The USA can boast about the longest railway network in the world with 2, 34, 000 km followed by Russia (1, 54, 000 km), Canada (73,000 km),China (67,500 km), India (60,000 km) and Germany (37,500 km).
The American aircraft 'X-15'was the fastest aircraft ever made. It was a prototype, built in1967, flew at 7279KMPH or 'MACH 7', which is equivalent to seven times the speed of sound.
The fastest round-the-world flight was established by Air France's Concorde. It left New York on 15th August 11995, heading east. The global trip was completed in 31 hours land 28 minutes, with landing for refuelling at Dubai, Bangkok, Guam-USA-Pacific, Honolulu USA and Acapulco-Mexico.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef, which extends up to 2027 km from north to south, and is the world's largest ever biological structure. This is made from 400 different corals, and it took 2 million years to form. This is even visible from the moon!
The deepest point in the Indian Ocean has been recorded at 7400 m in the Java trench. The great white shark, which can smell one drop of human blood in 100 million drops of water, is often found in this ocean.
Tsunami denotes a series of tidal waves, triggered off by volcanic eruption, or an earthquake, underneath the sea bed etc. The earthquake measuring 9.8 Richter scale , that occurred near Sumatra island on Sunday, the 26th December 2004, devastated the south-eastern part of the Indian claiming 1,24,000 leaving 1,13,000 p e o p I e missing and r e n d e r I n g 4, 00 000 homeless.
Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, is in - Venezuela. Water falls from a height of 978 m, which is more than three times the height of Eiffel Tower (Paris).
The railway line crossing, the Nullarbar plain in Australia has the largest stretch of straight track in the world - 478 km without a bend or curve.
The Colosseum in Rome (Italy) is the largest amphitheatre and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It was built from 2, 92, 000 cart-loads of stones and has 76 numbered gateways and 4 main entrances. It could hold an audience of 50,000.
It is estimated that the Indian population of 1.1 billion in 2005 will increase to 1.4 billion by 2025, and will surpass China's population by 2030. China will be contained to 1.45 billion by 2050, but India will have 1.6 billion in 2050. The current world population of 6.5 billion will be about 9 billion by 2050.
