There are 365 different languages spoken in Indonesia.

Indonesia covers 2 million square km, the size of the massive continent of Australia, however only 20% of this is land. The rest of it is water.

There are 5 major Indonesian islands but a grand 13,667 in total. Only 6,000 of these are inhabited though.

For such a remarkable place, it’s not surprising that Indonesia hosts some of the world’s most amazing animals, some of which are the Komodo dragon (the world’s largest lizard) and the dwarf buffalo, one of the rarest animals in the world.

The human head contains 22 bones

This is counting the cranium (8 bones) and the facial bones (14). Amazingly, the skull has many little holes, which allow the cranial nerves to transport messages through and through in order to do their work.

These hard bones form a protective shield in which to house the brain. After all, this is an organ which transmits more than 100 billion neurons. These pulses travel at more than 400 km/h (250 mph) which is more than enough electricity to power a light bulb. (Forget energy saving bulbs then, super brain energy is the way to go).

The average male’s brain is about 1400 gram (49oz) and the average female’s about 1294g, which is about 46 oz.

Consider though that Albert Einstein’s brain was average weight, this difference in male/female brain weight, evidently then, has nothing to do with the level of intelligence, or lack thereof.

An elephant’s brain weighs 5000g (11lb) and no man will agree that an elephant is significantly smarter than him.

Half the world knows Bond

(Picture of Daniel Craig)

Well here’s a visual stimulus to put some weight on the female brain.

“The name is Bond, James Bond.” Half the world’s population has heard this line, because half of us have seen at least one Bond movie since Barry Nelson debuted on Television as 007.

The first Bond movie was “Dr No” it was released in 1962 and starred Sean Connery, who made a total of seven Bond movies. George Lazenby did one, Roger Moore starred in seven, Timothy Dalton in two, Pierce Brosnan had his license to kill revoked after four. Blonde Daniel Craig, the only light-haired “James” so far, landed the 22nd and last one to date.

Cows don’t have upper front teeth

Did you know that cows have no upper front teeth? Considering they graze up to 8 hours a day, taking in about 45 kg (100 lb) of feed and the equivalent of a bath tub full of water, (and we thought that gassing up is all they did) this is quite a feat.

An average cow gives about 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime. Cows have four stomachs, and are said to be the main contributors to the hole in the ozone layer.

Cows release nearly 100 million tons of hydrocarbon annually – by letting out gas. If a person could trap and bottle the gas of ten cows it would provide heating for an average sized house for a whole year. Caution though, you’d place the tube (for catching gas, if you’re so inclined) not at the back-side but at the opposite end, since the wind is not released where you think it is.

The average lifespan of a cow is 7 years, but one cow (Big Bertha) reached 48 in 1993 and produced a record 39 calves.
There are more than a billion cattle in the world, about 200 million in India, so imagine what all that grazing and chewing and passing wind is doing to our environment as we speak. (Not to mention drinking up all those tubs of water).

Bollywood beats Hollywood

(Picture of Shilpa Shetty)

Bollywood produces more movies than Hollywood each year. Why then does my spell check recognise the latter but not Bollywood? (The “B” in Bollywood refers to Bombai, renamed Mumbai).

India releases about 1000 movies every year as opposed to Hollywood’s 500 average.

Bollywood movies are usually about 3 hours long, and includes lots of dancing and singing, but no snogging. Daily, more than 14 million Indian people queue for a movie, and more than 4 million movie tickets are sold every year compared to 3 million for Hollywood movies worldwide.

Youngest language

The youngest language in the world is Afrikaans, spoken by South Africans.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Dutch and German Protestants escaped persecution from the Roman Catholic church and settled in the Dutch colony of Cape of Good Hope in the South of Africa.

By the early 20th century, the Afrikaans language had developed from a mixture of Dutch, German and other tongues into a language of its own. Now it’s the second most spoken language in South Africa, with Zulu being the first.

It’s ironic to think that the people who fled unfair treatment didn’t realise how painful it was to the people on whom it’s inflicted.

Today, new languages are popping up everywhere. One only has to look at the Internet and mobile phone texting to see new ones developing right before our very eyes. Somalia is the only country in the world where all its citizens speak one language, Somali

What’s the British Royals’ name

In 1917 the British Royal family changed their surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to Windsor.

George V, the king of England from 1910 to 1936 was the son of Edward VII (England) and Princess Alexandra (Denmark). He renounced all the German titles belonging to him and his family in 1917 during the war. He then adopted the English name of his castle which is Windsor.

The world’s first novel was written by a woman

Arial picture of people waiting to buy the last Harry Potter book

Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese noble woman wrote the world’s first full novel in 1007. It was called “The tale of Genji,” and tells the story of a prince looking for love and wisdom.

Dame Barbara Cartland, (1901 – 2000) obviously another woman, wrote the most novels ever. She completed a novel every two weeks, (every two weeks? Oh dear, it’s taken me two years and counting to even get my first book published. Does anyone know who her publisher is? Contact me if you do) publishing more than 723 novels, which sold more than 1 billion copies in 36 languages, making her the best-selling novelist of all time.

Joanne Rowling holds the record for the fastest selling book of all time.

Joanne Rowling (b. 31 July 1965) has no middle name but writes under the pen name JK Rowling.

Her “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, the seventh and final book of the Harry Potter series, sold 11 million copies within 24 hours. This was better than the record of 9 million copies sold in the first day held by the sixth Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”. In fact, the last four books in the series had set the record for fastest-selling book within 24 hours. About 340 million fans have bought Harry Potter books, which means that a woman became the world’s first billionaire by writing books. (Nothing to do with brain weight after all)

The top five moneymaking films of all time

1. “Titanic” made $1,835m, but it was also the most expensive as it cost $200 million to make. It was also the most successful movie of all time, winning 11 Academy awards which was equal only to “Ben Hur” of 1959.
2. “Jurassic Park” $920m
3. “Independence Day” -$810m
4. “Star Wars” -$780m
5. “The Lion King” $767m

All of these movies offer family-type viewing, which would indicate that these are the best received sort of films.

Having said this, David Selznick director of “Gone With The Wind” the best attended movie, was fined $5,000 for the mild curse word “damn”, (according to “Curse Control”, a book by James O’Connor). A word found in the most famous line of the movie, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”