There is a geocache on the International Space Station placed in 2008. It has since been visited four times by other astronauts.
100 Mind-Blowing International Facts
September 3rd is International Bacon Day.
July 3rd is International Plastic Bag Free Day – it’s a day about making a little change to make a big impact (for the better) in the future.
In 2015, Ariana Grande won two MTV Millennial Awards for the “Global Instagrammer of the Year” and “International Hit of the Year” with her single “One Last Time.”
In 2000 the first permanent crew inhabited the International Space Station (ISS). Since then, there’s always been a human presence in space.
The logo for the Monster energy drink cans is not an M, as most believe, but are claw marks from a monster ripping through the can. In 2014 a YouTube video gained an international audience when they claimed that each segment of the claw mark looks like the Hebrew symbol for the number six, making the logo 666, the number of the Beast.
You can yo-yo in space. In 2012, NASA astronaut Don Pettit took a yo-yo on board the International Space Station and demonstrated several tricks. It works because a yo-yo mainly relies on the laws of conservation of angular momentum to perform tricks, which, provided you keep the string taut, apply in microgravity too.
Beyoncé’s concert in Paris on May 26, 2023, had more sales from U.S. buyers on StubHub than any other single night of an international concert in 2023.
Stillwater, Minnesota, formerly a big player in the lumber industry, hosts the World Snow Sculpting Championships, sanctioned by the Association Internationale de Sculpture sur Neige et Glace (International Association of Ice and Snow Sculpture) based in Finland. For the event, teams travel from around the world to make intricate snow sculptures.
The Eiffel Tower was originally intended for Barcelona. The Spanish city thought the design was too ugly, so Gustave Eiffel pitched it to Paris instead, as a temporary landmark during its 1889 International Exposition. French critics didn’t like it much either though.
Competitive art used to be an Olympic sport. Between 1912 and 1948, the international sporting events awarded medals for music, painting, sculpture and architecture. Shame it didn’t catch on, the famous pottery scene in Ghost could have won an Olympic medal as well as an Academy Award for the best screenplay.
Bangkok is the world’s most visited city. With 22.78 million international visitors, Bangkok has been named the most visited city in the world for the fourth year in a row – beating Paris, London, Dubai, and Singapore.
Space travel makes mice run in circles. NASA once sent 20 rodents to the International Space Station to see how the effects of space affected mice. Not long after they got there, the mice all started running in loops inside their cages. No one is exactly sure why this occurred, but researchers stated that the critters might’ve just been enjoying their time in space.
Knowing how to speak Russian is a requirement to become an International astronaut. The ISS has operations in Russia and will not provide a translator during the job. Most new astronauts claim that learning a new language is the most difficult part of the job.
List drove to Kennedy International Airport, abandoned his car, and took a train to Denver, Colorado.
The international telephone dialling code for Antarctica is 672.
The England v Scotland football match in 1872 was the world’s first international match.
August 13th is International Left-Handers Day.
There is gravity on the International Space Station. Footage of astronauts on the International Space Station may give the impression of a gravity-free environment, but onboard gravity is only 10-11% weaker than it is on Earth’s surface. This particular one of our facts relates to the common belief that there’s no gravity in space. Astronauts float freely due to the Space Station’s continual state of free-fall, the same effect experienced by skydivers. The difference with the ISS is that it also has horizontal motion. As the ISS moves ‘sideways’ and falls towards Earth, the horizon curves away beneath it at the same rate, keeping the ISS in orbit and simulating a feeling of weightlessness for anyone on board.
Space junk is any human-made object orbiting Earth that no longer serves a useful purpose. Scientists estimate there are about 500,000 pieces of space junk today, including fragments from rockets and satellites, and everyday items like spanners dropped during the construction of the International Space Station!
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.
With 3.572 billion viewers, half the world’s population watched the 2018 FIFA World Cup of soccer (or football, as many international fans call it), which is held every four years. That number is on par with the 2016 Summer Olympics, but only a quarter of the world watched the less-popular Winter Olympics in 2018.
YouTube Has 2 billion Monthly Logged-in Users. Are you impressed by the number of active iPhones currently in use? Multiply that number by two and you will have a good idea of the number of people who count on YouTube tutorials and broadcasts for myriad reasons. An international presence is partly responsible for these big numbers. Localised versions of YouTube produce content for around 100 nations, broadcasting in approximately 80 languages. Do you upload content? You’re in good company. About 500 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute, fulfilling this social media platform’s long-term goal to be a primary resource for folks around the planet.
Amazon Prime Members Stats Just Keep Climbing. Launched as a membership service for Amazon patrons in 2005, Prime boasts 214.43 million international users and remains the most-visited U.S. multi-platform in the U.S., serving 98 million active users every month. Niches driving Prime traffic are Amazon Music (16.46 million users) and Prime Video (46.3 million). Members spent $1400 annually on goods and services driven by offers of discounted pricing and free shipping. Expanding its media influence, Amazon Studios has begun to rack up Emmy Award nominations for original productions available only to members. During Covid lockdowns, an estimated 37% of Prime members bought food and beverages from Amazon.
We can thank Albert Einstein for a lot of our current understanding of the physics of time. Rather than viewing time as a set order, he proved that it’s relative. For example, according to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, there’s an inverse relationship between your speed and the speed of time. The faster you move, the slower time moves. This is why someone blasting through space will age slower than the people still hanging out on Earth: Astronaut Scott Kelly was born several minutes after his twin brother, Mark, but after Scott spent 340 days living on the International Space Station, he returned to Earth around an extra 5 milliseconds younger than his “big” brother. Had Scott been travelling at a speed close to the speed of light, that age difference would have become much more pronounced.
Because astronomical time and atomic time don’t always line up, every so often, we get a leap second. Earth’s spin speed can be a bit unpredictable. Atmospheric winds, Northern Hemisphere winters with heavy snow, and other big weather systems can affect how fast the planet rotates. To keep the difference between astronomical time and atomic time to less than .9 seconds, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service will occasionally announce the need for a leap second. Most people won’t notice a leap second, but they can be a huge pain for tech companies. Because leap seconds are added irregularly, developers have no way of working them into their codes, which has caused websites like LinkedIn and Reddit to crash in the past. A bug caused by 2012’s leap second created so much chaos on Qantas’s servers, more than 400 flights wound up being delayed.
After an engineer named Sandford Fleming missed a train in 1876, he set out to change the way time worked. Fleming originally proposed a concept he called “Cosmic Time,” in which the world would run off an imaginary clock located at the planet’s centre, essentially a line from the centre of the planet to the sun. He then suggested splitting the world into 24 time zones labelled with a letter of the alphabet, with each zone spanning 15 degrees of longitude. His original plan to create a standard “Cosmic Time” was rejected, but it did lay the groundwork for a similar standardisation, so-called Universal Time. Nations present at the 1884 International Meridian Conference laid the groundwork for dividing the world into 24 time zones, with the Prime Meridian, also known as Longitude 0°, running through Greenwich, England.
The International Space Station has been running Linux since 2013.
Since 2013 the International Space Station also run exclusively on Linux.
Linux on Every Major Space Station: Linux is used in every major Space Station including NASA, the International Space Station (ISS), and private space companies such as Space X. Its reliability and open-source adaptability makes it an ideal choice for critical systems, ensuring smooth operations and supporting astronauts in their endeavours beyond Earth’s boundaries.
Russian Military Cyber Actors: The NSA, FBI, CISA, and international allies issued a Cybersecurity Advisory in 2024 detailing malicious activities by Russian military cyber actors targeting U.S. and global critical infrastructure.
Personnel Distribution: As many as 12,000 personnel are housed at the Friendship Annex near Baltimore Washington International Airport, highlighting the significant presence of the NSA in the region.
Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland is known for its castle and the Royal Mile. Its International Fringe Festival attracts more than 2,500,00 visitors every year.
Paper money enabled international trade: Once the shift to paper money had occurred, international trade began to increase. Currency value began to depend on the strength of a particular country’s government or monarchy and before long, currency wars had started.
Global debt is dangerously high: The current global debt figure reached a record $303 trillion in 2021 according to the Institute of International Finance. This was a huge jump from the $226 trillion figure in 2020, representing the biggest one-year debt surge since the Second World War. The World Bank says that our current world debt wave is the fourth since 1970 and is a result of various factors including Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine.
Billions of funds are transferred each year: In 2021, money transfers to low and middle-income countries reached US $605 billion according to the latest World Bank data. It’s estimated that around one billion people worldwide (or 1 in 7 people) are involved in international money transfers, with around 200 million migrant workers sending money back home and 800 million people receiving it.
Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman called for coordinated international regulation of generative artificial intelligence.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the spending on AI will reach $22 billion in 2022 across Europe. The number is expected to surpass $50 billion by 2025.