Facts About Don Juan Pond - strangefacts

• Don Juan Pond, the hypersaline lake in western Antarctica which has even greater salinity than the Dead Sea

• With a salinity of over 40%, Don Juan Pond is the saltiest body of water in the world

• It is named after the two pilots who first investigated the pond in 1961, Lt Don Roe and Lt John Hickey

• It is a small lake, only 100m by 300m, and on average 0.1m deep, but it is so salty that even in the Antarctic, where the temperature at the pond regularly drops to as low as -30 degrees Celsius, it never freezes

• It is 18 times saltier than sea water, compared to the Dead Sea which is only 8 times saltier than sea water

• At its saltiest, Don Juan Pond contains 671 parts per thousand salt, compared to 35 and 300 for the ocean and the Dead Sea respectively

• A beautiful salty pool in Antarctica's Dry Valleys is teaching scientists about the potential for life in brine pools on ancient Mars

• The study also reveals a previously unreported mechanism for producing an important greenhouse gas - nitrous oxide - in Antarctic habitats

• Research at Antarctica's 'Mars on Earth' reveals non-organic mechanism for production of important greenhouse gas

• Possibly even more important, the discovery could help space scientists understand the meaning of similar brine pools in a place whose ecosystem most closely resembles that of Don Juan Pond

Facts About John James Audubon - strangefacts

• John James Audubon from 1785 to1851 was an American Woodsman

• John James Audubon was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America (Alexander Wilson has that distinction), but for half a century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist

• His seminal Birds of America, a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed Wilson’s work and is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists, such as Roger Tory Peterson and David Sibley, are measured

• Although Audubon had no role in the organization that bears his name, there is a connection: George Bird Grinnell, one of the founders of the early Audubon Society in the late 1800s, was tutored by Lucy Audubon, John James’s widow

• Knowing Audubon’s reputation, Grinnell chose his name as the inspiration for the organization’s earliest work to protect birds and their habitats

• Today, the name Audubon remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world over

• John James Audubon was enrolled in the French Naval Academy at he age of 14

• He was also a limner (traveling portrait artist), dance instructor, clerk and taxidermist

• In 1819 he was briefly jailed for failing to pay his debts

• Audubon was born in Saint Domingue (now Haiti), the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and plantation owner and his French mistress. Early on, he was raised by his stepmother, Mrs. Audubon, in Nantes, France, and took a lively interest in birds, nature, drawing, and music

• In 1803, at the age of 18, he was sent to America, in part to escape conscription into the Emperor Napoleon’s army. He lived on the family-owned estate at Mill Grove, near Philadelphia, where he hunted, studied and drew birds, and met his wife, Lucy Bakewell

Facts About Rotorua - strangefacts

• A city founded in the early 1870s and named after Lake Rotorua whose Maori name means ‘Second Lake’ from roto ‘lake’ and rua ‘two’ or ‘second’

• It is said that it was so named by a traveller as he went along the Kaituna River; the first was Lake Rotoiti ‘Small Lake’. However, this may be a convenient invention to justify claims to the area by the local tribe

• The city of Rotorua, about 30 miles (48 km) inland on the Volcanic Plateau, is noted for the geysers, fumaroles, boiling mud, and warm mineral bathing pools in its vicinity

• Rotorua sits squarely on the Pacific Ring of Fire, so volcanic activity is part of the city’s past and present

• The city is also the tribal home of the Te Arawa people, who settled in lakeside geothermal areas more than 600 years ago

• Entertaining in any weather, and at any time of the year, Rotorua promises to keep you captivated with geothermal phenomena and special cultural experiences

• Geysers, boiling mud pools, marae stays, hangi feasts, an authentic pre-European Maori village and indulgent spa therapies will provide plenty of content for your emails home

• Rotorua also has a well-developed adventure culture – everything from sky diving to zorbing

• Functional facts: Approx. population 76,000, i-SITE Visitor Centre, domestic airport

• Rotorua is a city on the southern shores of the lake of the same name, in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island of New Zealand

• The city is known for its geothermal activity, with a number of geysers, notably the Pohutu Geyser at Whakarewarewa, and boiling mud pools (pictured above) located in the city

Facts About Socotra - strangefacts

• Measuring 1,200 square miles, Socotra (also Suqutra) Island is located in the Arabian Sea, about 500 miles from Aden and less than 200 miles from Somalia

• The sparsely populated island has a mountainous interior and most of its population engages in farming or fishing; the most striking feature of this isolated place is its biodiversity and the great number of unique flora and fauna

• The ruler of the Mahra Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra resided there under British rule during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

• The island became a part of South Yemen in 1967 and, with Yemeni unification in 1990, it became a part of the Republic of Yemen (ROY)

• Given its location near the sea lanes, Socotra was long thought to be of strategic value by Western imperial powers

• During the latter half of the Cold War, South Yemen allowed the Soviet Union to maintain a submarine base and other military facilities there; Russia continues to maintain a modest naval presence

• During the late 1990s there were rumors about a deal between the United States and the ROY over military facilities on the island, but the complicated, if not strained, relations between the two countries, beginning with the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Aden in 2000, squelched this talk

• The considerable activities regarding Socotra now focus on its development as a tourist destination featuring and protecting its unique biodiversity

• Socotra has been described as one of the most alien-looking place on Earth, and it’s not hard to see why

• It is very isolated with a harsh, dry climate and as a result a third of its plant-life is found nowhere else, including the famous Dragon’s Blood Tree, a very-unnatural looking umbrella-shaped tree which produces red sap

Facts About The Great Dune of Pyla - strangefacts

• Largest sand dune in Europe is the great dune of Pyla

• Size of sand dune of Pyla is about 60,000,000 cubic meters

• It measures 1,640 feet (500 m) wide and 1.86 miles (3 km long), with the height ranging from 328 to 383.8 feet (100 to 117 m) above sea level

• The Dune of Pilat is also known as the Great Dune of Pyla

• It is located in the La Teste-de-Buch of the Arcachon Bay area

• At 60Km from Bordeaux, in the South of the Arcachon Bay, it is possible to visit the highest dune in Europe, the Great Dune of Pyla (or Pilat)

• This hight of dune of Pyla reaches upto a height of 107m

• At this summit, the view is spectacular with the ocean coast, the inlet of the Bay, the large pine forest and, when the sky is very clear, the Pyrenees Range

• This Great Dune is constituted of fine sand which the siliceous grains have about the same size

• Since about ten years, this area is also became a point of start to the lover of delta planes

• The Great Dune of Pyla is located on the “La Teste de Buch” district (Gironde) and it is a national listed landscape

• Since Europe has no deserts, you’d think the title of “Europe’s largest sand dune” would go to something that wasn’t particularly impressive. But you’d be wrong

Facts About Earth Day - strangefacts

• Annually, April 22 is a day set aside to honor the Earth. But every day is Earth Day, and some of the things that will happen 365 times in a year are listed below

• In 1969, Nelson, considered one of the leaders of the modern environmental movement, developed the idea for Earth Day after being inspired by the anti-Vietnam War "teach-ins" that were taking place on college campuses around the United States

• According to Nelson, he envisioned a large-scale, grassroots environmental demonstration "to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda."

• Nelson announced the Earth Day concept at a conference in Seattle in the fall of 1969 and invited the entire nation to get involved

• A highlight of the United Nations' Earth Day celebration in New York City is the ringing of the Peace Bell, a gift from Japan, at the exact moment of the vernal equinox

• Earth Day Networks estimates that 500 million people from 4,500 organizations in 180 countries will participate in Earth Day events during the month of April

• Earth Day is big with schools. On many school calendars, it is the third most activity-inspiring holiday, after Christmas and Halloween

• Companies have even gotten into Earth Day. Last year, office supply store Staples introduced office paper made entirely without new trees

• As part of the celebration, some communities make Earth Day a "Car-Free Day"

• Earth will travel 1.6 million miles in its annual journey around the Sun, the 4.6-billionth such round-trip. It will rotate about its axis exactly once

Facts About Meteor Crater - strangefacts

• Meteor Crater is a meteorite impact crater located approximately 43 miles (69 km) east of Flagstaff, near Winslow in the northern Arizona desert of the United States

• Because the US Department of the Interior Division of Names commonly recognizes names of natural features derived from the nearest post office, the feature acquired the name of “Meteor Crater” from the nearby post office named Meteor

• Middlesboro is the only city in the United States built within a meteor crater

• The crater was created about 50,000 years ago during the Pleistocene epoch when the local climate on the Colorado Plateau was much cooler and damper

• At the time, the area was an open grassland dotted with woodlands inhabited by woolly mammoths, giant ground sloths, and camels

• It was probably not inhabited by humans; the earliest confirmed record of human habitation in the Americas dates from long after this impact

• The object that excavated the crater was a nickel-iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which impacted the plain at a speed of several kilometers per second

• Meteor Crater was originally thought to be a volcanic crater, since there were other volcanic craters, including the still-active Sunset Crater, in the region

• However, in the 1890s, mineralogists discovered iron fragments in the crater. This led geologists to suggest that the crater was caused by a meteor crash

• Daniel Barringer (1860-1929), a Philadelphia mining engineer who explored the site in 1903, was convinced the meteorite was buried beneath the crater. He purchased the land and, in 1906, began drilling