Which is the oldest civilization?

The Sumerian civilization is the oldest civilization known to mankind. The term ‘Sumer’ is today used to designate southern Mesopotamia. In 3000 BC, a flourishing urban civilization existed. The Sumerian civilization was predominantly agricultural and had community life. The Sumerians were adept at building canals and in irrigation. Excavated objects such as pottery, jewellery and weapons show they were also skilled in the use of metals like copper, gold and silver and had developed artistry and technological knowledge. China is the oldest surviving civilization.

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Which is the biggest missile test centre in the world?

Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR) is the world's largest, land-based rocket range. It has a chain of downrange flight monitoring, observing and recovery stations from inland Alaska to Spitzbergen in the Arctic Ocean.

Poker Flat is a sounding rocket launch facility 30 miles northeast of Fairbanks used for auroral and middle to upper atmospheric research. It's operated by the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

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What is a surgical strike?

A surgical strike is an attack using missiles, bombers or on the ground against certain specific targets. The strike is planned with surgical precision so they cause damage only to the planned targets and cause minimum damage to their surroundings. These attacks are usually carried out against terrorist camps, training grounds, or facilities such as power stations, armouries, etc. The strikes are without any warning and are carried out at dawn with an element of surprise.

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What does Burundanga mean?

Burundanga is the other name of the drug ‘Scopolamine’, used for criminal activities like rape or to rob innocent victims. The drug is passed on to the victim through business cards, pamphlets, etc. Even if the skin, through touch, absorbs just a very small quantity of the drug it has the desired effect. The drug is also administered through tablets added to drinks. This is known as the ‘dating drug’.

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What is passive immunity?

There are two types of immunity for infectious microorganisms: active immunity and passive immunity. Passive immunity is provided by artificial means such as injections of antibodies and vaccines. The agents used for passive immunity include antibodies from humans or animals.

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How are sunrise and sunset determined for a place?

Sunset occurs when the upper edge of the sun — called the upper limb — sinks just under the horizon; sunrise occurs when the upper limb rises just above the horizon.

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Why are mosquitoes attracted to the color black?

Mosquitoes are attracted to dark colors, not only black, because dark colors absorb heat and lighter colors tend to reflect. Since mosquitoes have sophisticated and highly sensitive heat sensors, they tend to be more attracted to victims dressed in darker clothes, where there is more heat.

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What is a Black Forest dress?

Black Forest or Schwarzwald is a thickly wooded mountainous region in southwest Germany, extending over 4,600 square miles. Three neighbouring parishes - Gutach, Wolfach-Kirnbach, and Hornberg-Reichenbach of Black Forest - are known for their women's traditional costumes known as the 'Black Forest dress' worn on special occasions. It consists of long skirts with floral designs and the Bollenhut, a wide-brimmed hat decorated with woollen balls or pom-poms. Red pom-poms are worn by unmarried women and black by married ones.

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Who is a stealth shopper?

A stealth shopper is a person who shops secretly to avoid flaunting wealth or to hide expenses from a spouse. It could mean shopping on the net or from catalogues through a friend to avoid being spotted.

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How was the first world map drawn?

The first world map was chiselled on a clay tablet in ancient Babylon in 6 BC. The Greeks in 4 BC had similar maps though they correctly believed that the earth was not flat, but a sphere. The first reasonably accurate world map was drawn by hand on paper by Gerardus Mercator, a Flemish geographer. His first world map was produced in 1538 and improved upon in 1585.

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Fact : Heard of these?

1. The plastice things on the end of the shoelaces are called aglets.
2. The ridges on the sides of coins are called reeding or milling.
3. Ballistics is the science that deals with the motion of projectiles like bullets for example.
4. Cannibalism, or the practice of eating human flesh, is also called anthropophagy.
5. A single grass plant can have over 100 km of roots. The roots make up a dense mat close to the surface, which helps to keep the grassland soil in place. If the grass plants are removed, the soil quickly dries out and is easily blown away.
6. You can give in comment. I will add
7. You can give in comment. I will add

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Fact : Fantastic Facts

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1. Carrot is the vegetable with best narutal balance of both minerals and vitamins. Twelve of the body's vital mineral salts are found in perfect balance in the fresh carrot.
2. Egales can live in captivity for upto 46 years.
3. Crocodiles which are seen in the Shari river in Africa have stripes like Zebras.
4. The smallest penguin is the fairy penguin which is only 40 cm tall.
5. The giraffe can survive in waterless tracts for as along as 7 to 9 months.

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Fact : Nasty Facts

1. Every year, parks in London alone are doused in one million gallons of dog urine.
2. The germs present in human faeces can pass through ten layers of toilet paper.
3. If your body's natural defenses failed, the bacteria in your gut would consume you within 48 hours, literally eating you from insides out.
4. Parasites count for 0.01% of your body weight.
5. The longest recorded tapeworm found in the human body was 33 meters in length.
6. A Woman who had visited a South American rain forest, Began to experience serve pains in her left ear, accompanied by headaches, dizziness and constant rusting sounds, at first put down to tinnits. It became so serious that exploratory surgery was required, which revealed a spider trapped in her ear. Eventually it has eaten through he eardrum and was living within the aural caity. The rustling sounds were the spider crawing around inside her skull. An egg sac was also removed.

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What is the Superman seat-grab?

In freestyle motocross, when the rider is in the air, it is termed 'Big Air'. Superman seat-grab is considered a regular trick in which, when the rider is in the air (18 m is the minimum suitable height for performing this trick), puts one hand on the handle bar and other grabs the seat of the bike, and extends the lower body up in the air. A few riders keep their legs closed, others curve and open them slightly in the air. It is not to be confused with the 'Hart-attack' technique, which is slightly different.

 
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If the density of gold is more than that of iron, why is gold softer than iron?

The softness of a metal is its ability to undergo permanent deformation under applied stress. All metals have specific crystalline structures. Each structure has its own densely packed crystalline planes. There exist line defects and plane defects in a crystal system. Such defects are more in densely packed crystal systems, i.e., metallic crystals with higher density, and result in a number of slip planes, which can easily deform under a little stress. Noble metals like platinum, gold and silver have extra slip planes called twinning. Iron and most of its alloys have very rigid and open packed crystal structures and are difficult to deform.

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Why are viruses at the borderline of living and non-living things?

A virus has a very simple composition. It has a protein sheath inside which there is a strand of DNA. A virus shows some properties akin to living organisms. However, unlike other organisms, they show some properties that are akin to non-living things. They can undergo crystallization and in that form, survive for billions of years. They can survive very high temperatures, freezing cold and ultra-violet radiation in space vacuum, in crystallized form.

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Fact:Fun Facts

1. Cockroaches have remained unchanged on the earth for about 2,50,000,000 years.
2. There are 6984 railway stations in India.
3. Man is the only animal that can sleep on his back.

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World's largest swimming pool?

The world's largest swimming pool is in San Alfonso del Mar in Algarrobo, Chile. This man made wonder is eight hectares in size and contains an incredible 250,000 cubic meters of water and its deepest end reaches 115ft. It has been acknowledged by Guinness World Records for world's largest swimming pool.

The San Alfonso del Mar resort is situated on Chile’s southern coast, 100 km west of Santiago. This artificial lagoon, cost an estimated $US1.5 billion ($1.74 billion) to build.

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What is the Peking Opera?

The Peking Opera, which originated in the late 18th century, is a synthesis of music, dance, art and acrobatics. It is the most influential of all operas in China, and can be divided into 'civil' pieces characterized by singing, and 'martial' ones featuring acrobatics and stunts. Some operas are a combination of both. The operatic dialogues and monologues are recited in the Beijing dialect.

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What is Jeu de Paume?

Jeu de Paume is also called ‘real tennis’ or ‘court tennis’. It is the precursor of modern tennis and was a rage in Renaissance Europe. Jeu de Paume traces its history to the 11th century when French monks played the sport using their bare hands to volley cloth bags of hair or cork. Translated, it means ‘Game of palm’. It was played on an indoor court with angled walls and netted windows and involved smacking the ball. It was regarded by the upper classes as a provincial pastime initially.

In time, young nobles educated in monasteries brought the game to palaces and urban areas. By the early 1500s, the game embraced battoir (racquets) and introduced a cord (later a net) to separate players into two halves of the court, to take shape as modern tennis. Though men dominated the sport, the most celebrated player of the 15th century was Margot of Hainault, who defeated some of the best men in the game in 1427 in Paris.

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