Sure, many civilizations have their own calendars that they prefer to the Western Gregorian calendar, but the majority still obey the unwritten rule of "12 months to a year." Ethiopia is not one of them. Trying to buck the trend, Ethiopians picked up on Spinal Tap's conviction that one more is always better many thousand years ago, and have been counting 13 months to their year ever since. What exactly does this imply? Well, it's still 2009 there in 2017. And so savvy tourist boards can confidently assert that the nation has "13 months of sunlight."

Former French President Jacques Chirac referred to the Terracotta Army as the "Eighth Wonder of the World" in September 1987. He stated: "There were seven wonders of the world, and the discovery of the Terracotta Army could be considered the eighth. No one can claim to have visited Egypt without seeing the pyramids, and no one can claim to have visited China without seeing these terracotta figures."

This consumption rate of 163 litres per individual per year is unheard of in any other country in the globe. It is unsurprising that such misuse in Coca-Cola drinking may be noticed in people's health, given diabetes and obesity rates in Mexico are above normal. Other causes include a lack of exercise and an excessive intake of junk food. As a response to widespread health concerns, punitive tariffs on foods with excessive fat or sugar content were implemented in 2013.

Countries having borders within the Arctic Circle are members of the Arctic Council, which, according to its website, "is the sole circumpolar platform for political talks on Arctic problems, comprising all Arctic governments and with the active involvement of its Indigenous Peoples." The Council strives to examine and solve the environmental and social concerns that the people and wildlife that live there confront.

Now for a 'sumptuous' fact about the UAE: the Burj Al Arab is the world's first seven-star hotel and is widely regarded as one of the world's most luxurious. The hotel's interiors are adorned with 24-carat gold leaves that cover over 1790 square metres. The best thing is that it even has a 'Pillow Menu,' which offers guests nine different varieties of pillows! Right, I'm assuming you choose your pillow.

Lepioshka, or good luck bread, is a regional bread. An age-old tradition states that it should never be put upside down, since this is said to bring ill luck. Even if it's in a bag, you shouldn't leave it on the ground!

William "Willy" Patrick Hitler, Adolf Hitler's half-brother, was born in Liverpool to a British mother and a German father. Willy wrote an essay in Look magazine titled "Why I Hate My Uncle" when Anglo-German ties began to deteriorate as a result of his uncle's flamboyance. As the war broke out, he relocated his family to the United States, where he attempted to enroll in the United States Navy but was denied. After the Japanese destroyed Pearl Harbor, Franklin D. Roosevelt reconsidered Willy's application and ultimately authorized him to fight the Nazis.

On January 28, 1887, two years before Montana became a state, U.S. Army troops observed an unusual sight: a frisbee-sized snowflake descending from the sky near what is now Keogh, Montana. Snowflakes can occasionally clump together before hitting the ground, resulting in enormous, thick snowflakes. It is still the Guinness World Record holder for the biggest snowflake ever.

Bananas contain potassium, which decays and makes them mildly radioactive, making them one of our weirdest scientific facts. But this is one of those amusing science facts about which you need not be concerned. According to Forbes, you’d have to consume 10,000,000 bananas all at once to die of radiation exposure.

Technically, it is a degree in "Viticulture and Enology" (a.k.a. grape cultivation and the science of winemaking), but we're still applying.

With a surface size of 26,300 square miles, the Aral Sea was formerly the world's fourth biggest lake. However, the lake has been rapidly diminishing since the 1960s. The lake is diminishing due to the divergence of the main rivers away from the lake for irrigation projects. As of 1997, roughly 10% of the lake had vanished, leaving only patches of smaller lakes. The majority of the south-eastern lake had already dried up by 2009, while the majority of the southwestern lake had dwindled to become a narrow strip along the old southern sea. NASA images from 2014 showed the eastern section of the old Aral Sea, which had completely dried out and is now known as the Aralkum Desert.

The novel's working title was The Dead Undead, which was subsequently abbreviated to The Un-dead. Stoker then changed the title to Dracula just before it was released. What really is in a name? It's difficult to say. Dracula received positive reviews at its initial release, but sales were disappointing, and by the end of his life, Stoker was so penniless that he had to apply for a compassionate grant from the Royal Literary Fund. The Gothic tale did not become the legend it is today until theatrical and film versions began to appear in the twentieth century.

We still only know about a small percentage of the marine species that live in our oceans. According to the World Register of Marine Species, there are now 240,470 accepted species, but this is thought to be only a small proportion of the species that exist, as new marine life is discovered on a daily basis.

18-year-old The youngest player competing in the 2022 World Cup is a German named Youssoufa Moukoko. He contributed three assists and six goals to Borussia Dortmund in the 2022 Bundesliga. Essam El-Hadary, an Egyptian goalie, is the

In the 1940s, Anne Frank was an iconic emblem of Nazi cruelty, while Martin Luther King, Jr. was the face and voice of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The two events appear to be so far apart in history, although both people were born in 1929—on January 15, 1929, for King, and on June 12, 1929, for Frank. That's a mind-boggling truth, isn't it?

The French army is the only one in Europe that still employs carrier pigeons. These pigeons, which are housed at Mont Valérien near Paris, can be deployed to carry out broadcasts in the event of a severe disaster.

Francesco Illy, the founder of the Italian coffee roasting company, was actually born in TimiÈ™oara, Romania. He later moved to Vienna, and then the Italian city of Trieste. He didn’t make a 2006 list of the 100 Greatest Romanians, however, which was topped by Stephen the Great and featured the likes of Nadia Comăneci and Gheorghe Hagi.

Have you ever heard about Pangram? Pangram in the English Language is a sentence that contains every letter in the language. Sounds interesting? Isn’t it. One of the best examples of Pangram is ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’. The sentence has every letter and hence is a pangram. Can you think of some more Pangrams?

The Terracotta Army is part of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum, the world's largest ancient imperial tomb complex. There are approximately 8,000 different life-size statues that have been discovered. It is the most significant discovery of its kind. The statues stand between 175 and 190 cm tall. Everybody has different gestures and facial expressions, and some even have different colors. It reveals a lot about the Qin Empire's military, technology, arts, culture, and military.

Although the now-retro rainbow design is undoubtedly Apple's most well-known, the very first Apple logo depicted Sir Isaac Newton seated under a tree with an apple ready to fall on his head. The Newton logo was created by Apple's lesser-known creator Ronald Wayne and was only used briefly in 1976. Its high degree of detail didn't show up well when scaled down and put on a device.

The mayor of Paris has approved a resolution prohibiting Tom Cruise from being made an honorary citizen. Tom Cruise is a member of Scientology, a controversial religious group that has been labelled a cult in France. Tom Cruise sought to become an honorary citizen of Paris in 2005, but the city's officials refused because of his involvement with Scientology.

According to the Pizza Hall of Fame, the first pizzeria in the United States opened in New York City in 1905. Lombardi’s Pizza on 32 Spring Street is still going strong and it is now one of around 1,600 pizzerias in the city. New Yorkers have noticed that when the price of subway tickets rises, so does the price of pizza. It's known as "the pizza principle."

Yes, despite being a fictional species, the legendary unicorn is the national animal of Scotland, chosen because of its link with supremacy and chivalry and purity and innocence in Celtic mythology. BRB, I'm leaving for Scotland right now.

Handshakes are only permissible between two males in Uzbekistan. A man and a woman cannot shake hands. When greeting an Uzbek woman, kneel down to her and lay your right hand over your heart.

The Hiroshima bombing was so powerful that the shadows of persons and things were permanently seared into the earth. These were dubbed "Hiroshima shadows."