Travel Facts

Sound travels about 4 times faster in water than in air.

Club Direct, a travel insurance company in Britain, provides insurance plans for protection from falling coconuts.

The MGM Grand Hotel of Las Vegas washes 15,000 pillowcases per day!

Before traveling a person should, apparently, sit on their luggage. (Russian)

It takes approximately 8 minutes and 19 seconds for sunlight to reach the Earth, traveling across 149.6 million kilometers of space.

Pollen can travel up to 500 miles in a day.

There's a cruise ship named "The World" where residents permanently live as it travels around the globe.

WWOOF is an international program that allows you to travel the world, with food/accommodations covered, in exchange for volunteer work.

At any given moment during peak travel hours, there are approximately 45,000 people airborne over the United States.

Queen Elizabeth does not hold a passport. Since all British passports are issued in the queen’s name, she herself doesn't need one. She just has to say that she is the queen.

Mahatma Gandhi used to travel with his goat so that he could have fresh milk.

There’s a company that provides private flights for individuals who want to join the “mile high club”. For $425.00 you get a 1 hour flight, chocolates, champagne, and a curtain.

30 years ago, you could buy a lifetime, unlimited first-class travel pass with American Airlines for $250,000.

Chen Guanming, a farmer from Jiangsu province in eastern China, traveled by rickshaw for 2 years covering over 25,000 miles through 16 countries, surviving floods, war zones, and extreme temperatures, to arrive at the London 2012 Olympics.

Nancy and Robert Houchens (71 and 68) of Charlottesville, Virginia, sold their 3,000 sq ft home and now live full-time on Carnival cruise ships for around $4,000/month - covering food, lodging, gym, and entertainment. Virginia assisted living runs $5,250/person/month, or $10,000+ for a couple. Robert put it plainly: "It's much cheaper than a nursing home."

A 22-year-old Londoner did the math and realised flying to Morocco for a haircut was cheaper than his local barber - £39 total (flight, hostel, taxi and trim) vs £41 at home. He saved £2 and got a free holiday.

Plennie Wingo walked backwards out of Fort Worth in 1931, with mirrors fixed to his glasses and postcards at a quarter to pay his way, until Turkish police jailed him at the border and an American consul talked him into coming home from Istanbul. Guinness still lists the 8,000-mile trek as the longest walk ever made backwards.

On very long, boring roads in Australia, they put up trivia signs to keep drivers alert. One sign asks a question, and a few kilometres later another sign gives the answer.

In 1987, American Airlines sold a lifetime unlimited first-class pass for $250,000. Steven Rothstein bought one. He flew over 10,000 flights. Breakfast in London, dinner in Tokyo. He even booked a fake passenger named "Bag Rothstein" to keep the adjacent seat empty. American Airlines estimates he cost them over $21 million before they revoked his pass — and handed him the termination letter at the gate.

A worker at Alitalia forgot two digits when updating fares, listing Toronto-to-Cyprus business-class round trips at $39 instead of $2,258. Thousands booked before the error was caught. Alitalia honored the tickets - passengers flew business class for less than a pizza delivery. Two missing digits filled every premium seat.

Every October, hundreds of hot air balloons fill the sky above Albuquerque, often called the most photographed event on Earth. It began with 13 balloons in a mall parking lot in 1972, a stunt for a radio station's 50th birthday. A storm kept most of the other pilots on the ground. 20,000 people still came to watch. Today over 500 balloons fill that sky. The parking lot is long gone. The sky is still full.