WORLD RECORDS

PLANET EARTH – UNDERGROUND

DEEPEST CAVE – The world’s deepest cave is KRUBERA (or VORONJA), beneath the Arabika Massif, western Caucasus, Georgia. In Oct 2004, an expedition named “The Call of the Abyss” from the Ukrainian Speleological Association explored it to a depth of 6,824 feet (2,080 m) – the equivalent of rapelling down the side of a building five-and-a-half times taller than the Empire State Building.


LARGEST CAVE – The Sarawak Chamber, Lubang Nasib, in the Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, was discovered by the 1980 British-Malaysian Mulu Expedition. Its length is 2,300 feet (700m), its average width is 980 feet (300m), and it is at least 230 ft (70m) high – nearly four times greater than the height of the faces of the US presidents carved into Mt. Rushmore.

PLANET EARTH – DYNAMIC EARTH
The tidal bulges in the Earth’s oceans, caused by the gravitational effect of the Moon, are gradually transferring momentum from the Earth’s rotation to the Moon’s orbit. As a result, the Earth’s rotation is slowing at a rate of around 0.02 seconds per century and each day is fractionally longer than the day before. Therefore, the longest day on Earth is always today.

EARTHQUAKES
LONGEST EARTHQUAKE – The Sumatra-Andaman Islands earthquake in the Indian Ocean, on December 26, 2004 was the longest ever recorded. Its duration, monitored by seismometers all over the world, was measured at between 500 and 600 seconds. It had an earthquake magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3 on the Richter scale.

HIGHEST DEATH TOLL FROM AN EARTHQUAKE – The earthquake that struck the SHAANXI, SHANXI and HENAN provinces, Chin on February 2, 1556 is believed to have killed 830,000 people.

SMALLEST PARASITE – Pneumocystis carinii is 0.02 to 0.03 in (0.5 – 1 mm) long – no bigger than a period. It inhabits the human lungs and can cause pneumonia.

SMALLEST COMMERCIAL FISH – The now endangered SINARAPAN (Mistichthys luzonensis) is a goby found only in Lake Buhi, Luzon, Philippines. Males are 0.39 to 0.51 in (10-13 mm) long, and a dried 1 lb (454 g) fish cake would contain about 70,000 of them!

YOUNGEST PERSON TO CLIMB EVEREST – MING KIPA SHERPA (Nepal) reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 22, 2003 at the age of 15. She made the climb with her brother Mingma Gyula Sherpa and sister Lakpa Sherpa. All three were climbing in support of a Romanian expedition.




SOCIETY – ESPIONAGE

LARGEST INTELLIGENCE AGENCY – The NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA) is the largest and most secretive institution of its kind. Often known as the “No Such Agency”, its mission is to gather data on international economic, military and diplomatic situations. An estimated 38,000 people work at the HQ in Washington, DC, USA with an annual budget of more than $40 billion. According to author and NSA expert James Bamford (USA), each of its dozen largest global listening posts picks up more than 2 million communications – including emails, phone calls, and faxes every hour.

MOST EXPENSIVE MOVIE EVER MADE – KING KONG (New Zealand/USA, 2005) had an estimated budget of $207 million. This puts the film ahead of Titanic (USA, 1997) and Spider Man 2 (USA, 20040 – both of which cost $200 million – as the most expensive movie ever made. Director Peter Jackson (New Zealand), who also filmed The Lord of the Rings, was paid $20M to direct the movie. This represents the highest salary ever paid to a film director prior to production.

ENGINEERING – LONGEST

LONGEST BRIDGE – At 23.8 miles (38.4 km), the longest bridge in the world is the SECOND LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN CAUSEWAY that joins Madeville and Metairie, Louisiana, USA. Completed in 1969, the causeway is so long that it is possible to stand in the middle of it and be unable to see land in either direction.

STOP PRESS ----
MOST EXPENSIVE RESIDENCE – LA MAISON DE L’AMITE is a beachfront estate in Florida, USA, owned by American billionaire Donald Trump. In May 2006, the sale price of the 33,000 ft2 (3,065 m2) house was listed as $125million.

ENGINEERING MONUMENTS

TALLEST STONE BUDDHA – The Leshan Giant Buddha in the Sihuan Province of China was carved out of a hillside in the 8th century. Its height of 233 ft (71m) makes it the tallest statue of Buddha carved entirely out of stone. The statue surrounding area have been designated a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

TRANSPORTATION AND TOURISM

BUSIEST AIRPORT – According to the Airports Council International (ACI), HARTSFIELD INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT which serves Atlanta, Georgia, USA – handled 83.6 million passengers in 2004, making it the world’s busiest airport.

LIFE ON EARTH
LARGEST EYE – The Atlantic giant squid (Architeuthis dux) has the largest eye of any living or extinct. It is also the largest of all invertebrates. It has been estimated that a specimen found in 1878 in Thimble Tickle Bay, Newfoundland, Canada, had eyes 16 in (40 cm) in diameter – almost the width of an open Guinness World Records book! Its body was (6m) long and one tentacle measured 35 feet (10m)

HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS
TALLEST LIVING MAN – Xi Shun (China, b. 1951) measured a record-breaking 7 ft 8.95 in. in (2.36m) when examined on January 15, 2005, at Chifeng City Hospital, Inner Mongolia, China. In September 2005, Xi Shun made his first ever trip outside China when he visited the London offices of Guinness World Records.

OLDEST MOTHER – Adriana Emilia Iliescu (Romania, b. May 31, 1938) was 66 years, 230 days old when she gave birth by Caesarean section to her daughter Eliza Maria Bogdana at the Clinical Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Bucharest, Romania, on January 16, 2005.

IN A DAY…FASTEST-SELLING BOOK
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth novel in J.K. Rowling’s (UK) Harry Potter series, sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours (or 287,564 books per hour), following its release in the USA on July 16, 2005. The novel follows Harry in his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The previous holder of this record was the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

ANCIENT WORLD
OLDEST LOVE POEM – Archeologists have dated a love poem written on a clay tablet to the time of the Sumerians, who invented writing circa 3500 BC. It was given the rather unromantic name of “ISTANBUL #2461” and is thought to have been recited by a bride of the Sumerian king Shu-Sin, who ruled between 2037 and 2029 BC. It begins:
Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.

OLDEST ZERO – The figure zero, or “0” was first used by the Babylonians circa 300 BC, as a placeholder – as with the “0” in “10” or “100”. The oldest known reference to zero as a numerical value to signify “nothing” was by the Indian mathematician and astronomer Brahmagupta, in his great work of AD 628, the Brahmasphutasiddhanta.



OLDEST MATHEMATICAL PUZZLES – When transcribed, a 3,650 year-old Egyptian scroll known as the Rhind Papyrus was found to contain various mathematical and lateral-thinking puzzles. The most durable problem is the riddle better known today as Going to St Ives:

As I was going to St Ives,
I met a man with seven wives.
Every wife had seven sacks, and
Every sack had seven cats.
Every cat had seven kits.
Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, how many
were going to St. Ives?

The answer, of course, is ONE!

Q. THE MOST STOLEN PAINTING IS __________ – The famous Rembrandt painting called ans: JACOB III de Cheyn (1632)
This famous Rembrandt painting has been stolen (and recovered) from museum galleries no less than four times – making the pocket-sized portrait the world’s most stolen picture.
It has been returned anonymously each time and, as a result, no one has ever been charged with theft. The painting is so well known that thieves would find it virtually impossible to sell.
[c09

SOCIETY - PETS
Q. TALLEST DOG – [c09 Q. The tallest living dog is _____ GIBSON,
it’s a harlequin Great Dane who measured 42.2 in (107 cm) tall on Aug 31, 2004. A therapy dog, he is owned by Sandy Hall of Grass Valley, California, USA.


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
STAR GAZING – Black holes are born when massive stars collapse at the end of their lives. They exert a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape.

Q.The closest black hole to earth is ____ only 1,600 light yrs away discovered on Jan 14, 2000.
ANS: V6441 Sgr – only 1,600 light years away – discovered on January 14, 2000.

INTERNET
FIRST PESON JAILED FOR FIRE SHARING IN THE INTERNET – In November 2005, Chan Nai-Ming (China) was jailed for three months for uploading the movies Daredevil (USA, 2003), Miss Congeniality (USA 2003), and Red Planet (USA 2000) onto the internet using BitTorrent P2P file-sharing technology. The case against Chan, who adopted the online alias “Big Crook,” is the first in the world to lead a prison sentence.

FIRST EMOTICON – Q. The very first “smiley” emoticon was used by ______

ANS: Scott Fahlman (USA) of Carniege Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA, on September 19, 1982. In a message on a bulletin-board system, he proposed the use of : - ) and : - ( emails to signify the emotional context of the message and so prevent misunderstandings in communication.

FIRST WEBLOG – The first website, created by Tim Berners-Lee (UK) in 1991, would be described as a weblog if it were published online today. It was essentially a website containing news of what was being added to the World Wide Web, also created by Berners-Lee, who was knighted for his achievements in December 2003.

Q. MOST DOWNLOADED PODCAST – [c09 a: The Ricky Gervais Show podcast on Guardian Unlimited had an average of 261,670 downloads per episode during it first month (starting December 5, 2005) The podcast features random discussions between Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

The heaviest building moved intact is the Fu Gang Building at West Bank Road Wuzhou, in the Guangxi Province of China. It was successfully relocated by the Guangzhou Luban Corporation on November 10, 2004.The building weighs 15,140.4 metric tones (33.3 million lb) and is 34 m (111 ft) tall. The building was moved 35.62 metres horizontally and it took eleven days to complete the relocation.