There are so many things we don't know. Things we didn't know existed. There is so much to know out there that I believe it's not possible to know everything. Or even half of everything. Even if one learns a 100 new things each day of his/her adult life, can he/she know it all ? Not even close. We live in an age where everyday something new pops up somewhere. Plus we have million plus years of "data" already found. That's a huge amount of "stuff". I guess the cavemen had it easy. History for them would have possibly been a page, or i guess (it being the stone-age), a slab. What I am getting at is there's so much out there in the world. Some interesting, some not that interesting at all.
This past week I came across something that caught my eye. I was browsing the Times of India website and ended up at the medals tally of the Commonwealth Games. It's not often that people look at countries at the bottom of the medals list. I did. And way down, having won 1 gold and 1 silver was Nauru. Both medals were for Weightlifting. But what crossed my mind was - What the hell is Nauru ?
It's obviously a country. Duh. And it's a commonwealth country. That's all I knew. Well, that doesn't count as anything as that's (too stupid to finish the sentence). I needed to know more. So, enter Google. Search - Nauru. Without even waiting for the entire page to load, I click on maps. I zoom out to see the world map to see where it lies. I lose it. Not my mind, but Nauru. I search for it again. This highly magnified image opens that shows this almost circular piece of land. I say piece of land because it's absolutely tiny. Too tiny to be an island ? I zoom out. Slowly this time. And realize that it's this tiny "thing" in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. Tiny meaning minuscule. It's near Papua New Guinea. Zoom in again to check it out. Ask Pushkar and Vinay about it. We laugh looking at its size. I mean, come on. Its absolutely so small. It seems to have one main road around it's circumference. A lone airstrip whose end seems to be built over water. Switch to satellite imaging. It seems like it's just forests with a ring of civilization on its circumference. And a location says - Republic of Nauru Phosphate. Laughter breaks out again. This tiny island (well, it is surrounded by water on all sides) had us engrossed. Sometime later, I ask Steve - Hey, Have you ever heard of a country called Nauru. I was ready to impart knowledge to someone. Be the big man. His reply - YES.
My jaw dropped. I was at a loss for words. And he laughs. We run through the same process of Googling (when did google become a verb) it. And he tells me he knows of it because they once spoke about it on "This American Life", a show on NPR (i think). That was absolutely fascinating. This made us read the entire Wikipedia article about it. It's really cool. Something that I bet a lot of you haven't heard of.
It's nice to discover these facts and read about them. It teaches you something and your not losing anything by reading about it. But do definitely check out Nauru if you can. You will not be disappointed.
This American Life link : http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/253/the-middle-of-nowhere
That's all for now.
P.S : Did you know there is a piece of France above the USA ? Check it out.
:D
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