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Trivia Page Two

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The Australian 'Jindalee Over-The-Horizon Radar' can both detect aircraft & ships well past the line-of-sight horizon (unlike a conventional radar, which can only detect objects it can 'see' directly) and the otherwise undetectable US Air Force's 'Stealth' fighters & bombers.

75% of people are right handed. Because of this, the olde English Knights used to traditionally joust from the left hand side (LHS) of the separating fence. This tradition lead to people driving cars on the LHS of the road, and so infers that the countries that drive on the RHS are the odd ones out!  This being said though, a very slightly numerically higher number of countries drive on the RHS of the road rather than the LHS. Those countries include China and India, so the actual number of people driving on the left is vastly higher than the number driving on the RHS.
For the theory of people driving on the RHS, it apparently goes back to the times of early Chrisians going to visit the Pope in Rome.  The people used to just clog the roads going to Rome, and they had "horses to the left of me, chickens to the right and my bloody carriage stuck in the middle so to speak."
Anyway it was a Papal edict to bring some control, the first traffic control in fact, pilgrims going to Rome travel to the left side of the road, pilgrims leaving travel on the right, simple as that.

In a typical English Castle, the stairs leading up to the front entrance always start from the lower right hand corner. (as viewed from the front) This again is because of the predominant right-handedness of people, and so if the Castle was being invaded, the opposing knights would have to fight their way up the stairs, the sword play being impeded because of the proximity of the Castle wall. The defending Knights, however, had a clear swing.

When some coins were made from real silver, some people used to grind a small amount from the edges of the coins, thus over a period of time  building up a small stock of silver. To combat this, the mint added a ridged edge to the coins, so it could easily be seen if the coin had been tampered with.

The original fifty cent piece in Australian decimal currency had around $2.00 worth of silver in it before it was replaced with a less expensive twelve sided coin.

The glass bottomed beer mug came about from a few hundred years ago, when 'press-gangs' were roaming the pubs looking for likely recruits. When they found one, they'd walk up to him with a beer and give it to him, apparently free of charge. When the beer mug was finally drained, the drinker would find a penny in the bottom of the mug, and then the press-gang would demand him to serve, because "he now owes the Queen."

If you are driving a car in New Zealand, you are roughly twice as likely to die from a car accident than you are in Australia. In the USA, you are roughly 1.4 times as likely than you are in Australia.

The average car drinks about 11,500 litres of fuel in its life. It also spews out a total of about 35 tons of carbon into the air.

More people die in NZ every year playing Lawn Bowls than Scuba Diving.

One of the world's smallest electric engine, which drives one of the world's smallest cars, was made by Denso, a Toyota affiliate, and is 0.7mm in diameter. (0.028") It drives the car at 2" per second.

Superconductivity was actually discovered in 1911, by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in Lieden. He found that Mercury superconducts at a temperature of around 4° Kelvin, or -269°C. Almost no progress was made in finding higher temperature superconductors until 1986, when K. Alexander Müller and J. Georg Bednorz in Zurich found a ceramic compound that was a superconductor at temperatures up to 35° Kelvin, or -238°C. The best effort of the mid-to-late 90's is a mercury-barium-calcium-copper oxide which can superconduct at up to 134° K, or -139°C.

Wormholes are theoretical 'constructs' which may connect several Black Holes, possibly allowing faster-than-light travel. This was envisioned as early as late in the 19th century, by a Oxford mathematician called Charles Dodgson. He decided at the time that the more adult population may well frown on such notions, so he wrote it for children, in form of a story. He used the name "Lewis Carrol", and the story is well known as "Through the Looking Glass." It tells the story of how Alice steps through a looking glass (the wormhole) into another world, (parallel dimension) where strange things happen.

The term "Viet Cong" was an artificial one invented by the CIA, because they thought that the correct name, "Viet Minh" didn't sound 'communist' enough.

To "testify" was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors.

A full seven percent of the entire Irish barley crop goes to the production of Guinness beer.

The full name of the U.K. is: "The United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Berwick-upon-Tweed." The reason for this being that Berwick-upon-Tweed has historically been a disputed border town between England and Scotland, and was so constitutionally enshrined as a separate entity. Until 1987, Berwick-upon-Tweed was officially at war with Germany, due to war being declared with the full title, but desisted with only the partial one. The problem was solved, and they are now at peace, so the Germans can sleep easy!

The original Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland has a six thousand year lease.

The words for the numbers "eleven" and "twelve" in English derive from the Anglo-Saxon for "one left" and "two left", respectively. "Aend-lefene" and "Twa-lefene" describe the process of counting, from left to right, your fingers and then going back one or two.

The "you are here" arrow on maps is called an ideo locator.

The "J.R.R." in J.R.R.Tolkien stands for John Ronald Reuel. His son's name is Christopher.

Bulgaria was the only soccer team in the 1994 World Cup in which all 11 players' last names ended with the letters "OV."

Abdul Kassem Ismael, Grand Vizier of Persia in the tenth century, carried his library with him wherever he went. The 117,000 volumes were carried by 400 camels which were trained to walk in alphabetical order.

The oldest Whiskey distillery in the world is in Ireland and started distilling in 1657. Whiskey in Ireland is spelt with an 'e' before the 'y.' Scottish Whisky (or Scotch) is spelt without the 'e.'

Finnish is not a Germanic, Slavic or Romantic language. It belongs to its own language group. The other two languages in the group are Hungarian and Estonian.

The billionth digit of pi is 9.

Ancient Egyptians shaved off their eyebrows to mourn the deaths of their cats.

Australia is the richest source of mineral sands in the world.

You should not eat a crawfish with a straight tail. It was dead before it was cooked.

King Kong is the first movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released the same year (1933).

Babies are born without knee caps. They don't  appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

It takes a lobster approximately seven years to  grow to be one pound.

No word in the English language rhymes with month or orange or silver or purple.

In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

A donkey will sink in quicksand but a mule won't.

Napoleon constructed his battle plans in a sandbox.

Since 1896, the beginning of the modern Olympics, only Greece and Australia have participated in every Game.

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

"Mr. Mojo Risin" is an anagram for Jim Morrison.

The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

In the great fire of London in 1666 half of London was burnt down but only 6 people were injured