Have you ever thought how many languages are there in the world. There are 2,700 languages, however most widely read spoken languages are English, Chinese, Spanish and Hindi. Chinese is the most spoken language with over 50,000 characters. Interesting, right??

Kokura, Hiroshima, Yokohama, Niigata, and Kyoto were on the list. Kyoto was spared, according to legend, because US Secretary of War Henry Stimson loved the ancient Japanese capital and had spent his honeymoon there decades before. In its place, Nagasaki was established. On July 25, 1945, the United Kingdom approved the bombing of four Japanese cities: Kokura, Niigata, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

On the tragic evening of April 14, 1865, Samuel J. Seymour was just five years old when he went to see a play at Ford's Theater. He was sitting directly across from the president in the balcony and claims to have heard the gunfire, seen Lincoln fallen over, and seen John Wilkes Booth climb onto the stage before leaving. Seymour related the incident on the CBS TV show I've Got a Secret on February 9, 1956, two months before his death. History is closer than you believe!

The Terracotta Warriors were built between 246 BC when Qin Shi Huang assumed the Qin State throne, and 206 BC, when the Han Dynasty began, four years after Qin's death. Over 700,000 laborers worked nonstop for 40 years to complete the terracotta army and tomb complex.

We still only know about a small percentage of the marine species that live in our oceans. According to the World Register of Marine Species, there are now 240,470 accepted species, but this is thought to be only a small proportion of the species that exist, as new marine life is discovered on a daily basis.

Plenty of Japanese celebrate Christmas, but the festive fare isn’t what you might expect. In Japan, it’s traditional to head to your local KFC on Christmas Eve. An estimated 3.6 million Japanese feast on the KFC Christmas Dinner and hours of queuing and ordering weeks in advance is expected. Some say turkey and chicken wasn’t widely available for the Christmas-curious Japanese, so Colonel Sanders stepped in to answer the demand…

Although the now-retro rainbow design is undoubtedly Apple's most well-known, the very first Apple logo depicted Sir Isaac Newton seated under a tree with an apple ready to fall on his head. The Newton logo was created by Apple's lesser-known creator Ronald Wayne and was only used briefly in 1976. Its high degree of detail didn't show up well when scaled down and put on a device.

During International War I, Europe was at war, and world powers like Britain were organizing their armies. By 1917, one renowned British admiral of the Royal Navy had retired and wrote to Winston Churchill to express his thoughts on the day's headlines, some of which were so thrilling that he wrote, "O.M.G. (Oh! My! God!)." How could he have realized that the acronym he created would go on to become one of the world's most-used phrases?

Japan is well-known for its non-stop festivals, but Hadaka Matsuri must be one of the most bizarre. Thousands of Japanese men strip naked in public to secure a fortune-filled year, with the biggest matsuri taking place in Okayama, where an estimated 9,000 men get down to their fundoshi.

The number four (‘shi’) is widely avoided in Japan since it sounds too similar to the Japanese word for death. Keep an eye out in Japan and you’ll notice buildings don’t have a fourth floor, items are sold in sets of three or five and special care is taken to avoid encountering the number in daily life.

Ophiocordyceps, a tropical fungus, infects the central nerve systems of ants. After nine days in the insect bodies, the fungus gain total control over the host's motions. They drive the ants to climb trees before convulsing and falling into the cold, wet earth below, where fungus thrive. When the fungus arrives, it waits until exactly solar noon to induce the ant to bite a leaf and kill it.

You probably don’t know this, but the calendar that we use today was invented by ancient Egyptians. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the first calendar known to humankind was invented in Egypt. In fact, it is the year 6264 in the Egyptian calendar.

The ancient Egyptians used the 12-month calendar like we do today. However, each month was always 30 days which meant that their years were only 360 days in total causing the years to fall out of sync with the seasons. So to make up for the lost time, they held a 5-day festival at the end of each year.

Shakespeare produced some of the world's most renowned and cherished works of literature. Yet, to build his plays and poetry, he occasionally made up his own words. In fact, Shakespeare is credited with coining over 1,700 terms, including moonbeam, hilarious, eyeball, bump, vomiting, champion, bedroom, thrill, and zany.

From 1935 through 2018, the Los Pinos presidential palace served as the official residence of Mexico's presidents and was off-limits to anyone who were not officially invited. This changed in 2018, when Andres Manuel López Obrador was elected President of Mexico, campaigning on pledges to eradicate corruption. As a gesture of goodwill, he elected to live in a humble apartment in Mexico City's central sector rather than the palace. To give you a sense of what the Mexican president sacrificed, the presidential mansion is 56,000 square feet in size.

While historians have only lately recognized their accomplishments (or female discoveries attributed to males), female mathematicians engaged in a World War II program coding instructions into the groundbreaking Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer.

When Santa Claus travels throughout the world on Christmas Eve, you may be confident that he is legally permitted to operate his sleigh—at least in the United States. The cheerful man in the red suit received his pilot's certificate from Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics William P. MacCracken in 1927.

First, she misplaces her shoe while delivering breakfast trays. She then misplaces her glass slipper while fleeing the ball. Finally, on her wedding day, her shoe falls off.

While more individuals use English as a second language, Mandarin Chinese is spoken natively by approximately three times as many people. English is studied as a second language by almost two billion people, yet only 350 million speak it natively.

The mayor of Paris has approved a resolution prohibiting Tom Cruise from being made an honorary citizen. Tom Cruise is a member of Scientology, a controversial religious group that has been labelled a cult in France. Tom Cruise sought to become an honorary citizen of Paris in 2005, but the city's officials refused because of his involvement with Scientology.

Many people believe that the Bible began as a single book, but it is actually an anthology of 66 volumes written by many authors. The first printed bible, known as the Gutenberg Bible, was published in 1455, and it was also the first book ever printed. It has been written and rewritten several times, and it has been translated into over 3000 languages during a span of around 1400 years. Furthermore, the first known text of the Old Testament dates from the 2nd century BC. There are no original manuscripts of the New Testament, but owing to fragments and early copies, researchers are very positive that the Bible we have today is more or less the same way it was first written.

Uzbekistan is the world's 56th biggest sovereign state, with an area of around 172,700 square miles, and is almost the same size in geographical area as Spain or the state of California in the United States. The length of the nation from east to west is 885 miles, while the length from south to north is 580 miles.

The city's official name, like one of its nicknames, has an intriguing backstory. In the 1920s, a 'Big Apple' was a prize awarded at a horse racing event. Many musicians and journalists began referring to New York as "the ultimate" prize or "the best" because the term meant "the ultimate" prize or "the best." In 1971, the New York Tourism Board adopted The Big Apple as an official nickname in an attempt to boost tourism following some negative press.

In Japan, people don’t have signatures – they have their own seal. Known as Hanko, the seal is typically your name translated into Kanji characters, and are made from silk or plant-based paste. Adults will often have three Hankos; one for signing off letters and personal matters, a bank seal and an identify seal. They’re not necessary for tourists, but foreigners living in Japan can have one handmade in small, local shops.

Kubo, the anime's creator, offered two reasons for naming the series Bleach. For starters, we bleach our garments to eliminate stains and whiten them, just like soul reapers cleanse or bleach souls. Second, it was the title of a Nirvana album, which was one of Kubo's favourites.

The longest novel which exists is ‘In Search of Lost Time’ by Marcel Proust. This masterpiece has made its mark and left its essence in the Gunnies Book of World Records. The whole novel is contained in 13 volumes clocking up nearly 1.3 million words. Isn’t this amazing?