Fantasy of Knowledge

, Most birds don’t fly very high – usually under 3,000 feet – as they go about their business of looking for food and building nests. But some birds fly very high while they’re traveling to or from their winter homes. Geese are the highest-flying birds of all. Those in the Himalayas Mountains in Asia fly at heights of over 29,000 feet above the earth! Almost all birds have keen vision, and birds of prey have the keenest vision of all. These birds cruise through the air looking for worms, small animals, or other birds on the ground, and must be able to see tiny creatures far below them. Of all birds of prey, the eagle probably has the best vision, with the ability to see a rabbit from two miles away. One eagle was even seen diving for a fish it spotted underwater from three miles away! Even though the eagle’s eyes are on the side of its head, it can see straight ahead!

Hi dude. Hope you all fine. At this moment I like to tell you something about the interesting fact of snakes. When a chicken or any other bird lays an egg, the egg stays the same size (even though the bird inside is growing) until it’s ready to hatch. But a snake egg grows along with the developing unborn snake inside it. The shell of a snake egg is not hard like a bird’s egg; it is soft and leathery, so it can grow and stretch as the hatched as they were when they were laid! There is a reptile called the flying snake lives in trees, and when danger threatens, it can flatten its body and leap from the tree, gliding to another tree or to the ground. The snake’s flattened body acts like a parachute, so that as it glides through the air, it does look like its ‘flying’.

you probably think of all dinosaurs as huge creatures. But dinosaurs actually existed in a great variety of sizes. Most were from 25 to 35 feet long, and weighed from five to ten tons. Some were the size of a rhinoceros, and a few early forms were no bigger than a chicken. One winged dinosaur was the size of a sparrow! The biggest dinosaurs included the Tyrannosaurus, a meat-eater that stood up to 20 feet tall and weighed about 8 tons; the Brontosaurus, over 65 feet long and weighing 35 tons; and the more slender diplodocus, which grew to 85 feet long but weighed less than 25 tons. Because most dinosaurs were so huge, we think of them as vicious meat-eaters roaming the earth in search of prey. Actually, most dinosaurs were completely harmless to other creatures. Only one dinosaur in 20 was a meat-eater. The rest were vegetarians, eating only plants that they scooped up from swampy water. Some giant dinosaurs didn’t even have teeth! The largest of all dinosaurs, the Brachiosaurus, was a vegetarian!

During the 16th century, silver coins made in St.joachimsthal, a town in bohemia – a part of Czechoslovakia, were thought to contain the purest silver. This prized coin became known as the joachimsthaler, a word that was shorted to thaler. In some places in Europe, the word became daler. This was the name of certain Spanish coins that were used in America before the revolution. In 1785, when the United States Congress decided to start issuing money, they chose that word, now spelled dollar, for the unit of currency. During the middle ages, most people in Europe used silver coins. The English used silver pennies; each weighed 1/240 of a pound, and was called sterling. The basic unit of money in England became the pound of silver, which was equal to 240 sterling’s. So this unit was and still is called the pound sterling. The word lira that is used for the basic unit of money in Italy also means ‘pound’. The word franc became the name of the money unit in France, because during the 14th century, coins issued there bore the Latin words Franco rum Rex, ‘king of the French’.

The small scarlet, white, or purple flowers of the plant called the scarlet pimpernel can give you a better weather prediction than the radio or TV weatherman. If you are in the woods in the morning and you see the flowers on this herb close up, you will know that rain or cloudy weather is coming. If, however, the petals are opened up, the day will be sunny and fair. Because of its unusual powers, the scarlet pimpernel has been nicknamed ‘the poor man’s weatherglasses. Bamboo is the world’s tallest grass. It grows in tropical areas. Even though these woody poles are so tall and so hard, they are actually in the same family as the grass we see every day. Some bamboo grows at an unbelievable rate of speed, two feet in just one day! In addition to being used as fishing poles, bamboo is used for ships’ masts, furniture, paper, and construction material for homes. Its shoots are a popular dish in Chinese restaurants. One type of bamboo has been found growing 100 feet tall!

English alphabets, called the Roman alphabet, was based on the older Greek alphabet. In Greek, the letter z is the sixth letter. But when the Romans borrowed the Greek letters to form their own alphabet, they didn’t need the z, because they didn’t have a z sound in their language. Later, many Greek words came into use in the Latin language. So the Romans brought back the z in order to write Greek words, and put the z at the end of their alphabet. The oldest letter in English alphabet is o, which has existed in its present form for more than 3,000 years!
The alphabets we use today, the Roman, had only capital letters for many centuries after it came into use in ancient Rome. But those big, angular letters were not good for writing quickly with a pen. So by the 4th century, scribes had developed another set of letters, called uncials, that were smaller and more rounded, and were therefore easier to write than the earlier capitals. But these smaller letters were used instead of the capitals, not along with them. Then later came a combination of both these styles.

The FIFA World cup is also called the Football World Cup or simply the World Cup. It is an international football competition organized by the FIFA or the international federation of football associations. In this competition, the men’s national teams of FIFA take part. The championship has been organized every four years since the first tournament in 1930, except in 1942 and 1946, due to World War II.
The tournament has two parts – the qualification phase and the final phase. The current format of the Finals involves 32 teams competing for the title, at venues within the host nation (or nations) over a period of about a month. The FIFA World Cup is the most famous sporting event in the world.
In the eighteen tournaments held, only seven nations have won the title. Brazil is the most successful World Cup team, having won the tournament five times. The most recent World Cup was held in Germany, where Italy was crowned champion after beating France in the final. The next FIFA World Cup will be held in South Africa, from June 11, 2010 TO July 11, 2010, and the 2014 World Cup will be held in Brazil.

FIBA Euro Cup is men’s basketball competition. It is organized by FIBA Europe. The competition was created in 2003 following the defection of several top European basketball teams from the former European Champions cup.
FIFA Women’s World Cup
The FIFA Women’s World Cup is the most famous international competition in women’s football. It is played among women’s national football teams of the members of FIFA. This tournament is held every four years. When it began, the tournament was known as the women’s world championship.

It was held first time in 1991. The tournament was the brainchild of Joao Havelange, the former FIBA Euro Cup. The inaugural tournament was hosted in China in 1991, with twelve teams sent to represent their countries. The 1995 FIFA Women’s World Cup was held in Sweden with twelve teams. The United States and Germany have won the championship twice and Norway once. Germany will host the 2011 FIFA Women’s women cup.

Fed Cup is an international team competition in women’s tennis. It was started in 1963 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the international tennis federation (ITF). The competition was known as the Federation Cup until 1995. The men’s equivalent of the Fed Cup is the Davis Cup. It was Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman who came up with the concept for a woman’s team competition.
It was in 1919 that she proposed this idea. When this was rejected, she instead presented a trophy in 1923 for an annual contest between the United States and Great Britain, who were at that time the strongest tennis-playing nations. Nell Hopman, wife of the legendary Australian Davis Cup Captain Harry Hopman, later took up Mrs. Wightman’s original idea.
It had taken 40 years for Wightman’s idea of a women’s Davis cup to become a reality. Finally in 1963, the ITF launched the Federation CUP TO Celebrate its 50th anniversary. Open to all nations and not just USA and Great Britain, the much awaited competition became a resounding success

The finals of the cricket world cup are contested by all ten Test-playing and ODI-playing nations, together with other nations that qualify through the world cup qualifier. Australia is the most successful team in the world cup. The team has won the world cup five times. The West Indies have won twice, while India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka have even won once. Indian team under the dynamic leadership of Kapil Dev won the world cup in 1983, June 25. In the final, India defeated the mighty West Indies team.
In 2007, the tournament was hosted by the West Indies. Thus, the cricket world cup became the first such tournament to be hosted on all six populated continents. The Test- playing nations and ODI-playing nations qualify automatically for the world cup. However, the other teams have to qualify through a series of preliminary qualifying tournaments.

The Commonwealth Games is a multinational, multi-sport event. It is held in every four years. The athletes of the Commonwealth of Nations take part in the Games. Almost five thousand athletes take part in these Games. The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) is the organization that is responsible for the direction and control of the Commonwealth Games.
The first Commonwealth Games was conducted in 1930. At that time, it was known as British Empire Games. The first Games British Empire Games was held in Canada. The name changed to British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954, to British Commonwealth Games in 1970 and received the current name of the Commonwealth Games in 1974.
Currently, there are 53 members in the Commonwealth of Nations. 71 teams participate in the Games. Only six teams have attended every Commonwealth Games: Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales.