Amazing Facts Quotes

“In a massive, long-term study of 17,000 civil servants, an almost unbelievable conclusion emerged: the status of a person's job was more likely to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure.”
― Matt Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters

“The Amazon is not a normal river, like the Thames, for instance - it is the focal point of a huge sheet of water that surges through the forest when the waters are high. This deluge can be more than 100km wide in places; it is the same distance as London to Paris at its mouth where it gushes out at over 200,000 cubic metres per second in to the Atlantic Ocean”
― Ed Stafford, Walking the Amazon: 861 Days

“The sun never sets there [Siberia] - one end wakes up when the other is going to sleep. In parts it is so cold that living trees explode with a sound like gunfire...”
― Sara Wheeler, Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age

“The quickest way from St Petersburg to Kamchatka in furthest Siberia is still often westwards via New York.”
― Sara Wheeler, Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age

“Every fire on this ghat is lit from a dhuni (sacred fireplace) that has been burning continuously here since Satya Yuga. It is not for anyone to bring their own matchbox!”
― Piers Moore Ede, Kaleidoscope City: A Year in Varanasi