Interesting Facts - Page 3

The oldest international cricketer was Wilfrid Rhodes of England. He was 52 when he played his final Test match in 1930. He took a couple of wickets too.

The character of Meg Altman (Jodie Foster's character in Panic Room) was originally played by Nicole Kidman, who left 18 days into filming due to injury.

There are an estimated 1800 languages spoken in Africa. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages and several whistled languages.

The huge Malaysian 'Arum' is a 'man eating' plant. It is also called 'devil's tongue' or 'krubi' & can't actually eat a human. It mainly eats insects.

The Borrowers' surname was Clock. The family comprised Pod, Homily, Arrietty and Peagreen. The author, Mary Norton, was born in Bedfordshire in 1903.

If you drove every road in the UK you would cover 375,000 km of road. Motorways account for less than 1 per cent of total road length in the UK.

The name Birmingham is derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'Beormund ingas ham'. 'Beormund' is a proper name, 'ingas' means people and 'ham' means farm.

Shane Howarth is the former New Zealand player who switched allegiance & won 19 caps for Wales. In 2000 it was found he was ineligible to play for Wales.

26 of the world's nations start with the letter S. These include Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovenia, Solomon Islands & Somalia.

"Carrot" is first recorded in English in 1533, and derives from Greek "karoton", related to "kara" meaning "head". It's the UK's 3rd favourite vegetable.

At peak hours in Tokyo, Japan, some subway stations employ part-time platform staff to cram passengers into carriages, filling them to 183% of capacity.

Nitrogen is the gas used in racing tyres. This has less thermal expansion and makes the expansion rate more predictable. It also contains no moisture.

At around 600 feet, natural light can still penetrate the water, but plants do not grow. This area is known as the 'disphotic zone', or twilight zone.

Child actress Shirley Temple received 135,000 presents on her 8th birthday, and by the time she was 10 she was a dollar millionaire.