Factlog: A Directory of Facts YOU Should Know!

The 19 Minutes Mothers

In the words of the UK's Office for National Statistics:

A TYPICAL WORKING MOM SPENDS JUST 19 MINUTESS A DAY LOOKING AFTER THEIR CHILDREN.

In a Time Use Survey  that studied about 4,950 people, tracking how much time each person allots to individual activities throughout the day. The top 3 activities were sleeping, working and watching television. Activities at the bottom of the lists were reading with 10 to 24 minutes per day and spending time with children with just 19 minutes per day.

This survey comes at a time when there are more working moms than ever. The survey results show that over 12 million moms work outside the house today compared to approximately 8 million in 1970.

In another report by Prima Magazine, (a leading british women magazine read by over a million women) women were asked "In an ideal world, what would you like to be?" 26 percent said they wanted to be a "housewife and mother". The most popular response, given by 50 percent, was to be a "mum who works part-time" just 6 percent of the women wanted to work full-time.

The Swiss Army Knife Karl Eisner Made

Today, Swiss Army knives (a multifunctional knife that has several tools built into one handy little package) are manufactured by two companies, Victorinox and Wenger, both of which supplied knifes to the Swiss Army. What some Swiss army knife freaks don’t know is – the Swiss Army knife was invented by Karl Eisner in 1891.

Karl Eisner was inspired to create a tool for the Swiss Army that was not manufactured by Germans, so he set out to produce a Swiss knife for the Swiss Army.

Eisner’s first Swiss Army knife was called the “Soldier’s Knife”.

The Soldier’s Knife s made of a wooden handle and a variety of tools including a blade, a screwdriver and a can opener.

Eisner later created a revised version of the Soldier knife that featured two blades instead of just one. Eisner needed another spring for the second blade, which also made room for him to add more tools such a corkscrew.

Today several people, not just the Swiss Army, use Swiss Army knives.

The traditional Swiss Army knife has an aluminum plated handle and includes several tools including blades, nail file, toothpick, tweezers, scissors, can opener, leather punch and a screwdriver.

Today, the United States is the largest importer of Swiss Army knifes. Swiss Army knives are popular to use when camping or working in the outdoors because they are small, easy to carry and very useful.

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More Than 20,000 Brands of Beer

Worldwide, 20,000 brands of beer are brewed in 180 styles, from ales, lagers, pilsner and stouts to bitters, cream ales and iced beers.

Beer has been a popular beverage for a long time. Babylonian clay tablets show detailed recipes of beer making in 4300 BC. Beer was also brewed by the ancient Chinese, Assyrians and Incas.

An Egyptian text of 1600 BC gives 100 medical prescriptions using beer. A few years ago, the New Castle Brewery in England brewed 1,000 bottles Tutankhamun Ale from a 3,200-year old recipe found in the sun temple of Queen Nefertiti.

Commercial beer making was established in 1200 AD in present-day Germany. In 1506, the German Purity Law is issued, specifying that beer ingredients must only be water, barley, wheat and hops. Bottling of beer started in 1605.

Other Beer Facts:

• The first beer brewery in the US opened in Manhattan in 1623.
• The first Octoberfest was held in 1810 in Munich, Germany.
• The oldest brewery in Munich, Löwenbrau, was founded 1373.
• The Czech Republic has the highest per capita beer consumption in the world, at 155 litres (40 gal).
• Ice beer is produced by freezing the brew and filtering the ice crystals, increasing the alcohol content. This process was already known in the Middle Ages to "cold-distil" brandy from wine, and the ancient Chinese produced rice hooch that way. The Canadians adopted the cold-distillation method for ice beer.
• A true pilsner comes from the Pilsner, Czech Republic. The original pilsner was Pilsner Urquell (Plzensky Prazrod), meaning "The Original Spring of Pilsen." It still is one of the most popular pilsner in the world.
• Sake, the Japanese rice brew, is closer to beer than wine by its production method.
• The English word "brewer" refers to a male beer-maker; "brewster" to a female.
• Beer and ale volumes:
          4 gills = 1 pint
          2 pints = 1 quart
          4 quarts = 1 gallon
          9 gallons = 1 firkin
          2 firkins = 1 kilderkin
          3 kilderkins = 1 hogshead
          2 hogsheads = 1 butt

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Things You Didn't Know About Google

The web has forced people to embrace and develop new trends and habits. Not many agents can claim to be propagators of these for these habits in the same vein as the page that Larry and Sergey built. Since the days that information (+text, video…) on everything and anything in more than one hundred languages became only a Google away, the means to do more from the most valuable text box/bar in the world keeps increasing. Your (Yes. Yours) Google search box can do more than return millions of web-links to you from a keyword or phrase query. Here are the facts about googling that aren’t obvious to everyone (this is an incomplete list):

• It is a calculator – type a mathematical problem into your Google search box and google it! What you’ll have is the correct solution to that mathematical problem. And if you care to know, you can type the mathematical problem in words, figures or both you can also type in multiple problems at the same time separated by commas e.g. 23% of nine hundred, 1234 plus 345, 60,000*34 divided by sixteen)

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Fact-Trivias 01

America’s most valuable square foot is the space on top of your TV set where the cable box sits.

The first adhesive postage stamp that displayed a Mornach was called - Penny black

How And When We Grow Old

According to Catherine Arnst, the organs of the body suffer myriad of indignities as we age, deteriorating in response to genetic signals and the wear and tear of daily life. Here’s what we can all expect, if we live so long:

Brain
The cells start dying off in substantial numbers at round the age of 50; roughly half of all the people who live to be 85 or older suffer from dementia.

Eyes
Vision declines between ages 40 and50, after decades of exposure to sunlight. Macular degeneration , contracts and glaucoma  can all cause blindness.

Ears
The structures in the ear that help with hearing and balance deteriorate over time, and we lose the ability to hear high-pitched tones.

Skin
The number of sweat glands and nerve endings in the skin decreases around age 60, leaving the body more vulnerable to temperature fluctuations.

Bones
Density decreases over time, and the effects of osteoporosis are especially debilitating for women. As bones age, they are increasingly prone to fractures.

Muscles
Atrophy of the muscles accelerates after the age of 80. The deterioration of leg muscles can leave people dependent on canes or wheelchair.

Lungs
After the age of 20, the lungs slowly lose air sacs. By old age, breathing becomes shallow, leaving the elderly more susceptible to pneumonia and other lung diseases.

Heart
The heart wall, valves, and arteries thicken and become stiffer with age, and there is less fluid in the bloodstream, raising the risk of arteriosclerosis.

Bladder
The maximum volume of the bladder decreases, and the bladder muscles weaken. This can only leave many elderly people prone to incontinence.

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The Ipod Knowknow

Did I say Ipod knowknow? Sorry. I meant Ipod Nano.

It’s increasingly feeling like a sin to not own one and a bigger sin not to know all the basics of the Nano about it. Look no further, here is your redemption:

The ipod Nano can hold up to 1,000 songs in the 4GB version with album-art. It also come in a smaller 4MB (this can hold 500 songs) size. The Nano has a normal sized wheel and a full color screen. The battery lasts for about 14 hours. The Nano also has a shuffle function and can also use the armband accessory.

A skin to protect your ipod and the iTrip which lets you play music through any radio are pretty much a must when you buy the ipod Nano.

The Nano at a glance:

• Holds up to 1,000 songs and full-color album art
• Only 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27 inches and 1.5 ounces
• Bright 1.5-inch color LCD display
• Up to 14 hours of battery life
• Apple Click Wheel
• Charges and syncs via USB
• Accessory-compatible Dock connector
• Completely skip-free playback
• Works with Mac OS X or Windows 2000/XP
• Plays music, podcasts and audiobooks
• Holds up to 25,000 photos
• Syncs contacts, calendars and to-do lists

The World's Best-Selling Phone

Yeah. You guessed right. Its got to be a Nokia phone.

Before its retirement in 2005, the Nokia 3310/ 3330 sold 126 million units from its launch in 2000. If all the Nokia 3310/ 3330 phones ever sold were laid end-to-end, the line wo

 

uld stretch from Nokia’s neighbouring city of f Helsinki in Finland to Santiago in Chile (that’s over 13,500 kilometers).

Nokia just can’t stop making records. On September 5^th, 2005, the day in which the world recorded the two billionth mobile phone subscriber, Nokia, the world's largest manufacturer of mobile telephones claimed it had just sold its one billionth phone to the market, meaning  - 1 IN EVERY 2 PHONES IN THE WORLD IS A NOKIA PHONE. 

More interesting facts about the Nokia Company include:

• Nokia is currently the world's largest digital camera manufacturer, as the sales of its camera-equipped mobile phones have exceeded those of any conventional camera manufacturer
• Compare this: the combined total of all Nokia phones sold between 1991 and 1998 is 100 million, but in 2004, it manufactured 207.7 million phones, which equals 6.5 phones per second
• Nokia was listed as the 20th most admirable company worldwide in Fortune's list of 2006
• Unlike other modern day handsets, Nokia phones do not automatically start the call timer when the call is connected, but start it when the call is initiated. (Except for Series 60 based handsets like the Nokia 6600)
• Nokia accounts for about half of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX Helsinki); a unique situation for an industrialized country.

Nokia consumes 100 billion components on annual level. On average, one phone includes up to 400 components – do the math and that works out to about 250million phones per year (7.9 phones per second)

The Only 2 All-saeson English Premiership Goal Scorers Are Welsh

Yes. Even though it’s the English premier league the only all-season goal scorers are welsh - WELSH football's golden boy, Ryan Giggs and his compatriot Gary Speed.

Another bit of fact is that they both achieved that feat against Watford.

Giggs is a true great noted as an outstanding winger and for his lengthy career at Manchester United. He is their longest-serving current player and has the 3rd highest number of appearances for the club of all time. He is the most decorated footballer in the history of Manchester United, having won eight FA Premier League championships (a record he shares with Liverpool F.C.'s Alan Hansen, Phil Neal and Kenny Dalglish), four FA Cup titles, two League Cup titles and one Champions League.

Giggs holds many other records, including that of the top all-time scorer in the FA Premier League not to play in the position of striker, and interestingly, as a non-striker, holds the record for scoring Manchester United's fastest goal (15 seconds), set in November 1995 against Southampton F.C.

One last bit of fact about Giggsy (Ryan) is that he has played his entire professional career at a great and successful club like Manchester United (second to Arsenal).

Gary Speed currently plays for Bolton Wanderers, after a £750,000 switch from Newcastle United in July 2004. The former captain for the Welsh national team, began his career with Leeds United, winning the title with them in 1992. He moved to Everton in 1996, for a fee of £5,500,000 before moving to Newcastle in 1998, and while there he became the club's most dependable midfielder according to the club’s manager, Sir Bobby Robson.

After been capped for Wales over 80 times, he retired from international football, he was recommended to take up the mantle of Wales' manager, by both the former manager Mark Hughes and fellow Welsh midfielder Robbie Savage. For his part, Speed has stated he will not apply for the position but would talk to the Welsh FA if approached.

 

An extra fact on Gary Speed – he holds the record for the most Premiership appearances.

Nike: The Orignal Name & More

Everybody knows Nike. What a lot of us don’t know is the name that was before Nike. The

 

sports-fashion company started in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports when Phil Knight, a CPA at Price Waterhouse and college track coach Bill Bowerman both contributed $500 each to start a sports marketing company.

In 1971, Blue Ribbon Sports changed its name to Nike (taken from the Greek goddess of victory) and adopted the Swoosh (designed by  Carolyn Davidson) The original logo was designed by a college student for $35. She later got an undisclosed amount of stock.

The Nike brand, arguably the most sport-celebrity endorsed sportswear, was first worn in any competition by long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine. At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, when the American Basketball team were picking up their Olympic medals, Nike sponsored players like Magic Johnson use the American flags to hide the Reebok jackets.

The Nike’s company portfolio include sports and fashion brands such as, Converse, Bauer, Cole Haan, Hurley International