In New Zealand, snakes of any kind are illegal.
Aristotle defined space by the things inside it according to his theories, if one were to remove the things then the space would no longer exist.
The word unfriend first appeared in print in 1659.
The Norwegian Armed Forces have unisex dormitories, ‘meatless Mondays’, and allow male soldiers to sport ponytails.
A male rhinoceros beetle can lift 850 times its own body weight.
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New Zealand is home to more than 100 varieties of pubic lice.
People from Denmark use less toilet paper than those from any other western nation.
Paul Keres is the only chess player to have defeated nine undisputed world champions: Jose Raul Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer. Keres also drew two games against Anatoly Karpov.
Walt Whitman ate four raw eggs for breakfast every day for the last 20 years of his life.
One of the criticisms of communism was the allegation that communists practice and propagandise the ‘community of women’. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels suggest that this allegation is an example of hypocrisy and psychological projection by “bourgeois” critics of communism, who “not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.”
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On 27 November 1942, the French navy scuttles its fleet of 70 ships and submarines at Toulon to keep them from the Germans.
Johan de Witt
According to a Marie Claire survey, one in four women have been found to discard their partner’s choice in lingerie after wearing it just once, due to it being the wrong size, impractical, or simply not sexy – this at the annual price of 100 million British pounds every year.
In 1672, the Dutch killed and ate their Grand Pensionary (the modern equivalent of Prime Minister) Johan de Witt.
The curious thing about the Montevideo Metro is that it does not exist. This is of course in itself not an odd thing; however, it is strange that the metro has an official website, an official map, street signs indicating stations, and even real underground passageways that would suggest the Uruguayan capital does indeed have an underground. The Montevideo metro however, is a surrealist project, born out of the Uruguayan frustration of feeling dwarfed next to its Argentine and Brazilian neighbours.
At the end of December 2011, Samoa jumped forward by one day, omitting 30 December from the local calendar, when the nation moved to the west of the International Date Line. This was designed to help the nation boost its economy by doing business with Australia and New Zealand. Before this change, Samoa was 21 hours behind Sydney, but the change means it is now three hours ahead. The previous timezone was agreed on 4 July 1892, to work in line with American traders based in California. This also means that Samoa will be one of very first nations to celebrate the new year.
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More than 50 national flags have five-pointed stars on.
The Gadus Morhua or Atlantic Cod
New Zealand is famous for trout fishing, but before the British colonised it, there were no trout anywhere in the country.
A sole can live cheerfully at a depth of 35,800 feet (10,933m).
Codfish can be up to six feet long and weigh more than 200 pounds.
Catfish have more tastebuds than any other creature. Their entire bodies are covered with them. A catfish just six inches long has more than a quarter of a million tastebuds, not just in its mouth and gills, but on its whiskers, fins, back, belly, sides and tail.
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Kiwifruit use up more than their own weight in aviation fuel getting from New Zealand to Europe.
Foeniculum Vulgare or Fennel
According to Andrew Marshall’s writings on Burma in The Trouser People, the Burmese idiom, “Excuse me sir, but I see your department store is open, even on weekends,” means, “Your fly is open.”
Finocchio (fennel) is Italian street slang for a homosexual.
Sheep are castrated without breaking the skin.
Andrew Graham-Dixon discovered that the painter Caravaggio accidentally killed Ranuccio Tomassoni on a tennis court. He was merely attempting to cut off his testicles.
