Facts : these do not sound as facts - but they are.

At the end of 2023, The New York Times published a listing of 72 of their favorite facts. Here's a pick from them of my 12 favorite facts from the list:

1.  The world produces about 400 million metric tons of plastic waste each year, according to a United Nations report. About half is tossed out after a single use.

2. Research suggests noise from shipping, oil exploration and other underwater human activities may make it harder for dolphins to communicate and work together.

3. Wedding rings stem back to the ancient Egyptians, who believed that there was a vena amoris, Latin for “vein of love,” in the left hand’s fourth finger with a direct route to the heart.

4. According to a study by the sustainability consultancy Edge Impact in 2020, the average American wedding emits 57,152 kilograms of CO2. You would need to plant 2,722 trees to offset that. (Wondering what it is for a simple-not-so-fat wedding in India!)

5. Dashboard touch screens are now integral to most modern cars, which run up to 14 times more code than a Boeing 787.

6. The Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, between North and South Korea is strewn with two million land mines.

7. In the United States, there are as many as six parking spaces for every car.

8. The human body is continually renewing itself. Billions of cells are replaced every day; by some accounts, after 100 days, enough cells will have turned over to generate an entirely new person.

9. Wikipedia has versions in 334 languages and a total of more than 61 million articles. It consistently ranks among the world’s 10 most-visited websites. Its contributors, who make about 345 edits per minute on the site, are not paid.

10. There are more than 20,000 species of wild bees in the world. They don’t produce honey, but they are indispensable pollinators of plants, flowers and crops.

11. The United States has the largest population of incarcerated people in the world.

12. On a clear day, three of the world’s 10 tallest mountains are visible from Pokhara, Nepal’s second-biggest city.

Source: NYTimes

There are no facts in India. Simply because data is not collated. It is a fact - ask the current government of India on facts on anything except propaganda items.