95 Incredible Facts about India

70% of the spices used in the world come from one country. India.

27. An Indian rationalist named Sanal Edamaruku was accused of blasphemy and had to flee the country after he proved that the "miracle" tears coming from a Jesus statue actually came from clogged drainage pipes.

28. Arunachalam Muruganantham invented a simple method to produce low-cost sanitary pads in India. It took 4.5 years, his wife and mother left, and he was expelled from his village. He said: "Luckily I'm not educated. If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop. You have no fear of the future".

29. There is a gypsy tribe in India that celebrates death as one of the happiest events in their lives while treating births as occasions of great grief.

30. There is a tribe in India that has learned how to train the roots of fig trees to create natural suspension bridges that can span over 100 feet and last 500-600 years.

In the 1980s, India released 25,000 flesh-eating turtles into the Ganges river in an attempt to clean up corpse-pollution. The turtles were raised on dead fish so they wouldn’t develop a taste for the living, as they ate most everything. The $32M plan failed due to corruption and mismanagement

32. In North America and India, 'lemonade' is not a carbonated soft drink, but is actually made from lemon juice, water, and sugar.

33. India has more people using the Internet than the entire population of the United States

34. Asiatic lions still inhabit India's Gujarat state, making them the only Lions to naturally live outside of Africa.

35. An elephant in India, while helping villagers lift logs, refused to lower a log into a certain hole because there was a dog sleeping in it. Only after the dog was chased away would the elephant lower the log into the hole.

Over 30% of pharmaceuticals sold in developing countries are counterfeit. Roughly 50% of malaria drugs and up to 30% of antibiotics are counterfeit, mostly originating from India. Over 700,000 people die every year from consuming counterfeit drugs.

37. In a 2009 paper, researchers found that the widespread introduction of television across India was associated with decreased acceptability of domestic violence against women, increases in women's autonomy and an overall decrease in the country's fertility rate.

38. A woman named Shakuntala Devi in India once calculated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers - 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 - correctly in just 28 seconds.

39. Queen Elizabeth still keeps a diamond stolen from India in her crown and it's one of the largest diamonds in the world

40. In 1848, the British East India Company sent Botanist Robert Fortune on a trip to China's interior, an area forbidden to foreigners to steal tea seeds from China to India. He succeeded and within his lifetime, India surpassed China as the world's largest tea grower.

In countries with higher piracy rates like Russia and India, Microsoft prices Office products much cheaper

42. Jews living in India faced almost no antisemitism when they arrived there until the Portuguese and British colonized India

43. Villagers in the India village of Marottichal began playing chess as an alternative to drinking after a ban on alcohol.The village is now known as 'Chess Village' due to its near 100% chess literacy.

44. India was formerly an island but crashed into Tibet 40 million years ago. The impact created the Himalayas, which are still being pushed up by 2cm each year

45. 5% of India's population is on Facebook, but already it has the third largest Facebook population in the world

Bhopal gas disaster was the worst industrial disaster ever killing close to 4000 people. The incident happened when poison gas escaped from a Union Carbide factory due to negligence. The American CEO of the company was arrested, let out on $2100 bail and never came back to India to face charges.

47. Sex toys are illegal in India, and their sale punishable by 2 years in prison

48. The drug Daraprim costs about 5 cents in India compared to $750 in the United States!

49. In ancient India, Diabetes was called "madhumeha" or "honey urine" as the urine would attract ants. Indian physicians Sushruta and Charaka identified Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes as separate conditions for the first time in 400-500 CE

50. An 'extinct' tree frog has been rediscovered in India after 137 years