Interesting facts about New Zealand

Interesting facts about New Zealand
- New Zealand was the first country to give women the right to vote (1893).
- It was probably a New Zealander, Richard William Pearse, who took the world’s first flight - nearly two years before the Wright Brothers in the United States (this however cannot be proven). On 31 March 1902 Pearse managed to fly his home-made aircraft 91 metres in a field near Timaru.
- There are more golf courses in New Zealand per capita, than any other country in the world (over 400 golf courses).
- Auckland has the largest number of boats per capita than any other city in the world.
- William Hamilton, a Canterbury farmer, developed and perfected the propellerless jet boat based on the principle of water jet propulsion. Following this, Hamilton went on to invent the hay-lift, an advanced air compressor, an advanced air conditioner, a machine to smooth ice on skating ponds; the water sprinkler and also contributed to the improvements of hydro-power.
- A New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, was the first person to climb Mount Everest (with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay) in 1953.
- Baron Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealander, was the first person in the world to split the atom (in 1919). Rutherford also succeeded in transmitting and detecting ‘wireless waves’ a year before Marconi, but left this work to pursue researching radioactivity and the structure of the atom at Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work.
- New Zealand is the first country in the world to see each new day.
- Curio Bay in Southland is one of the world’s most extensive and least disturbed examples of a petrified forest, (the forest is approximately 180 million years old).
- New Zealand is the birthplace of the meringue dessert known as the ‘Pavlova’, named after the famous ballerina Anna Pavlova.
- New Zealand won the first ever Rugby World Cup in 1987. The New Zealand Women’s Rugby Team won the Women’s Rugby World Cup in 1998.
- Tongariro National Park was the fourth national park to be established in the world and the first in New Zealand, in 1887. (Yellowstone National Park in the United States was the first in 1872.)
- The Hector’s Dolphin (the world’s smallest marine dolphin), and the world’s rarest sea lion, the Hooker’s sea lion, are only found in New Zealand waters.
- New Zealand is home to the world’s only flightless parrot, the Kakapo, as well as the Kea - the only alpine parrot in the world.
- The oldest living genus of reptile is the native New Zealand Tuatara. Tuataras have a life expectancy of 300 years. It is estimated that Tuataras can be traced back 190 million years to the Mesozoic era.
- A New Zealander invented the tear back Velcro-strip, the pop-lid on a self sealing paint tin, the child-proof pill bottle and the crinkle in your hairpins so that they don’t fall out!
- Katherine Mansfield is New Zealand's greatest literary figure. Her works shake free of plots and endings, but tell stories, for the first time, through the expansiveness of the interior life, the poetry of feeling, and the blurred edges of personality.
- Nancy Wake (born in Wellington in 1912) was the Allies' most decorated servicewoman in WWII, and the Gestapo's most-wanted person.  They code-named her 'The White Mouse'.
- Alan MacDiarmid discovered that plastics could conduct electricity, leading to the development of information technology as we have come to know it today. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry for this discovery.
- Nobel Price winner in physiology and medicine, New Zealander Maurice Wilkins helped lead to the discovery in 1953 of the DNA molecule structure - the very essence of life itself!
- Joseph Nathan was a New Zealand entrepreneur that, in 1906, founded Glaxo, producer of the dried milk formula that became a household name for infant health & nutrition.  Today, the company forms the cornerstone of the multinational corporation - GlaxoSmithKline.
- Arthur Lydiard invented jogging - the method of building physical fitness by gradually increasing stamina.
- The launch of Sputnik in 1957 forced the United States into the space race.  Less than 3 months later, the U.S. launched Explorer 1. The man behind it: William Pickering from Wellington, New Zealand.
- Children in New Zealand's secondary schools spend more time than the OECD average learning mathematics, science, technology and physical education. They spend less time learning foreign languages, arts and religion than children in other countries.

· The graduates from New Zealand's universities who tend to earn the highest salaries are those qualified in sciences, engineering and management & commerce. Creative arts, food, hospitality and personal services graduates tended to have lower salaries.
· For each person who lives here, New Zealand produces 100 kg of butter and 65 kg of cheese each year.
· Wellington is the most southerly capital city on the planet
· One in five deaths in New Zealand is caused tobacco smoking.

- The City of Dunedin is home to: New Zealand's oldest university. New Zealand's first newspaper and New Zealand's first botanic gardens
- With 2.5 million cars for four million people, including children, New Zealand's car ownership rate is one of the world's highest
· New Zealanders raise most sheep on the world

Conclusion
I hope this my work has impressed you and once you’ll visit these beautiful countries. I hope you know something new and interesting about these countries what you didn’t know before. Now you know something more about Aboriginals, Uluru, Kakadu National Park, kangaroos, emu, koalas, Sydney, Gold Coast.... You also know about Maori, Mt Ruapehu, Wai-O-Tapu, Hamner Springs Thermal Reserve, Auckland, rafting and more.
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