More Philippines Fun Facts

More Philippine Fun Facts

Here is another batch of facts to use at a party. The Philippines is a country full of contradictions and chaos. Yet with all this it seems to work and produce the biggest smiles in the world.

Pope John Paul II offered a mass to about five million Filipinos on Jan. 18, 1995, at Luneta Park in Manila. The event went into the Guinness Book of World Records as the Biggest Papal Crowd at the time.

 In 2009, about 1.39 billion SMS messages were being sent in the Philippines daily. The country was one of the earliest adopters of text messaging, earning the moniker “text capital of the world” from the mid ’90s to the early 2000s.

The English word ‘boondocks’ is actually a Filipino loanword: the Tagalog word for ‘mountain’ is ‘bundok.’

The word entered the North American vernacular in the 1940s, just as the Philippines became involved in the Second World War.

• Mount Apo, at an altitude of 2,954 m, in the island of Mindanao is the highest point in the Philippines.

• The people of the Philippines are from different ethnic origins such as Malay, Chinese, Spanish, American, etc.

• The Philippines remain the colony of Spain from 1521 to 1898. Subsequently, it went into the hands of the USA.

• There are 132 main rivers, 59 lakes and 7 major mountain ranges in the Philippines.

• Taal Volcano in Batangas is the world’s smallest volcano.

• It was the first Southeast Asian country to gain independence in 1946, following World War II.

• With more than 11 million Filipinos overseas, the Philippines has the largest diaspora networks in the world.

• World’s deepest spot, The Philippine Trench, runs down at the Pacific side of the islands to depths of over 10,000 meters, exceeding the altitude of Mt. Everest.

• NOT SO FUN