20 Amazing Facts You Probably Didn't Know

1. Bolivia holds the highest turnover of governments. Since their independence from Spain in 1825, Bolivia has had almost 200 governments. Since 1945, Italy saw more than 50 governments and more than 20 Prime Ministers.

2. India is the world’s largest democracy with more than 700 million registered voters.

3. The candidate who ran the most times for office of the President of the United States was Norman Thomas. He ran six times from 1928 and didn’t win any. Thomas ran for presidency in 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948.

4. Great Britain was the first county to issue
postage stamps , on 1 May 1840. Hence, UK stamps are the only stamps in the world not to bear the name of the country of origin.

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

6. An annoyed camel will spit at a person.

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

8. 75% of wild birds die before they are 6 months old.

9. The pig is rated the fourth most intelligent animal but are mentioned only twice in the Bible. 

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

11. The heart of a blue whale is the size of a small car.

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

13. A blue whale weighs as much as 40 rhinos.

14. 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.

15. One million Earths could fit inside the Sun. 

16. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with another simultaneously. 

17. In the 1960s, the CIA tried to spy on the Kremlin (the official name for the office of the Russian President) by turning cats into listening devices. It involved surgically implanting batteries, microphones and antennae into cats.

18. Arabic numerals (the ones used in English) were not invented by the Arabs at all – they were actually invented by Indian mathematicians.

19. At the start of World War I, the US Airforce (then a component of the US army) had only 18 pilots and 5 – 12 airplanes.

20. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

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