Did You Know « 1/3/2011

As I am In New Zealand at the moment I will give you some “Did You Know” information about NZ.

1. BOWLED OVER
Despite being a water-loving nation, more people die in New Zealand every year playing lawn bowls than scuba diving.

2.ANIMALS GALORE
Less than five percent of New Zealand’s population is human, the rest are animals – one of the highest ratios of animals to humans in the world.

3. BIG READERS
New Zealand has more bookshops per capita than any other country – one for every 7,500 people.

4. SPELL THAT!
New Zealand boasts the world’s longest place name: Taumatawhakatangi- hangakoauauotamatea- turipukakapikimaunga- horonukupokaiwhenuaki- tanatahu.

5.TEEING OFF
New Zealand has more golf courses per capita than any other country – 400 courses for four million people, approximately one for every 10,000 people.

6. REAL LIFE MOUNT DOOM
New Zealand’s Lake Taupo, was formed by the world’s biggest recorded eruption in the last 75,000 years. The dust from the eruption was seen as far away as Rome and China.

7. LAND BEFORE TIME
Curio Bay – in Southland, New Zealand – is one of the world’s most extensive and least disturbed examples of a petrified forest, up to around 180 million years old.

8. NOT IN OUR BACKYARD
New Zealand established itself as a nuclear free zone in 1985, refusing to allow nuclear powered or armed ships in its waters, and continues this stance today.

9. BOX OF BIRDS
The New Zealand kakapo is the world’s largest, rarest and only flightless parrot; the kea is the world’s only alpine parrot; the little blue is the world’s smallest penguin.

10. KING OF THE WORLD
New Zealand mountaineer, Sir Edmund Hillary was the first person to climb Mount Everest in 1953, alongside Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

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