The official language of Ireland is not the most spoken in the country. Instead, its inhabitants are more comfortable speaking in Polish rather than Irish. English is also more dominant since the beginning of the 19th century.
100 Mind-Blowing Beginning Facts
The number 57 on the bottle of Heinz ketchup has a meaning. This number represents the number of products the company has. However, in the beginning, it was said that Henry Heinz simply used the number because he believed it was lucky.
As of the beginning of 2004, the U.S. population increased by 1 every 12 seconds. A birth takes place in the U.S. every 8 seconds and an immigrant is added every 25 seconds. Death also occurs every 13 seconds.
Since the beginning of newscasting, there has only been one day with no news. April 18, 1930, was such an uneventful day, that the BBC’s radio announcer said, “There is no news,” by 6:30 PM.
Humans have farted 17 quadrillion times since the beginning of time. If you want a picture of how far the human race has come, you can measure it in farts. The average person farts 14 times a day. The next time you’re questioning your contributions to society hold on to these kinds of WTF facts.
Women were allowed to compete in the Olympics beginning in 1900.
Christopher Lee released three metal albums. Sir Christopher Lee was a fan of metal from its very beginning and was particularly fond of Black Sabbath. That being said, it wasn’t until 2010, when he was well into his eighties, that he recorded his first album: Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross. Lee’s second and third albums were released in 2013 and 2014, but he also dabbled in several metal-inspired Christmas carol parodies.
One of Fleetwood Mac’s founding guitarists disappeared just before a show and was found days later as a newly initiated cult member. Jeremy Spencer was with Fleetwood Mac from the very beginning, but during a tour to the US in the 70’s he became quite disillusioned with his career and life in general. He met members of Children of God, a religious cult in California, and decided to join them instead of continuing on the road to stardom. Jeremy Spencer is still affiliated with the cult, now known as Family International.
A Petabyte is a lot of data. We all know 1 GB is the same as 1024 MB, but did you know that 1 petabyte (PB) is equivalent to 1024 terabytes (TB)? To give an example of how big this is, a 1 PB hard drive could hold 13.3 years of HD-TV video. A 50 PB hard drive could hold the entire written works of mankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages.
The Maya had multiple calendars to measure time. The most familiar is the Long Count Calendar. These calendars measured around 5125 years, beginning around August 3114 BCE. The Long Count calendar’s cycle came to an end around December 21, 2012, sparking a craze of Armageddon conspiracy theories.
In the past 5 years, there have been over 2.2 million complaints about Internet crime to the FBI (FBI IC3): According to the Internet Crime Complaints Centre – or IC3, the number of complaints issued to the centre has increased significantly in the last five years. Around 2.2 million complaints were recorded in 2020. The FBI notes this is a significant increase since the beginning of 2016. What’s more, the cost of cyber-attacks is higher too. In 2016, complaints of hacking and cybercrime accounted for around $1.5 billion in losses. In 2020, the complaints accounted for around $4.2 billion.
Establishment: The NSA was officially formed on November 4, 1952, by President Harry S. Truman. This marked the beginning of a new era in intelligence gathering.
Director Ralph J. Canine: Major General Ralph J. Canine became the first Director of the NSA on November 4, 1952, marking the beginning of the agency’s formal existence.
Winchester was the first capital of England: We’re beginning this collection of interesting facts about England by uncovering some insights into the country’s history. It’s a well-known fact that the bustling city of London is the country’s capital, however, it hasn’t always had this status! Over 1,150 years ago, in 871, the Hampshire city of Winchester was the country’s capital. This came to be when King Alfred began his reign as King of Wessex and chose the city to be his capital. During the 10th century, all seven of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, including Wessex, merged to become England. This led to London becoming the capital and the new base for the government, thanks to its fantastic trading opportunities.
England is very close to Europe’s mainland: The Channel Tunnel, also playfully known as the ‘Chunnel’, connects Folkestone to Calais. The tunnel offers easy access between England and France and stretches over 31.5 miles. The tunnel was built in 1993, with the Eurostar’s handy services beginning in 1994. It’s the longest undersea tunnel in the world, with 23.5 miles of tunnel stretching 75 metres below the surface of the English Channel. Thanks to the Chunnel, you can get to Paris from London in just over two and a half hours!
The pound sterling is the oldest existing currency: The pound sterling is the official currency of the United Kingdom, with the first pound appearing in 1489 under the reign of Henry VIII. While the majority of Europe adopted the Euro as a single currency around the beginning of the 21st Century, the pound sterling survived as an independent currency.