Amazing Earth Facts

1. What is the hottest place on Earth?

Count one wrong if you guessed Death Valley in California. True enough on many days. But El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 -- the hottest ever measured. In Death Valley, it got up to 134 Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.

2. And the coldest place around here?

Far and away, the coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

3. What makes thunder?

If you thought, "Lightning!" then hats off to you. But I had a more illuminating answer in mind. The air around a lightning bolt is superheated to about five times the temperature of the Sun. This sudden heating causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound, which compresses the air and forms a shock wave; we hear it as thunder.

4. Can rocks float?

In a volcanic eruption, the violent separation of gas from lava produces a "frothy" rock called pumice, loaded with gas bubbles. Some of it can float, geologists say. I've never seen this happen, and I'm thankful for that.

5. Can rocks grow?

Yes, but observing the process is less interesting than watching paint dry. Rocks called iron-manganese crusts grow on mountains under the sea. The crusts precipitate material slowly from seawater, growing about 1 millimeter every million years. Your fingernails grow about the same amount every two weeks.

6. How much space dust falls to Earth each year?

Estimates vary, but the USGS says at least 1,000 million grams, or roughly 1,000 tons of material enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earths surface. One group of scientists claims microbes rain down from space, too, and that extraterrestrial organisms are responsible for flu epidemics. There's been no proof of this, and I'm not holding my breath.

7. How far does regular dust blow in the wind?

A 1999 study showed that African dust finds its way to Florida and can help push parts of the state over the prescribed air quality limit for particulate matter set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The dust is kicked up by high winds in North Africa and carried as high as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), where it's caught up in the trade winds and carried across the sea. Dust from China makes its way to North America, too.

8. Where is the worlds highest waterfall?

The water of Angel Falls in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).

9. What two great American cities are destined to merge?

The San Andreas fault, which runs north-south, is slipping at a rate of about 2 inches (5 centimeters) per year, causing Los Angeles to move towards San Francisco. Scientists forecast LA will be a suburb of the City by the Bay in about 15 million years.

10. Is Earth a sphere?

Because the planet rotates and is more flexible than you might imagine, it bulges at the midsection, creating a sort of pumpkin shape. The bulge was lessening for centuries but now, suddenly, it is growing, a recent study showed. Accelerated melting of Earth's glaciers is taking the blame for the gain in equatorial girth.

11. What would a 100-pound person weigh on Mars?

The gravity on Mars is 38 percent of that found on Earth at sea level. So a 100-pound person on Earth would weigh 38 pounds on Mars. Based on NASA's present plans, it'll be decades before this assumption can be observationally proved, however.

12. How long is a Martian year?

It's a year long, if you're from Mars. To an earthling, it's nearly twice as long. The red planet takes 687 Earth-days to go around the Sun -- compared to 365 days for Earth. Taking into account Mars' different rotational time (see #13 below) calendars on Mars would be about 670 days long with some leap days needed to keep things square. If you find one, please mail it to me. I'm curious how they worked out the months, given they have two moons. [The initial publication of this fact mistakenly said a Mars calendar would have 687 days.]

13. How long is the average Martian day?

A Martian can sleep (or work) and extra half-hour every day compared to you. Mars days are 24 hours and 37 minutes long, compared to 23 hours, 56 minutes on Earth. A day on any planet in our solar system is determined by how long it takes the world to spin once on its axis, making the Sun appear to rise in the morning and sending it down in the evening.

14. What is the largest volcano?

The Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii holds the title here on Earth. It rises more than 50,000 feet (9.5 miles or 15.2 kilometers) above its base, which sits under the surface of the sea. But that's all volcanic chump change. Olympus Mons on Mars rises 16 miles (26 kilometers) into the Martian sky. Its base would almost cover the entire state of Arizona.

Planet building

15. What was the deadliest known earthquake?

The world’s deadliest recorded earthquake occurred in 1557 in central China. It struck a region where most people lived in caves carved from soft rock. The dwellings collapsed, killing an estimated 830,000 people. In 1976 another deadly temblor struck Tangshan, China. More than 250,000 people were killed.

16. What was the strongest earthquake in recent times?

A 1960 Chilean earthquake, which occurred off the coast, had a magnitude of 9.6 and broke a fault more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) long. An earthquake like that under a major city would challenge the best construction techniques.

17. Which earthquake was more catastrophic: Kobe, Japan or Northridge, California?

The 1994 Northridge earthquake had a magnitude of 6.7 was responsible for approximately 60 deaths, 9,000 injuries, and more than $40 billion in damage. The Kobe earthquake of 1995 was magnitude 6.8 and killed 5,530 people. There were some 37,000 injuries and more than $100 billion in economic loss.

18. How far is it to the center of the Earth?

The distance from the surface of Earth to the center is about 3,963 miles (6,378 kilometers). Much of Earth is fluid. The mostly solid skin of the planet is only 41 miles (66 kilometers) thick -- thinner than the skin of an apple, relatively speaking.

19. What is the highest mountain?

Climbers who brave Mt. Everest in the Nepal-Tibet section of the Himalayas reach 29,035 feet (nearly 9 kilometers) above sea level. Its height was revised upward by 7 feet based on measurements made in 1999 using the satellite-based Global Positioning System.

20. Has the Moon always been so close?

It used to be much closer! A billion years ago, the Moon was in a tighter orbit, taking just 20 days to go around us and make a month. A day on Earth back then was only 18 hours long. The Moon is still moving away -- about 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) a year. Meanwhile, Earth's rotation is slowing down, lengthening our days. In the distant future, a day will be 960 hours long!

21. Where is the lowest dry point on Earth?

The shore of the Dead Sea in the Middle East is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) below sea level. Not even a close second is Bad Water in Death Valley, California, at a mere 282 feet below sea level.

22. Good thing California isn't sinking further, right?

Actually parts of it are, which is so interesting that I snuck this non-question onto the list. In a problem repeated elsewhere in the country, the pumping of natural underground water reservoirs in California is causing the ground to sink up to 4 inches (11 centimeters) per year in places. Water and sewage systems may soon be threatened.

23. What is the longest river?

The Nile River in Africa is 4,160 miles (6,695 kilometers) long.

24. What is the most earthquake-prone state in the United States?

Alaska experiences a magnitude 7 earthquake almost every year, and a magnitude 8 or greater earthquake on average every 14 years. Florida and North Dakota get the fewest earthquakes in the states, even fewer than New York.

25. What's the driest place on Earth?

A place called Arica, in Chile, gets just 0.03 inches (0.76 millimeters) of rain per year. At that rate, it would take a century to fill a coffee cup.

26. What causes a landslide?

Intense rainfall over a short period of time can trigger shallow, fast-moving mud and debris flows. Slow, steady rainfall over a long period of time may trigger deeper, slow-moving landslides. Different materials behave differently, too. Every year as much as $2 billion in landslide damage occurs in the United States. In a record-breaking storm in the San Francisco area in January 1982, some 18,000 debris flows were triggered during a single night! Property damage was over $66 million, and 25 people died.

27. How fast can mud flow?

Debris flows are like mud avalanches that can move at speeds in excess of 100 mph (160 kph).

28. Do things inside Earth flow?

You bet. In fact, scientists found in 1999 that molten material in and around Earth's core moves in vortices, swirling pockets whose dynamics are similar to tornadoes and hurricanes. And as you'll learn later in this list, the planet's core moves in other strange ways, too.

29. What is the wettest place on Earth?

Lloro, Colombia averages 523.6 inches of rainfall a year, or more than 40 feet (13 meters). That's about 10 times more than fairly wet major cities in Europe or the United States.

30. Does Earth go through phases, like the Moon?

From Mars, Earth would be seen to go through distinct phases (just as we see Venus change phases). Earth is inside the orbit of Mars, and as the two planets travel around the Sun, sunlight would strike our home planet from different angles during the year. Earth phases can be seen in recent photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor and the European Mars Express.

Source from : http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/101_earth_facts_030722-3.html

Sixty Amazing-but-True Facts!

• In the weightlessness of space a frozen pea will explode if it comes in contact with Pepsi.
  
• The increased electricity used by modern appliances is causing a shift in the Earth's magnetic field. By the year 2327, the North Pole will be located in mid-Kansas, while the South Pole will be just off the coast of East Africa.
• The idea for "tribbles" in "Star Trek" came from gerbils, since some gerbils are actually born pregnant.
• Male rhesus monkeys often hang from tree branches by their amazing prehensile penises.
• Johnny Plessey batted .331 for the Cleveland Spiders in 1891, even though he spent the entire season batting with a rolled-up, lacquered copy of the Toledo Post-Dispatch.
• Smearing a small amount of dog feces on an insect bite will relieve the itching and swelling.
• The Boeing 747 is capable of flying upside-down if it weren't for the fact that the wings would shear off when trying to roll it over.
• The trucking company Elvis Presley worked at as a young man was owned by Frank Sinatra.
• The only golf course on the island of Tonga has 15 holes, and there's no penalty if a monkey steals your golf ball.
• Legislation passed during WWI making it illegal to say "gesundheit" to a sneezer was never repealed.
• Manatees possess vocal chords which give them the ability to speak like humans, but don't do so because they have no ears with which to hear the sound.
• SCUBA divers cannot pass gas at depths of 33 feet or below.
• Catfish are the only animals that naturally have an ODD number of whiskers.
• Replying more than 100 times to the same piece of spam e-mail will overwhelm the sender's system and interfere with their ability to send any more spam.
• Polar bears can eat as many as 86 penguins in a single sitting.
• The first McDonald's restaurant opened for business in 1952 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and featured the McHaggis sandwich.
• The Air Force's F-117 fighter uses aerodynamics discovered during research into how bumblebees fly.
• You *can* get blood from a stone, but only if contains at least 17 percent bauxite.
• Silly Putty was "discovered" as the residue left behind after the first latex condoms were produced. It's not widely publicized for obvious reasons.
• Approximately one-sixth of your life is spent on Wednesdays.
• The skin needed for elbow transplants must be taken from the scrotum of a cadaver.
• The sport of jai alai originated from a game played by Incan priests who held cats by their tails and swung at leather balls. The cats would instinctively grab at the ball with their claws, thus enabling players to catch them.
• A cat's purr has the same romance-enhancing frequency as the voice of singer Barry White.
• The typewriter was invented by Hungarian immigrant Qwert Yuiop, who left his "signature" on the keyboard.
• The volume of water that the Giant Sequoia tree consumes in a 24-hour period contains enough suspended minerals to pave 17.3 feet of a 4-lane concrete freeway.
• King Henry VIII slept with a gigantic axe.
• Because printed materials are being replaced by CD-ROM, microfiche and the Internet, libraries that previously sank into their foundations under the weight of their books are now in danger of collapsing in extremely high winds.
• In 1843, a Parisian street mime got stuck in his imaginary box and consequently died of starvation.
• Touch-tone telephone keypads were originally planned to have buttons for Police and Fire Departments, but they were replaced with * and # when the project was cancelled in favor of developing the 911 system.
• Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.
• Calvin, of the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, was patterned after President Calvin Coolidge, who had a pet tiger as a boy.
• Watching an hour-long soap opera burns more calories than watching a three-hour baseball game.
• Until 1978, Camel cigarettes contained minute particles of real camels.
• You can actually sharpen the blades on a pencil sharpener by wrapping your pencils in aluminum foil before inserting them.
• To human taste buds, Zima is virtually indistinguishable from zebra urine.
• Seven out of every ten hockey-playing Canadians will lose a tooth during a game. For Canadians who don't play hockey, that figure drops to five out of ten.
• A dog's naked behind leaves absolutely no bacteria when pressed against carpet.
• A team of University of Virginia researchers released a study promoting the practice of picking one's nose, claiming that the health benefits of keeping nasal passages free from infectious blockages far outweigh the negative social connotations.
• Among items left behind at Osama bin Laden's headquarters in Afghanistan were 27 issues of Mad Magazine. Al Qaeda members have admitted that bin Laden is reportedly an avid reader.
• Urine from male cape water buffaloes is so flammable that some tribes use it for lantern fuel.
• At the first World Cup championship in Uruguay, 1930, the soccer balls were actually monkey skulls wrapped in paper and leather.
• Every Labrador retriever dreams about bananas.
• If you put a bee in a film canister for two hours, it will go blind and leave behind its weight in honey.
• Due to the angle at which the optic nerve enters the brain, staring at a blue surface during sex greatly increases the intensity of orgasms.
• Never hold your nose and cover your mouth when sneezing, as it can blow out your eyeballs.
• Centuries ago, purchasing real estate often required having one or more limbs amputated in order to prevent the purchaser from running away to avoid repayment of the loan. Hence an expensive purchase was said to cost "an arm and a leg."
• When Mahatma Gandhi died, an autopsy revealed five gold Krugerrands in his small intestine.
• Aardvarks are allergic to radishes, but only during summer months.
• Coca-Cola was the favored drink of Pharaoh Ramses. An inscription found in his tomb, when translated, was found to be almost identical to the recipe used today.
• If you part your hair on the right side, you were born to be carnivorous. If you part it on the left, your physical and psychological make-up is that of a vegetarian.
• When immersed in liquid, a dead sparrow will make a sound like a crying baby.
• In WWII the US military planned to airdrop over France propaganda in the form of Playboy magazine, with coded messages hidden in the models' turn-ons and turn-offs. The plan was scrapped because of a staple shortage due to rationing of metal.
• Although difficult, it's possible to start a fire by rapidly rubbing together two Cool Ranch Doritos.
• Napoleon's favorite type of wood was knotty chestnut.
• The world's smartest pig, owned by a mathematics teacher in Madison, WI, memorized the multiplication tables up to 12.
• Due to the natural "momentum" of the ocean, saltwater fish cannot swim backwards.
• In ancient Greece, children of wealthy families were dipped in olive oil at birth to keep them hairless throughout their lives.
• It is nearly three miles farther to fly from Amarillo, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky than it is to return from Louisville to Amarillo.
• The "nine lives" attributed to cats is probably due to their having nine primary whiskers.
• The original inspiration for Barbie dolls comes from dolls developed by German propagandists in the late 1930s to impress young girls with the ideal notions of Aryan features. The proportions for Barbie were actually based on those of Eva Braun.
• The Venezuelan brown bat can detect and dodge individual raindrops in mid-flight, arriving safely back at his cave completely dry.

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50 THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW

The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed. Beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts, and worms like fried bacon. Of all the words in the English language, the word 'set' has the most definitions! What is called a "French kiss" in the English speaking world is known as an "English kiss" in France. "Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order. "Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel. In 1386, a pig in France was executed by public hanging for the murder of a child A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off! Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath There is a city called Rome on every continent. It's against the law to have a pet dog in Iceland! Your heart beats over 100,000 times a day! Horatio Nelson, one of England's most illustrious admirals was throughout his life, never able to find a cure for his sea-sickness. The skeleton of Jeremy Bentham is present at all important meetings of the University of London Right handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people Your ribs move about 5 million times a year, everytime you breathe! The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump! One quarter of the bones in your body, are in your feet! Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different! The first known transfusion of blood was performed as early as 1667, when Jean-Baptiste, transfused two pints of blood from a sheep to a young man Fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails! Most dust particles in your house are made from dead skin! The present population of 5 billion plus people of the world is predicted to become 15 billion by 2080.

Honey is the only food that does not spoil. Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeologists and found edible. Months that begin on a Sunday will always have a "Friday the 13th." Coca-Cola would be green if colouring weren’t added to it. On average a hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute. More people are killed each year from bees than from snakes. The average lead pencil will draw a line 35 miles long or write approximately 50,000 English words. More people are allergic to cow's milk than any other food. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand. The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times! The six official languages of the United Nations are: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. Earth is the only planet not named after a god. It's against the law to burp, or sneeze in a church in Nebraska, USA. You're born with 300 bones, but by the time you become an adult, you only have 206. Some worms will eat themselves if they can't find any food! Dolphins sleep with one eye open! It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is 9000 years old! The longest recorded flight of a chicken is 13 seconds Queen Elizabeth I regarded herself as a paragon of cleanliness. She declared that she bathed once every three months, whether she needed it or not Slugs have 4 noses. Owls are the only birds who can see the colour blue. A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years! A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue! The average person laughs 10 times a day! An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain Women blink nearly twice as much as men. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, and had only ONE testicle.

Why is a hotdog called a hotdog?

In 1987, Frankfurt, Germany celebrated the 500th birthday of the frankfurter, the hot dog sausage. Although, the people of Vienna (Wien), Austria will point out that their wiener sausages are proof of origin for the hot dog. (By the way, ham, being pork meat, is found in hotdogs.) According to Douglas B. Smith in his book "Every wonder why?" the hotdog was given its name by a cartoonist.

A butcher from Frankfurt who owned a dachshund named the long frankfurter sausage a "dachshund sausage," the dachshund being a slim dog with a long body. ("Dachshund" is German for "badger dog." They were originally bred for hunting badgers.) German immigrants introduced the dachshund sausage (and Hamburg meat) to the United States. In 1871, German butcher Charles Feltman opened the first "hotdog" stand in Coney Island in 1871, selling 3,684 dachshund sausages, most wrapped in a milk bread roll, during his first year in business.

In the meantime, frankfurters - and wieners - were sold as hot food by sausage sellers. In 1901, New York Times cartoonist T.A. Dargan noticed that one sausage seller used bread buns to handle the hot sausages after he burnt his fingers and decided to illustrate the incident. He wasn't sure of the spelling of dachshund and simply called it "hot dog."

Eating
Recipes for placing meat between slices of bread date back to Roman times. However, that was for steak, not minced meat. Thus, the steak burger is older than the hamburger!

Sausage is one of the oldest forms of processed food, having been mentioned in Homer's Odyssey in the 9th century BC.

The tongue is a muscle with glands, sensory cells, and fatty tissue that helps to moisten food with saliva. You cannot taste food unless it is mixed with saliva. For instance, if salt is placed on a dry tongue, the taste buds will not be able to identify it. As soon as saliva is added, the salt dissolves and the taste sensation takes place.

There are 4 basic tastes. The salt and sweet taste buds are at the tip of the tongue, bitter at the base, and sour along the sides.

Why is a hamburger called a hamburger although it contains no ham?

During a trip to Asia in the early 1800s, a German merchant - it is said - noticed that the nomadic Tartars softened their meat by keeping it under their saddles. The motion of the horse pounded the meat to bits. The Tartars would then scrape it together and season it for eating. The idea of pounded beef found its way back to the merchant's home town of Hamburg where cooks broiled the meat and referred to it as it as Hamburg meat.

German immigrants introduced the recipe to the US. The term "hamburger" is believed to have appeared in 1834 on the menu from Delmonico's restaurant in New York but there is no surviving recipe for the meal. The first mention in print of "Hamburg steak" was made in 1884 in the Boston Evening Journal.

The honour of producing the first proper hamburger goes to Charlie Nagreen of Seymour, WI. In 1885 Nagreen introduced the American hamburger at the Outgamie County Fair in Seymour. (Seymour is recognised as the hamburger capital of the world.)

However, there is another claim to that throne. There is an account of Frank and Charles Menches who, also in 1885, went to the Hamburg, New York county fair to prepare their famous pork sausage sandwiches. But since the local meat market was out of pork sausage, they used ground beef instead. Alas, another hamburger.

The first account of serving ground meat patties on buns - taking on the look of the hamburger as we know it today - took place in 1904 at the St. Louis World Fair. But it was many years later, in 1921, that an enterprising cook from Wichita, Kansas, Walt Anderson, introduced the concept of the hamburger restaurant. He convinced financier Billy Ingram to invest $700 to create The White Castle hamburger chain. It was an instant success. The rest of the history, we might say, belongs to McDonald's.

And, no, a hamburger does not have any ham in it. Well, it's not supposed to. Hamburger meat usually is made of 70-80% beef, and fat and spices.

More than 5 billion crayons are produced each year

More than 100 billion crayons have been produced so far. The first crayons consisted of a mixture of charcoal and oil. In the early 1900s, cousins Edwin Binney and Harold Smith developed a nontoxic wax crayon. Binney's wife, Alice, attached the French word for chalk, craie, with "ola," from oily, to form the Crayola name. Their first box of Crayola crayons were sold for a nickel in 1903.

The first Crayola crayons came in a box of eight colours: black, blue, brown, green, orange, purple, red and yellow. By 1957, 40 new colours were introduced. Today there are more than 120 crayon colours, including Atomic Tangerine, Blizzard Blue, Mango Tango, Outrageous Orange, Laser Lemon, Screamin' Green and Shocking Pink. Over 5 billion crayons are produced each year.

First submarine designed in 1578

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) made sketches of a submarine and William Bourne, a British mathematician, drew plans for a submarine in 1578. But it was only in 1620 that Cornelius van Drebbel, a Dutch inventor, managed to build a submarine. He wrapped a wooden rowboat tightly in waterproofed leather and had air tubes with floats to the surface to provide oxygen. Of course, there were no engines yet, so the oars went through the hull at leather gaskets. He took the first trip with 12 oarsmen in the Thames River - staying submerged for 3 hours.

The first submarine used for military purposes was built in 1776 by David Bushnell (1742-1824) of the US. His "Turtle" was a one-man, wooden submarine powered by hand-turned propellers. It was used during the American Revolution against British warships. The Turtle would approach enemy ships partially submerged to attach explosives to the ships's hull. The Turtle worked well but the explosives did not.

Two rival inventors from the US developed the first true submarines in the 1890s. The US Navy purchased submarines built by John P Holland, while Russia and Japan opted for the designs of Simon Lake. Their submarines used petrol or steam engines for surface cruising and electric motors for underwater travel. They also invented torpedoes which were propelled by small electric motors, thereby introducing one of the most dangerous weapons in the world.

Submarines are also called U-boats, which is short for Unterseeboot, the German word for undersea boat.

The first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched in 1955. In 1958 the Nautilus made the first voyage under the polar ice pack, completing the 2945 km (1,830 miles) journey in 6 days.

The first submerged circumnavigation of earth was made in 1960 by the nuclear submarine USS Triton.

Budweiser beer named after Czech town

In the mid-1800s, Eberhard Anheuser was a successful manufacturer of soap and candles in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. In 1859, he financed a loan to a struggling neighbourhood brewery called The Bavarian Brewery, which was started by George Schneider in 1852. When the brewery faltered again in 1860, Anheuser and a partner, William O'Dench, bought the interests of minority creditors rather than see the brewery go under. They reorganised the company and resumed production under the name E. Anheuser & Company.

The partnership
In 1857, the 18-year old Adolphus Busch, the second youngest of 22 children, immigrated to the United States from Germany to join his 3 brothers in St. Louis. Although his brother had started the John B. Busch Brewing Company in Washington, Missouri, Adolphus opted to enter into a partnership with Ernst Wattenberg to sell brewing supplies. It was through this business that Adolphus met his wife, whose father would be his future partner. Adolphus Busch and Lily Anheuser married in 1861. In 1865, the two beer companies merged, with Adolphus as equal partner with Eberhard Anheuser.

Budweiser beer
In 1876, Busch and his friend Carl Conrad, a liquor importer, developed a "Bohemian-style" lager, inspired after a trip to the region. Brewers in Bohemia generally named a beer after their town with the suffix "er." Beers produced in the town of Plzen, for example, were called Plzners, or Pilsners. Busch and Conrad had visited another town, only 104 km (65 miles) south of Plzenalso, known for its breweries: Bömische Budweis, which became Ceske Budejovice in 1918. Beer has been brewed in Ceske Budejovice since it was founded as Budiwoyz by king Premys II Otakar in 1245. The German name for the town is Budweis. The name "Budweiser" is a locative, meaning "of Budweis."

The beer recipes from Budweis were carried around the world - including by Busch and Conrad - and in the late 1800s there were several breweries producing beers called Budweiser. Miller and Schlitz both produced Budweisers but, as the name became so strongly associated with Anheuser-Busch, they stopped it. In the US the last other Budweiser producer was DuBois Brewing, which stopped making the brand only in the late 1970s.

The American Bud
Busch and Conrad introduced "Budweiser Lager Beer" in St. Louis, brewed by E. Anheuser Co.'s Brewing Association, and bottled and distributed by Carl Conrad. The Anheuser company was renamed Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association in 1879, and Adolphus became president the following year, a position he was to hold for 33 years. On 24 January 1883, Anheuser-Busch Brewing Association acquired the rights in the US to bottle and sell Budweiser. In 1919, the company was renamed Anheuser-Busch, the name by which it is known today. In 1997, the Anheuser-Busch annual worldwide beer volume exceeded 100 million barrels, confirming its position as the world's largest brewer.

The Bud battle
In 1895, almost 20 years after Busch's Budweiser was first brewed, a Bohemian company called Budejovicky Pivovar started making a beer known as Budvar, a shortened version of the brewery name. It was exported under the name Budweiser Budvar, being from Budweis.

The golden rule in business is that the one with the gold rules. Well, usually. In the battle for the Budweiser brand name there has not been a victor. A legal battle between the Buds has raged for years. According to EU regulations, a locative can be registered as a trademark only by a manufacturer residing at that place. Thus, according to EU regulations, the Czech beer is the legal bearer of the trademark "Budweiser", or "Budejovicky." But that's not the only claim.

According to the German "Reinheitsgebot" (Beer Purity Regulations), the Annheuser-Busch Budweiser cannot be considered as beer because rice is used in the production process. According to the Beer Purity Regulations, beer can only be brewed from [barley] malt, hops and beer. (Wheat beers are called "weizens" in German.) Germany forbade the use of word "Bud" as trademark on everyone; the court ruled it was too close to "Bit" which the domestic Bitburger brewery uses as its trademark.

The oldest brewery in the town of Ceske Budejovice (Budweis) is Budweiser Burgerbrau, founded in 1795, and by far the most "original" of the claimants over the name Budweiser. The main brand of Budweiser Burgerbrau (Budejovice Burghers' Brewery) is Samson, still brewed as both light and dark lager beer, bearing the labels Budweiser Bier and Budejovicky Pivo. It is said Samson was the model for Augustus Busch for his brew.

Budweiser Burgerbrau has claimed they have the right to the trademark "Budweiser" on the basis they were the oldest brewery of the German-speaking burghers of Budweis. They insist that Budejovicky Budvar was the brewery of the Czech-speakers, who thus only have the right to the trademark "Budejovicky".

Wasssup!
The Budweisers from Budejovice has been called "The Beer of Kings" since the 16th century. Adolphus Busch is said to have turned the slogan around to "The King of the Beers". The Czech Budweiser is imported all around Europe, sold in some countries as "Budejovicky Budvar" but known as Budweiser. In Europe it is still known as the original Budweiser. In the US and elsewhere the Anheuser-Busch Budweiser remains, if not the king of beer tastes, the king of beer sales.

Eberhard Anheuser (1805-1880). He had a taste for success. A German immigrant to the US, he made a fortune in soap manufacturing. But when he helped finance a small brewery in 1860, he suddenly found himself in the lucrative beer business.

Adolphus Busch (1839-1913). He was taken with Lily Anheuser from the start. His brother Ulrich courted Lily's older sister Anna. On 7 March 1861, Eberhard Anheuser gave away the hands of both daughters in a double wedding ceremony with the Busch boys in St. Louis.

Adolphus Busch died in 1913, and his son August took charge of the company. When August passed away in 1934, his son Adolphus Busch III took over. He was succeeded by his brother, August A. Busch Jr in 1946. In 1974, his son August A. Busch III became the fifth-generation Anheuser-Busch president. In 1992, August A. Busch IV was named vice president, Budweiser Brands.

So, who invented the paperclip?

When Johann Vaaler patented his paper clip in 1901, therealready were similar designs on the books. William Middlebrook of Waterbury, Connecticut patented his design in 1899. Cornelius Brosnan of Springfield, Massachusetts patented his Konaclip in 1900.

So, who was first? Well, it is thought to be Johann Vaaler. Drawings of his design date to early 1899, but since Norway had no patent law at the time, he had to seek patent rights in Germany and the US in the following years.

Johann Vaaler was born on 15 March 1866 in Aurskog, Norway. Known as an innovator in his youth, he graduated in electronics, science and mathematics. He was employed by the owner of a invention office when he invented the paperclip in 1899.

Several designs followed the original. Only a few remain, such as the Ideal, Non-Skid, Owl and Gem.

The first double-oval clip, the Gem, was launched in early-1900 by Gem Manufacturing Ltd of England.