5/v mmxv

If the empty space in atoms could be removed, the entire human race could fit into an average sugar cube.

The most common surname in China is Wang.

Originally, the traditional Argentine game of pato, which is a combination of rugby, polo and basketball, was played – as the Spanish name suggests – with a live duck in a basket. Nowadays, a leather ball is used.

There are 117 road accidents in Rome every day.

No country in history has imprisoned more citizens than the United States.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

23/iv mmxv

In Argentina, it was forbidden to say “Juan Domingo Perón” after the coup that deposed him in 1955; the media referred to him as the “Deposed Tyrant”.

Orang-utan means ‘person of the forest’ in Malay.

Liquorice is used in Chinese medicine.

94% of happy, healthy participants, when placed in a totally silent room developed tinnitus.

At the age of 100, Teiichi Igarashi became the oldest person to climb Mount Fuji – in his socks.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

26/iii mmxv

Anthropologies believe that man has known how to use fire for 500,000 years, but only learned how to make it himself 12,000 years ago.

Prior to 1962, sodomy was illegal in every US State.

The flag of Paraguay is the only current national flag whose obverse and reverse sides are neither identical nor mirrored.

Legendary Cuban Communist revolutionary Che Guevara was born in Argentina.

Until 1857, in the UK, a husband wishing to end an unhappy marriage could sell his wife. The cost was about £3,000 – roughly £223,000 in today’s money.

See other: Quite Interesting Facts

14/ix mmxii

Mozart owned a pet starling, which he taught to whistle the theme from the last movement of his G major Piano Concerto. On May 27, 1784, the starling died. Mozart’s friends were required to attend the funeral, sing hymns at the graveside and listen to a recitation of a poem Mozart had written to honour the occasion.

Sir Isaac Newton was a cold, austere and difficult man. The slightest criticism of his work drove him into a furious rage, and his life was blighted by vicious feuds with other eminent mathematicians. A hypochondriac, obsessive, neurotic homosexual, he had no friends to speak of.

Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, established the first model of American democracy after he was expelled from Plymouth, Massachusetts for his “extreme views” on freedom of speech and religion.

Jose de San Martin

US State papers dating from 1994 released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, during the Gulf War, the Pentagon toyed with the idea of developing an aphrodisiac bomb that would cause enemy troops to find each other sexually irresistible. An alternative was to make enemy troops sexually attractive to stinging and biting insects and rodents. They also spent 50 years looking into a stink bomb that would produce smells leading enemy troops to think one of them had farted or suddenly developed bad breath.

Jose de San Martin (1778-1850) is Argentina’s national hero. After successfully liberating Argentina from Spain in 1816, he went on to help liberate Chile and Peru. A polite and sophisticated man, he was dispirited by the internal power squabbles that followed independence, and left to spend the rest of his life in France.

Mamihlapinatapai [Noun.]

A look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to do.

The word mamihlapinatapai comes from the southern part of Argentina and Chile, where Fuegian is spoken (from Tierra del Fuego, literally meaning: Land of Fire) and is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most succinct word (succinct: briefly and clearly expressed), meaning that it is the hardest word to translate into any language without using multiple words.

The word contains the root -ihlapi, meaning to be at a loss as what to do next. The rest of the affixes used in the word state reflexiveness and a reciprocal sense, making the word relevant in a situation with two people.