Do you know number of countries in world

There are 196 countries(click to view list) in the world today.
Unless you don't count Taiwan…
Taiwan is not considered an official country by many, which would bring the count down to 195 countries. Although Taiwan operates as an independent country, many countries (including the U.S.) do not officially recognize it as one. Because the People's Republic of China considers Taiwan a breakaway province of China, countries who wish to maintain diplomatic relations with China have had to sever their formal relations with Taiwan (more than 100 countries, however, have unofficial relations with Taiwan).
How many countries belong to the United Nations?
192 countries are UN members. The exceptions are Taiwan (in 1971, the UN ousted Taiwan and replaced it with the People's Republic of China) and Vatican City. Kosovo is not yet a member. The newest UN members are Switzerland (2002) and Montenegro (2006).
What are the world's newest countries?
The world's newest country is South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan on July 9, 2011. Before that, the newest country was Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. Montenegro became a country in June 2006, after splitting off from Serbia. Since 1990, 29 new nations have come into being. Many of these emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union (14 countries) and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia (7 countries). See our Guide to New Nations.
Are there still any countries that have colonies?
There are 61 colonies or territories in the world. Eight countries maintain them: Australia (6), Denmark (2), Netherlands (2), France (16), New Zealand (3), Norway (3), the United Kingdom (15), and the United States (14). See Territories, Colonies, and Dependencies for a list of the world's colonies and what countries administrate them, p. 663.
Are there still territories in the world that are claimed by more than one country?
There are six major disputed territories in the world: the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the Paracel Islands, Spratly Islands, Western Sahara, and Antarctica (about a dozen nations have laid claims to portions of it). In addition, there are innumerable other territorial disputes throughout the world, many of which had resulted in ongoing armed conflicts.

School training in China to defend

Primary school children practice defending themselves with brooms during an anti-violence exercise at a school in Rugao, Jiangsu province, China

A teenage girl in China has stopped a boy from committing suicide with a simple kiss

The incident occurred at a shopping mall in Shenzhen, when Liu Wenxiu was passing by a pedestrian bridge in the Guang Province, where Wenxiu noticed crow...ds gathering around an unknown man who was clinging to a barrier on the mall's highest floor.

According to local television, the boy’s mother had passed away, his stepmother didn’t treat him well and she left with all his father’s money.

"The young man was on the outside of the barrier and was holding a knife to his chest but nobody seemed to be trying to talk him round," Wenxiu said, according to Orange News. "I wanted to help him but the police wouldn't let me through so I lied and told them he was my boyfriend and that he wanted to kill himself because of me."

"They let me talk to him and he told me he was sad because he was from a broken family," she explained. "I'm also from a broken family too and understood him perfectly.

"His story touched me and I felt like I really was his girlfriend and I could help him."

The negotiation on the bridge ended like a romantic movie when Liu hugged the boy and kissed him unexpectedly. Police took advantage of the situation to take away the boy’s knife and pull him inside the handrail of the bridge.

Liu left after the rescue, but local police needed her help again because the boy refused to reveal his story without her presence.

Source :
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/fun/news/a326843/woman-saves-man-from-suicide-with-a-kiss.html

http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2011/06/26/girl-saves-suicidal-boy-with-a-kiss-video/

Video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p2NvMYzQ9s

Students Crossing Collapsed Bridge

Students hold on to the side steel bars of a collapsed bridge as they cross a river to get to school at Sanghiang Tanjung village in Lebak regency, Indonesia's Banten village, January 19, 2012. 

Overtoun Bridge – where the dogs commit suicide

The Overtoun Bridge is an arch bridge located near Milton, Dumbarton, Scotland, which was built in 1859. It has become famous for the number of unexplained instances in which dogs have, apparently, committed suicide by leaping off it. The incidents were first recorded around the 1950′s or 1960′s, when it was noticed that dogs – usually the long-nosed variety, like Collies – would suddenly and unexpectedly leap off the bridge and fall fifty feet, to their deaths. In some cases, however, the dogs would survive gets up, and then leap off the bridge again. What makes this tragic mystery even more mysterious is that many of the dogs that jump from Overton Bridge jump from the same side and from almost the same spot: between the final two parapets on the right-hand side of the bridge.

One bereaved owner, Donna Cooper was out walking with her family when her dog, Ben leapt over the parapet and fell fifty feet onto the rocks below. ‘His paw was broken, his jaw was broken and his back was broken and badly twisted. The vet decided it wasn’t worth putting him through the pain, so we had to let him go,’ recalls Donna.

Some believe that the bridge is haunted. In 1994, a man threw his baby son off the bridge, claiming that it was the anti-Christ. Later, the man attempted suicide there as well. Some believe that Overtoun Bridge is a “thin place”, where the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead meet, and sometimes cross over.

As the unexplained phenomenon received international media attention, the Scottish SPCA sent an animal habitat expert to investigate the causes as to why dogs kill themselves at Overtoun Bridge. Initially Dr David Sands examined sight, smell and sound factors. After eliminating what a dog could potentially see and hear on the bridge, he eventually focused on scent following the discovery of mice and mink in undergrowth on the side of the bridge from which dogs often leaped. In a test, the odors from these animals were spread around an open field. Ten dogs were unleashed - representing the commonest breeds that jumped off the bridge. Of the dogs tested, only two showed no interest in any of the scents while nearly all the others made straight for the mink scent. Sands concluded that, although it was not a definitive answer, the potent odor from male mink urine was possibly luring keen-nosed dogs to their deaths.

Below is a documentery of Dr David Sands.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysvn2JDzVw8&feature=player_embedded

Baby In Womb Grabs Doctor's Finger

When Alicia Atkins of Glendale, Ariz., was undergoing a routine C-section in October, something extraordinary happened.

Atkins's baby girl – still inside her mother’s womb – reached up and grabbed her doctor's Finger.

Realizing how special the moment was, Dr. Allen Sawyer, who has also delivered Atkins’s other two children, called to her husband Randy to grab the camera.

In a split second, he was able to capture the special moment just in time

And the image has gone viral.

The little baby's name is Nevaeh -- Heaven spelled backward. Even the hospital staff told her parents there's something almost spiritual about the picture of Nevaeh holding the doctor's finger before technically being born.

"It was such an amazing photo. Hospital staff had possibly heard of it happening but they had never seen a photo of it," said Alicia Atkins, Nevaeh's mother.

Atkins is actually a professional photographer herself and owns her own business called A Classic Pin-Up Photography. However, it was her dad, Randy, who snapped the picture.

"The doctor called me over and said, 'Hey, she's grabbing my finger.' So I ran over there and just grabbed the shot and I was just in awe looking at it. It was such an amazing picture," said Randy Atkins, adding that he was nervous about missing the precious and fleeting moment as he hurried to snap a picture.

 

Dubai at it's Best

An aerial picture of a Cloud-Shrouded Dubai has won first prize in a National Geographic photography contest

List of wars with highest cost of causalities/deaths tolls across the world.

This list of wars by death toll includes deaths that are either directly or indirectly caused by war. These numbers include both the deaths of military personnel which are the direct results of battle or other military wartime actions, as well as the wartime/ war-related deaths of civilians, which are the results of war induced epidemics, diseases, famines, atrocities etc.

Two of the ten most highly estimated death tolls, have been waged in the last century. These are of course the two World Wars. Most of the others involved China or neighboring peoples.

Some events overlap categories.

Knocker-up

 A Knocker-up was a profession in England and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution and at least as late as the 1920s, before alarm clocks were affordable or reliable.

A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time.

The knocker-up often used a long and light stick (often bamboo) to reach windows on higher floors. In return, the knocker-up would be paid a few pence a week for this job. The knocker-up would not leave a client’s window until they were assured the client had been awoken.

There were large numbers of people carrying out the job, especially in larger industrial towns such as Manchester. Generally the job was carried out by elderly men and women but sometimes police constables supplemented their pay by performing the task during early morning patrols

Very Strange Connection

President Lincoln's oldest son was connected to three presidential assassinations. He was invited, but did not attend, Ford's Theatre (but was by his father's deathbed in 1865); he was on the scene when Garfield was shot in 1881; and he was present for McKinley's assassination in 1901. 

Shortest war in history

Year Fought: 1896
Between: British Empire vs Zanzibar
Outcome: British victory

The Anglo-Zanzibar War was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar on 27 August 1896. With duration of only 45 minutes, it holds the record of being the shortest war in recorded history. The war broke out after Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini, who had willingly co-operated with the British colonial administration, died on 25 August 1896, and his nephew, Khalid bin Bargash, seized power in what amounted to a coup d’état. The British favoured another candidate, Hamud bin Muhammed, whom they believed would be easier to work with, and delivered an ultimatum ordering Bargash to abdicate. Bargash refused. While Bargash’s troops set to fortifying the palace, the Royal Navy assembled five warships in the harbour in front of the palace. The British also landed parties of Royal Marines to support the “loyalist” regular army of Zanzibar. Despite the Sultan’s last-minute efforts to negotiate for peace via the U.S. representative on the island, the Royal Navy ships opened fire on the palace at 9 am on 27 August 1896 as soon as the ultimatum ran out. With the palace falling down around him and escalating casualties, Bargash beat a hasty retreat to the German consulate where he was granted asylum. The shelling stopped after 45 minutes. The British demanded that the Germans surrender the erstwhile Sultan to them, but he escaped to sea on 2 October 1896. He lived in exile in Dar es Salaam until captured by the British in 1916. He was later allowed to live in Mombasa where he died in 1927. As a final act, Britain demanded payment from the Zanzibar government to pay for the shells fired on the country.

A bolt of lightning killed an entire soccer team during a game in 1998!

In October of 1998 a bolt of lightning killed an entire 11-man soccer team from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The opposing team was completely unharmed. Thirty more people had burn injuries.

Some people thought the team had been cursed and that was what caused the lightning to strike them. The game was a draw at 1-1 when the lightning struck the visiting team in the province of Kasai in the eastern region of the DRC.

Incidentally, a similar situation happened the following weekend in Johannesburg, South Africa. A Premier League soccer match was suddenly stopped when lightning struck the field.

Half of the players from both teams, the Jomo Cosmos and the Moroka Swallows, fell to the ground. Several of the players writhed on the ground holding their ears and eyes in pain. Luckily, no one was killed in that incident. 

World's Youngest Serial Killer - Mary Bell

Mary Bell born May 26, 1957
Mary Bell is deemed one of the world's youngest serial killers in history. Although not a serial killer by definition, many feel if she wasn't captured the killings would have continued. She had a tough start in life. Mary's mother tried to kill her on multiple occasions during the beginning years of her life, allegedly trying to make it look like an accident.

Abuse was no stranger to Mary Bell. Her mother, who had Mary at the age of 17, was a prostitute who traveled to Glasgow to work. She was absent from home, spending little to no time with her daughter. When she was there she forced the young child to engage in adult activities with men. The only knowledge Mary Bell had of her mother was the abusive actions towards her.


At the tender age of just 10 years old, one day before her 11th birthday, Mary Bell would commit her first murder. Martin Brown was her first victim, whom she murdered by strangling him to death. Soon after she claimed the life of Brown, Mary and a 13 year old friend Norma Flora Bell (no relation) broke into and vandalized a nursery in Scottwood. They allegedly littered the nursery with letters claiming they were Martin Brown's murderer. This was simply dismissed as a prank as kids will be kids. Soon after the vandalism incident, young potential serial killer Mary strangled three year old Brian Howe to death. After the toddler died, she carved the letter N into his chest, which she would later change to a M, done with a razor blade. Mary then came back to cut parts of his hair off with scissors and used it to partially castrate him.

This young murderer and 13 year old Norma Bell would eventually become captured August in 1968. The trial was set against Mary and Norma, charging them both with two counts of manslaughter. Norma was acquitted of the charges but Mary Bell was convicted of both counts of manslaughter. Prison was deemed inappropriate because of her age and she was too dangerous for a girl's home. She was sent to a boy's home indefinitely.

After serving her time in the boy's home and some time in prison, she was released to the world with a new, unknown identity in 1980. She had a daughter in 1984. When people found out her identity on two separate occasions, she was driven from her location both times. Finally settling in at an unknown location, her daughter grew up and had children. She now lives as a grandmother.

First View of Earth From Moon

On Aug. 23, 1966, the world received its first view of Earth taken by a spacecraft from the vicinity of the Moon. The photo was transmitted to Earth by the Lunar Orbiter I and received at the NASA tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid, Spain. The image was taken during the spacecraft’s 16th orbit.