10 interesting facts you should know

1) US flag is popularly known as “Stars and Stripes” .There are 50 stars in it. These stars represent 50 states of the US.
2) Asia’s oldest stock exchange is Bombay Stock Exchange which was set up in 1875.
3) Reserve Bank of India acted as banker for about 7 years for Burma, from 1937 to 1942 and 1945 to 1947. 
                         
4) “TataNagars” were extensively used by the British in North Africa during the Second World War. These “TataNagars” were nothing but armored cars, so called as they were built by TISCO in Tata Nagar (India).
5) Though discovered by Columbus in 1492, America is not named after him, but after another explorer Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus discovered America in 1492, but he thought that it was India. In 1501 an Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci reached the same place and realized that it was not India but some unknown place. And thus America got its name after him.
6) All the planet in our solar system rotates anticlockwise, except Venus which rotates clockwise.
Update: Someone commented below that Uranus also rotates clockwise. For those who have this doubt please refer to http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/solarspin.htm. Uranus is tilted on its side about 90° so its direction of rotation is ambiguous. Its angle of inclination is usually given as 98° which would mean that its direction of rotation is not clockwise. If its direction of rotation is presumed clockwise then its angle of inclination would be 82°.
7) The first product to have a bar code was Wrigley’s chewing gum.
8) The names of all the continents end with the same letter with which they start (considering six continents- Asia, Africa, Europe, America, Antarctica, Australia. There are different naming conventions used for continents, based on which there are five, six or seven continents).
9) Polar bears with white, fluffy fur actually have black skin.
10) Earth is the only planet not named after a pagan God.

Tips for How to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

The most effective waste reduction strategy is not to create waste in the first place. Fortunately, you can reduce your consumption, reuse products already in circulation and recycle the rest in dozens of ways.

Step 1:

Consume less to begin with. Waste does not begin when you throw a product away. Every step in the production process, including the extraction of raw materials, transportation, processing and manufacturing, produces waste. Consumer demand creates products. Less demand means less production.

Step 2:

Reduce consumption of toxic waste. Select naturally derived and nonhazardous materials for cleaning products and garden pesticides. Purchase the smallest amount possible of a toxic product, or share it with a friend or neighbor to decrease the need to throw away the remainder.

Step 3:

Consider the necessity of an item before purchasing. Borrow infrequently used items, or check secondhand stores for used options.

Step 4:

Donate unwanted clothing, household items and building materials to a reuse center in your community. Shop at these stores when possible to avoid purchasing new clothing, products and materials.

Step 5:

Repurpose unwanted items. Reuse containers with lids --- such as large-mouth condiment jars --- for storing leftovers or for dry goods instead of purchasing new storage containers. Use grocery sacks to line garbage cans to reduce the need for trash bags. Encourage your children to think of creative uses for household waste products in craft projects and school assignments.

Step 6:

Check with your local municipality to determine what can be recycled in your area. For example, some recycling centers can handle cardboard but not glass, while others might accept only No. 1 or No. 2 plastics. Purchase products in containers recyclable in your municipality.

Step 7:

Purchase products made from post-consumer recycled content to complete the recycling loop. Post-consumer recycled products refer to those used by consumers and then recycled. A product made from recycled content may have come from a damaged or excess item produced during the manufacturing process and not from a local recycling program.

Step 8:

Composting with these materials instead of discarding them will decrease landfill waste and create a useful product from would-be garbage.

What Is Reduce, Reuse & Recycle?

We've all heard the mantra, "Reduce, reuse and recycle." You may wonder what it means or how to incorporate these principles into your daily life. It's not as complicated as you may think --- the "three Rs" all complement each other and together create a system that can shrink your household's carbon footprint.

Reduce

The most essential way to reduce waste is to avoid creating it in the first place. Unfortunately, current consumer behavior is trending in the wrong direction. According to wisegeek.com, on an average a person generates about 2 kg of garbage a day. That amounts close to 13 kg a week. Some companies, however, are getting more efficient with their product packaging to save resources. Plastic 2-liter soft drink bottles are one example. Manufacturers have reduced the weight of the plastic used in these bottles by 0.6 ounces over the last 30 years. While this may seem insignificant, it keeps 250 million pounds of plastic from becoming part of the waste stream. Likewise, consumers can reduce simply by cutting back and making small changes. Cutting back on water and energy use at home is a good place to start. When making a purchase, look for durable products that will last a long time, rather than something that might need to be replaced quickly.

Reuse

Reuse refers to several things. It can mean investing in items that can be reused --- for example, using cloth tote bags when you shop instead of asking for plastic bags, or buying reusable food containers, such as a thermal coffee mug or a reusable water bottle. It also means looking for ways to re-purpose discarded items, especially those that cannot be recycled and will end up sitting in a landfill for centuries. Consider repairing an item rather than throwing it out. If you're upgrading an appliance or gadget, see if you can donate the old one to someone who can use it. If a product has served its purpose, look for alternative uses. For example, clean used jars can be used to store leftovers or odds and ends.

Recycle

Recycling also keeps usable materials out of the landfill. Objects that might be considered waste are turned back into raw materials that can be used in the manufacture of other items. Recycling consists of three basic steps. The first step is collection and processing. Communities handle this in various ways. For example, some may offer curbside or kerbside recycling, while others may have central drop-off facilities. The recyclables are then sorted, cleaned and turned into marketable raw materials --- for example, paper is turned into pulp and plastics are melted down. Step two consists of manufacturing the recycled materials into new products. Step three occurs when consumers purchase recycled products. This completes the recycling loop. As a consumer, you can participate by properly recycling as much waste as possible, and by looking for products that contain recycled content. Often, products will tout this as a selling point.

Benefits

Following the "three R's" has several advantages, including cutting greenhouse gas emissions, conserving energy and resources and reducing the need for landfills and incineration.

20 Little Known Facts About The Human Body

1.  A human being loses an average of 40 to 100 strands of hair a day.
2. A cough releases an explosive charge of air that moves at speeds up to 60 mph.
3. Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.
4. A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
5. A sneeze can exceed the speed of 100 mph.
6. Every person has a unique tongue print.
7. According to German researchers, the risk of heart attack is higher on Monday than any other day of the week.
8. After spending hours working at a computer display, look at a blank piece of white paper. It will probably appear pink.
9. An average human drinks about 16,000 gallons of water in a lifetime.
10. A fingernail or toenail takes about 6 months to grow from base to tip.
11. An average human scalp has 100,000 hairs.
12. It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown.
13. Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.
14. Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow to nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
15. By age sixty, most people have lost half of their taste buds. By the time you turn 70, your heart will have beat some two-and-a-half billion times (figuring on an average of 70 beats per minute.)
16. Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels and has an average of 32 million bacteria on it.
17. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
18. Every person has a unique tongue print. 
19. Fingernails grow faster than toenails.
20. Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin.

Reverse ATM PIN - Hoax or Truth?

Subject: ATM
USE: This is a useful TIP …

WHEN A THIEF FORCES YOU TO TAKE MONEY FROM THE ATM, DO NOT ARGUE OR RESIST,YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW WHAT HE OR SHE MIGHT DO TO YOU.WHAT YOU SHOULD DO IS TO PUNCH YOUR PIN IN THE REVERSE, i.e. IF YOUR PIN IS 1254, YOU PUNCH 4521.THE MOMENT YOU PUNCH IN THE REVERSE, THE MONEY WILL COME OUT BUT WILL BE STUCK INTO THE MACHINE HALF WAY OUT AND IT WILL ALERT POLICE WITHOUT THE NOTICE OF THE THIEF. EVERY ATM HAS IT; IT IS SPECIALLY MADE TO SIGNIFY DANGER AND HELP. NOT EVERYONE IS AWARE OF THIS.
FORWARD THIS TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND THOSE YOU CARE FOR.

I am sure many of you must have got such a mail at least once. And most of you must have forwarded it to all your friends with good intention.But think for a second: What will a person do whose PIN is a palindrome number (which reads same both ways), such as 1441 or 2332, or who has all identical digits in PIN such as 2222? How will he alert the police? Or will the police come to “nab the robber” every time he uses his ATM?Baffling, isn’t it?Don’t worry. Police won’t come when that person punches his PIN in ATM. In fact police won’t ever come if you enter your PIN in reverse order. Not because our police is inefficient, but because such a system doesn’t exist.However this rumor is not entirely baseless.These rumors started because there were actually plans to implement such a system in ATMs (not in India but in US), where a user can enter some panic code to alert police. However it was never implemented because banks were against it. And they had valid reasons for that.
Firstly, implementing it in existing ATMs would have increased the cost.
Secondly, it won’t be a foolproof method because by the time police will reach the site, the robbers would have already fled.
Thirdly, if the robber guesses that the victim is fumbling with the numbers, there is a greatprobability that he’ll hurt the victim badly.
Fourthly, it will give rise to lot many false alarms.
The better solution is therefore to equip ATMs with efficient security guards.
But there are certain things that can certainly happen if you enter the PIN in reverse order.
1) Your ATM can get blocked if you try it thrice in a row.
2) When actually facing a situation where a robber forces you to withdraw money from ATM, if you enter PIN in reverse, money won’t come out.
This might irritate the robber and he might hurt you badly.I am sure you’ll never want that to happen to your loved one. Why then forward such mails which might have serious consequences? Internet is a place where it is very easy to spread false information, and people in awe of internet believes whatever it  throws at them. We, being educated and responsible citizens, should therefore refrain from forwarding such rumors.
So next time when you get such a mail think twice before forwarding it.

8 Interesting Facts about Currencies

Hi Friends here I have compiled 8 interesting facts about currencies of different countries that I came across over a period of time.







 1) When Pakistan was in its infancy after India-Pak separation in 1947, they used Indian currency with "Pakistan" stamped on it for the first few months till there was enough circulation of Pakistani notes.

Indian One Rupee Bill

 2) Before switching to Australian Dollar in 1966, Australia used Australian Pound as its official currency. Initially Australian Dollar was given the name “Royal”, but as the name could not gain popularity among the locals, it was changed to Dollar.

 

American Dollar

3) The widely used $ symbol, which is used to represent US Dollar, doesn’t appear on US currency at all. 


4) Before 1974, Bhutan didn’t have any currency. Instead they followed Barter system, i.e., they traded goods and services in exchange of other goods and services. In 1974 Bhutanese Ngultrum was introduced as a currency.

5) Bermuda’s $2 bill has been named the bank note of the year 2010 by International Bank Note Society for its attractiveness and high security features.You can read about it in detail at IBNS website.

Bermuda's $2 Bill

6) Queen Elizabeth’s portrait has appeared on 33 different currencies. Her image first appeared on the Canadian currency in 1935, when she was just 9 years old. The reason for her portrait being used by various countries is that the British monarch is considered as the head of the state by many countries that are a part of the British Commonwealth. This is why Australia and New Zealand have Union Jack on their Flag.

7) Australia introduced polymer notes in 1988 and in 1996 it became the first country in the world to have a complete series of polymer notes.

Australian Dollar

 

8) In India, Rupee one notes have signature of the Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, while the notes of Rs.2 and above denominations contain signature of the Governor, Reserve Bank of India.


BONUS FACT: There are only 5 currencies in the world that have unique symbol to represent them. These are US Dollar, Yen, Pound, Euro and Indian Rupee (latest addition). Of these only the pound sterling has its symbol printed on the notes.

Facts about Human Eye

 

1. Your eyes blinks over 27,397 times in a days

2. The eyeball of a human weighs approximately 28 grams.

3. Under the right conditions, the human eye can see the light of a candle at a distance of 14 miles.

4. The eye of a human can distinguish 500 shades of the gray.

5. Your eyes can process 36,000 bits of information every hour.

6. The space between your eyebrows is called the Glabella.

7. Blinking helps to wash tears over our eyeballs. That keeps them clean and moist. Also, if something is about to hit our eye, we will blink automatically.

8. Our body has some natural protection for our eyes. Our eyelashes help to keep dirt out of our eyes. Our eyebrows are made to keep sweat from running into our eyes.

9. Around the pupil is a colored muscle called the "iris." Our eyes may be BLUE, BROWN, GREEN, GRAY OR BLACK, because that is the color of the iris.

10. The study of the iris of the eye is called iridology.

11. The shark cornea has been used in eye surgery, since its cornea is similar to a human cornea.

12. The number one cause of blindness in adults in the United States is diabetes.

13. The cornea is the only living tissue in the human body that does not contain any blood vessels.

14. The conjunctiva is a membrane that covers the human eye.

15. Sailors once thought that wearing a gold earring would improve their eyesight.

16. Research has indicated that a tie that is on too tight can increase the risk of glaucoma in men.

17. People generally read 25% slower from a computer screen compared to paper.

18. Men are able to read fine print better than women can.

19. All babies are color blind when they are born.

20. Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.

21. The reason why your nose gets runny when you are crying is because the tears from the eyes drain into the nose.

22. The most common injury caused by cosmetics is to the eye by a mascara wand.

23. Some people start to sneeze if they are exposed to sunlight or have a light shined into their eye.

24. The highest recorded speed of a sneeze is 165 km per hour.

25. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.