235 facts about India

India's road network is long enough to loop around earth over 117 times.

·         New Delhi’s air is the most polluted in the world.


·         About Rs 2,500 crore worth of hair is bought and sold in India.

·         India's 25 richest people have a combined net worth of $174.8 billion, which is about as much as Ukraine's GDP.

·         About 25% of India’s land is turning into desert - that’s the equivalent of three United Kingdoms.

·         India has the most expensive home, constructed at the cost of about $1 billion. This is equivalent to the GDP of Somalia.

·         India has won all Kabbadi World Cups to date both in Men's and Women's category.

·         The biggest ever air evacuation in the history of mankind was done by India.

·         VA Shiva Ayyadurai- the founder of software named "EMAIL" which is used in modern day for sending data's.

·         Highest no. of candidates from one assembly seat, i.e. 1033 candidates contesting on Modakurichi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu in 1996.

·         Groceries and flowers collected by the shopkeepers from nearby forests are kept on display with the rates and a money box. The astonishing thing being that there is no shopkeeper around the shop. If you want to buy some vegetable, it's as simple as weighing it and paying the amount according to the rate, and that's it. Pick up the balance from the money box and continue with your daily routine.

·         'Nghah lou dawr' shop, which means shops without attendants are common along the highway, approximately 65 kilometers Aizawl. The shop owners leave their shops open for their customers passing the highway to pick up their requirement.

·         The Free Kitchen (Langar) at the Golden Temple Feeds up to 100,000 People a Day for Free.

·         India has the world's largest Thorium deposits, enough to produce 500GWe of power, every year for 400 years, if you consider only the reserves that can be extracted economically.

·         A place called Shani Shingnapur, where they do not have doors in their houses!

·         Roopkund Lake is a glacial lake located at about 5000 meters in the Himalayan ranges of Uttarakhand. In 1942, a forest guard stumbled upon hundreds of human skeletons on the banks of Roopkund.  Carbon dating of the corpses puts them between 12th and 15th century. The fact that intrigued the investigators was that there was no historical account of any such past incident on the trade route to Tibet.

·         Some ritual chants of Kerala have patterns, but no known meaning. They can’t be written down and can only be transmitted orally. No language has phonetic equivalents for it. Their nearest analog is bird songs! These aural traditions are actually bird vocalizations which originated before human speech.

·         A village in the Dima Hasao district of Assam witnesses mass suicidal of the birds in the moonless nights of September and October.This event has been occurring year after year for centuries .
·         The village of Kuldhara is like a ghost village that has been abandoned since 1800s. It is said to carry a curse of the villagers who migrated to other places. Kuldhara lies about 15 Km west of Jaisalmer in western Rajasthan. The village now lies in ruins.

·         The dinosaur eggs are found in India .In some areas of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh eggs of giant reptiles are found and even illegally sold at $10.

·         Fossilized skeletons with length around 18-20m and 10-13 tonnes have been found in Maharashtra.They are also believed to be found in Gujarat, Rajasthan and .M.P.

·         Stambheshwar Mahadev Temple is situated about 40 miles from Vadodara in the small town of Kavi Kamboi of Gujarat.  This temple of Lord Shiva can only be visited during the low tide hours. In the hours of high tides it remains mostly submerged.

·         Bengal Swamps – West Bengal (Aleya Ghost lights)

·         These are the mysterious lights which are often encounered by the fishermen in the marshy regions of West Bengal.Many fishermen have drowned or their bodies washed off from the river following these mysterious lights.

·         The population of Uttarakhand according to 2011 census was 10,116,752. The number of tourists visiting are 2.5 crore .

·         India is home to 3,00,000 mosques which is more than any country of world .

·         The southern districts of Kottayam and Idukki of Kerala witnessed an unusual phenomenon on July 25 to September 23, 2001 when the rain was unusually red tinged. Colored rainfall in Kerala had been reported as early as 1986 and on several instances since then, the most recent of which was in June of 2012.

·         One of the first serial killers to be photographed. He had killed around 925 people .He was hanged by East India company in 1840.He himself confesses to have killed around 125 people.

·         India won 8 Olympic Gold medals in Hockey. In Olympic Games we played 48 games and won all of them.!

·         India was unbeatable in Hockey for 20 years.

·         Hitler requested Dhyanchand to accept German citizenship and play for Germany but he refused.

·         A polling booth was setup in the remote village of Banej, far into the Gir forests of Gujarat, for a single voter.

·         Other such polling stations - Marambo polling booth, Dibang Valley district and Upper Mudoideep, Changlang had three voters each, while Malogam in Anjaw and Sikaridong in West Kameng had four voters each. Lamta, East Kameng district:5, Matkrong, Anjaw and Dharampur-II, Changlang district:7, Punli booth:9. (all in Arunachal Pradesh).

·         These are inaccessible areas with no motorable roads. The polling officials had to trek in hilly terrains for two days to reach them.

·         This year, Karnataka assembly elections, 10 polling booths in remote areas of the Western Ghats can be accessed through boats only. The EC made the required arrangements for the voters.

·         India's first rocket was brought on cycle and a satellite on bullock cart.

·         There are people of African origins living  in India for the last 1400 years. They are known as Siddi.

·         Switzerland declared 26 May 2005 as Science Day in honour of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

·         Lifeline Express is the world's first hospital-train! Established in 1991, the train has traveled the length and breadth of the country, bringing medical aid and relief to the most far-flung, inaccessible areas.

·         A dead Indian soldier gets the treatment of a living army-man to honor his valor and courage for the motherland.

·         'Bangalored' , a word which came up after heavy outsourcing to India took the world by storm.

·         Navi Mumbai, a planned satellite township of Mumbai, was developed in 1972 and is the largest planned township on the planet.

·         In 2004, 200 women took law in their own hands and came to the court armed with vegetable knives and chilli powder andmurdered on the court floor a serial rapist - Akku Yadav. Then every woman claimed responsibility for the murder.

·         The 61st Cavalry Regiment and the President's Bodyguard (PBG) of the Indian Army are one of the few remaining horsed cavalry army regiments anywhere in the world.

·         English Actor Sir Ben Kingsley’s birth name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji and he is of Indian (Gujarati) descent.

·         Australia’s Cricketer Stuart Clark is of Indian origin. His father Bruce Clark who is from Madras (now Chennai) was a student at Christ Church Anglo Indian-High School Madras, and his mother Mary Clark (name at birth - Boosey) is from the Kolar Gold Fields, Karnataka, India; her family is a famous sporting family.

·         In 1928, when the Indian Hockey team was on its way to Amsterdam, they played a series of exhibition matches in England. Seeing its caliber England decided not to field a team for the Olympics as “they did not want to lose to a slave country.” - India was still under the British Rule then.

·         A sugar company in Andhra provides rocket fuel to ISRO.

·         There is a species of Shark known as the Ganges Shark that inhabits River Ganga and it is critically endangered.

·         Lonar Lake, a saltwater lake in Maharashtra, was created by a meteorhitting the Earth and is one of its kind in India.

·         A city name "Jhumri Telaiya" actually exists in Jharkhand.

·         Security at Tihar jail is managed by Tamil Nadu special police force.

·         India has three antarctic stations, Dakshin Gangotri, Maitri and Bharathi (pictured below). The first station Dakshin Gangotri was buried in ice and abandoned in 1990–91

·         India Post allows you to order personalized stamps with your picture on them.

·         Taj Mahal was covered with a huge scaffold during WW2 to make it look like a stockpile of Bamboo and misguide any enemy bombers. (It was also disguised again in 1971 and 2001)

·         The Tirupati Balaji temple and the Kashi Vishwanath Temple both receive more visitors than the Vatican City and Mecca combined.

·         Every 12 years, a religious gathering called the Kumbh Mela occurs. This event has an administration of its own and is classified as a district for the time it lasts. It is the world's largest gathering of people and is visible from space. It has its own District Magistrate.

·         India is the only country in the world which has both tigers and lions in the wild.

·         India has classified dolphins as "non-human persons" (due to the animal, er, the non-human's near human intelligence) and has ordered their release from captivity.

·         India has the world's largest school in terms of pupils, the City Montessori School, which has nearly 45 thousand pupils

·         Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun before any other astronomer. He said that the earth took 365.258756484 days.

·         Varanasi is Asia's oldest continuously inhabited city.

·         Only Africa is ahead of India in terms of linguistic, genetic and cultural diversity. And Africa is a continent.

·         India was the first country in the world to produce steel.

·         The first reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Gujarat by the Saka king Rudradaman I.

·         Rabindranath Tagore has written the national anthems of India and Bangladesh (Jan Gana Man and Amar Sonar Bangla).

·         Veterinary science was developed in India.

·         Indian Railways employs over 1 million people. That's more than the entire population of many nations.

·         The world's largest film studio is Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad.

·         Indians developed the largest measure of time, known as kalpa, which is nearly 25 billion years.

·         Cricket may be a religion now, but India has won 6 gold medals in field hockey back to back at the Olympics and a total of 8 golds. Talk about domination. A nation losing 5-0 to India was considered brilliant.

·         India is one of the few places which has fused religion and science. In Hindusim, there is a God of engineers and architects, Vishwakarma. In India, whenever a section of a bridge or building is completed, He is worshipped.

·         India has 3 biodiversity hotspots, no other country, or even continent except Brazil and Indonesia have more than 2.

·         India's economic rise since the 90's has been meteoric. India led the world in GDP before the industrial revolution, with a share of 33% of the World GDP, which then fell to 3% during the British Raj; now may rise to 25%.

·         Although western media portray modern images of India as poverty-stricken and underdeveloped through political corruption, India was once the richest empire on earth.

·         India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand and Indonesia.

·         The India-Pakistan World Cup semi-final match in Mohali drew 150 million viewers worldwide.

·         Once a person becomes a Hindu Sadhu, he becomes legally dead and can therefore, can ride trains for free.

·         Cotton was domesticated in India.

·         India in Chinese is pronounced as Yindu (“印度”).

·         The Grand Anicut Dam of the state of Tamil Nadu was built over 2000 years ago and is still standing.

·         In Madhya Pradesh, policemen are given a rise in their salaries if they grow a moustache. The policemen in the above picture are not from M.P.

·         In Rajasthan, the body hair of a camel is often cut or trimmed in festivals ormelas (fairs) to give them an attractive look.

·         Some may have a misconception that huge dinosaurs never roamed India but Bruhathkayosaurus, according to some, was the largest dinosaur that ever lived. Its remains were found near Trichy, in Tamil Nadu. Its name is derived from bruhath, meaning huge in Sanskrit, and kay, meaning body.

·         India has the world's second largest stadium by seating capacity, the Salt Lake Stadium.

·         The Koh-i-Noor Diamond is a famous diamond which was mined in India and is currently a part of the British Imperial Crown, but what many don't know is that The Hope Diamond, which has been touted as the world's most famous diamond was also mined in India.

·         All the ten stores or outlets which sold the most amount of pizzas, are in India.

·         George Orwell, the writer of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm was born in Motihari, in the Indian state of Bihar.

·         Captain Nemo (Prince Dakkar), the famous character of Twenty ThousandLeagues Under The Sea, is the son of the Hindu Raja of Bundelkhand. His famous ship, The Nautilus.

·         V.K. Krishna Menon was once described as India's second most powerful man, second only to the Prime Minister. He was a seasoned diplomat. in 1957, Mr. Menon delivered an eight hour speech defending India's stance on Kashmir at the United Nations. This is the longest speech ever in the UN.

·         Such is the size of Mumbai, that if the Pakistani administration ever had the suicidal thought of nuking South Bombay with their biggest bomb, the immediate damage would not be felt in the suburbs (although radiation would still do a lot of damage).

·         The world's first recorded manhunt was launched for a pirate, Henry Every, after he destroyed a Mughal ship, the Ganj-i-Sawai, by the British East India Company after they were defeated and imprisoned by the Mughal Emperor Abul Muzaffar Muhi-ud-Din Mohammed Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb was the world's richest and most powerful ruler while he lived. This holds true for nearly all of India's emperors.

·         The Mahabharata is the world's longest epic. Its length is ten times more than that of the Illiad and the Odyssey combined and is much longer than any other religious text or epic.

·         At one time there were two currencies operating in India. One as you all may know was the Indian National Rupee and the other was the Hyderabadi Rupee.

·         In the next three years, up to 25% of the world's new workers will be Indian

·         42% of the world's poor live in India. That's over 450 million people living below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank.

·         India's GDP per capita will quadruple from 2007 to 2020, according to Goldman Sachs.

·         Property prices in Mumbai and Delhi have more than doubled in the past 18 months.

·         India's tech capital, Bangalore, has  increased its office supply by six times since 2006, and now has more  Grade-A offices than Singapore.

·         Half the world’s outsourced IT services come from India, amounting to a $47 billion dollar industry.

·         Walmart alone outsources $1 billion in IT contracts to India.

·         India is the world's second largest importer of arms and has spent $50 billion on defense purchases in the last decade.

·         India grows 12 million tons of mangoes in a year, the weight equivalent to 80,000 blue whales.

·         India's Cherrapnuji is the wettest places on earth, receiving 425 inches of rain every year. That's 6.3 times the rainfall of continental America's rainiest city, Mobile.

·         A bigger movie market than America and Canada combined, India sold 3.2 billion tickets last year.

·         The average Indian is nearly 20 years younger than the average Japanese (26 vs 45).

·         Indians are also around ten years younger than rival China, which was limited in growth by its one-child policy.

·         In recent decades, 500,000 female births have gone missing each year due to (illegal) sex selection and abortion.

·         India has 568 million more registered voters than the US -- and a better voter turnout rate too.

·         India has been the largest troop contributor to the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions since it's inception and every year remains in the top 4.

·         India has the second largest road network in the world after US despite being 7th largest in Area.

·         An Indian State every year host the Rural Olympics. Kila Raipur Sports Festival, popularly known as the Rural Olympics, is held annually in Kila Raipur (near Ludhiana), in Punjab, India.

·         India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.

·         India invented the Number system. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.

·         The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.

·         The world’s first University was established in Takshila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4 th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

·         According to the Forbes magazine, Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software.

·         Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.

·         The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh 5000 years ago. The very word "Navigation" is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH.

·         The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is now known as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars have last year (1999) officially published that Budhayan’s works dates to the 6 th Century which is long before the European mathematicians.

·         Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11 th Century; the largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Indians used numbers as big as 10^53.

·         According to the Gemmological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds to the world.

·         USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion amongst academics that the pioneer of wireless communication was Professor Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.

·         The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.

·         Chess was invented in India.

·         Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted surgeries like cesareans, cataract, fractures and urinary stones. Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient India

·         When many cultures in the world were only nomadic forest-dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization).

·         Nearly 10,000 crore of rupees were spent and 800 soldiers died in the war mobilization effort after the parliament attack.  Reportedly, over 100 children died and many farmers lost their livelihoods due to heavy mining in the border areas.

·         For centuries to come and the centuries that went by, which recorded in history talking of the great men and legendary characters who shaped time through their vision and exemplary actions. Chanakya, perhaps is the only personality who has been accepted and revered as a genius both by Indian and Western scholars.

·         Viswanathan Anand is first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in three different formats: knockout, tournament, and match.

·         Agni III is the most accurate missile in the world in its range category and BrahMos is the fastest operational cruise missile in the world.

·         The process of crystallization of sugar from sugarcane juice was discovered in India in the Gupta period (350 AD).

·         Many tribes in India worship Asura and Ravan and consider Vijaya Dashami and Dussehra to be black days.

·         Raj Kapoor’s 1951 film Awaara was massively popular in Soviet Russia and China. The film and its title song were Mao Zedong’s (Founder of People’s Republic of China) favorite.

·         There were two US navy warships called USS Krishna and USS Indra that served during World War II.

·         Unlike in Border movie, only 2 Indians died in battle of Longewala.

·         Freddie Mercury, British musician was actually of Gujarati descent.

·         “John Doe” orders (restraint orders against unknown persons for breach of plaintiff’s rights) are called “Ashok Kumar” orders in India. Likewise, “unclaimed” or “unidentified” dead body found in a public place is called is Ashok Kumar.

·         The oldest building in Asia is in India, the Sanchi Stupa.

·         Bal Thackeray’s father changed his family name from Thakre toThackeray after the British writer William Makepeace Thackeray.

·         The first railroad was constructed by two Indians (Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and Jaganath Shunkerseth) and not the British.

·         Tamil is an OVS (object-verb-subject) language, a characteristic it shares with Klingon (a fictional language spoken by a race in Start Trek Series).

·         Mount Kailash has never been climbed, in spite of Chinese government’s support to the climbers.

·         When going to battle Indian kings would make their horses wear trunks. The other side’s elephants would refuse to attack the horses thinking that the horses were baby elephants.

·         If Uttar Pradesh were to be a separate country, it would be world’s fifth most populous country.

·         There are more poor people in 8 Indian states alone than in the 26 poorest African countries.

·         Bodhidharma, a prince of the Pallava dynasty went to China and began the physical training of the Shaolin monks that led to the creation of Kung Fu.

·         Tipu Sultan used Rockets with Swords fixed in the front against the British in the Anglo-Mysore Wars.

·         There is a French electronic band named “Masala Dosa.”

·         India has a National Ice Hockey Team.

·         Govt hiked the payment for the hangman from RS 10 to 5,000 just days before for Kasab hanging.

·         Ajmal Amir Kasab had a case booked for entering CST stationwithout a ticket.

·         There was a Great Hedge built by the British across India primarily to collect the salt tax. It was 4000 km long and 12 feet in height spanning from Punjab to Orissa. None of it remains today.

·         Kunal Nayyar (Rajesh Koothrappalli from Big Bang Theory) is married to a former Miss India, Neha Kapur.

·         There is a village called Delhi in New york , USA. There is a city called Madras in Oregon, USA.

·         After United States, India has the largest number of English speakers.

·         During the battle of Rezang La in the 1962 India-Sino war a battalion called 13 Kumaon Regiment consisting of mere 120 soldiers held off 6000 Chinese with heavy artillery killing 1300 of their soldiers.

·         One of the oldest College of Engineering in the world is in Chennai, College of Engineering (Guindy).

·         India has the world’s smallest prison population.

·         The average cost of census taking in India is $0.5 per person (US: $39, World Average: $4.6).

·         Frozen bank accounts of Ottavio Quattrocchi were unexpectedly released by India’s law ministry in 2006 apparently without the consent of the CBI which had asked for them to be frozen.

·         In 2001, Indian co. Cipla produced three-in-one drug for HIV, which is affordable at an incredible $ 1 a day.

·         India is world's largest producer of Generic medicines.

·         India Pharma co. account for 20% of world pharma in valuation and 80% in volumes.

·         India is a hotspot for treatment for critical illness like cardiac surgery and is medical hub for patients from Africa, Middle east and South East Asia.

·         The oldest brand  in the world is the health supplement “Chyawanprash,” and is attributed to a revered Rishi (seer) named  Chyawan. It was developed at Dhosi Hill, the site of a highly religious  extinct volcano in Northern India.

·         India's oldest fort,Kalinjar Fort lies on the Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh's state border. Moreover, one-fourth of it lies in MP whereas remaining three-fourth in UP.

·         Also,the Kamadgiri Mountain, in Chitrakoot where Lord Ram spent 12 years of his exile with his wife and brother,lies on the state boundary,again of MP and UP,this time being equally divided.

·         In Chitrakoot again,the river Mandakini is the state boundary itself.

·         People expected the PINCODE (Postal Index Number Code) would be a failure in a largely illiterate country.  It became a runaway success.

·         Speaking of literacy - India has a very high illiterate population, but it also has the most number of universities in the world!

·         People expected fat free milk will become a hit with Indians as a "healthy" alternative.  Indians trashed the notion.

·         An Indian man named Jadav Payeng started planting trees on a barren sandbar at 17. He is now 47 and lives in his own 1360 acre forest which now houses rhinos, tigers, deer, apes and elephants.

·         India was the first country in the world to have a finger print forensic laboratory in 1897.

·         The first “Finger Print Bureau” in the world was officially established in Kolkata on 12 June 1897 at Writers’ Building.

·         India has 1650 languages - 30 of which are spoken by more than a million speakers and 122 of which are spoken by more than 10,000.

·         The whole region of Kashmir was "bought" for a measly 7.5 million rupees in the mid 19th century by the Hindu rulers. It even had a bill of sale.

·         India has 1200 million people. That is more than the combined population of US, Russia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Japan, UK, Germany, Australia, Italy, Spain and New Zealand! In fact, India's population is larger than any other continent in the world, outside Asia.

·         Indian laws make it illegal to carry more than Rs. 5000 in Indian currency out of Indian territory (except Nepal and Bhutan)

·         Himalayas are growing taller at a rate of 2.5 cm per year.

·         Although widely accepted and definitely deserved, Mahatma Gandhi is never officially designated as the father of the nation by the Indian government.

·         Indian railways transports 20 million people every day on short and long distance transport.

·         The official name of our country in local languages is Bharat and written as such in all Hindi communications of the government. This name is 1000s of years old and is named after the mythical emperor of Bharat.

·         Since its independence in 1947, India has fought 8 main wars - 4 with Pakistan, 1 with China, 1 with Portugal (to take Goa), 1 with Hyderabad Nizam to take the territory into India and 1 in Maldives to restore government rule.

·         The Kashmir dispute is a tri-party dispute between India-Pakistan-China and 5 distinct territories of Kashmir. Yellow territory has the world's highest mountains - including K2 and integrated into Pakistan, Brown territory is one gifted by Pakistan to China, Blue territory is one India has in its maps but has never ever been into. The Red territory is where all the action is.

·         We have a total of 154,919 post offices (as of 2001) as compared to just 57,135 of China which is in second place.

·         The Cuttack Police has about 1000 pigeons that are used to deliver messages quickly to desolate areas in the hills. The messages are put in little containers tied to the pigeons’ feet.

·         Diamonds were first mined only in India. Diamonds were discovered in the Krishna River delta in the 9th century BC.

·         The Brihadeeshwarar Temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu is the world’s first granite temple. It is India’s largest temple and today is considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

·         The art of navigation also began from India during the Indus valley civilization when people learned to navigate the Sindhu River.

·         India leads the world with the most murders (32,719), with Russia taking second at 28,904 murders per year.

·         All of India is under a single time zone.

·         India is the world’s largest producer of dried beans, such as kidney beans and chickpeas. It also leads the world in banana exports; Brazil is second.

·         Indians hold prominent places both internationally and in the United States. For example, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems (Vinod Khosla), the creator of the Pentium chip (Vinod Dahm), the founder/creator of Hotmail (Sabeer Bhatia), and the GM of Hewlett-Packard (Rajiv Gupta) are all Indian.

·         Chandragupta Maurya (340-290 B.C.), a leader in India who established the Mauryan Empire (321-185 B.C.), was guarded by a band of women on horseback.

·         To avoid polluting the elements (fire, earth, water, air), followers of Zoroastrianism in India don’t bury their dead, but instead leave bodies in buildings called “Towers of Silence” for the vultures to pick clean. After the bones dry, they are swept into a central well.

·         War of 27 years fought between the Maratha Empire and the Mughal Empire from 1681 to 1707 was the longest recorded military engagement in the history of India.

·         The first official set of rules for snooker or billiards were drafted in 1882 Ooty, Tamil Nadu.

·         A Chinese pop star named Sa Dingding sings in Sanskrit (ancient language of India).

·         According to a study conducted in 2011, India’s Parle-G biscuits were the world’s No. 1 selling biscuits.

·         India does not have a National Language, Hindi and English are two Official Languages.

·         An asteroid almost caused a nuclear war between India and Pakistan in 2002. Fortunately it exploded over Mediterranean Sea. If it would have occurred at the same latitude a few hours earlier, the explosion might have resembled a nuclear detonation equivalent to the blast that destroyed Hiroshima.

·         Helium was discovered in India by French astronomer Jules Janssen in 1868.

·         There is an Asian brown cloud, a 2-mile-thick blanket of polluted air that covers much of South Asia that forms each year between January and March might be responsible for the premature deaths of a half-million people each year in India alone.

·         The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake was so powerful that in addition to causing 230,000 deaths, it caused the entire earth to “wobble” on its axis by between 1 and 6 cm, thus increasing the length of a day on earth by 2.68 microseconds.

·         There was a girl born named Lakshmi Tatma in India with four arms and legs due to an underdeveloped conjoined twin.

·         The world’s highest cricket ground was built in India in 1893. It is in Chail, Himachal Pradesh and is 2444 metres above sea level. It was built by flattening a hilltop.

·         Tirumala Venkateswara Temple in India gets more than $450,000/Per Day as Donation and annual Gold offering goes as high as 3,000 Kg.

·         About 600 barbers deftly shave over 20,000 heads a day, making Sri Venkateswara Temple, India the world’s largest barbershop.

·         Budhia Singh, a runner from India completed 48 marathons all by the age of 4.

·         The number of cellphone subscribers in India increased by 16,420% between 2001 and 2011.

·         A Buffalo is worth more than a Human in India’s Black Market Economy, $300 vs $45.

·         An underground coal field fire in Jharia (Jharkhand), India has been burning since 1916 and is yet to be extinguished.

·         In 1937, University of Kerala (then a princely state in India) tried to bring in Albert Einstein as the Vice-Chancellor. They offered him 6,000 rupees per month (equivalent to 30,000,000 rupees now/ $600,000 per month). Einstein declined the offer.

·         The Baily Bridge is the highest bridge in the world. It is  located in the Ladakh valley  between the Dras and Suru rivers in the  Himalayan mountains. It was  built by the Indian Army in August 1982.

·         India has largest population of vegetarians.

·         The Vishnu Temple in the city of Tirupathi built in the 10th century, is theworld's largest religious pilgrimage destination. Larger than either Rome or Mecca, an average of 30,000 visitors donate $6 million (US) to the temple everyday.

·         India consumes about half of the world’s whiskey.

·         India has over 275 billion tons of coal reserves, that's the equivalent of 1.37 billion blue whales.

·         India was the 4th dangerous country for journalists last year.

·         In the 1920's, notes worth Rs. 2½ were an integral feature of all paper money issues of British India.

·         And today, those are worth more than Rs. 2.5 lakh.

·         Till 1945, number of gods exceeded the population of India.

·         India and Bangladesh share a 3rd enclave border which means that a  part of India is in Bangladesh which is in India which is in  Bangladesh.

·         The Income Tax Rate in India was 97.75% in the year 1973

·         India has an Airforce base in Tajikistan. Farkhor Air Base is India’s one and only military base outside its territory.

·         When A.P.J Abdul Kalam was the President of India, he asked a question on Yahoo Answers on ways to eliminate terrorism.

·         Dr. Shrikant Jichkar holds the record for “India’s most qualified  person”. He was an IAS, IPS, lawyer, doctor,  D. Litt (Doctor of  Letters) in Sanskrit , the highest degree in a University, photographer,  actor, radio operator, youngest MLA at the age of 25, held 14  portfolios, had 20 degrees, 28 gold medals & had a library of 52,000  books.

·         P.V. Narasimha Rao was fluent in 16 languages. In addition to 7  Indian languages (Telugu, Hindi, Urdu, Oriya, Marathi, Bengali,  Gujarati, Tamil), he spoke English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German,  Greek, Latin and Persian.

·         There were no plastic bags in India before 1985.

There are 235 facts above this point.