Iran has more people than you think

Questions:

1. Name the French philosopher credited with saying, “cogito, ergo sum,” or “I think, therefore I am.”

2. Which blood type is the rarest in the United States?

3. There are seven countries in Africa that begin with the letter M. Name them. Hint: Two are island nations.

4. Give the names of the Grease movie characters played by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

5. What classic book contains the characters Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, Lucie Manette and Madame Defarge?

Fun Facts:

Although China spans five geographical time zones, it uses only one official time zone, Beijing time. In western China, that can make for some very strange work times.

Australia has roughly the same population as Taiwan, but Australia is about 200 times larger in area.

When a person receives a kidney transplant, the old kidneys usually are not removed. They are left in place while the transplanted kidney is attached nearby.

The population of Iran is very close to the combined populations of California, Texas and Florida.

An adult male tiger can weigh more than 500 pounds, up to roughly 150 pounds more than an adult male lion.

At their peak, an estimated 3–5 billion passenger pigeons filled North America. Flocks were so huge they darkened the sky for hours. Some shooting contests required 30,000 dead birds to win. By 1914, the last passenger pigeon was gone, one of history’s most brutal population collapses.

The first and last men whose deaths were officially linked to the construction of Hoover Dam were father and son. George Tierney died on Dec. 20, 1922, and his son Patrick Tierney died exactly 13 years later, on Dec. 20, 1935.

More than 60 percent of Canadians live south of Seattle.

Parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, are actually within the Mississippi River Basin, meaning some water that falls in Canada eventually flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

A 2016 National Institutes of Health study found that most Biggest Loser contestants had regained their weight six years after the show, while their resting metabolisms remained much slower than expected for their body size.

Marilyn Monroe had two older half-siblings whom she did not meet until she was a teenager. After their parents divorced, their father illegally took them to Kentucky, depriving Monroe’s mother of custody.

Answers:

1. René Descartes. He lived from 1596 to 1650.

2. AB negative (Less than 1 percent of Americans are AB - )

3. Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco and Mozambique. The island nations are Madagascar and Mauritius.

4. John Travolta played Danny Zuko, and Olivia Newton-John played Sandy Olsson.

5. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, published in 1859.