30 most amazing and unknown facts about Amazon and Jeff Bezoz that you need to know - Bemorepanda
Everyone knows Amazon.com, where you can order fast and convenient delivery of everything. Its creator, Jeff Bezos, promises that it will soon be possible to deliver orders in 10 minutes using aerial drones. But few have heard of Relentless.com. By typing this address in a search engine, you will be automatically redirected to Amazon.
The fact is that "Relentless" is one of the first names that 30-year-old Bezos came up with for his online store. The second option was "Kadabra" as part of a magic spell. But both did not pass, then Bezos simply took a dictionary from the shelf and chose one of the first words he came across - the Amazon River. Thus began one of the most successful business stories in the world. It has a bit of magic and ruthlessness.
Brad Stone's book "The Everything Store" is about Jeff Bezos and the Amazon era, which explores the early years of Amazon and how it evolved from an online bookstore to today's e-commerce giant. Bemorepanda have collected some interesting facts about Amazon from this book.
1. Amazon originally had a different name.
Jeff Bezos wanted to give his company the name Cadabra, which sounded like part of a spell.
But Amazon's first lawyer, Todd Tarbert, said the name was too similar to the word cadaver, which translates from English as "corpse." Customers may have misheard such a name on the phone.
Bezos also liked the title Relentless. By the way, if you go to Relentless.com, you will be redirected to the Amazon home page.
Finally, Bezos chose the name Amazon - he liked the idea of naming the company after the largest river in the world. It can be seen on the original Amazon logo.
2. There used to be a bell in the company's office that would ring whenever someone made a purchase on Amazon
After a few weeks, the bell began to ring so often that it had to be removed.
3. Initially, Bezos opened a company in his garage. The servers required so much power that when Bezos and his wife turned on a hairdryer or vacuum cleaner in the house, they would short-circuit.
4. In its first month of operation, Amazon sold books to people from all 50 states of America and 45 different countries.
5. A little-known lichen book saved Amazon from bankruptcy.
Book distributors demanded to buy books in batches of ten, but Amazon didn't need that much, and the company wouldn't have enough money to buy them.
But in the end, there was one loophole with which it was possible to bypass this rule. Amazon began ordering one book and nine copies of some obscure lichen book that was always out of stock.
6. Bezos used to hold meetings at the Barnes & Noble bookstore.
In the early days of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, his wife Mackenzie, and their first employee, Shel Kafan, held meetings at a local Barnes and Noble store.
In 1996, Bezos met with the shopkeepers, and they said they respect him, but they are still going to launch a site that will destroy Amazon. Barnes and Noble co-founder Len Riggio wanted to call this site the Book Predator.
7. Jeff Bezos wanted his employees to work at least 60 hours a week.
Previously, the company did not know what it meant to maintain a balance between work and personal life. One of the first employees said that he worked without rest for more than eight months: he came to work early in the morning and returned late at night. He constantly rode his bike to work and completely forgot about the minibus that was parked at his house.
He didn’t have time to check his mail, and when he did open it, he saw several parking tickets, a notification from the tow truck and, finally, a message that his minibus was sold at an auction.
8. In 1998, Amazon had a very busy Christmas.
At that time, the company had a significant staff shortage. At Christmas time, all fulfillment center employees had to work the night shift. They called for help from friends and relatives and sometimes slept in their cars to go straight to work in the morning.
After this incident, Amazon promised to make sure that the next holidays the company has enough employees who would be able to fulfill the holiday orders. This is why Amazon is recruiting so many seasonal workers these days.
9. When eBay came along, Amazon launched its own auction site.
The idea failed, but Bezos liked it.
For $ 40,000, he bought the skeleton of a primeval cave bear and displayed it in the lobby of Amazon headquarters. This skeleton stands there to this day, and next to it is a sign "Please do not feed the bear."
10. Bezos enjoyed growing his company quickly, leading to chaos in Amazon's order centers.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, Amazon was in chaos. Centers were closed for several hours due to system failures, and mountains of goods were lying around, and the company was not ready to store new categories of products.
When Amazon started selling kitchen goods, it sometimes happened that the knives without the protective packaging cut the conveyor belt. The situation was extremely dangerous.
11. In early 2002, Bezos introduced the concept of a “two pizza team”.
He suggested that workers should work in groups of less than ten people - that's how many people can be fed with two pizzas. According to Bezos, such groups should work autonomously, they should have clear goals and a formula for assessing success.
12. Dissatisfied customers can send a complaint to Bezos's personal mail, and he will forward it to the right employee with a single scary "?"
Whenever Amazon employees receive a letter from Bezos with a question mark, they react to it like a bomb. They usually have several hours to solve the problem and prepare a detailed explanation of why it arose. The explanatory note is checked by senior managers and then redirected to Bezos himself. In this way, Bezos shows customers that their complaints are constantly reviewed by the company.
13. Even before Google Street View came along, Amazon had Block View.
In 2004, Amazon launched the A9.com search engine. The team that worked on it also began to develop a project called Block View, which would display photographs of them from the street in response to a search query about stores and restaurants. For less than $ 100,000, Amazon sent its car photographers to twenty US cities to photograph the restaurants they needed. In 2006, Amazon abandoned the project, and in 2007 Google launched Street View.
14. Amazon employees fought stress with primal screams.
During the holidays, it is especially difficult for the employees of the logistics department. In the early 2000s, Jeff Wilkie, Chief Operating Officer for Amazon, allowed anyone who was able to achieve a big goal at work to close their eyes and yell at him with all their might on the phone.
Some of these primal screams nearly broke his speakers, Wilkie said.
15. Sometimes the "protests" of employees of Amazon fulfillment centers ended in rather funny ways.
The working conditions in these centers are notorious and sometimes their employees have tried to go on strike. One day, a worker decided to quit his job and sat astride a conveyor belt - and so he rode all the way out of the building.
But the funniest story happened in 2006 with a temporary employee of a Kansas center.
This employee came and went at the beginning of the shift, but no one saw him during working hours. Only a week later, it was discovered that the man had made himself a lair inside a pile of empty wooden boxes. Inside, he built a bed of Amazon products, reinforced the walls with pages torn from books, and even stole ordered food. When his lair was finally discovered, the employee was fired (not surprisingly).
16. The original Amazon Kindle e-reader was codenamed "Fiona".
This name Kindle got from the book by Neil Stevenson "The Diamond Age". It told of a distant future in which an engineer managed to steal a rare interactive book for his knowledge-hungry daughter, Fiona. The team behind the Kindle prototype was inspired by this fictional device.
The team asked Bezos to keep the name Fiona, but he ended up choosing the Kindle. This word is translated as "kindle the flame", and it really liked Bezos.
17. Jeff Bezos is said to have hired a leadership coach to shout less at his subordinates.
Bezos is known for being quite harsh or sarcastic about employees who tell him something unpleasant. Rumor has it that he has hired a special assistant to help him respond to the news in a less harsh manner.
During one meeting, Bezos chastised employees in his usual harsh manner. He said that they were all fools and that he gave them a week to figure out what they were doing. Then he took a couple of steps, froze as if he suddenly realized something and said: "But still, you did a good job."
18. Bezos Realized a childhood dream.
Bezos founded his own space tourism company Blue Origin in 2000, decades after telling teachers and friends as a child that he wanted to be a “space entrepreneur” when he grew up.
19. Space enthusiast.
Jeff is so passionate about NASA during the Mercury and Apollo missions that he equipped and financed an underwater expedition to locate and recover the debris of Apollo rockets.
20. Bezos doesn't use an alarm clock.
He does not use an alarm clock and tends to sleep a full eight hours a night. No overnight fires or early risings for this CEO.
21. A good father.
As a child, Jeff was adopted by his stepfather Miguel Bezos. Today, the entrepreneur has four children with his wife Mackenzie: three sons and a daughter, whom the couple adopted in China.
22. He has come a long way.
As a teenager, Bezos worked at McDonald's, making French fries. At the same time, he founded a small summer camp for primary school students DREAM Institute.
23. Demanding to women.
Jeff had high demands on candidates for the role of a life partner. In an interview with Wired, he said that he was looking for one that "will get him out of the trap of the Third World."
24. Altruist, but not strong.
Originally from Albuquerque, Jeff studied at Princeton. There he studied electrical engineering and computer science. In 2011, he donated $ 15 million to the university to build a center for the study of neurological disorders.
At the same time, being the richest man on earth, Bezos is ranked last in the ranking of the top 10 billionaire benefactors.
25. A big fan of reading.
Bezos's favorite book is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
26. Customers come first.
If you have any complaints or suggestions, just email jeff@amazon.com. Receiving emails to this mail, Bezos forwards the question to the person in charge at the company, who then reports directly to the CEO on the progress of the issue. So the problem is under control.
27. Bezos made the first tables for himself and Amazon employees himself.
He could not afford expensive furniture at the beginning of the journey, so he put together tables for the first employees himself, using wooden doors instead of tabletops and boards for legs. Now these tables have become something of an artifact at the company - for over 20 years at Amazon, they have been using various variations of that historically simple design for the desktop.
The company even instituted the Door Desk Awards, which give creators "good ideas to offer consumers the lowest prices."
28. Bezos is not a fan of expensive cars.
Despite the fact that after the founding of Amazon, Bezos' business rapidly went uphill, he did not, like many, buy yachts and expensive cars for himself and for a long time remained faithful to his 1987 Chevrolet Blazer, which at first personally delivered deliveries. In 1997, when the company went public, he finally swapped out his old car for the new Honda Accord.
29. Bezos once looked into the eyes of death.
In 2003, Jeff Bezos practically looked death in the eye. He was looking for land to build a test site for Blue Origin when his helicopter crashed on a tour of Texas. The Amazon CEO received a number of minor injuries and recovered quickly, but after that he did not fly helicopters for a long time.
“Nothing special occurred to me. I was only thinking about what a stupid way to die, ”Bezos told Fast Company in 2004.
It didn't become some kind of life-defining experience for me. I’m afraid I’ve learned a rather mundane lesson: Avoid helicopters whenever possible! They are not as reliable as air transport with wings. "
30. Bezos is an Early Investor in Google.
Less than five years after founding Amazon, Bezos demonstrated his investment flair by investing $ 1 million in Google in the late 90s. Then it was a serious risk, which by now has paid off handsomely.
The brand of the search giant Google is probably one of the most recognizable on the globe, and today only a person who is very far from the Internet and civilization has not heard about the company. At the same time, the activities of the "corporation of good" are so diverse that even its employees themselves do not know about all the initiatives of their management. Bemorepanda choosed 30 unusual and interesting facts about the world famous company that you most likely did not even know about.
Many people dream of working at Google. Getting there is not easy - sometimes interviews alone can take six months. But if you happen to be there, even if you are an intern, you can celebrate winning the jackpot.
1. Before giving the user the result of a search query, Google takes into account about 200 different factors.
2. The company owns a bunch of domains that are the wrong spelling for Google. For example, Gooogle.com, Gogle.com, Googlr.com and many others. Among them there are even such exotic ones as 466453.com - these are numbers on the phone's disk that correspond to the letters of Google.
3. When Google launched in 1998, the system was processing 500,000 queries a day. Now users ask the system for something more than 2 million times per second.
4. Since Google launched Street View in 2007, the project team has photographed over 11.5 million kilometers of roads and objects.
5. The first five American cities were captured with a 5 megapixel camera. Now the company uses devices with 75-megapixel sensors.
6. Every month, YouTube users watch over 6 billion hours of video - about an hour for every inhabitant of the globe.
7. Google regularly buys and funds projects that aim to change the world and the lives of millions of people. However, the "corporation of good" does not shun small, local projects. For example, in 2012, the company added the Cherokee American Indian language to Gmail.
8. More than 300 hours of new videos appear on YouTube every minute.
9. Last year, more than 1 billion Android devices were sold worldwide. This means that Google's market share in this segment is 81%.
10. In total, Google employs 53,600 people in 70 offices from 40 countries.
11. If a corporation likes something, then it will not stand up to the costs to buy it. This year, the company made more than 170 acquisitions, and the value of the top 10 purchases exceeded $ 24.5 billion.
12. Despite the huge number of adventurous and super-innovative projects, such as self-driving cars or smart contact lenses, the bulk of Google's revenue comes from advertising. In 2014, revenue from this type of activity amounted to $ 66 billion.
13. Larry Page and Sergey Brin released the first Doodle in August 1998. During this time, they were participating in the Burning Man rally through the Nevada desert and wanted the world to know where they were at the moment.
14. The volume of the Google search index is over 100 million GB. To accommodate this amount of data would require over 100,000 terabyte hard drives.
15. People trust and love Google services so much that when the system dropped by 5 minutes in 2013, the volume of global traffic dropped by 40%.
16. Google is probably the only company in the world that wants people to spend as little time on their website as possible.
17. Google was originally called BackRub. This is how the main page of the search engine looked like, which became the prototype of Google.
18. Google's incredibly fast growth is especially noticeable against the backdrop of one curious fact: since 2010, the Internet giant has bought an average of one company per week.
19. The first doodle was invented by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page together. It happened in 1998. A schematic image of a burning guy, a symbol of the Burning Man festival, which takes place in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, has been added to the usual multicolored Google inscription. Brin and Page went there in 2008.
20. Google's own chef, Charlie Ayers, came to Google in 1999, when the company had only 40 employees.
21. Ayers built a good career in the corporation, becoming the chef of the entire company. At the time of leaving Google, he controlled 150 employees and 10 cafes at Google's Mountain View headquarters.
22. Gmail already supports over 50 different languages. Among them are the Basque, Welsh, Tagalog, Malayalam, Telulu and Cherokee languages.
23. In 2004, Google went public, selling part of its shares on the stock exchange. On the same day, about 1,000 of its employees became millionaires.
24. One of these lucky ones is masseuse Bonnie Brown. She joined the company in 1999. Her initial salary was $ 450 per week.
25. Button "I'm Lucky!" became extremely popular. But it costs Google $ 100 million every year in lost ad revenue.
26. Google is hiring goats. In 2009, the company rented about two hundred goats that grazed on its California campus, while fertilizing the soil with their excrement along the way.
27. The first official tweet from Google's corporate Twitter meant "I'm in luck," but it was written in binary, meaning it was all zeros and ones.
28. Google's competitor, Mozilla (Firefox browser), receives money from the Internet giant. For the fact that the default browser uses the Google search engine, its developer receives $ 300 million a year.
29. The total cost of this 16 percent stake is close to $ 46 billion.
30. Each new employee within the company is called a noogler, and the former is called a xoogler.
YouTube is a huge video repository of a wide variety of formats and genres: marketing workshops, product unboxing, comedy shows, and educational songs for kids. For this variety, hosting is loved by almost two billion users around the world. And the business appreciated the advantages of the platform for promotion.
YouTube is undoubtedly the world's largest video sharing service.
Of course, it will be a surprise for everyone if this changes anytime soon!
Most of us use the YouTube website or app on a daily basis. Some use YouTube for learning, and some just for fun.
No matter how you use it, these 30 YouTube facts by Bemorepanda are worth reading!
Fact 1. YouTube was founded on February 14 (Valentine's Day) 2005 by three former PayPal employees.
Fact 2. It was originally funded by bonuses that employees received when eBay bought out PayPal.
Fact 3. The first YouTube video was uploaded on April 23, 2005. This is a video of the co-founder of the San Diego Zoo.
Fact 4. YouTube was originally created as a video testimonial site called "Tune In Hook Up".
Fact 5. Just 18 months after founding YouTube, Google bought it in stock for $ 1.65 billion.
Fact 6. YouTube has over a billion users, which is almost a third of all Internet users.
Fact 7. YouTube has opened a production site in Los Angeles that you can use for free, but only if you have at least 10,000 subscribers on the channel.
Fact 8. The oldest YouTube video about cats dates back to 1894.
Fact 9. More than 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
Fact 10. In 2014, the famous YouTube star, Grumpy Cat, made more money Gwyneth Paltrow - the Oscar-winning actress.
Fact 11. Google is, of course, the largest search engine in the world. But right behind it is Youtube, which is bigger than Bing, Yahoo and Ask combined.
Fact 12. Every April 1, YouTube pranks its users.
Fact 13. When they played their first joke, they turned the site upside down.
Fact 14. Rickrolling first appeared on YouTube in 2009. At its peak in 2008, more than 18 million users in the United States became involved in ricrolling.
Fact 15. Every month YouTube users watch 6 billion hours of video per month and 4 billion videos every day.
Fact 16. Apart from the US, Saudi Arabia has the most views on YouTube. This is because TV, Facebook and Twitter are banned in Saudi Arabia and YouTube is not restricted.
Fact 17. The most popular video that people are looking for is "How to kiss." The second most popular video is "how to tie a tie."
Fact 18. The most popular topic that people are looking for is, of course, music!
Fact 19. The total number of videos uploaded in 2010 is equivalent to over 150,000 full-length films in theaters every week.
Fact 20. The first world leader to create a YouTube channel was British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who opened his account in 2007.
Fact 21. According to a 2013 study, 60% of the 1000 most viewed YouTube videos are banned in Germany.
Fact 22. The longest YouTube video is 571 hours, 1 minute and 41 seconds. This is the same as 23 days and 19 hours!
Fact 23. The first video to reach 1 billion views was Hello by Adele the fastest. It reached 1 billion views in 88 days.
Fact 24: The video that got the most views on its first day of upload is the official teaser # 2 of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It scored 112 million views in 24 hours.
Fact 25. Justin Bieber is one of the first YouTube success stories.
Fact 26. YouTube has been watched every day on Facebook for over 150 years.
Fact 27. In Thailand, YouTube was blocked for 5 months in 2007 due to a 44-second video that depicted distorted images of the king.
Fact 28. There is a copyright infringement program called Automated Content ID that scans over 100 years of video every day.
Fact 29. Every minute there are 400 tweets containing a link to a YouTube video.
Fact 30. In 2011, 30% of all YouTube videos accounted for over 99% of views.
Without music, our life would be dull and monotonous. Many of us start and end our day with it. After all, besides the fact that it helps us to get aesthetic pleasure, music also cheers us up and generally has a beneficial effect on our well-being.
Elvis Presley was told at the audition that he lacked talent.
But to learn more about music, it is not at all necessary to be a professional in this field. Because many musical facts will interest anyone.
And today, we at Bemorepanda are ready to share some exciting details with you.
1. British naval officers turn on the Britney Spears songs "Oops I Did It Again" and "Baby One More Time" to drive pirates off the east coast of Africa. Since African criminals have a strong dislike for Western music and culture, they try to get away from this place as soon as possible.
2. Singing has been scientifically proven to be soothing and uplifting. However, singing in a group is even more beneficial because it releases hormones like oxytocin that make you feel good and also lowers stress hormones like cortisol.
3. Jimi Hendrix had no musical education and taught himself to play the guitar. Throughout his career, he could not read music.
4. If you're hoping to build a career in music but can't read or write music, don't worry. If the Beatles could do it, so can you! In a 2018 interview, Paul McCartney admitted that both he and the rest of his bandmates were musically "illiterate" and lacking in music theory. Every tune they wrote simply "came to them from above," said the legendary musician.
5. French researchers have determined that the volume of music affects the amount of alcohol consumed. Namely, if you listen to loud music, you are more likely to drink more in less time. The researchers studied 40 men aged 18-25 who drank draft beer in bars by manipulating the sound volume and observing the behavior of their subjects. So, if you don't plan on drinking a lot at the party, it might be worth avoiding bars with loud music.
6. Finland is the country with the largest number of metal musicians. A Reddit user created a map based on data from the Metallum encyclopedia. With 42.6 metal bands per 100,000 inhabitants, Finland is indeed home to the largest number of metal bands in this genre.
7. Cows prefer slow music. A 2001 study at the University of Leicester found that when cows listen to slow, soothing songs, they produce 3% more milk. Cows need oxytocin to produce milk, so slow music helps them relax and increases oxytocin levels. On the other hand, cows remained indifferent to rap and techno music, showing no change in milk production.
8. One of the greatest musicians and composers of the Renaissance, Orlande de Lassus was kidnapped three times as a child. The reason for all three kidnappings was his beautiful singing voice.
9. Scottish Heriot-Watt University studied the personalities of more than 36,000 music lovers from different countries and found that the only difference between heavy metal and classical music lovers is their age. Other than that, they were pretty much the same, creative, at ease, and introverted.
10. There are so many stories around about people quitting their jobs to pursue the career in art they have dreamed of all their lives. However, the opposite also happens. James Lilja, the original drummer for the pop punk band The Offspring, left the band after three years. There were no conflicts with other members of the group, but Lilya wanted to go to medical school. He later became an obstetrician-gynecologist and gynecologist-oncologist.
11. Prince released his debut album For You at the age of 20. In the liner notes of the album, he is listed as the musician performing all the vocals, but in addition he played 27 musical instruments: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, bass, bass synthesizer, electric piano, acoustic piano, etc.
12. It's hard to believe, but there are people who are completely indifferent to music. The University of Barcelona conducted a study in which 5 percent of participants reported that they did not experience any emotion or even the desire to tap their feet while listening to music. Otherwise, they were physically and psychologically healthy young people who enjoyed other things in life, but were not interested in music in any form.
13. Canada widely celebrated the 150th anniversary of the country. Part of the celebrations was a concert that lasted from March 17 to April 5, 2017, in which the musical group Epidemic participated. It was 453 hours 54 minutes and 40 seconds long and has been recognized as the longest multi-singer concert in the world.
14. In 1974, Elvis Presley approached Dolly Parton for the rights to record a cover of her hit I Will Always Love You. However, after his manager demanded half of all profits from the song, Parton refused to let Elvis record it.
15. In 2016, Mozart sold more CDs than Beyoncé, Adele and Drake. 2016 marks the 225th anniversary of Mozart's death, and to commemorate this event, Universal Music Group released a 200-disc box set featuring works by the great musician. The fact is that for statistical purposes, each disk was considered separately. But the box set was also a huge success and, despite a hefty price tag of over $600, was sold out almost immediately.
16. In 2013, Metallica played a concert for 120 scientists and competition winners at Carlini Station in Antarctica. The performance was held under a transparent dome. After that, the group received a new title in the Guinness Book of Records as the first musical group to perform on all seven continents. In fact, Metallica toured all seven continents in the same year.
17. Music helps increase physical performance, especially if you synchronize repetitive exercises with rhythm. This will not only help you train longer, but will also be more efficient. In one study, cyclists reported that they needed 7% less oxygen when they exercised to music than people who performed the same exercise with a random, unsynchronized background count. This shows that the temporal cues provided by music help you use your physical energy more effectively.
18. Before becoming famous, the members of Guns N' Roses had to earn their living doing some strange work. So, frontman Axl Rose and his co-founder and first rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin smoked cigarettes for a scientific study at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to some reports, they were making $8 an hour (or $19 in today's money).
19. The oldest piece of music in the world dates back to the 1st century AD and is called Seikilos Epitaph. You can find it on a tombstone in Turkey. Including both the score and a short text, it reads:
"While you live, shine / Do not be sad at all / Life exists only for a short time / And time takes its toll."
20. We find inspiration wherever we can. Even if your own cat walks on the keys of your instrument. This is exactly what Domenico Scarlatti observed before he had the idea of composing his fugue in G minor for harpsichord. He even named the work "Cat's Fugue" after the cat.
21. In 2014, scientists from the Museum of Science and Industry conducted an online test called "Hooked on Music." The test consisted of a thousand snippets of pop hits, from contemporary hits to hits from the 1940s. The 12,000 participants had to identify each song as quickly as possible. While the average time to identify most songs was 5 seconds, it took only about 2.3 seconds to guess the song Wannabe from the Spice Girls, making it the most memorable song of all time.
22. Astronaut Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to go into space, but he also turned out to be a talented musician. He first went viral with his cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity". During his 144-day stay on the International Space Station, Hadfield recorded 11 original songs. In 2015, he released them on an album titled Space Sessions: Songs for a Tin Can.
23. Everyone knows that music can affect our mood, but it turns out that it can also have a significant impact on our perception of the world. In a 2011 study at the University of Groningen, participants were asked to identify emojis while listening to music. If the faces matched the music, the participants identified them more accurately. And even when there were no emojis, participants felt like they were seeing a happy or sad face, depending on what music they were listening to at the time.
24. If you are into music or have received any form of music education, you are more likely to score higher on the SAT (Standardized Test for Admissions to Higher Education in the United States) or similar exams. Reports show that music students typically score 63 points higher in speaking and 44 points higher in math. They also tend to show a lot of self-confidence and are good team players and chimes, also known as tubular bells, was created by Simon Desorger. He used 120 aluminum tubes ranging in length from 473 mm to 4877 mm, tuned to suit musical scales.
26. Most musicians hate changing guitar strings. This is a tedious job that takes time and requires a lot of effort and a lot of patience. But instrument technician and record store owner Thomas Silkman set out to prove that this was not the case. On April 20, 2018, he set a world record by changing 226 strings in an hour. Interestingly, there was no special reason for this, he simply dreamed of setting a world record.
27. In the history of music, there are two days that are called "The Day the Music Died". The first occurred on February 3, 1959, when musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Big Bopper died in a plane crash in Ohio. A few years later, in 1963, another plane crashed in Tennessee, killing Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Cowboy Copas on board.
28. Country music is strongly associated with the American countryside. But over time, this genre is becoming more and more popular all over the world. One example of this is the Indian singer Bal Kishore Das Loival, who goes by the name Bobby Cash. He built a career as a country music performer in Australia and in 2005 received recognition from the Country Music Association of Nashville, Tennessee.
29. The best-selling album of all time belongs to Michael Jackson. This is his sixth studio album Thriller, released in 1982. It is estimated that over 60 million copies have been sold worldwide.
30. Elvis Presley was a truck driver. However, in order to fulfill his dream of becoming a singer, he attended auditions whenever possible. During his first performance on stage at the Grand Ole Opry in Tennessee, talent manager Jim Denny told Elvis that he lacked talent and should go back to his previous job.
31. You often hear about free concerts that have attracted more than a million viewers, but these numbers are often exaggerated. However, Guinness World Records claims that the largest free concert in history was attended by an estimated 4.2 million people. It took place on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and was organized to celebrate the New Year 1993. The stage performer was Rod Stewart.
32. The longest team drumming marathon in the world lasted 3 days, 8 hours and 2 minutes. Janelle Spaulding, Aaron Housego, Holly Jones, Ryan Murray and Lorraine Dorrington played from August 26 to 29, 2016, and their performance was broadcast live around the world.
33. There are two ways to read musical notes. In most Western countries they are known as do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si. In some others, these names are replaced by the first seven letters of the alphabet. However, seven notes is not a full octave. An octave consists of eight notes, where the eighth is the same as the first. And if you count all the sharps and flats in between, you get 12 notes.
34. If you thought that the conductor has absolute power over his orchestra, you are not mistaken. As a rule, orchestras include instruments from each of the five instrumental groups. However, the conductor has the right to choose the instruments necessary for the performance of the musical program. Also in the 20th century, a new tradition was introduced, according to which it was allowed to use not only classical musical instruments in the orchestra. Nowadays, if the conductor sees fit, you can see an electric guitar, a synthesizer or any other modern instrument in the orchestra.
35. We know that music is good for our mood and general well-being, but researchers from the University of Pavia (Italy) have proven that it helps our heart physically. It causes physiological changes that regulate blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory function. And if a classical musical phrase lasts more than 10 seconds, it causes the heart rate and some other parts of the cardiovascular system to synchronize with the music. At the same time, research has shown that music elicits stronger physiological responses in musicians than in people without a musical education.
36. Most countries have military bands, but only one country has a military band larger than a real army, and that is Monaco. The country's military band consists of 85 people. At the same time, his army has 82 soldiers. This is understandable, since Monaco is a fairly small country, and the only time it put its army on alert was when the president of neighboring France threatened to cut off water and electricity supplies in 1962 unless income tax was imposed on Monaco residents.
37. Almost everything the Simpsons does becomes history, and so the show's creators decided, x. Rumors have since circulated that Michael Jackson was the ghost composer, which made sense since the artist was a big fan of The Simpsons; however, the producers continued to deny this. It wasn't until many years later that Matt Groening admitted that Jackson actually wrote the track, but this was kept secret as the King of Pop was legally prohibited from writing for an outside label.
38. The largest known performing rock group included 953 musicians. The concert, organized by the Beijing Academy of Contemporary Music on June 16, 2016, took place in Tianjin, China and included 349 singers, 154 guitarists, 151 drummers, 100 bassists, 100 keyboardists and 98 brass players.
39. Prior to the Renaissance, non-folk music was predominantly written and performed at church services. After the Middle Ages, the Renaissance placed more emphasis on humanism, allowing musicians to experiment with new instruments and styles. The music they composed became less religious and more secular. One of the greatest things that the Renaissance gave us was opera, which was created as an attempt to bring ancient Greek theater back to life.
40. In Japanese, “carappo” means “empty,” and “okesutura” is the Japanese pronunciation of the word “orchestra.” If you put these two words together, you get "karaoke", which translates as "empty orchestra".
41. The world's longest performance began in September 2001 and should end in 2640. Yes, 27th century! The action takes place in the church of St. Buchard in Germany, where an automatic organ plays as slowly as possible a piece by avant-garde composer John Cage. Visitors have to wait months to catch the chord change - that's how slow it is. Interestingly, the performance began even before the organ was completely completed - in 2008, several pipes were added, and this did not affect the music in any way.
42. The sea organ may sound like something straight out of The Little Mermaid, but it actually exists. After the devastation caused by World War II, the city of Zadar in Croatia underwent a major renovation. One of them was a concrete wall on the city coast. An interesting part of this wall is located under the large marble steps and is a set of pipes. When they hit the sea waves, they make musical sounds. Since its completion in 2005, the Zadar Sea Organ has become very popular with locals and tourists alike.
43. Even after so many years after the breakup of the Spice Girls, individual members are still referred to by their nicknames. But what is interesting, these nicknames were not invented by the girls themselves and not by any of the label's employees. At the beginning of their career, they were interviewed by the famous British teen magazine Top of the Pops, whose editor gave them nicknames. All five of them stuck and were later officially used by the band.
44. The highest price a musical instrument was sold for is $15.9 million. Of course, it was a Stradivarius violin, namely "Lady Blunt". It was sold in 2011 for four times the previous Stradivarius record. Industry experts say that Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù violins yield around 10-12% per year.
45. It is well known that different areas of our brain are responsible for different aspects of life. However, in 2011, Finnish researchers showed in a groundbreaking study that different areas of the brain are involved in listening to music, including those that control motor actions, emotions, and creativity. This research helped them understand how the brain processes rhythm, pitch and timbre, also known as sound color, as well as other aspects of music, and how large the effect of music is.
46. The largest erhu ensemble gathered for a performance in Raoyang, China on October 19, 2019. 2024 participants played a traditional Chinese musical instrument similar to a violin for 5 minutes and 18 seconds.
47. On November 13, 2009, the Tom Lee Music Company gathered 6,131 musicians in Hong Kong for a concert that was to be given by the largest harmonica ensemble in history. The entire performance lasted 7 minutes and 25 seconds.
48. No one will be surprised by the fact that two people play at the same piano. What about 23 people? Students of the Isidor Bajic School of Music proved that this is possible on September 20, 2019, when they performed in Novi Sad (Serbia). The play they performed, called "Zora" ("dawn" in Serbian), was written by one of the graduates of the school especially for this event.
49. When Japanese pop group AKB48 started out, it only had 48 members, hence the name. However, over time, they decided that the more the better, the time of existence. This makes AKB48 the biggest pop group in the world.
50. The London Symphony Orchestra was supposed to travel to the US to perform aboard the infamous Titanic. However, due to reasons beyond their control, the entire orchestra had to board another ship in order to reach their destination in time.
51. A study of the word "jazz" showed that it is associated with the word "jasm", meaning "cheerfulness, energy" as early as 1860. The first recorded use of the word was not even associated with music. In an article in the Los Angeles Times in 1912, a minor league baseball pitcher called the pitch a "jazz ball" because "it wobbles and you just can't do anything about it."
52. Jazz ensembles differ in the number of performers and types of instruments, but the most basic of them is called the piano trio. Consisting of piano, bass and drums, it's just enough to perform and share the essence of jazz with your audience.
53. A professor at the University of Sydney conducted a study that examined the deaths of musicians between 1950 and June 2014. He compared life expectancy, and the proportion of suicides, homicides, and accidental deaths by sex and decade, with those of the general US population. The conclusion he came to was not particularly encouraging: on average, musicians live 25 years less than ordinary people.
54. Whoever told you that Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll, is dead, don't believe them! He may not be with us physically, but today he continues to be the world's best-selling solo artist with over 1 billion sales worldwide. For a musician whose career peaked in the 50s and 60s, this is a huge achievement.
55. The word "orchestra" does not indicate a specific number of musicians. Chamber orchestras are usually small and include no more than fifty performers, which cannot be said about symphony and philharmonic orchestras - they often have more than eighty musicians. Depending on the program, even more than a hundred performers can be expected in one orchestra.
56. Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini is one of the most famous operatic authors in the history of music. Among his works is the opera "Tancredi", which includes the play "Di Tanti Palpiti". Rossini himself called it a "rice aria" because he composed the entire piece while waiting for a dish of rice to be cooked.
57. On October 15, 2017, David Stanley and The Music Man Project brought together 1,521 triangle players to perform together at the Music is Magic concert in London. This ensemble went down in history as the largest ensemble of triangles.
In February 2022, the 2022 Super Bowl will take place - the final of the National Football League.
Ahead of the match, which is just some days away, the NFL has announced a roster of performers who will play during halftime.
The audience will be entertained by four famous rappers - Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar. Also on stage will be the hip-hop singer Mary J. Blige.
This is the final game of the American football season between the two best teams in the United States. At the same time, it is the most rated event of the year on American television, which gathers the maximum audience from television screens. The Super Bowl is not only watched by sports fans, because it is one of the main events of modern pop culture.
Every year, on the first Sunday in February, the US hosts the final game of the National Football League - The Super Bowl. From a purely sporting event, the Superbowl has long turned into a super show. We tell the story of the best performances of this cup, which have become iconic in pop culture and fashion - from Carol Channing to The Weeknd.
Bemorepanda collected some interesting facts about The Super Bowl 2022.
1. Super Bowl - in American football, the title of the final game for the title of champion of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States of America. The game and its attendant celebration over the years is Super Bowl Sunday.
2. Any holiday, in my opinion, is great: it is a good mood, emotions, meeting interesting people and friends (if you are watching a company) and a reason for discussion the next day. Well, in America they know how to decorate holidays beautifully and celebrate on a large scale.
3. During the break, the stadium turns into a large-scale concert venue. One star is putting on an amazing mini-concert!
4. Huge audience attracts advertisers' attention. During the Super Bowl, the most expensive and high-quality advertising in the world is shown - the cost of showing a 30-second video is $ 5 million. Film companies showcase exclusive trailers of the most anticipated films of the year.
5. At the same time there are 22 people on the field - 11 attacking players of one team against 11 defense players of the other. The task of attacking in 4 attempts to go 10 yards. In this case, the ball can be passed through the air or immediately run with it in hand. If you miss 10 yards in your available attempts, either give the ball to an opponent or kick the ball into the goal to score 3 points.
6. If the attack goes all the way and the player is in the end zone with the ball, this is called a touchdown and the team scores 6 points plus the chance to score one extra. The task of the defense, therefore, is to prevent the attack from passing all those yards.
7. The Denver Broncos are playing against the Carolina Panthers. For Denver, the main figure is 39-year-old quarterback Peyton Manning, one of America's most famous and respected athletes. For him, this is most likely the last game of his career and a chance to say goodbye to sports beautifully by winning the championship ring.
8. Carolina are a young and mischievous team with outstanding defense, having suffered only 1 defeat in 18 games of the season (including the playoffs). The leader is quarterback Cameron Newton, who will soon be named the best player of the regular season.
9. From the point of view of non-Americans, the hysteria around, in fact, a football match seems to be a surprising phenomenon.
10. The amazing thing is: Since 1967, when the National Football League and the American Football League began merging, the Super Bowl has grown in popularity until it has become a national phenomenon.
11. Now the final game of the season, during which the NFL champion is determined, in the United States has the character of a national holiday: fashionable department stores like Bergdorf Goodman decorate windows in her honor and come up with capsule collections, and Americans themselves sit en masse in front of TV screens - on the day of the final in the USA they buy and eat only slightly less food than they did on Thanksgiving.
12. The TV broadcast of the game is so popular that the match itself has been shifted over the years to the evening time, so that the breaks fall on Sunday prime time.
13. For this broadcast, brands of all stripes traditionally release separate commercials (one minute of airtime during the Super Bowl costs about $ 8 million) - this is how the first iPhone advertisement was shown for the first time, and this year the Tiffany & Co. campaign will be presented during the broadcast. starring Lady Gaga.
14. Falling into big news feeds, the fashion industry could not ignore such an event and throughout the existence of the Super Bowl systematically worked its way inside the football game. In the interval between the halves, since 1970, they have been organizing mini-concerts - a little less than 15 minutes, the so-called halftime performances, at which the most famous artists at the time of the game perform.
15. The next morning, the sports media talked about the score, and the rest of the media talked about the performances and costumes prepared by the fashion brand teams for the Super Bowl. We have selected the most iconic ones.
16. Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida attracted three times fewer people than usual. Due to antiquated measures, the performances had to be moved from the field to the stage installed in the stands (for the first time in the 55-year history of the Super Bowl!). However, even this did not stop them from staging a grand show. Super Bowl 2021 headliner The Weeknd was accompanied by poet Amanda Gorman, r'n'b singer Jazmine Sullivan, singer H.E.R. and Miley Cyrus.
17. Viewers first saw Cyrus performing a special TikTok Tailgate show in honor of the doctors (with a Tik Tok broadcast, of course).
18. On the stage, Miley appeared first in the form of a cheerleader by Michael Schmidt, and then in the interpretation of football equipment that Gucci designers created especially for Miley, by the way, the FTW inscription on the top stands for for the win.
19. To the delight of older viewers, rock legends Billy Idol and Joan Jett appeared on stage with Cyrus (they also worked with Miley on her last disc). After Miley, Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet most of us knew about at Biden's inauguration, came up with a new poem about Americans fighting a pandemic. Amanda changed her Prada coat to a Moschino from the Spring 2021 collection, and a red rim for a pearl one. Star stylist Jason Bolden, who works with the main figures of American pop culture, from Alicia Keys to Serena Williams, gathered her for the ceremony (you can find out how his everyday life as a stylist goes on in Bolden's author's show on Netflix Styling Hollywood.
20. Although on the eve of the Super Bowl, The Weeknd complained that he did not have enough money to repeat the appearance of Diana Ross (in 1996, the singer landed at the stadium by helicopter), his appearance on the impromptu stage turned out to be no less spectacular.
21. The Weeknd decided not to deviate from the narrative set in 2020, and again used the image of Robert De Niro from "Casino" by Martin Scorsese. The outfit was in charge of Givenchy creative director Matthew Williams, who said it took 250 hours of work to create the rhinestone-studded jacket. But The Weeknd made it easier for the makeup artists - this time the singer went on stage without bandages on his face.
22. Dancers have appeared in them, and according to The Weeknd, this is a hairpin towards celebrities who change their appearance for public recognition. The performance has already been sold into memes, including because at the same time as The Weeknd there were thousands of his "clones" on stage - some fans decided that in the middle of the show Abel himself was a little confused.
23. J-Lo and Shakira's performance during the Super Bowl 2020 halftime ended just a few hours ago, and it is already being called one of the most spectacular shows in the history of halftime performances. Designer Peter Dundas was responsible for Shakira's costumes. One of them - a red crop top with Swarovski crystals and a transforming dress - has been compared on the Internet to the Gazelle outfit from the Zootopia cartoon, voiced by Shakira. Red, which is so popular on similar tracks, in the Super Bowl, on the contrary, was an exception. Oddly enough, the last time Diana Ross performed in such a dress on the show was back in 1996.
24. The choice of outfit for Jennifer Lopez was predictable. “When people think of Jennifer, they think of Versace,” said one of the singer's stylists, Mariel Hann. In just a 14-minute performance, J.Lo changed four outfits, while it took her only 8 seconds to change clothes for the longest time. So, during Jenny From The Block, she was in a leather jumpsuit with rivets (like she wore to concerts in the early 2000s), and Get Right sang in a sparkling bodysuit.
25. There were also political statements at the Super Bowl. So, for the finale of the performance, Jay Lo wore a voluminous cape of multi-colored feathers that form an American flag on the outside, and a Puerto Rican one from the inside.
26. Shakira's performance was regarded as an homage to Middle Eastern culture. The singer took the stage with the Colombian dance troupe Swing Latino (and performed a belly dance herself), and when she played the track My Hips Don’t Lie, she imitated the manner of Arab women to festively "hoot" with joy. True, not everyone understood the allusion - and so the singer became the main meme of the Super Bowl.
27. The end of the show was held under the auspices of girl power. Shakira and J. Lo sang Let’s Get Loud together - Lopez's hit from her 1999 debut album. And on stage they were joined by a chorus of girls led by the 11-year-old daughter Jennifer Lopez Emmy (American Vogue has already read her a great future).
28. The performance at the 2016 Super Bowl was discussed, firstly, because the game was jubilee - the fiftieth, and all the artists tried to make their performances as patriotic as possible.
29. The incident was that absolutely everything was decided to express love for the native country in the outfits of Italian designers: Lady Gaga was in Gucci, Bruno Mars - in Versace, Beyonce - in Dsquared2, and only Chris Martin's sneakers were American. Otherwise, the patriotic component of halftime performance was all right: for example, the costumes of Beyoncé dancers, which Zana Bane did, were an allusion to the uniforms of the Black Panthers, a radical political group that fought against the oppression of black Americans, and on the day before Super Bowl, the singer presented composition Formation and a clip for it (you yourself know what).
30. Jeremy Scott was responsible for the costumes of Perry: he came up with four extravagant (in some places even just weird) looks for the singer - from a beach ball costume to a dress of flames, in which Katy rode out onto the field, sitting astride a huge mechanical dog.
31. Scott is known for his commercial approach to fashion, and about the appearance of Moschino clothes at the Super Bowl he said honestly: "This is the most popular show of the year - it has more viewers than the Oscars!" As for Missy Elliott, in her case, the news feed was in her very appearance on the stage after a ten-year hiatus. Thanks to the Super Bowl, her album sales grew more than 900 percent in the week after the match.
32. Since 2012, bespoke clothing from big brands has become an important part of Super Bowl performances. For example, three years ago, the fashionable component of the performance split in two - on the one hand, there was Bruno Mars in a gold Yves Saint Laurent jacket, on the other - the opera singer Renee Fleming in a black Vera Wang dress made especially for her with white draperies.
33. According to Vera's plan, the dress was supposed to embody all the greatness of American culture, sit comfortably on Fleming and look good against the background of the orchestra. It seems that everything turned out, and in such a way that Rene did not want to donate the outfit to the museum later (in the end, she was persuaded).
34. The Super Bowl has had dozens of amazing performances, but Beyoncé is Beyoncé. The show, which the singer, her team and the group Destiny's Child came up with, was so entertaining and polished that it seemed as if the audience was watching a 3D clip.
35. Beyoncé came out in a transforming bodysuit, from which she unfastened parts during the performance until only transparent leather lace remained on her. The outfit was invented by the young American couturier Rubin Singer - according to him, the Super Bowl 2013 completely turned his career around. And we join Vogue.com's question: how did it happen that Beyoncé never lost her breath throughout the entire performance?
36. The most epic performance in Super Bowl history goes to Madonna. In the guise of an Egyptian queen, she rode out onto the field in a huge golden chariot, which was carried by hundreds of athletes, and then sang her hit Vogue and several compositions with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj.
37. The costumes for the show were made by Ricardo Tisci - he has already collaborated with Madonna during her three-year Sticky & Sweet tour. “People say that there is a limit to everything, but there are no borders from Madonna. So glad that after trying herself in different roles, she decided to return to the music scene. Not only to give us music, but also to create fashion, create iconic performances, ”said Tisci. For his Super Bowl performance, he came up with three looks: with a long gold cape, with a long black cape and a short dress with over the knee boots. The dancers' costumes were also ordered by Givenchy.
38. The Black Eyed Peas were still performing in full force back then, and each costume deserved a separate discussion. Fergie wore a leather dress with huge overhead shoulders (like those of American football players) covered with crystals, and her fingers glittered with huge ring claws worn on the last phalanx. The rest of the band were wearing leather suits with built-in LEDs. Plus the costumes of four hundred dancers glowed. Minnesota-based dance studio Just For Kix took on this challenging design and technical work. Six years have passed since then, and LEDs on clothes and shoes are gradually becoming a common place (the future is somewhere nearby).
39. The stage in the form of a purple cartoon letter P, the same guitar and sky-blue pantsuit with an orange shirt: this appearance of Prince is invariably included in all lists of the best images of the singer, and outside of such listings it can be safely called the most obvious proof of what he knew how to wear nuclear colors like no one else.
40. Perhaps the most scandalous costume in the history of the Super Bowl. During the joint performance of Rock Your Body, Timberlake tore off Janet's suit - the right cup of a leather corset, exposing the singer's chest. This incident became so high-profile that the English-language Wikipedia has a separate article dedicated to it. CBS was fined a record 550,000 dollars, critics said Janet's trick was a sign of moral decline in the United States, and Jackson herself had to make a public apology.
41. The singer's PR service later explained that Janet let the suit down, but no one believed them: the singer's nipple was prudently covered with an ornament in the form of the sun. The bare-chested fragment was cut from the Super Bowl recording, but it was sent to each other anyway. YouTube co-founder Javed Karim even believes that the episode was one of the reasons for the popularity of the video platform.
42. Strictly speaking, in 2001 she was not the only one performing at the Super Bowl - the singer was accompanied by Aerosmith, * NSYNC and Mary J. Blige. But Britney was the epitome of the early 2000s. In low-rise white trousers, a crop top and a pierced navel, she was the face of a decade, defining the look of the most fashionable girls for years to come. That same year, Pepsi, the official sponsor of the Super Bowl, shot a commercial starring Britney that looked like a sequel to her performance with Aerosmith.
43. Diana Ross wouldn’t be herself if her Super Bowl performance hadn’t been built around her as the main diva of the nineties. First, she changed four costumes: she came out in a red fluffy dress, which was transformed into a mini; then she appeared in an orange-pink mermaid dress, changed it to a gold cloak with leggings and a fuchsia-colored corset, and ended the performance in a pink and orange suit.
44. Ross flew away from the stadium in a helicopter. Thirdly, people lined up in giant letters Diana Ross - so that they could be seen even from space. Her performance is ranked ninth in the Top 10 Super Bowl Performances: Diana turned the costumes into part numbers for the first time.
45. The press unanimously considers Michael Jackson to be the founding father of the standard halftime performance format - in general, he invented a lot of pop cultural phenomena that did not exist before him. Jackson turned his Super Bowl performance into a hit potpourri for the first time, and produced individual dance routines that flow into each other.
46. The singer's costume became no less legendary than the performance itself: black aviator glasses, a black military jacket with a decorative gold bandolier and black cropped trousers with white socks. The Dsquared2 leather jacket that Beyoncé wore at last year's Super Bowl is a homage to Jackson's 1993 look.
47. It is believed that halftime performance first became a full-fledged pop show in 1991, when the Super Bowl was headlined by boy band New Kids on the Block. Firstly, for their performance, a real Disneyland was built on the field with a huge castle and hundreds of children dressed as Disney characters. Second, all four members of the group could outperform the models from men's glossy magazines: wide-leg trousers with a high waist, a straight jacket under Adidas sweatpants, a vest for a naked body and a golden leather jacket, like Mick Jagger.
48. The king of the twist Chubby Checker in tight black trousers and a silver shirt with a wrap and shoulder pads, plus the famous dance group The Rockettes (44 girls in gold top hats and bodysuits), and 88 more white pianos and pianists - just imagine this party on the football field. After Checker, there were many worthy performances, and some of them were much more spectacular, but there was never more fun in the Super Bowl.
49. Actress and singer Channing became the first artist to perform at the Super Bowl. She told The Guardian that she was asked to perform the hit from the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly! literally a week before the match. That halftime performance was built, by the way, not around her performance, but around the Southern University Orchestra - according to Carol, it was like her debut on Broadway.
50.Channing stepped onto the moving platform stage in a white long coat with a hood trimmed with fluffy fur. Presumably, its author was the American couturier Nolan Miller, and the coat itself later became the hallmark of the actress, and she put it on more than once for her other performances.
The giant panda is considered the most valuable species of the bear family. For its specific culinary preferences, it is usually called the bamboo bear. Researchers initially assigned these animals to the raccoon family and only towards the end of the 20th century was it finally assigned to the bear family. Pandas are considered a jewel of China, rare animals and are carefully protected by the state. In this article, we will introduce our readers to interesting facts related to these funny animals.
1. The first time the giant panda was caught only in 1916 with the participation of local residents, but she quickly died. Only 20 years later, one American woman managed to buy a bear cub and bring it to America.
2. The giant panda is one of the rarest animals in the world. She lives only on the territory of the PRC. The main habitat is Sichuan province. Zoologists suggest that pandas may also have remained wild in Gansu province and parts of the Tibetan mountains.
3. The first panda that appeared in a foreign zoo was called Su-ling. She has lived in several zoos in the United States. Only after a fairly long period, after a long search, two more individuals were brought to America, and a little later these bears appeared in London.
4. In the Soviet Union, the first bamboo bear appeared in 1957 in the Moscow Zoo. The panda was a male named Pin-Pin. In 1959, the administration of the Moscow Zoo managed to find another individual for reproduction. The newly acquired panda was named An-An, and she turned out to be a male.
5. For the first time in the zoo, a panda was born in 1963, in Beijing. The bear cub was given birth by a female named Li-Li. The calf's weight was 142 grams. The bear was nicknamed Min-Min. A year later, Li-Li brought another cub, then scientists were able to establish that the period of bearing offspring in pandas is about one hundred and forty days.
6. The peak of activity of pandas is in the evening and at night. The animals are extremely clean and quiet. Bears cannot stand the rain, and try to hide from it.
7. Bamboo bears are extremely careful animals and try to avoid humans. Despite this, Buddhist monks living in the highlands often tame young animals. Pandas often come to monasteries for food alone and in groups.
8. Pandas love to roll head over hills, they have acquired this habit, fleeing from predators. Plus they run surprisingly well. The main natural enemies for bears are leopards.
9. Under natural conditions, the main diet of a bamboo bear is young bamboo shoots and fresh leaves. Besides, pandas love to feast on insects, fish, small rodents.
10. The closest relative of the bamboo bear is the spectacled bear that lives on the western slope of the Andes in the South American continent.
11. The genetic code of a panda and a human is 68% identical, and that of a dog and a bamboo bear is 80% identical.
12. In the summer season, in search of coolness, pandas climb the highlands, located four kilometers above sea level, and in winter they sink eight hundred meters.
13. Adult bears grow up to one and a half meters long and weigh 150 kilograms.
14. Every day panda spends about twelve hours on food and absorbs up to 15% of its own mass.
15. The body of the animal assimilates up to 20% of the absorbed feed.
16. The giant panda, unlike other bears, does not require hibernation.
17. Pandas often reproduce twins, but they feed only one bear cub. The second cub usually dies.
18. After birth, the cub spends with its mother for about three years.
19. The total number of pandas in their natural habitat is approximately 1600 individuals.
20. In China, bamboo bear hunting has been banned since 1962. Violation of the prohibition is punishable by death.
21. The giant panda is considered a national treasure of the PRC.
22. The Chinese government leases pandas to overseas reserves for one million US dollars a year. Moreover, all born panda cubs are considered the property of the Celestial Empire.
23. A newborn bear cub weighs 800 times less than its mother.
24. Pandas have a specific sixth toe, which is the transformed carpal bone.
25. The panda is listed in the Guinness Book of Achievements as the cutest animal on earth.
26. The red panda and the giant panda share the same habitat and diet, and both animals are also endangered.
27. According to legend, the panda was once an all-white bear. When a small girl tried to save a panda cub from being attacked by a leopard, the leopard killed the girl instead. Pandas came to her funeral wearing armbands of black ashes. As they wiped their eyes, hugged each other, and covered the ears, they smudged the black ashes.
28. Pandas can stand upright, but their short hind legs aren’t strong enough to support their bodies.
29. Little pandas are born white, but after a week they acquire their recognizable black and white color.
30. Pandas rely less on visual memory than they do on spatial memory to locate a mate’s home range area and preferred patches of bamboo
31. Pandas are slow creatures, they are capable of developing a very low speed, comparable to a quick step of a person, no more. Although this is still an order of magnitude faster than sloths move (see interesting facts about sloths).
32. The size of an adult giant panda is comparable to that of a brown bear.
33. A baby panda weighs only 150-200 grams at birth.
34. Many Chinese philosophers believe that the universe is made from two opposing forces, the Yin and Yang. The panda is one symbol of this philosophy.
35. For a full and calm life in its natural habitat, an adult giant panda needs about 10 square kilometers of space.
36. In the wild, giant pandas live for 15-20 years, in captivity - a little more. But they are very reluctant to breed in captivity.
37. China does not sell giant pandas but leases them to zoos around the world. Renting one panda brings China about $ 1 million annually.
38. A panda's tooth is 7 times larger than that of a human
39. Every day the panda is busy eating for more than 12 hours and eats about 12-15% of its weight.
40. A panda fur is worth between $60,000 and $100,000 on the illegal trade market.
41. Although a giant panda’s fur looks silky and soft, it is quite thick and wiry.
42. Pandas often give birth to twins, but after giving birth, the panda mother chooses a stronger baby, and the second, left unattended, soon dies.
43. A panda’s throat has a special lining to protect it from bamboo splinters.
44. Pandas have lived on Earth for two to three million years.
45. There are only about 1600 pandas left in the wild.
46. Hunting pandas has been completely banned since 1962, and killing a panda in China can be punishable by death.
47. The word “panda” may have developed from the Nepalese word poonya, which means “bamboo-eating animal” or “plant-eating animal.
48. In summer, pandas can move to an altitude of 4000 meters, fleeing the heat. In winter, they do not hibernate and do not equip a den.
49. An adult panda eats up to 30 kg of bamboo per day.
50. A panda’s entire mating process takes only about two or three days.
