Wacky Facts

Hundreds of titanosaur nests with fossil eggs have been found in the Narmada valley in Madhya Pradesh.

The series of conflicts between England and France ran from 1337 to 1453, with long truces in between.

The idea was introduced by King Jigme Singye Wangchuck in the 1970s and is part of government policy.

During deep sleep the brain replays and consolidates what you learned during the day.

Ridges develop in the womb around 10–16 weeks and remain the same throughout life; even identical twins differ.

Shared by India and Bangladesh at the mouth of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna, it is home to the Bengal tiger.

Cheetahs are the fastest land animals, reaching around 100–110 km/h in short bursts, but they tire after a few hundred metres.

During the day the discs between the vertebrae are compressed by gravity, so you can lose about a centimetre of height. Lying down at night lets them recover.

Floppy disks faded out in the 2000s, but the 3.5-inch disk survives as the universal symbol for saving a file.

Short answer: Indonesia’s Geospatial Information Agency counted 17,380 named and coordinated islands in its 2024 review. The total can change as maps, coastlines and field verification improve.

How many islands does Indonesia have?

Indonesia is an archipelagic country stretching between the Indian and Pacific oceans. The official number used by Badan Informasi Geospasial (BIG), Indonesia’s national geospatial agency, was 17,380 islands after its 2024 review. The figure increased from 17,374 in the 2023 national gazetteer.

What counts as an island?

BIG’s release uses four basic tests: the land must occur naturally rather than being created by reclamation; it must be surrounded by water; and it must remain above water at the highest tide. The agency also records a standardized name and geographic coordinates. Those rules turn a familiar-sounding question into a serious mapping and verification task.

Why does the number change?

A higher count does not necessarily mean dozens of unknown islands suddenly appeared. Survey teams may verify a feature that was missing from an older gazetteer, correct a duplicate, standardize a name or distinguish landforms more accurately with improved imagery. Natural processes also matter. Erosion can remove exposed land, sediment can connect or enlarge it, and volcanic activity can alter coastlines.

Why the count matters

Island data supports navigation, emergency planning, local administration, environmental management and standardized place names. It also helps government agencies discuss remote communities consistently. An island’s presence in a national gazetteer is therefore more than trivia: it links a physical feature to maps and public records.

Indonesia at a glance

• 2023 gazetteer: 17,374 islands.
• 2024 review: 17,380 islands.
• Key test: naturally formed land above water at high tide.
• Official keeper: Badan Informasi Geospasial.

Evidence and limits

“More than 17,000 islands” is a sound rounded statement, but a precise total should always carry a year and method. Different publications may show older figures because they use an earlier survey, include unnamed features or apply different minimum mapping thresholds. The official count is best understood as a maintained dataset, not an eternal constant.

What to remember

The interesting part is not only the size of the number. Indonesia must keep a national record across an enormous maritime area, reconcile local names, confirm coordinates and revisit coastlines that change naturally. When a new official total appears, compare the survey year and definition before assuming that one source is wrong. Good geography starts with a method, not just a headline.

Sources

• Badan Informasi Geospasial: 2024 island-count release
• BIG: how Indonesia updates island data

On 3 December 1992, engineer Neil Papworth sent “Merry Christmas” from a computer to a mobile phone on the Vodafone network in the UK.

Point Nemo in the South Pacific is about 2,700 km from the nearest land; the International Space Station, about 400 km up, can pass much closer.

Rice flour rangoli and kolam are said to feed ants and birds, a daily act of sharing.

Elephants’ front legs bend like knees but are actually wrists. What makes them unusual is that they cannot jump at all.

India is one of the largest producers and consumers of tea, with Assam and Darjeeling famous worldwide.

Gastroliths helped grind plant matter, as they do in birds like chickens today.

A forager returning to the hive performs a “waggle dance”: the angle of the dance shows the direction of the food relative to the Sun, and the length of the waggle shows the distance. Karl von Frisch shared the 1973 Nobel Prize for decoding it.

It comes from e (picture) + moji (character). The resemblance to “emotion” is a coincidence.

Short answer: Lakshadweep is India’s smallest Union Territory by land area. Its islands together cover about 32 square kilometres, although its lagoons and surrounding sea area are vastly larger.

Where is Lakshadweep?

The archipelago lies in the Arabian Sea, roughly 220 to 440 kilometres from Kochi on India’s southwest coast. Kavaratti is the capital. The Union Territory administration describes Lakshadweep as a group of 36 islands made up of 12 atolls, three reefs and five submerged banks, with ten inhabited islands.

Why is the land area so small?

Lakshadweep is formed from low coral islands rather than one large continental landmass. An atoll develops around a lagoon as coral grows near the surface of warm tropical water. The exposed strips of sand and coral can be narrow even when the reef and lagoon system covers a much greater area. That is why 32 square kilometres of dry land can sit inside a maritime landscape extending over hundreds of kilometres.

Small does not mean insignificant

The surrounding lagoons, reefs and ocean support fisheries, coconut cultivation, transport and tourism. They are also ecologically sensitive. Coral systems can be affected by warming water, erosion, pollution and physical damage. Fresh water and waste management require particular care on small, densely settled islands because land and natural storage capacity are limited.

What does the name mean?

The administration says “Lakshadweep” comes from Malayalam and Sanskrit words meaning “a hundred thousand islands.” The poetic name should not be read as a literal modern count. Official descriptions currently refer to 36 islands, while tourism pages sometimes count particular exposed islands differently. The composition—atolls, reefs, submerged banks and inhabited islands—is more informative than a single headline number.

Evidence and limits

The “smallest” claim compares land area among India’s Union Territories. It does not mean Lakshadweep has the smallest marine jurisdiction. Its official tourism material points out that the lagoon and extended sea zone make the territory’s geographic footprint much larger than the dry-land figure suggests.

Lakshadweep at a glance

• Land area: about 32 square kilometres.
• Capital: Kavaratti.
• Setting: the Arabian Sea, west of Kerala.
• Formation: coral atolls, reefs and submerged banks.
• Inhabited islands: ten, according to the Union Territory administration.

These figures explain the apparent paradox: it is India’s smallest Union Territory on a land-area table, yet its communities and ecosystems are spread across a long and strategically important ocean region.

For visitors and readers, the useful lesson is to distinguish an island’s dry surface from its reef, lagoon and wider maritime setting.

Sources

• Administration of Lakshadweep: official overview
• Administration of Lakshadweep: tourism and geography

The Pushkar Camel Fair in Rajasthan draws tens of thousands of camels and cattle, along with pilgrims, each November.

Humans have about 400 types of smell receptors, and combinations of them let us tell apart a vast range of odours. Smell is also closely linked to memory, which is why a scent can bring back a moment instantly.

R was created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland. The name nods to both of them — and to the S language it was inspired by.

A gas-lit signal outside the UK Parliament in 1868 exploded weeks after installation, injuring its operator.

Ray Tomlinson chose @ in 1971 because it meant “at” and almost never appeared in names, so it could not confuse the system.

In 1947 operators of the Harvard Mark II found a moth trapped in a relay and taped it into the logbook with the note “first actual case of bug being found”. The logbook is now at the Smithsonian.

Researchers at Cambridge University set up a camera in 1991 so they could check whether the coffee pot was full before walking to it.

Short answer: Canada has the world’s longest national coastline. Statistics Canada gives a length of 243,042 kilometres when the mainland and offshore islands are included, touching the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans.

Why is the coast so long?

Canada is the world’s second-largest country by total area and has an enormous Arctic archipelago. Its shore is broken into countless bays, fjords, channels, islands and peninsulas. Every indentation and island adds distance, so the total is far greater than a simple west-to-east measurement on a map.

Which oceans does it touch?

The Atlantic coast includes Newfoundland and Labrador, the Maritime provinces and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Pacific coast includes British Columbia’s deeply indented mainland shore and many islands. The Arctic coast extends across Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut and around the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Why can coastline figures differ?

A coastline does not have one scale-independent length. Measuring with short segments captures more small bends than measuring with long segments, a problem known as the coastline paradox. Datasets may also differ over whether they include every island, tidal feature, river mouth or inland-water coast.

What does the official number include?

Statistics Canada’s 243,042-kilometre figure includes the mainland coast and offshore islands. Parks Canada separately notes more than 243,000 kilometres along three oceans and additional shoreline along the Great Lakes. Those freshwater shores are important but are not needed for Canada’s world coastline record.

Why the coastline matters

Coastal waters support fisheries, shipping, tourism, biodiversity and communities with long cultural connections to the sea. They also create demanding responsibilities for search and rescue, charting, environmental protection and infrastructure. Much of the Arctic coast is remote, seasonally ice-covered and difficult to access.

Canada’s coastal facts

• Published ocean coastline: 243,042 km.
• Oceans: Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific.
• Major contributor: the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
• Separate freshwater shoreline: the Great Lakes.
• Measurement caution: totals depend on mapping scale and method.

Evidence and limits

Country rankings use a consistent published dataset, but figures from different sources should not be mixed without checking their definitions. Saying Canada has the longest coastline is well supported by Statistics Canada, Parks Canada and other federal agencies; treating 243,042 kilometres as mathematically exact at every scale would not be.

The headline record and the measurement caution can both be true. Canada ranks first under the accepted national dataset, while a differently detailed map would produce a different numerical length.

Sources

• Statistics Canada: the world’s longest coastline
• Parks Canada: national marine conservation system

The air in a lightning channel can reach roughly 30,000 °C, while the visible surface of the Sun is about 5,500 °C. The heat lasts only microseconds, but it makes the air expand explosively — that sudden expansion is the thunder you hear.

In 1928 Alexander Fleming noticed that mould contaminating a bacteria culture had killed the bacteria around it. The mould produced penicillin, the first widely used antibiotic.

The southwest monsoon, from June to September, brings around 70% or more of India’s yearly rainfall.