68 Amazing Facts About India We Bet You Didn’t Know.

by Anisha Chadha.

East or west, India is the best :)

1) Around a 100 million years ago, India was an island.
2) India’s name is derived from the “Indus” river.
3) Indus Valley Civilisation is the world’s oldest civilisation.
4) India, hence, is the world’s oldest, most advanced and continuous civilisation.
5) India has been the largest troop contributor to the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions since its inception.
6) India has the world’s third largest active army, after China and USA.
7) The Tirupati Balaji temple and the Kashi Vishwanath Temple both, receive more visitors than the Vatican City and Mecca combined.

8) Every 12 years, a religious gathering called the Kumbh Mela occurs in India. It is the world’s largest gathering of people.
9) The gathering is so large that the Kumbh Mela is visible from the space.
10) Varanasi is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today.
11) India has more mosques (300,000 mosques) than any other nation in the world.
12) And the third largest Muslim population in the world.
13) Takshila is said to be the first every university in the world; it started around 700 BC.

14) Today, India has the world’s largest school in terms of students, the City Montessori School in Lucknow. It has more than 45 thousand students!
15) Indian Railways employs more than 1.3 million people. That’s more than the population of many nations.
16) More than 54 crore people voted in the 2014 General Election – more people than the population of USA, UK, Australia and Japan combined.
17) Number of births in India every year is more than the total population of Australia, and many other nations.
18) India has the largest English speaking population in the world.
19) At an estimate, 25% of the total workforce of the world’s population will be from India in the next year or so.
20) India’s first rocket was brought on cycle and a satellite on bullock cart.
21) And despite budgetary constraints, India’s space program is one of the top 5 space programs in the world.
22) In 2004, 200 women took law in their own hands and came to the court armed with vegetable knives and chilli powder and murdered on the court floor a serial rapist – Akku Yadav. Then every woman claimed responsibility for the murder.
23) English Actor Sir Ben Kingsley’s birth name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji and he is of Indian descent.
24) Lonar Lake, a saltwater lake in Maharashtra, was created by a meteor hitting the Earth and is one of its kind in India.

25) In a village called Shani Shingnapur in Maharashtra, people have been living in houses with no doors for generations. This is because they believe that whoever steals anything from this place will incur the wrath of Shani God and will have to pay for his/her sins very dearly. There is no police station in this village either.
26) Magnetic Hill is a gravity hill located near Leh in Ladakh, India. The hill is alleged to have magnetic properties strong enough to pull cars uphill and force passing aircraft to increase their altitude in order to escape magnetic interference.

27) Viswanathan Anand is the first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in three different formats: knockout, tournament, and match.
28) Chess was invented in India.
29) Buttons were invented in India. Yes, your shirt’s buttons.
30) We also invented the ruler.
31) And shampoo.
32) And discovered the number zero.
33) And the value of pi. 
34) And trigonometry, algebra, calculus.
35) And cataract surgery.
36) And plastic surgery.
37) And diamond mining.
38) And water on the moon.

39) Until 1986, the only place where diamonds had been officially found was in India.
40) India has banned all captive dolphins, stating that dolphins should be viewed of non human persons.
41) India’s tech capital, Bangalore, has increased its office supply by six times since 2006, and now has more Grade-A offices than Singapore.
42) India is the largest producer of films in the world.
43) India is the largest milk producer in the world.
44) India leads the world with the most murders (32,719) per year, with Russia taking second at 28,904 murders per year.
45) 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.
46) Karmanasa River in India is considered to be a cursed river and it is believed that touching its water would ruin one’s plans. There’s hardly any development along this river. People around this river just eat dry fruits because cooking food would require water!
47) Two major religions, Buddhism and Jainism, were established in India.
48) Chail in Himachal Pradesh is the highest cricket pitch in the world. It is situated at an elevation of 2444 meters (above the sea level).
49) The India-Pakistan World Cup semi-final match in Mohali drew 150 million viewers worldwide.
50) Sachin Tendulkar. (Okay, you knew this!)
51) The first Granite Temple of the world, the Brihadeswara Temple is situated in Tamil Nadu. It was built during the 11th century, in only five years.

52) Around the 17th century, India was one of the richest countries in the world.
53) Today, India is the world’s third largest economy.
54) India is one of the only three countries that makes supercomputers (the US and Japan are the other two).
55) The world’s largest road network is in India—over 1.9 million miles of roads cover the country.
56) India has the largest amount of vegetarians in the world.
57) So much so that Pizza Hut had to open their first pure vegetarian restaurant in the country.
58) And KFC had to introduce a “vegetarian” menu for India.
59) And so did McDonalds, the world’s largest fast-food manufacturer.
60) Chai is India’s national drink.
61) India grows 1.2 million tons of mangoes every year, weight equivalent to 80,000 blue whales.
62) The state of Meghalaya is the wettest inhabited place of earth.
63) India gave the world Yoga, that has existed for more than 5,000 years.
64) May 26 is celebrated as the Science Day in Switzerland in honour of former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, because on the day, Kalam visited the country :)
65) Martial Arts was first created in India.
66) The world’s biggest family lives in India. One man, 39 wives and 94 children.
67) India is the world’s largest importer of arms.
68) But India has never invaded or attacked a country.

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.