The event is the world’s third largest celebration of the Emerald Isle saint, bettered only by those in Dublin and New York.

There’s a dear little plant
that grows in our isle,
‘Twas St. Patrick himself
sure that set it;
And the sun on his labour
with pleasure did smile,
And with dew from his eye
often wet it.
It thrives through the bog,
through the brake,
through the mireland;
And he called it the dear
little shamrock of Ireland—
The sweet little shamrock,
the dear little shamrock,
The sweet little, green little,
shamrock of Ireland!
Andrew Cherry, Irish Playwright (1762-1812)

Medical term for belly button is umbilicus.

Those who smoke a pack of cigarettes a day drink half a cup of tar a year.

Humans are the only animals capable of drawing a straight line.

On average, an individual grows over 450 miles of hair in a lifetime.

When a person smiles, 17 muscles are engaged.

Human DNA contains 80,000 genes.

Men shorter than 4.2 feet and women shorter than 3.9 feet are considered dwarfs.

White blood cells live in the human body for 2 to 4 days, while red blood cells live up to 3 to 4 months.

Every human bends her finger 25 million times in a lifetime.

Human heart is equal in size to a human fist. Average weight of an adult’s heart is approximately 0.5lbs.

Human body contains four minerals: apatite, aragonite, calcite, and christobalite.

Human brain generates more electric impulses in a day than all telephones of the world combined.

The loss of vision caused by exposure to bright light is called snow blindness.

Total weight of bacteria living in the human body is 4.4lbs.

Human brain produces 100,000 chemical reactions per second.

Babies are born without kneecaps, which form only at the age of 2 to 6.

The area of human lungs’ surface is equal to that of a tennis court.

At birth, a baby’s brain contains 14 billion cells, and this number does not increase till death. On the contrary, after the age of 25 it decreases by 100,000 cells per day. Reading a page of text in a minute kills approximately 70 cells. After the age of 40, the brain degradation is accelerated, and after 50, neurons shrink and brain volume reduces.

The human small intestines are 8.5 feet long during life. After death, when the muscles of the bowel walls relax, it may reach over 19 feet.

An average human has approximately 2 million of perspiratory glands. An average adult person loses 540 calories with a liter of sweat. Men perspire 40% more than women.

The right lung holds more air than the left one.

An adult person makes approximately 23,000 breaths a day.

In a lifetime, the female body produces 7 million egg cells.

The human eye is capable of differentiating 10,000,000 hues.

There are approximately 40,000 bacteria in the human mouth.

It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

The human spine contains 33 to 34 spinal bones.

Women blink twice as often as men.

For the third time in three years, the world has a new richest man. 

Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil, Mexican tycoon Carlo Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires. 

Slim’s fortune has swelled to an estimated US$53.5 billion, up $18.5 billion in 12 months. Shares of America Movil, of which Slim owns a $23 billion stake, were up 35% in a year.

BY Annie Leonard  the Director of the Story of Stuff Project and author of the book, The Story of Stuff (Free Press, March 2010).

Walking to work one day I wanted to listen to the news, so I popped into Radio Shack. I found a cute little green radio for $4.99. Pleased with my bargain, I stood in line to pay, but then started wondering: how could $4.99 cover the cost of extracting the raw materials, manufacturing the parts, assembling the radio, and getting it into my hands?

Whenever I go to buy something I get sidetracked, thinking of how it got here. It’s an occupational hazard. I spent a decade traveling around the world, visiting the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where it goes when we don’t want it any more. What I learned makes it impossible for me to look at anything and not see the journey it made through the global take-make-waste system.

The metal in that $4.99 radio was probably mined in Africa. The petroleum that went into the plastic probably was pumped from Iraq, and the plastic itself produced in China. The packaging came from forests in Brazil or Canada. Maybe the parts were then shipped across the ocean to Mexico, where some 15-year-old in a maquiladora assembled the radio. There it was put on a truck or a train and shipped to a distribution center in Southern California, then 500 miles north to my local store.

Four-ninety-nine? That wouldn’t pay for the shelf space it took up until I came along, let alone the salary for the guy who helped me pick it out.

That’s when I realized: I didn’t pay for the radio. So who did?

A study currently underway for the United Nations is calculating the cost of pollution and other environmental damage caused by the 3,000 largest publicly held corporations in the world. The study, which will be published this summer, has found that the cost of environmental damage by these companies is $2.2 trillion, or more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable. This includes greenhouse gas emissions, other pollution, and water degradation. The final amount is likely to increase once additional costs — like toxic waste — are incorporated.

Drastic action has been meted on four top Pakistan players

Top Pakistan stars Mohammad Yousuf and Younus Khan have been told they cannot represent their country again.

The Pakistan Cricket Board’s inquiry into the tour of Australia found the pair had been involved in “infighting which… brought down the whole team”.

Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Shoaib Malik each face one-year bans and big fines.

Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal and Umar Akmal also face heavy fines while their conduct will be strictly monitored during a six-month probationary period.

The PCB has implemented the recommendations of an inquiry committee formed to evaluate Pakistan’s dismal performance against Australia during the winter, when they lost all nine internationals.

Please click on the following link for lots more “stuff” about Easter:

http://easterfunontheweb.blogspot.com/