-Strange but True -

 People



The world's largest palace has 1788 rooms. It was built for the Sultan of Brunei.






The world's largest recorded gathering of people was at a Hindu religious festival in India in 1989. It was attended by about 15 million people.






Abraham Lincoln went to school for less than a year. He taught himself to read and write.






The longest recorded swim was 2938 km down the Mississippi River in 1930. The swimmer spend 742 hours in the water.






Humans are no match for some animals. The rhinoceros beetle can carry 850 times its own weight on its back. The Emperor moth can detect smells 11 km away. The cheetah can run at 70 km/h. The Polyphemus moth eats 86,000 its own birth weight in 48 hours. The cries of South American howler monkeys can be heard 16 km away.






The longest jail sentence passed was in the United States - 10,000 years for a triple murder.






It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. Try it!






Levi Strauss made the first pair of blue jeans in 1850. They were intended as work trousers for American miners looking for gold.






In Ancient Rome only important people wore purple clothes. This is because the purple dye came from a particular kind of shellfish and was very expensive.

 
World's Worst Predictions - Famously Wrong Predictions


Theoretically, television may be feasible, but I consider it an impossibility--a development which we should waste little time dreaming about.

- Lee de Forest, 1926, inventor of the cathode ray tube



I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.

- Thomas J. Watson, 1943, Chairman of the Board of IBM



It doesn't matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.

- Albert Einstein's teacher to his father, 1895



It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister.

- Margaret Thatcher, 1974



This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

- Western Union internal memo, 1876



We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.

- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962



Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927



640K ought to be enough for anybody.

- Bill Gates, 1981



Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.

- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872



Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.

- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949



We don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.

- Hewlett-Packard's rejection of Steve Jobs, who went on to found Apple Computers



King George II said in 1773 that the American colonies had little stomach for revolution.



An official of the White Star Line, speaking of the firm's newly built flagship, the Titanic, launched in 1912, declared that the ship was unsinkable.



In 1939 The New York Times said the problem of TV was that people had to glue their eyes to a screen, and that the average American wouldn't have time for it.



An English astronomy professor said in the early 19th century that air travel at high speed would be impossible because passengers would suffocate.




Airplanes are interesting toys, but they have no military value.

- Marshal Ferdinand Foch in 1911




With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.

- Business Week, 1958



Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping.

- Frank Knox, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, on December 4, 1941



Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.

- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, October 16, 1929.