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  • In January 2010 Fabrice Bellard set a new record by calculating pi to 2.7 trillion (2,700,000,000,000) digits. Pi is an irrational number, which means that it cannot be expressed as a fraction a/b, where a and be are integers. This means that its decimal expansion goes on forever without repeating. In other words, despite his acheivement, there are still an infinite number of digits for Mr Bellard to calculate.
  • Although at the time pi had only been calculated to 2.7 trillion (2,700,000,000,000) digits, Nicholas Sze from Yahoo managed to calculate that its two quadrillionth (2,000,000,000,000,000th) digit in binary is 0. To make the calculation he used 1000 of Yahoo's computers for 23 days.
  • Apples float in water but pears don't. This fact can be used to distinguish a round pear from an apple.
  • The summit of Mount everest is made from marine limestone.
  • In 1959 a rhinoceros named Cacareco won the most votes in the council election for São Paulo. Cacareco went on to inspire the Rhinoceros Party in Canada, offering the electorate an alternative vote with which to express their discontent with the politicians on the ballot papers.
  • The Russian language has no present tense of the verb "to be". There is an infinitive (быть), a past tense and a future tense but no present tense.
  • There is no definite or indefinite article in Russian (in other words, they don't have words for "the", "a" or "an"). Instead of saying, "The dog is intelligent", they would say, "Dog intelligent" (Собака умна).

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