Snipfact:

  The death cap is a highly poisonous mushroom. It is responsible for almost 90 per cent of deaths from eating fungi. The poison causes severe diarrhoea and vomiting.

  Opium is extracted from the juice of a poppy and contains morphine. Small quantities of both are used legally as painkillers and illegally as drugs. Both can easily cause death.

  Ricin is extracted from the seeds of the castor oil plant and is more poisonous than cyanide or snake venom. Even minute doses of ricin can be fatal.

  Potatoes are safe to eat when cooked, but the stems and leaves of the plants contain a poison called solanine. If potatoes turn green, they may also contain solanine.

  Forests cover 29.6 per cent of Earth’s  land and almost a quarter of these are in Russia. There are three main types of forest which grow in particular climates in different parts of the world. Tropical forests or rainforests grow near the Equator where it is always hot and wet.Here temperatures are about 20-25 o C and there is more than 200 cm of rain a year. Temperature forests grow in places that have not summers and cold winters. The summers can be as hot as 30 o C and winters as cold as – 30 o C. Average rainfall is about 75-150 cm a year. Many trees are deciduous. Boreal or taiga forests grow in Russia, Canada and elsewhere in the far north. Winters are long and very cold.There is rainfall of 40-100 cm a year, but most fails as snow. Most trees are evergreen conifers.

    As many as 30 per cent of the world’s most useful plants originally came from North, Central and South America. Early European explorers discovered the plants while on their travels and tool them back home to grow. This was not always easy. Pineapples was difficult and expensive to cultivate in Europe that they became a symbol of wealth – carved stone pineapples are often seen on the gateposts of many grand houses.

  Sugar cane 1,392,365,323 tonnes per annum Maize 695,228,280 tonnes per annum Rice 634,605,733 tonnes per annum Wheat 605,945,825 tonnes per annum Potatoes 315,100,319 tonnes per annum Sugar beet 256,406,926 tonnes per annum Cassava 226,337,396 tonnes per annum Soybeans 221,500,938 tonnes per annum Barley 138,642,560 tonnes per annum Tomatoes 125,543,475 tonnes per annum Sweet potatoes 123,509771 tonnes per annum Watermelons 100,602,392 tonnes per annum Bananas 70,756,347 tonnes per annum Cabbages 68,991,380 tonnes per annum Grapes 68,952,793 tonnes per annum Oranges 64,795,383 tonnes per annum Apples 63,804,534 tonnes per annum Onions 61,636,915 tonnes per annum Sorghum 56,485,280 tonnes per annum Coconuts 55,324,323 tonnes per annum

  Every year the people of the world eat more than 2.2 billion tonnes of cereals, 903 million tonnes of vegetables and 526 million tonnes of fruit. These figures come from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or FAO, which is based in Rome. The aim of the FAO is to help people more food and eat a better diet .

  These are the most important crops grown for uses other than food. Cotton (clothing, household items)       72,008,070 tones per annum Rubber (tyres, shoes, balls, erasers)      9,918,744 tones per annum Tobacco (cigarettes, cigars)      6,719,314 tones per annum Jute (sacks, rope)      3,110,950 tones per annum     

  The flower of the rafflesia, or stinking corpse lily, measures almost 1 m (3.3ft) across and weights 11 kg (24 lb). It is one of the world’s smelliest flowers, with an odour like rotting flesh. The smell attracts files, which pollinate the plant.

  Here are some of the plants that originally came from America – avocado, beans (kidney, French, etc), cashew nut, cassava, chilli pepper, cocoa, corn, cranberry, loganberry, peanut, pecan, pineapple, potato, pumpkin, quinine, rubber, squash/gourd, sunflower, tobacco, tomato, vanilla.

  The rare Malagsy rainbow frog, found off Madagascar, is one of the 100 creatures on the 2008 EDGE- Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered – list. Its striking colours make it popular in the pet trade – a significant threat to this critically endangered species.

  The worst cyclone of the 21st century has been Cyclone Nargis (2008) which killed an estimated 140,000 in Myanmar (Burma), with more than 2.5 million more gravely effected.

  On 26 December 2004 a tsunami created by an undersea earthquake caused catastrophic floods in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, the Maldives, Malaysia, India and parts of Africa. More than 283,100 people died

  Floods caused by China’s Huang He, or Yellow River, were first recorded in 2297 BC. The river has flooded at least 1,500 times since. In 1887 floods killed between 1.5 an 7 million people, making it the worst flood ever.

  Serious droughts kill people and livestock and destroy crops. The drought in Australia in 1982 cost £3.5 billion ($6 billion), and one in Spain Cost £3billion ($4.7 billion).

  Most earthquakes last only a minute or two, but the Alaska earthquake of 27 March 1964 continued for at least five minutes and registered 8.6 on the Richter scale. It killed 131 people but caused more than $450 million worth of damage.

  An earthquakes in Tang-shan, China, on 28 July 1976, killed 242,419. The Kashmir quake of 8 October 2005 officially killed 87,350 people, but it may have been more than 100,000.

  The worst  earthquake affecting an inhabited area was in Assam, India on 12 June 1987. It is reckoned to have reached 8.7, killing about 1,500. The Colombia/Ecuador earthquake of 31 January 1906 was 8.9 on the Richter scale. Fortunately, it was 300 km off the coast, and so resulted in fewer than 1,000 deaths on land.

  An earthquake affecting the Middle East and North Africa on 20 ,May 1202 may have been the worst in human history. Up to 1,000,000 people were killed, 110,000 in Cairo, Egypt alone.

    0 Detected by sensitive seismographs (some can detect magnitudes of less than zero!) 1 Detected by instruments 2 Lowest felt by humans 3 Slight vibration; more than 100,000 a year around the world 4 Up to 15,000 a year; at 4.5, would be detected by seismographs worldwide, but cause little damage. 5 3,000 a year; that 1960 earthquake in Agadir, Moroco was 5.6 6 100 a year worldwide 7 20 a year; the 1995 earthquake in kobe, Japan was 7.2 8 Major destructive earthquakes; average two a year; the 1904 San Francisco earthquake was probably 8.25 9 No quake higher than 8.9 has been recorded, but 9.0 or even higher is theoretically possible

  Seismic waves are vibrations from earthquakes that travel through the Earth. Sensitive instruments called seismographs can record the waves, even at great distances, and calculate their strength and location. The Richter scale indicates the magnitude of the strength of an earthquake based on the size of the seismic waves. The biggest earthquake is a billion times greater than the smallest.

  Chinese astronomer Chan Heng (AD 78-139) invented an earthquake detector made of a vase adorned with dragons’ heads and surrounded by metal frogs. In each of the dragons’ jaws was a carefully balanced ball. When the first tremors of an earthquake made the device vibrate, the balls fell into the frogs’ mouths, making a noise of warn of the coming danger.

  Earthquakes are movements of the Earth’s surface, often as a result of a fault, or fracture, in the crust. They happen more often in some parts of the world than others. In heavily populated areas,  they cause great damage to buildings and loss of life.

  An avalanche caused by the eruption of Mount St Helens volcano, Washington, USA, on 18 May 1980, was reckoned to have travelled at 400 km/h.

  Mont Pelee began to erupt in April 1902, after lying dormant for centuries. The 30,000 residents of the main city. St Pierre, were told they were not in danger, so stayed in their homes. They were there on 8 May when the volcano burst apart and showered the port with molten lava, ash and gas, destroying all buildings and killing as many as 40,000 people.

  In 1985 this Andean volcano gave warnings signs that it was about to erupt, but the local people were not evacuated soon enough. On 13 November the hot steam, rocks and ash ejected from Nevado del Ruiz melted its icecap, causing a mudslide. This completely engulfed the town of Armero, killing 22,940 people.

  The uninhabited island of Krakatoa exploded on 27 August 1883 with what may have been the biggest bang ever heard by humans. People heard it up to 4,800 km away!

  On 24 August AD 79 Vesuvius erupted with little warning, engulfing the Roman city of Herculaneum in a mud flow. Nearby Pompeii was buried under a vast layer of pumice and volcanic as. This preserved the city, including the bodies of many of its inhabitants, until it was excavated by archaeologists in the 19th and 20th centuries. As many as 20,000 people died. Vesuvius erupted again in 1631, killing up to 18,000 people.