I love my country.

We’re a little country, but we still make a difference!! I got this in an email and thought it was damn interesting! My favourites are the bolded ones.

25 Things you may not have known about New Zealand
1. New Zealand is home to the world’s smallest dolphin, the hectors Dolphin, the rarest sea lion, the Hookers Sea Lion, the largest flightless parrot, the Kakapo, the oldest reptile, the Tuatara, the heaviest insect, the weta, the biggest earthworms, the smallest bats, some of the oldest trees, and many of the rarity birds, insects, and plants in the world.

2. More rainbow trout, in the 2kg to 3 kg category, are caught annually in New Zealand than the rest of the world put together.

3. More fresh water flows up from the cracks in the limestone at Waikoropupu, near Takaka, than from any other freshwater spring in the world – more than 2100 million litres every 24 hours.

4. New Zealand has the third highest rate of deaths in the developed world from maltreatment among under-15-year-olds; third to Mexico and the US.

5. New Zealand has more book shops per head of population than any other country; one for every 7500 people.

6. There are more Scottish pipe bands per head of population in New Zealand than in Scotland.

7. The kea, native to New Zealand, likes to eat the strips of rubber around car windows.

8. Less than 5% of the population of New Zealand is human – the rest are animals. This is one of the highest ratios of animals to humans in the world.

9. In the scene of Star Trek: First Contact, when Picard shows Lilly she is orbiting earth, Australia and Papau New Guinea are clearly visible but New Zealand is missing.

10. Measured by club memberships, golf is the most popular sport in New Zealand, followed by netball.

11. The longest blackout in the world was on February 19, 1998, when the four main power cable supplying Auckland city, broke down. The disruption, which lasted 66 days, affected 7500 business and residential customers and cost businesses an estimated $300 million.

12. In 1984, $43 in New Zealand would buy approximately the same as $100 today.

13. New Zealand has won more Olympic gold medals a head than any other country.

14. The longest place name in the world still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronuku-
Pokaiwenuakitanatahu, a hill in Porangahau in the Hawkes bay. The Maori name translates to “the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as Land eater, played his flute to his loved one.”

15. Two Massey University (my University) students broke a Guinness World Record in December 2005 for the world’s largest tape ball. The ball, which weighs 53kg and has a circumference of more than 2.5m, was made by winding Scotch tape continually around itself.

16. The shortest interval between separate births in the world is 208 days. New Zealander Jayne Bleakley gave birth to Joseph Robert on September 1999 and Annie Jessica Joyce on March 30, 2000.

17. The median age of New Zealanders is growing. In 1901 were 23. By 1991 it was 31 and in 2001 it was 35. By 2021 it is expected to be 40.

18. No part of New Zealand is more than 128km from the sea.

19. In the early 1980s, New Zealand was home to more than 70 million sheep, but now has 40 million, or about 10 sheep to one person. This decline has not stopped New Zealand from bringing in 50% of all international trade in sheep meat.

20. 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 hair-pins so that they don’t fall out.

21. For each person who lives here, New Zealand produces 100kg of butter and 65kg of cheese each year.

22. New Zealanders are getting married older. The latest statistics show that the median ages of men and women marrying for the first time are 29.9 and 28.1 years. These brides and grooms married, on average, 9 years older than their parents did.

23. New Zealand births exceeded deaths by 29,890 in 2005

24. Captain James Cook, the man who navigated New Zealand, is said to have discovered a cure for scurvy, a disease that results from Vitamin C deficiency, when he played around with medicines.

25. No capital city in the world is further south than Wellington