India, officially the Republic of India ,is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast; and Myanmar and Bangladesh to the east. Check out some awesome facts!
1. India has a huge network of floating post offices.
2. To be exacts, it has 1, 55,015 post offices. A single post office on an average serves a population of 7,175 people. The floating post office in Dal Lake, Srinagar, was inaugurated in August 2011.
3. The 2011 Kumbh Mela was the largest gathering of people with over 75 million pilgrims.
4. The gathering was so huge that the crowd was visible from space.
5. It’s the wettest inhabited place in the world! Mawsynram, a village on the Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, receives the highest recorded average rainfall in the world. Cherrapunji, also a part of Meghalaya, holds the record for the most rainfall in the calendar year of 1861.
6. Bandra Worli Sealink has steel wires equal to the earth’s circumference.
7. It took a total of 2,57,00,000 man hours for completion and also weighs as much as 50,000 African elephants. A true engineering and architectural marvel.
8. Shampoo was actually invented in India, not the commercial liquid ones but the method by use of herbs. The word ‘shampoo’ itself has been derived from the Sanskrit word champu, which means to massage.
9. In September 2009, India’s ISRO Chandrayaan- 1 using its Moon Mineralogy Mapper detected water on the moon for the first time.
10. At an altitude of 2,444 meters, the Chail Cricket Ground in Chail, Himachal Pradesh, is the highest in the world. It was built in 1893 and is a part of the Chail Military School.
11. The father of India’s missile programme had visited Switzerland back in 2006. Upon his arrival, Switzerland declared May 26th as Science Day.
12. India’s first President only took 50% of his salary
13. When Dr Rajendra Prasad was appointed the President of India, he only took 50% of his salary, claiming he did not require more than that. Towards the end of his 12-year tenure he only took 25% of his salary.
14. The first rocket in India was transported on a bicycle!
15. Be it because of religious reasons or personal choices or both, around 20-40% of Indians are vegetarians, making it the largest vegetarian-friendly country in the world.
Got anything to add?