Incredible Facts about INDIA that you don't know

You live in a country, for Which people expect from you that you know your country better. Here's the fact about India that may amaze you but they are fact.

1. Around a 100 million years ago, India was an island.
2. India’s name is derived from the “Indus” river. If you have read Bhagvad Gita, Ramayan, Mahabharata then you will realize that there is not even a single text which mentions the word "Hindu". It was a name which was given by foreigners because our land was on other side of river "Indus" and hence came the name "Hindu".
3. Indus Valley Civilization is the world’s oldest civilization. hence, is the world’s oldest, most advanced and continuous civilization.
4. India has been the largest troop contributor to the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions since its inception.
5. India has the world’s third largest active army, after China and USA.
6. The Tirupati Balaji temple and the Kashi Vishwanath Temple both, receive more visitors than the Vatican City and Mecca combined.
7. Every 12 years, a religious gathering called the Kumbh Mela occurs in India. It is the world’s largest gathering of people. The gathering is so large that the ''Kumbh Mela'' is visible from the space.
8. Varanasi is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today.
9. India has more mosques (300,000 mosques) than any other nation in the world. And the third largest Muslim population in the world.
10. Takshila is said to be the first every university in the world; it started around 700 BC.
11. Today, India has the world’s largest school in terms of students, the City Montessori School in Lucknow. It has more than 45 thousand students!
12. Indian Railways employs more than 1.3 million people. That’s more than the population of many nations.
13. More than 54 crore people voted in the 2014 General Election – more people than the population of USA, UK, Australia and Japan combined.
14. Number of births in India every year is more than the total population of Australia, and many other nations.
15. At an estimate, 25% of the total workforce of the world’s population will be from India in the next year or so.
16. India’s first rocket was brought on cycle and a satellite on bullock cart. The rocket was so light and small that it was transported on a bicycle to the Thumba Launching Station in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. And despite budgetary constraints, India’s space program is one of the top 5 space programs in the world.
17. In 2004, 200 women took law in their own hands and came to the court armed with vegetable knives and chilli powder and murdered on the court floor a serial rapist – Akku Yadav. Then every woman claimed responsibility for the murder.
18. English Actor Sir Ben Kingsley’s birth name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji and he is of Indian descent.
19. Lonar Lake, a saltwater lake in Maharashtra, was created by a meteor hitting the Earth and is one of its kind in India.
20. In a village called Shani Shingnapur in Maharashtra, people have been living in houses with no doors for generations. This is because they believe that whoever steals anything from this place will incur the wrath of Shani God and will have to pay for his/her sins very dearly. There is no police station in this village either.
21. Snakes and Ladders originated in India, Earlier known as Moksha Patamu, the game was initially invented as a moral lesson about karma to be taught to children. It was later commercialized and has become one of the most popular board games in the world.
22. Magnetic Hill is a gravity hill located near Leh in Ladakh, India. The hill is alleged to have magnetic properties strong enough to pull cars uphill and force passing aircraft to increase their altitude in order to escape magnetic interference.
23. Viswanathan Anand is the first player in chess history to have won the World Championship in three different formats: knockout, tournament, and match.
24. Chess was invented in India.
1. Buttons were invented in India. Yes, your shirt’s buttons.
2. India also invented the ruler.
3. And shampoo.
4. And discovered the number zero.
5. And the value of pi. 
6. And trigonometry, algebra, calculus.
7. And cataract surgery.
8. And plastic surgery.
9. And diamond mining.
10. And water on the moon.
25. Though India is a country of multiple regional and local languages but in terms of English speaking countries in the world, it ranks number 2, yes, India is second largest English speaking country in the world, 10% of Indians can speak in English which is about 125 million people.
26. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, India ranks third behind the USA and the UK in the number of records claimed each year.
27. Mahatma Gandhi is not the Father of the nation. Indians widely describe Gandhi as the father of the nation (Hindi: राष्ट्रपिता). The title "The Father of the Nation" for Gandhi is not an official title and has not been officially accorded by Government of India. An RTI query filed by a 10-year-old girl from Lucknow in February 2012 revealed that PMO has no records of ever according such title to Gandhi. MHA and National Archives of India also communicated of not having any records. Origin of this title is traced back to a radio address (on Singapore radio) on 6 Jul 1944 by Subhash Chandra Bose where Bose addressed Gandhi as "The Father of the Nation". On 28 Apr 1947, Sarojini Naidu during a conference also referred Gandhi as "Father of the Nation". The RTI applicant had also pleaded for Gandhi to be officially declared as "Father of the Nation" to which the MHA informed that Gandhi cannot be accorded with the title by Government of India since the Indian constitution does not permit any titles except educational and military titles.
28. India has an Ice Hockey team and they are even member of International Ice Hockey Federation.
29. That it is illegal for a child in India to neglect their parents after their retirement. Right to maintenance — Maintenance is a right to livelihood when one is incapable of sustaining oneself. Right to maintenance forms a part of the personal law. Obligation of a husband to maintain his wife arises out of the status of the marriage. Hindu law, one of the most ancient systems of law, recognizes right of any dependent person including wife,children, aged parents and widowed daughter or daughter-in-law to maintenance. The Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act, 1956, provides for this right.
30. Kerala tops the "Highest liquor consuming State" list in India, not Punjab.
31. Only 3% of Indians pay income tax, in a population of 1.2 BN. One explanation for this is that agriculture is exempt and two-thirds of Indians live in rural areas. A large chunk of the economy is also informal, unorganized labor, for which it's harder to collect taxes. Many argue that some of the country's financial problems would be solved in one fell swoop, if this massive tax hole could be filled.
32. ''The human calculator'' Shakuntla Devi was given this title after she demonstrated the calculation of two 13 digit numbers: 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 which were picked at random. She answered correctly within 28 seconds.
33. The world's biggest family: The man with 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren, in India
34. Until 1986, the only place where diamonds had been officially found was in India.
35. India has banned all captive dolphins, stating that dolphins should be viewed of non human persons.
36. India’s tech capital, Bangalore, has increased its office supply by six times since 2006, and now has more Grade-A offices than Singapore.
37. India is the largest producer of films in the world.
38. India is the largest milk producer in the world.
39. India leads the world with the most murders (32,719) per year, with Russia taking second at 28,904 murders per year.
40. To avoid polluting the elements (fire, earth, water, air), followers of Zoroastrianism in India don’t bury their dead, but instead leave bodies in buildings called “Towers of Silence” for the vultures to pick clean. After the bones dry, they are swept into a central well.
41. Karmanasa River in India is considered to be a cursed river and it is believed that touching its water would ruin one’s plans. There’s hardly any development along this river. People around this river just eat dry fruits because cooking food would require water!
42. Two major religions, Buddhism and Jainism, were established in India.
43. Chail in Himachal Pradesh is the highest cricket pitch in the world. It is situated at an elevation of 2444 meters (above the sea level).
44. The India-Pakistan World Cup semi-final match in Mohali drew 150 million viewers worldwide.
45. The first Granite Temple of the world, the Brihadeswara Temple is situated in Tamil Nadu. It was built during the 11th century, in only five years.
46. Around the 17th century, India was one of the richest countries in the world.
47. Today, India is the world’s third largest economy.
48. India is one of the only three countries that makes supercomputers (the US and Japan are the other two).
49. The world’s largest road network is in India—over 1.9 million miles of roads cover the country.
50. India has the largest amount of vegetarians in the world. So much so that Pizza Hut had to open their first pure vegetarian restaurant in the country. And KFC had to introduce a “vegetarian” menu for India. And so did McDonald's, the world’s largest fast-food manufacturer.
51. A polling station is set up in a forest for a lone voter in every election since 2004. Mahant Bharatdas Darshandas remains one of India's most prized voters. He is the lone voter in the midst of Gujarat's Gir forest, home to the Asiatic lion, for whom an entire election team sets up a polling booth every election.
52. Largest Funeral attended : Funeral of CN Annadurai, India, 1969, Widely thought to be the largest funeral attendance in history, 15 million people took to the streets of Chennai in memory of the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state. was widely respected as a writer and speaker and also extremely popular after he made Tamil the official language of the state, rejecting Hindi.
53. HINDI is not the national language of India. In fact there is no national language in India. Rather we have many regional languages. The Union Of India has Hindi (Devanagari script) and English as Official languages. And every state legislature has these two plus the regional language as the official language. English is a more popular language in South India than Hindi.
54. Tea (Chai) is India’s national drink.
55. India grows 1.2 million tons of mangoes every year, weight equivalent to 80,000 blue whales.
56. The state of Meghalaya is the wettest inhabited place of earth.
57. India gave the world Yoga, that has existed for more than 5,000 years.
58. May 26 is celebrated as the Science Day in Switzerland in honor of former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, because on the day, Kalam visited the country.
59. Martial Arts was first created in India.
60. The world’s biggest family lives in India. One man, 39 wives and 94 children.
61. India is the world’s largest importer of arms. But India has never invaded or attacked a country.
62. Rabindranath Tagore also wrote the national anthem for Bangladesh. Rabindranath Tagore is credited not only for writing the Indian national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, but the Bangladeshi national anthem, Amar Sonar Bangla, as well. He was also offered knighthood by the British but refused the honour after the Jalianwala Bagh massacre.
63. Dhyan Chand was offered German citizenship. After defeating Germany 8-1 in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Major Dhyan Chand, the wizard of hockey, was summoned by Hitler. He was promised German citizenship, a high post in the German military and the chance to play for the German national side. Dhyan Chand however declined the offer.
64. Astronaut Rakesh Sharma said India looks saare jahaan se achcha from space. Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked the first Indian in space, Rakesh Sharma, about how India looked from space. His response was our famous patriotic song, "Saare Jahaan Se Achcha."
65. Havell's is purely an Indian brand & named after its first owner. Though the company was bought for just 1 hundred thousand Rupees a long time ago and is now a multi-billion electrical goods company, it's an Indian company and is still named after its original owner, Haveli Ram Gupta.

Some of the Quotes about India (Of Course I couldn't number them)

India is gem of a country. It's history, culture & heritage is as unique as it is rich. It's no wonder that a lot of great personalities has acknowledged India's contributions to the world. Here are a few iconic quotes about India which will fill you with pride. -Mark Twain

India was the motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe's languages. India was the mother of our philosophy, of much of our mathematics of the ideals embodied in Christianity, of self-government and democracy. In many ways, Mother India is mother of us all - Will Durant, American Durant.

Many of the advances in the sciences that we consider today to have been made in Europe were in fact made in India centuries ago. - Grant Duff, British Historian.

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. - Albert Einstein.