 230 feet (70 meters) high.

75. The most dangerous animal in the world is the common housefly. Because of their habits of visiting animal waste, they transmit more diseases than any other animal.

76. Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only system today that can show your exact position on the Earth anytime, in any weather, no matter where you are!

77. Blue whales are found throughout the world’s oceans, the lifespan is estimated to be 80 years & population is between 1300 & 2000 only, its dangerously low.

78. El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 – the hottest ever measured.

79. The eruption of Tambora volcano is the world’s deadliest Volcano in Indonesia in 1815 is estimated to have killed 90,000 people.

80. The highest temperature produced in a laboratory was 920,000,000 F (511,000,000 C) at the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in Princeton, NJ, USA.

81. United Arab Emirates is only the country where death rate 2.11/1000 (deaths/1,000 population) is lowest (2009 est.) in the world.

82. Mars has two satellites, Phobos and Deimos. The Earth has only one natural satellite, but it’s the Moon.

83. Most earthquakes are triggered less than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the surface of the Earth.

84. The Largest Ocean of the World is the Pacific Ocean (155,557,000 sq km), It covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.

85. Shanghai, China is the largest city by population (13.3 million) in the world.

86. There are between 100,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 stars in a normal galaxy.

87. Tremendous erosion at the base of Niagara Falls (USA) undermines the shale cliffs and as a result the falls have receded approximately 7 miles over the last 10,000 years.

88. In 1783 an Icelandic eruption threw up enough dust to temporarily block out the sun over Europe.

89. Scientists estimate that more than three-quarters of Earth’s surface is of volcanic origin, that is, rocks either erupted by volcanoes or molten rock.

90. The Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf are connected by the Hormuz Strait.

91. Earth is referred to as the BLUE PLANET. Because from space, the oceans combined with our atmosphere make our planet look blue.

92. The World’s largest hot desert is the Sahara in North Africa, at over 9,000,000 km, it is almost as large as the United States.

93. English is the second most spoken language (Native speakers 512 million) & the first is Chinese Mandarin (more then 1 billion speakers).

94. The coldest seas are found near the poles such as the Greenland, Barents, Beaufort, Kara, Laptev & East Siberian Seas found near the north pole & Weddell & Ross Seas found in the south poles. The Baltic Sea is also considered one of the coldest seas.

95. Total fertility rate of the world is 2.59 children born/woman.

96. Continents are typically defined as landmasses made of low-density rock that essentially floats on the molten material below. Greenland fits this description.

97. Birth Rate of Hong Kong is the lowest (7.29/1000) & Niger is highest (50.73/1000).

98. The world’s largest island is Greenland, it covers 840,000 square miles (2,176,000 square kilometers).

99. The Antarctic Ice Sheet holds nearly 90 percent of the world’s ice and 70 percent of its fresh water. If the entire ice sheet were to melt, sea level would rise by nearly 220 feet.

100. The red planet “Mars” takes 687 Earth-days to go around the Sun, compared to 365 days for Earth.

101. The oceans contain 99 percent of the living space on the planet.

102. American Roy Sullivan has been struck by lighting a record seven times.

103. Some of the oldest mountains in the world are the Highlands in Scotland . They are estimated to be about 400 million years old.

104. About 20 to 30 volcanoes erupt each year, mostly under the sea.

105. The Nile River in Africa is the longest river (6,825 kilometers) of the earth.

106. Mount Everest 8850 meter (29035 ft) Nepal/China is the tallest mountain.

107. The dormant volcano Mauna Kea (on the Big Island of Hawaii) could be considered the tallest mountain in the world. If you measure it from its base in the Hawaiian Trough (3,300 fathoms deep) to its summit of 13,796 feet, it reaches a height of 33,476 feet.

108. Water-meal or Wolffia globosa is the smallest flower in the world, its contains some 38 species of the smallest and simplest flowering plants.

109. Northern Mariana Islands is only the country where death rate (2.29/1000) is lowest in the world.

110. The saltiest sea in the world is the Red Sea with 41 parts of salt per 1,000 parts of water.

111. Of the more than 600 million school-age children in the developing world, 120 million primary school-age children are not in school, 53 percent are girls.

112. Luxembourg is the richest country of the world, the gross national product (GNP) of Luxembourg is $45,360.

113. The Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii is the largest volcanoon on Earth. It rises more than 50,000 feet (9.5 miles or 15.2 kilometers) above its base, which sits under the surface of the sea.

114. Earth is the only planet on which water can exist in liquid form on the surface.

115. The EARTH has over 1,200,000 species of animals, 300,000 species of plants & 100,000 other species.

116. Lake Mead is the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the United States. Formed by water impounded by Hoover Dam, it extends 110 mi (180 km) behind the dam, holding approximately 28.5 million acre feet (35 km³) of water.

117. Lloro, Colombia is the wettest place on Earth, averages 523.6 inches of rainfall a year, or more than 40 feet (13 meters). That’s about 10 times more than fairly wet major cities in Europe or the United States.

118. Mars days are 24 hours and 37 minutes long, compared to 23 hours, 56 minutes on Earth.

119. Caspian Sea, Asia-Europe is the major lake (371,000 sq km) in the world.

120. Coniferous forest belt supplies most of the world’s requirement of newsprint.

121. The fastest ‘regular’ wind that’s widely agreed upon was 231 mph (372 kph), recorded at Mount Washington, New Hampshire, on April 12, 1934.

A Brief History of NASA

Launching NASA

“An Act to provide for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes.” With this simple preamble, the Congress and the President of the United States created the national Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958. NASA’s birth was directly related to the pressures of national defense. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War, a broad contest over the ideologies and allegiances of the nonaligned nations. During this period, space exploration emerged as a major area of contest and became known as the space race.

During the late 1940s, the Department of Defense pursued research and rocketry and upper atmospheric sciences as a means of assuring American leadership in technology. A major step forward came when President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) for the period, July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958, a cooperative effort to gather scientific data about the Earth. The Soviet Union quickly followed suit, announcing plans to orbit its own satellite.

The Naval Research Laboratory’s Project Vanguard was chosen on 9 September 1955 to support the IGY effort, largely because it did not interfere with high-priority ballistic missile development programs. It used the non-military Viking rocket as its basis while an Army proposal to use the Redstone ballistic missile as the launch vehicle waited in the wings. Project Vanguard enjoyed exceptional publicity throughout the second half of 1955, and all of 1956, but the technological demands upon the program were too great and the funding levels too small to ensure success.

A full-scale crisis resulted on October 4, 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite as its IGY entry. This had a “Pearl Harbor” effect on American public opinion, creating an illusion of a technological gap and provided the impetus for increased spending for aerospace endeavors, technical and scientific educational programs, and the chartering of new federal agencies to manage air and space research and development.

More immediately, the United States launched its first Earth satellite on January 31, 1958, when Explorer 1documented the existence of radiation zones encircling the Earth. Shaped by the Earth’s magnetic field, what came to be called the Van Allen Radiation Belt, these zones partially dictate the electrical charges in the atmosphere and the solar radiation that reaches Earth. The U.S. also began a series of scientific missions to the Moon and planets in the latter 1950s and early 1960s.

A direct result of the Sputnik crisis, NASA began operations on October 1, 1958, absorbing into itself the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics intact: its 8,000 employees, an annual budget of $100 million, three major research laboratories-Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory-and two smaller test facilities. It quickly incorporated other organizations into the new agency, notably the space science group of the Naval Research Laboratory in Maryland, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology for the Army, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, where Wernher von Braun’s team of engineers were engaged in the development of large rockets. Eventually NASA created other Centers and today it has ten located around the country.

NASA began to conduct space missions within months of its creation, and during its first twenty years NASA conducted several major programs:

• Human space flight initiatives-Mercury’s single astronaut program (flights during 1961-1963) to ascertain if a human could survive in space; Project Gemini (flights during 1965-1966) with two astronauts to practice space operations, especially rendezvous and docking of spacecraft and extravehicular activity (EVA); and Project Apollo (flights during 1968-1972) to explore the Moon.
• Robotic missions to the Moon Ranger, Surveyor, and Lunar Orbiter), Venus (Pioneer Venus), Mars (Mariner 4, Viking 1 and 2), and the outer planets (Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2).
• Aeronautics research to enhance air transport safety, reliability, efficiency, and speed (X-15 hypersonic flight, lifting body flight research, avionics and electronics studies, propulsion technologies, structures research, aerodynamics investigations).
• Remote-sensing Earth satellites for information gathering (Landsat satellites for environmental monitoring).
• Applications satellites for communications (Echo 1, TIROS, and Telstra) and weather monitoring.
• An orbital workshop for astronauts, Skylab.
• A reusable spacecraft for traveling to and from Earth orbit, the Space Shuttle.

Early Spaceflights: Mercury and Gemini

NASA’s first high-profile program involving human spaceflight was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive the rigors of spaceflight. On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American to fly into space, when he rode his Mercury capsule on a 15-minute suborbital mission. John H. Glenn Jr. became the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962. With six flights, Project Mercury achieved its goal of putting piloted spacecraft into Earth orbit and retrieving the astronauts safely.

Project Gemini built on Mercury’s achievements and extended NASA’s human spaceflight program to spacecraft built for two astronauts. Gemini’s 10 flights also provided NASA scientists and engineers with more data on weightlessness, perfected reentry and splashdown procedures, and demonstrated rendezvous and docking in space. One of the highlights of the program occurred during Gemini 4, on June 3, 1965, when Edward H. White, Jr., became the first U.S. astronaut to conduct a spacewalk.

Going to the Moon – Project Apollo

The singular achievement of NASA during its early years involved the human exploration of the Moon, Project Apollo. Apollo became a NASA priority on May 25 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” A direct response to Soviet successes in space, Kennedy used Apollo as a high-profile effort for the U.S. to demonstrate to the world its scientific and technological superiority over its cold war adversary.

In response to the Kennedy decision, NASA was consumed with carrying out Project Apollo and spent the next 11 years doing so. This effort required significant expenditures, costing $25.4 billion over the life of the program, to make it a reality. Only the building of the Panama Canal rivaled the size of the Apollo program as the largest nonmilitary technological endeavor ever undertaken by the United States; only the Manhattan Project was comparable in a wartime setting. Although there were major challenges and some failures – notably a January 27, 1967 fire in an Apollo capsule on the ground that took the lives of astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Edward H. White Jr. Jr. – the program moved forward inexorably.

Less than two years later, in October 1968, NASA bounced back with the successful Apollo 7 mission, which orbited the Earth and tested the redesigned Apollo command module. The Apollo 8 mission, which orbited the Moon on December 24-25, 1968, when its crew read from the book of Genesis, was another crucial accomplishment on the way to the Moon.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Neil A. Armstrong uttered these famous words on July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 mission fulfilled Kennedy’s challenge by successfully landing Armstrong and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. on the Moon. Armstrong dramatically piloted the lunar module to the lunar surface with less than 30 seconds worth of fuel remaining. After taking soil samples, photographs, and doing other tasks on the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin rendezvoused with their colleague Michael Collins in lunar orbit for a safe voyage back to Earth.

Five more successful lunar landing missions followed. The Apollo 13 mission of April 1970 attracted the public’s attention when astronauts and ground crews had to improvise to end the mission safely after an oxygen tank burst midway through the journey to the Moon. Although this mission never landed on the Moon, it reinforced the notion that NASA had a remarkable ability to adapt to the unforeseen technical difficulties inherent in human spaceflight.

With the Apollo 17 mission of December 1972, NASA completed a successful engineering and scientific program. Fittingly, Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt, a geologist who participated on this mission, was the first scientist to be selected as an astronaut. NASA learned a good deal about the origins of the Moon, as well as how to support humans in outer space. In total, 12 astronauts walked on the Moon during 6 Apollo lunar landing missions.

In 1975, NASA cooperated with the Soviet Union to achieve the first international human spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). This project successfully tested joint rendezvous and docking procedures for spacecraft from the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. After being launched separately from their respective countries, the Apollo and Soyuz crews met in space and conducted various experiments for two days.

Space Shuttle

After a gap of six years, NASA returned to human spaceflight in 1981, with the advent of the Space Shuttle. The Shuttle’s first mission, STS-1, took off on April 12, 1981, demonstrating that it could take off vertically and glide to an unpowered airplane-like landing. On STS-6, during April 4-9, 1983, F. Story Musgrave and Donald H. Peterson conducted the first Shuttle EVA, to test new spacesuits and work in the Shuttle’s cargo bay. Sally K. Ride became the first American woman to fly in space when STS-7 lifted off on June 18, 1983, another early milestone of the Shuttle program.

On January 28, 1986 a leak in the joints of one of two Solid Rocket Boosters attached to the Challenger orbiter caused the main liquid fuel tank to explode 73 seconds after launch, killing all 7 crew members. The Shuttle program was grounded for over two years, while NASA and its contractors worked to redesign the Solid Rocket Boosters and implement management reforms to increase safety. On September 29, 1988, the Shuttle successfully returned to flight and NASA then flew a total of 87 successful missions.

Tragedy struck again on February 1, 2003, however. As the Columbia orbiter was returning to Earth on the STS-107 mission, it disintegrated about 15 minutes before it was to have landed. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board was quickly formed and determined that a small piece of foam had come off the External Tank and had struck the Reinforced Carbon Carbon panels on the underside of the left wing during launch on January 16. When the orbiter was returning to Earth, the breach in the RCC panels allowed hot gas to penetrate the orbiter, leading to a catastrophic failure and the loss of seven crewmembers.

NASA is poised to return to flight again in summer 2005 with the STS-114 mission. There are three Shuttle orbiters in NASA’s fleet: Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour.

Toward a Permanent Human Presence in Space

The core mission of any future space exploration will be humanity’s departure from Earth orbit and journeying to the Moon or Mars, this time for extended and perhaps permanent stays. A dream for centuries, active efforts to develop both the technology and the scientific knowledge necessary to carry this off are now well underway.

An initial effort in this area was NASA’s Skylab program in 1973. After Apollo, NASA used its huge Saturn rockets to launch a relatively small orbital space workshop. There were three human Skylab missions, with the crews staying aboard the orbital workshop for 28, 59, and then 84 days. The first crew manually fixed a broken meteoroid shield, demonstrating that humans could successfully work in space. The Skylab program also served as a successful experiment in long-duration human spaceflight.

In 1984, Congress authorized NASA to build a major new space station as a base for further exploration of space. By 1986, the design depicted a complex, large, and multipurpose facility. In 1991, after much debate over the station’s purpose and budget, NASA released plans for a restructured facility called Space Station Freedom. Another redesign took place after the Clinton administration took office in 1993 and the facility became known as Space Station Alpha.

Then Russia, which had many years of experience in long-duration human spaceflight, such as with its Salyut and Mirspace stations, joined with the U.S. and other international partners in 1993 to build a joint facility that became known formally as the International Space Station (ISS). To prepare for building the ISS starting in late 1998, NASA participated in a series of Shuttle missions to Mir and seven American astronauts lived aboard Mir for extended stays. Permanent habitation of the ISS began with the launch of the Expedition One crew on October 31 and the docking on November 2, 2000.

On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush visited NASA Headquarters and announced a new Vision for Space Exploration. This Vision entails sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars by eventually retiring the Shuttle and developing a new, multipurpose Crew Exploration Vehicle. Robotic scientific exploration and technology development is also folded into this encompassing Vision.

The Science of Space

In addition to major human spaceflight programs, there have been significant scientific probes that have explored the Moon, the planets, and other areas of our solar system. In particular, the 1970s heralded the advent of a new generation of scientific spacecraft. Two similar spacecraft, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, launched on March 2, 1972 and April 5, 1973, respectively, traveled to Jupiter and Saturn to study the composition of interplanetary space. Voyagers 1 and 2, launched on September 5, 1977 and August 20, 1977, respectively, conducted a “Grand Tour” of our solar system.

In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit around the Earth. Unfortunately, NASA scientists soon discovered that a microscopic spherical aberration in the polishing of the Hubble’s mirror significantly limited the instrument’s observing power. During a previously scheduled servicing mission in December, 1993, a team of astronauts performed a dramatic series of spacewalks to install a corrective optics package and other hardware. The hardware functioned like a contact lens and the elegant solution worked perfectly to restore Hubble’s capabilities. The servicing mission again demonstrated the unique ability of humans to work in space, enabled Hubble to make a number of important astronomical discoveries, and greatly restored public confidence in NASA.

Several months before this first HST servicing mission, however, NASA suffered another major disappointment when the Mars Observer spacecraft disappeared on August 21, 1993, just three days before it was to go into orbit around the red planet. In response, NASA began developing a series of “better, faster, cheaper” spacecraft to go to Mars.

Mars Global Surveyor was the first of these spacecraft; it was launched on November 7, 1996, and has been in a Martian orbit mapping Mars since 1998. Using some innovative technologies, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft landed on Mars on July 4, 1997 and explored the surface of the planet with its miniature rover, Sojourner. The Mars Pathfinder mission was a scientific and popular success, with the world following along via the Internet. This success was followed by the landing of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in January 2004, to much scientific and popular acclaim.

Over the years, NASA has continued to look for life beyond our planet. In 1975, NASA launched the two Viking spacecraft to look for basic signs of life on Mars; the spacecraft arrived on Mars in 1976 but did not find any indications of past or present biological activity there. In 1996 a probe from the Galileo spacecraft that was examining Jupiter and its moon, Europa, revealed that Europa may contain ice or even liquid water, thought to be a key component in any life-sustaining environment. NASA also has used radio astronomy to scan the heavens for potential signals from extraterrestrial intelligent life. It continues to investigate whether any Martian meteorites contain microbiological organisms and in the late 1990s, organized an “Origins” program to search for life using powerful new telescopes and biological techniques. More recently scientists have found more and more evidence that water used to be present on Mars.

The “First A in NASA:” Aeronautics Research

Building on its roots in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NASA has continued to conduct many types of cutting-edge aeronautics research on aerodynamics, wind shear, and other important topics using wind tunnels, flight testing, and computer simulations. In the 1960s, NASA’s highly successful X-15 program involved a rocket-powered airplane that flew above the atmosphere and then glided back to Earth unpowered. The X-15 pilots helped researchers gain much useful information about supersonic aeronautics and the program also provided data for development of the Space Shuttle. NASA also cooperated with the Air Force in the 1960s on the X-20 Dyna-Soar program, which was designed to fly into orbit. The Dyna-Soar was a precursor to later similar efforts such as the National Aerospace Plane, on which NASA and other Government agencies and private companies did advanced hypersonics research in such areas as structures, materials, propulsion, and aerodynamics.

NASA has also done significant research on flight maneuverability on high speed aircraft that is often applicable to lower speed airplanes. NASA scientist Richard Whitcomb invented the “supercritical wing” that was specially shaped to delay and lessen the impact of shock waves on transonic military aircraft and had a significant impact on civil aircraft design. Beginning in 1972, the watershed F-8 digital-fly-by-wire (DFBW) program laid the groundwork for electronic DFBW flight in various later aircraft such as the F/A-18, the Boeing 777, and the Space Shuttle. More sophisticated DFBW systems were used on the X-29 and X-31 aircraft, which would have been uncontrollable otherwise. From 1963 to 1975, NASA conducted a research program on “lifting bodies,” aircraft without wings. This valuable research paved the way for the Shuttle to glide to a safe unpowered landing, as well as for the later X-33 project, and for a prototype for a future crew return vehicle from the International Space Station.

In 2004, the X-43A airplane used innovative scramjet technology to fly at ten times the speed of sound, setting a world’s record for air-breathing aircraft.

Applications Satellites

NASA did pioneering work in space applications such as communications satellites in the 1960s. The Echo, Telstar, Relay, and Syncom satellites were built by NASA or by the private sector based on significant NASA advances.

In the 1970s, NASA’s Landsat program literally changed the way we look at our planet Earth. The first three Landsat satellites, launched in 1972, 1975, and 1978, transmitted back to Earth complex data streams that could be converted into colored pictures. Landsat data has been used in a variety of practical commercial applications such as crop management and fault line detection, and to track many kinds of weather such as droughts, forest fires, and ice floes. NASA has been involved in a variety of other Earth science efforts such as the Earth Observation System of spacecraft and data processing that have yielded important scientific results in such areas as tropical deforestation, global warming, and climate change.

Conclusion

Since its inception in 1958, NASA has accomplished many great scientific and technological feats. NASA technology has been adapted for many non-aerospace uses by the private sector. NASA remains a leading force in scientific research and in stimulating public interest in aerospace exploration, as well as science and technology in general. Perhaps more importantly, our exploration of space has taught us to view the Earth, ourselves, and the universe in a new way. While the tremendous technical and scientific accomplishments of NASA demonstrate vividly that humans can achieve previously inconceivable feats, we also are humbled by the realization that Earth is just a tiny “blue marble” in the cosmos.

For further reading:

Roger E. Bilstein, Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space: An Illustrated History of NACA and NASA.(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins New Series in NASA History, 2003).

For a list of the titles in the NASA History Series, many of which are on-line, please seehttp://history.nasa.gov/series95.html on the Web.

1. Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr. descends from the Apollo 11 Lunar Module to become the second human to walk on the Moon. Neil A. Armstrong, who took this photograph, was the commander of the mission and the first to walk on the lunar surface.

2. This rare view of two Space Shuttle orbiters simultaneously on launch pads at the Kennedy Space center was taken on September 5, 1990. The Orbiter Columbia is shown in the foreground on pad 39A, where it was being prepared for a launch (STS-35) the next morning. This launch ended up being delayed until December 1990. In the background, the orbiter Discovery sits on pad 39B in preparation for an October liftoff on STS-41.

3. The Sojourner rover and undeployed ramps aboard the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft are shown shortly after landing on the Martian surface on July 4, 1997. Partially deflated airbags are also clearly visible.

4. The rocket-powered X-15 aircraft set a number of altitude and speed records. Its flights during the 1960s also provided engineers and scientists with much useful data for the Space Shuttle program.

5. This dramatic view of Earth was taken by the crew of Apollo 17. The Apollo program put into perspective for many people just how small and fragile our planet is. Over its forty-year existence, NASA has been involved in many meteorological and Earth science missions that help us better understand our Earth.