1. If you are struck by lightning, your skin will be heated to 28,000 degrees Centigrade, hotter than the surface of the Sun.

2. If you trace your family tree back 25 generations, you will have 33,554,432 direct ancestors – assuming no incest was involved.

3. The average distance between the stars in the sky is 20 million miles.

4. It would take a modern spaceship 70,000 years to get to the nearest star to earth.

5. An asteroid wiped out every single dinosaur in the world, but not a single species of toad or salamander was affected. No one knows why, nor why the crocodiles and tortoises survived. 6. If you dug a well to the centre of the Earth, and dropped a brick in it, it would take 45 minutes to get to the bottom – 4,000 miles down.

7. Your body sheds 10 billion flakes of skin every day.

8. The Earth weighs 6,500 million million million tons.

9. Honey is the only food consumed by humans that doesn’t go off.

10. The Hawaiian alphabet has only 12 letters.

11. A donkey can sink into quicksand but a mule can’t.

12. Every time you sneeze your heart stops a second.

13. There are 22 miles more canals in Birmingham UK than in Venice.

14. Potato crisps were invented by a Mr Crumm.

15. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in their correct order.

16. Eskimoes have hundreds of words for snow but none for hello.

17. The word “set” has the most definitions in the English language.

18. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating its letters is uncopyrightable. 19. Windmills always turn counter-clockwise.

20. The “Sixth Sick Sheik’s Sixth Sheep’s Sick” is the hardest tongue-twister. 2

1. The longest English word without a vowel is twyndyllyngs which means "twins".

22. 1 x 8 + 1 = 9; 12 x 8 + 2 = 98; 123 x 8 + 3 = 987; 1234 x 8 + 4 = 9876; 12345 x 8 + 5 = 98765; 123456 x 8 + 6 = 987654; 1234567 x 8 + 7 = 9876543; 12345678 x 8 + 8 = 98765432; 123456789 x 8 + 9 = 987654321

23. The word "dreamt" is the only common word in the English language that ends in "mt".

24. Albert Einstein never wore any socks.

25. The average human will eat 8 spiders while asleep in their lifetime.

26. In space, astronauts cannot cry because there is no gravity.

27. Hummingbirds are the only creatures that can fly backwards.

28. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

29. Cockroaches can live 9 days without their heads before they starve to death.

30. A flamingo can eat only when its head is upside down.

31. The lighter was invented before the match.

32. The average left-handed person lives 7 years LESS than a right-handed person.

33. The average person has over 1,460 dreams a year!

34. Scientists with high-speed cameras have discovered that rain drops are not tear shaped but rather look like hamburger buns.

35. The first Internet domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. 36. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone back in 1876, only six phones were sold in the first month.

37. Approximately 7.5% of all office documents get lost.

38. Business.com is currently the most expensive domain name sold: for $7.5 million.

39. In 2001, the five most valuable brand names in order were Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE, and Nokia.

40. In Canada, the most productive day of the working week is Tuesday.

41. In a study by the University of Chicago in 1907, it was concluded that the easiest colour to spot is yellow. This is why John Hertz, who is the founder of the Yellow Cab Company picked cabs to be yellow.

42. It takes about 63,000 trees to make the newsprint for the average Sunday edition of The New York Times.

43. On average a business document is copied 19 times.

44. The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway system in India, employing over 1.6 million people.

45. Warner Chappel Music owns the copyright to the song "Happy Birthday." They make over $1 million in royalties every year from the commercial use of the song.

46. All babies are colour-blind when they are born.

47. Children grow faster in the springtime than any other season during the year.

48. Each nostril of a human being registers smells in a different way. Smells that are made from the right nostril are more pleasant than the left. However, smells can be detected more accurately when made by the left nostril.

49. Humans are born with 350 bones in their body, however when a person reaches adulthood they only have 206 bones. This occurs because many of them join together to make a single bone.

50. May babies are on average 200 grams heavier than babies born in other months.

51. Leonardo da Vinci was dyslexic, and he often wrote backwards.

52. Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had only one testicle.

53. Queen Lydia Liliuokalani was the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian Islands. She was also the only Queen the United States ever had.

54. Rolling Stones band member Bill Wyman married a 19 year-old model Mandy Smith in 1988. At the same time Wyman's son was engaged to Mandy Smith's mother. If his son had married Smith's mother, Wyman would have been the step grandfather to his own wife.

55. There are 158 verses in the Greek National Anthem.

56. There are about 6,800 languages in the world.
57. There was no punctuation until the 15th century.

58. Children laugh about 400 times a day, while adults laugh on average only 15 times a day. 59. The coconut is the largest seed in the world.

60. There is cyanide in apple pips.

61. If you were to take 1 lb. of spiders web and stretch it out it would circle the whole way around the world!

62. If every person in China stood on a chair and jumped off at the same time...it would knock the earth off its axis!

63. A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long in just one night!

64. The shortest war on record, between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896, lasted just 38 minutes. 65. The Shell Oil Company originally began as a novelty shop in London that sold seashells. 66. The symbols + (addition) and – (subtraction) came into general use in 1489.

67. If you save one penny and double it every successive day, (day two you have 2 pennies and day three you have 4 pennies, and so on), by the end of 30 days you’ll have $5,368,708! (or £’s or whatever currency).

68. It is not possible to tickle yourself. The cerebellum, a part of the brain, warns the rest of the brain that you are about to tickle yourself. Since your brain knows this, it ignores the resulting sensation.

69. The best time for a person to buy shoes is in the afternoon. This is because the foot tends to swell a bit around this time.

70. The typical lead pencil can draw a line that is thirty-five miles long.

71. Due to precipitation, for a few weeks, K2 is taller than Mt. Everest.

72. Astronauts get taller when they are in space.

73. There are over one hundred billion galaxies with each galaxy having billions of stars.

74. The surface area of the lungs is roughly the same size as a tennis court.

75. A dog can hear sounds that are 100 times fainter than the faintest sounds that a person can hear. If a person can just hear a noise that is coming from 10 feet away, a dog could hear that same noise from 100 feet away.

76. If a sole (a type of fish) lays upon a chessboard it can change the colouring of its body to match the pattern of the chess board. The sole takes about 4 minutes to make the change.

77. Of all the animals on earth the mosquito has contributed to the deaths of more people than any other animal.

THE OLD year is drawing to a close.

We are now sufficiently detached from Christmas with its feverish mood and its outburst of feeling to enable us to look forward with leisure to the new year.

The marking of time thus exerts an undeniably wholesome influence. Always, the meeting of two years is an occasion for contemplation-reminiscent, thoughtful, eagerly anticipative. We come, as it were, to a needed pause in the precipitate rush of our journey. We take time for a brief interlude of reckoning. We stop, we look about, and attempt to locate ourselves in the eternity of time and space through which we are hurrying.

Memory comes heavily laden. The old year we are about to lose suddenly becomes near and dear to us. We reconstruct scenes, we recreate feeling, we relive passion. The hours of happiness, the delights of success, the dear inconsequential felicities come thronging in and, holding them close, we peer apprehensively into the new unknown.

But inevitably in their wake comes the vaster, sadder throng-the lost dreams and the forgotten illusions, the fierce pains and the quiet tears. And we think of the new year wishing intensely, deeply, that it will be kinder. In our heart, without our knowing, the name of a new hope has arisen

The message of a new year is always heartening. To most of us, it is one of bountiful promise and beauteous renewal. We dream, we envision glory with unreasoning enthusiasm. The spirits are high. We harken to the promise of a rich fulfillment.

To others, it is true, the new year will bear a sadder gift; happily, the human mind cannot comprehend sorrow until it is come. Even to those among us who have been severely bruised by bitterness and pain, however, the new year carries a message of healing and restoration. Time is forever a balm to the wounded and a sanctuary for the sorrowful.

It may be then that we shall have only the same great sun and the unfathomed reaches of stars above us, that we shall still look into the same unchanging rivers winding their way to the immemorial sea. It may be that the new year will bring us neither the supreme glory of great heights, nor the nameless ignominy of infinite depths. Perhaps, its gift will be only this eternal pageant of the seasons, this strange mingling of laughter and tears, this little stock of duties done and suffering borne. But even these we can look forward to with rejoicing, heeding what Oscar Wilde once so beautifully said that "he who can look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realize something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to God's secret as any one can get".

CHRISTMAS, presaged by the cool December dawns, the early falling shadows and the long chilly nights, is with us again. In the wan light, the city, so joyously alive, takes on added charm. The chop windows are at their best, colorful with wreaths and tinsel and holly. Then there are the Christmas trees, richly laden, beautifully trimmed. Even the dingy shop around the corner is gay with its paper bunting and streamers.

 All day there is an endless stream of traffic through which the crowds, happy-faced and eager-eyed, make their way. At night the great white roadways are ablaze; row upon row of bright city lights and picturesque lanterns-ruby red, turquoise blue, emerald green. Homes are in festal mood, spotlessly clean, donning new and attractive draperies, with little Christmas touches here and there-green wreaths with bright red bows of branches of holly with blood red berries.

But best of all, I know that Christmas is here because there is a contagious surge of gaiety and enthusiasm, there is a winning undercurrent of friendiness, there is an irresistible wave of generosity. Faces so often coldly reserved in cities are frankly gay. There is a greater warmth to the handclasp; even the very familiar "Merry Christmas" assumes new meaning and sincerity. It is as if mankind momentarily has slackened its pace, discarded for the time being it unthinking rush for the creaturethings of life, forgot awhile its pain and desolation, to celebrate a universal holiday.

Because Christmas is so very happy, it partakes of poignance. Man is never sadder than when he is happiest, and so as we gather around the festive board of home, we glance at the vacant chairs and remember. Memory is never keener than at such moments. We think of the vaniched companions with whom we had spent the day in the long ago. Out of the receding horizon of the past, we recreate feeling and revive associations. But Christmas is neither an orgy nor mere effervescent sentimentality.

It is a beautiful season, Christmas is, when we rise above the pettiness of our own being, to attune ourselves to the universality of its appeal. It is strange how Christmas has survived the commercialism to which it has been subjected and triumphed over the frantic rush for wordly considerations, even over the bitterness which follows frustration and disappointment. Each year it has risen above its fetters, a true season when people all over the world join hands and make merry. Herein lies the beauty of Christmas, not in a lone gathering however lavish or mirthful, but in the long chain of such gatherings uniting men of all climes into brotherhood, into a unity of feeling. Nor does it stop here. In the consciousness of other generations that have kept the day, we establish a link which defies the isolation of time as well as of place. And we realize how large the house of life really is and how hospitable.

And sometimes we wonder at the reason for so widespread an appeal. It cannot be that human suffering and sorrow and misery are gone. Rather, it must be because joy and enthusiasmand goodwill are contagious. The hearty greetings, the sincere word, the honest good will strike responsive chords in our innerselves and unknowingly we are swept from our guarded reserve and are carried off in the genial flow of kindred feelings. Then, too, despite the apparent unbelief of the wordly wise, the growing skepticism of the learned and the much vaunted irreligiousness of today, Christmas, taking root in the Christian feast of the Nativity, has never been completely divested of its religious significance.

The oft-told story has not loosened its hold on the mindes and hearts of all people. Over and over we hear with rapt wonder of that night long ages past, when to the shepherds of the Judean hills, the Angel of the Lord brought tidings of great joy, for the Christ Child was born. Far above the trees in the east, a livid spark flashing rays of crimson and saffron spiralled upwards and rounded itself into a lustrous star. Through the blue stillness of the long night, it led the Wise Men. And they came upon the young Virgin Mother and the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger. In the blinding radiance, they fell upon their knees and worshipped and offered their gifts of gold and frankincence and myrrh, for they had found the King. And so the story goes on from year to year. Neither has the passing of timereally changed man's attitude of awe and reverence. Whether we acknowledged it or not, we read and echo the thoughts:

 Faith or fancy-call it what you will-

The stars of Christmas guide me to HIM still.