The mystical Alborz Mountains  looming over the Iranian capital of Tehran

Fun Facts:

• Tehran boasts a population of 8,429,807.
• One of the largest cities in Western Asia.
• World’s 19th largest city by population.
• Home to many historic mosques, churches, synagogues and Zoroastrian fire temples.

[Source]

1. China invented ice cream, and Marco Polo is rumored to have taken the recipe (along with the recipe for noodles) back with him to Europe.
2. A civil servant named Su Song built the first mechanical clock between A.D 1088 and 1092. It could tell the time of day and also track the constellations so that accurate horoscopes could be determined.
3. On September 27, 2008, Zhai Zhigang made the first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut.
4. The Chinese were the first to invent the waterwheel to harness water in A.D. 31—1,200 years before the Europeans. China was also the first country in the world to use an iron plow. Europe didn’t begin using the iron plow until the seventeenth century.
5. The name of China’s capital has changed over the centuries. At one time or another it has been known as Yanjing, Dadu, and Beiping. Peking or “Beijing means “Northern Capital.” Beijing is the officially sanctioned pinyin spelling based on the Mandarin dialect. Beijing is the second largest city after Shanghai.
6. It was customary for wealthy men and women in the late empire to grow the nails of their little fingers extremely long as a sign of their rank. They often wore decorative gold and silver nail guards to protect their nails.
7. By the fourth century B.C., the Chinese were drilling for natural gas and using it as a heat source, preceding Western natural gas drilling by about 2,300 years.
8. By the second century B.C., the Chinese discovered that blood circulated throughout the body and that the heart pumped the blood. In Europe, circulation wasn’t discovered until the early seventeenth century by William Harvey (1578-1657).
9. The Chinese were using the decimal system as early as the fourteenth century B.C., nearly 2,300 years before the first known use of the system in European mathematics. The Chinese were also the first to use a place for zero.
10. The crossbow was invented and first used by the Chinese. They were also the first in the world to use chemical and gas weapons, 2,000 years before gas was used in Europe during WWI.

via EnglishRussia

Taken with a grain of salt as Russians are continuously poking cheeky stabs at Ukrainians and vice versa.

1. Most words in the Ukrainian language starts with the letter “п”. The most frequently used letter of the Ukrainian alphabet – “о”. The letters “ф” and “г” are used least often.

2. George Gershwin wrote one of the world’s most famous songs, “Summertime”, after being inspired by an old Ukrainian lullaby called “Sleep Is Tiptoeing About” performed by the Ukrainian National Chorus.

3. The third most visited McDonald’s in the world is located in Kiev, near the train station. This restaurant has always been in the top five most crowded McDonald’s in the world. Last year, it served 2.283.399 visitors.

4. Arsenalnaya Metro Station located in Kiev is the deepest in the world (105 meters). The station was built in 1960, very close to the House of Parliament. According to some reports, the tunnels near Arsenalnaya house secret shelters built specially for the political elite.

5. Ukrainians are the fifth most-drinking nation in the world. Only Moldavians, Russians, Hungarians and Czechs are ahead of them. An average Ukrainian older than 15 drinks 15.6 liters of alcohol a year (it’s a liter more than an Irishman and almost two liters more than a Norwegian).

6. The Ukrainian national anthem consists of only six lines (four in a verse and two in a chorus). The remaining verses of the anthem are considered politically incorrect. (“We’ll stand, brothers, in bloody battle, from the Syan to the Don” implies a claim to the territories of Russia and Poland).

7. In Europe, the police solve 30-40% of crimes, in Ukraine – 90%. This unnaturally good statistics is the result of the reluctance of the Ukrainian policemen to record “hopeless” cases (like thefts of mobile phones) and knock confessions out of suspects.

8. Ukraine has the world’s largest reserves of manganese ore – 2.3 billion tons or about 11% of all deposits of the world.

9. Ukrainians invented a plane with the largest freight-carrying capacity in the world – the An-255 “Mriya”. Originally, it was designed for spacecraft transportation. Now it specializes in freight haulage.

10. In 1710, Ukrainian Hetman Pylyp Orlyk introduced “Pacts and Constitutions of Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporizhian Host”, at that time a super-progressive document which meant to separate powers into three branches and regulate the rights and responsibilities of the government and citizens. Some researchers believe that this document is one of the world’s first constitutions.

11. One of the most famous Christmas songs “Schedrik” (a folk song written by a Ukrainian composer, Mykola Leontovich) is known to the rest of the world as “Carol of the Bells” or “Ring Christmas Bells”.

12. Ukraine, on its own initiative, refused the third largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. At the moment of the declaration of independence, Ukraine had over a thousand nuclear warheads and the third largest nuclear potential after Russia and America. The warheads and missiles were given to Russia, silos were destroyed. In response, Ukraine received the money for disarmament, plus security guarantees from the nuclear powers.

13. The monuments to a famous Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, are set in 1200 places around the world. However, most of them are located in western Ukraine.

14. Following the example of the main hero of a famous folk tale “Levsha” (The Lefthander) by N. Leskov, Ukrainian Nikolai Syadristy decided to shoe a flea. The flea can be seen in the Kiev Museum of Miniatures.

15. In Ukraine, unlike the rest of the world, batteries are not recycled separately. Even in spite of the fact that they contain toxic elements which heavily pollute water and soil.

16. At the moment of the declaration of independence, Ukraine was inhabited by 19.4 million pigs, today there are only 8.3 million. Despite its reputation of a major bacon eater, an average Ukrainian eats only 18 kg of pork a year. This is three times less than a typical German eats.

17. A Ukrainian powerlifter, Dmitry Khaladji, is included in the Guinness Book of Records as the author of more than two dozen records. One of them is called “The Devil’s Forge”. He lies on a bed of nails and is covered with 700-kg plates which are broken with sledgehammers.

18. Ukrainian “Yuzhmash” (Dnepropetrovsk) produces the most environmentally friendly launch vehicles in the world.

19. The oldest map known to scientists, as well as the most ancient settlement of Homo Sapiens were found in Ukraine, in the village of Mezhireche. They are 14.5 – 15 thousand years old. The map is cut out of the bones of a mammoth. The settlement is made of the same material.

20. The official Guinness world record: Ukrainians made the world’s largest glass of champagne – 56.25 liters. How to drink champagne from this glass is unclear, but it’s still great.

Toilet paper was invented in China!

1. The modern word “China” most likely derives from the name of the Qin (pronounced “chin”) dynasty. First Emperor Qin Shi Huang (260-210 B.C.) of the Qin dynasty first unified China in 221 B.C., beginning an Imperial period which would last until A.D. 1912.
2. China is often considered the longest continuous civilization, with some historians marking 6000 B.C. as the dawn of Chinese civilization. It also has the world’s longest continuously used written language.
3. China is the fourth largest country in the world (after Russia, Canada, and the U.S.). It has an area of 3,719,275 square miles (slightly smaller than the U.S.) and its borders with other countries total more than 117,445 miles. Approximately 5,000 islands lie off the Chinese coast.
4. One in every five people in the world is Chinese. China’s population is estimated to reach a whopping 1,338,612,968 by July 2009. China’s population is four times that of the United States.
5. Fortune cookies are not a traditional Chinese custom. They were invented in 1920 by a worker in the Key Heong Noodle Factory in San Francisco.
6. China is also known as the “Flowery Kingdom” and many of the fruits and flowers (such as the orange and orchid) are now grown all over the world.
Invented in China, toilet paper was initially only for emperors
7. Toilet paper was invented in China in the late 1300s. It was for emperors only.
8. The Chinese invented paper, the compass, gunpowder, and printing.
9. The Chinese invented kites (“paper birds” or “Aeolian harps”) about 3,000 years ago. They were used to frighten the enemies in battle, and Marco Polo (1254-1324) noted that kites were also used to predict the success of a voyage. It was considered bad luck to purposely let a kite go.
10. Cricket fighting is a popular amusement in China. Many Chinese children keep crickets as pets.
11. Despite its size, all of China is in one time zone.
12. Many historians believe soccer originated in China around 1000 B.C.
13. Ping-pong is one of the most popular games in China, but it was not invented in China. It originated in Britain, where it is called table tennis.
Viewed as a status symbol, stamp collecting is China’s number one hobby
14. The number one hobby in China is stamp collecting.
15. Giant Pandas (“bear cat”) date back two to three million years. The early Chinese emperors kept pandas to ward off evil spirits and natural disasters. Pandas also were considered symbols of might and bravery.
16. White, rather than black, is the Chinese color for mourning and funerals.
17. Though Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is credited with designing the first parachute, Chinese alchemists successfully used man-carrying tethered kites by the fourth century A.D. Parachutes were not used safely and effectively in Europe until the late 1700s.
18. The custom of binding feet (euphemistically called “golden lilies”) began among female entertainers and members of the Chinese court during the Song dynasty (A.D. 960-1279). Tightly wrapped bandages gradually broke the arch of the foot and caused the woman’s toes and heel to grow inward toward one another. Her leg muscles would also atrophy and become very thin. Bound feet were seen as highly sexual.
19. Historians speculate that as the Chinese population grew, people had to conserve cooking fuel by chopping food into small pieces so that it could cook faster. These bite-sized foods eliminated the need for knives and, hence, chopsticks were invented.
20. In A.D. 130, Zhang Heng, an astronomer and literary scholar, invented the first instrument for monitoring earthquakes. The machine could detect and indicate the direction of an earthquake.
The Chinese invented ice cream by packing a milk mixture and rice into snow.

(Source: library.thinkquest.org)

The word pharaoh began as a nickname for the Egyptian king. It means “great house” because everyone believed the king’s human body was home to a god. The term wasn’t actually used until the 20th dynasty (1185-1070 B.C.).

The Great Pyramid at Giza has vents pointing to the constellation of Orion so the mummy’s spirit could fly straight up to the gods.

For ancient Egyptians, bread was the most important food and beer was their favorite drink. Models of brewers were even left in tombs to ensure that the deceased had plenty of beer in the next world.

In Egypt, both men and women wore eye make-up called kohl, which was made from ground-up raw material mixed with oil. They believed it had magical healing powers that could restore poor eyesight and fight eye infections.

Ancient Egyptian women had more rights and privileges than most other women in the ancient world. For example, they could own property, carry out business deals, and initiate divorce. Women from wealthy families could become doctors or priestesses.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped more than 1,000 different gods and goddesses. The most important god of all was Ra, the sun god.

The Copts are the largest Christian community in Egypt and in the Middle East. Because Christianity was the main religion in Egypt between the fourth and sixth centuries, the term “Copt” originally meant all Egyptians.

In Egypt, children (even girls) were considered a blessing. The Greeks who sometimes left unwanted infants (most often girls) outdoors to die, were shocked to discover that the Egyptians did not.

The Berlin Papyrus (c. 1800 B.C.) contains directions for the oldest known pregnancy test. The test involved wetting cereals with urine. If barley grew, it meant the woman was pregnant with a male child; if the wheat grew, she was pregnant with a girl. If neither grew, the woman would not give birth.

The ancient obelisk known as Cleopatra’s Needle has suffered more damage in the 125 years it has stood in New York City from pollution and weather than in the thousands of years it stood in Egypt.

To keep the hook shape of Ramses II’s nose from collapsing, embalmers stuffed his nostrils with peppercorns.

The first person in Egypt identified by name (Mery) for tax evasion was sentenced to 100 blows for his crime.

Scholars believe that ancient Egyptians were the first to sew wounds closed some 4,000 years ago. Egyptian doctors would often store their surgical needles in a case made from a hollowed-out bird bone.

The last known hieroglyphic inscription was made in A.D. 394 in the temple of Isis in Philae.

The oldest death sentence recorded is found in ancient Egypt. Found in the Amherst papyri, a teenaged male in 1500 B.C. is sentenced to kill himself by either poison or stabbing for practicing magic.

The quality that ancient Egyptians valued most was called ma’at, which means good behavior, honesty, and justice. Ma’at is also the name of the goddess of truth who, according to myth, weighs every Egyptian heart after death.

Cognitive enhancers which purportedly aid in reducing age related dementia and Alzheimer’s disease work by increasing higher cortical activity through an ‘unidentified’ mechanism of action. Such drugs have been available in Europe in one form or another for a little over a decade. But said ‘mind enhancers’ will never see the light of day in the US, as the FDA is very strict.