112 Fascinating Facts About Russia | Legacy Facts

# Russia is the world's largest country in terms of land area.

# The national flower of Russia is the Sunflower.

# Russia has more time-zones in the world than any other nation. It used to have 11, but in 2010 this was reduced to nine.

# Baikal lake in Russia is the deepest lake in the world and holds around 20 percent of the unfrozen freshwater in the world.

# Siberia accounts for 77 percent of Russia.

# For Russia the dialing code is 007.

# Banknotes in Canada, Mexico, India, Russia, and Israel have Braille-like markings for the blind on them.

# A 2010 census reveals that a third of the 153,000 villages in Russia has a population of fewer than 10 residents.

# Russia is believed to have at least 15 secret cities with their names, and unknown locations.

# Oymyakon in Russia is the coldest inhabited place on the planet. Its weather station recorded a temperature of -67.8°C on 6th February 1933.

# Approximately 17 million people in Russia live below the poverty line, with over 12 percent of the population making less than $220 a month.

# It is illegal in Russia to tell children that there are gay people.

# In Siberia, kindergarteners run outside in their underwear and dump freezing water over themselves to improve their immune systems.

# In just 40 years, a Russian woman gave birth to 16 pairs of twins in the 1700s, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets with the same man.

# A marriage tradition in Russia is for the groom to pay a ransom to their friends and family prior to the ceremony for his "kidnapped" bride. Payments for ransoms generally consist of champagne, chocolate, or money.

# There are 9 million more women in Russia than there are men.

# Popular sports in Russia are basketball, ice hockey, and football (soccer).

# A third of all Russians believe that the sun revolves around the earth.

# Russians drink six times more tea every year than Americans.

# There are 800,000 faith healers in Russia but there are only 640,000 doctors.

# The Russians never shake hands over a doorway, they believe that it would lead to arguments.

# There is a National Sex Day in Russia where people are encouraged to stay home from work and make babies. It is also known as the Day of Conception or Procreation Day.

# According to WHO statistics, Russians are the fourth-biggest drinkers in the world, behind Belarus, Moldova, and Lithuania.

# In Russia, teachers can be paid in vodka during times of economic disparity or high inflation.

# Every year, an average of 14,000 Russian women die from domestic violence. Russian law still does not recognize domestic violence as a crime.

# Every Russian consumes 18 liters (4.8 US gal) of alcohol annually, doubling what experts consider dangerous.

# Until 2013, beer was considered an alcoholic beverage in Russia.

# In Russia, the life expectancy of males is just 65, lower than in both North Korea or Iraq. While the life expectancy of Russian women is 76.

# Every year, there are more than 500,000 deaths related to alcohol in Russia.

# Every year 3 times more Russians die from heart-related illnesses than Americans or Europeans.

# 25 percent of Russians die before they reach 55 years of age, compared to only 1 percent in the United States, and Vodka is to blame.

# Russia has a homicide rate of 9.7 deaths per 100,000 people, which is higher than that of 4.7 deaths per 100,000 people in the United States.

# Russian McDonald's carry the McShrimp, something that allegedly can't be found elsewhere.

# The word "vodka" originates from the Russian word "voda" meaning "water."

# Russia has so many dash cams, because drivers use them to avoid fights caused by road rage, denied hit and run insurance claims, and scams for extortion.

# Every day around 9 million people ride the Moscow metro. This is more than New York and London combined.

# Subbotnik is the day on which Russian city residents volunteer to sweep and tidy up the streets. It began after the revolution but is still happening today.

# More than 200 people claim to have descended from the Romanovs, the family of last Tsar of Russia. However, irrefutable evidence of DNA reveals that all children at the hands of Bolsheviks perished with their parents.

# In 1918, Russia's last royal family, the Romanovs, was murdered. Their remains were missing until 1979 when they were round in the Yekaterinburg forest. However, the bodies of the two children weren't in the forest, spurring the rumors that Anastasia, the daughter, had survived. Despite many women coming forward claiming to be the lost princess, Anastasia and Alexei's remains were found in 2007, confirming their death in 1918.

# The Russian president's official residence is the Kremlin in Moscow. The word Kremlin means fortress.

# The entire Russian stock market is worth less than Apple.

# New York, Texas, and California all have bigger economies than Russia.

# There are more billionaires in Moscow than almost any other city. It has 73 billionaires and ranks behind New York with 82 billionaires and Hong Kong with 75 billionaires.

# Wealthy Russians employ fake ambulances to beat the traffic across Moscow.

# Russia is the leading oil and natural gas exporter, with oil accounting for 60 percent of Russian exports. Russia's oil and gas pipelines could wrap six times around the Earth.

# Russia produces 1,000,000 barrels a day more than Saudi Arabia does.

# Besides being the world's 4th largest consumer of alcohol, Russia is also the leading importer of heroin and tobacco smoking per capita.

# There's a mountain in the city of Magnitogorsk, called Magnitnaya, made almost entirely of iron with an estimated 7 to 10 billion pounds of Iron Ore.

# Russia has more than 8400 nuclear weapons, more than any other nation.

# Russia's nuclear missile force's motto is: "After us, it is silence."

# A survey in 2016 found that 56 percent of Russians regret the collapse of the Soviet Union.

# There are still thousands of tons of chemical weapons in the U.S. and Russia.

# One of the most fascinating facts about Russia is that Russia and the US are just 4 km (2.5mi) apart at their closest point. Big Diomede Island is part of Russia while Little Diomede Island is part of the state of Alaska in the United States.

# In 1867, the U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia only for $7.2 million.

# Stalin did not start learning Russian until he was eight. His native language was Georgian.

# Russia was the leading and the largest country in the Union of Soviet Social Republics (USSR) under communist rule. After the dissolving of communist rule in 1991, the USSR split into the 15 independent Russian Federation countries, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia.

# Joseph Stalin organized bank robberies to fund the communist cause before he ruled Russia.

# Under the communist rule of Stalin, Russian children in school were taught that Vladimir Lenin, the founder of communism, was the grandfather of Russians, whereas Joseph Stalin was the father, and Russia was the "motherland."

# Over the three decades of Stalin's rule, which ended in 1953 with his death, an estimated 15 to 30 million people were executed or died in labor camps or starved to death.

# During WW2, the metro stations were often used as air-raid shelters. During this time around 150 people were born in the stations.

# Because of the Kuril Islands dispute, Japan and Russia still haven't signed a peace treaty to end World War II.

# Russia lost around 30 million people, including civilians, during WW2, representing about 14 percent of the population. It is estimated that during the war, 40 percent of males between the ages of 20 and 49 lost their lives.

# In Russia, during the reign of Peter the Great, there was a "Beard Tax" paid by anyone who had a beard.

# Under the leadership of Lenin, homosexuality, and abortion was decriminalized in Russia.

# In 1945, when the Nazis surrendered to the Soviet Union, people partied so hard the country ran out of vodka.

# Excuses were banned by the mayor of Megion, west Siberia.

# Vladimir Putin served as Russia's President from 1999 to 2008. The next president, Dmitry Mendenev, has chosen Putin as his prime minister, after being denied the ability to run for a third term. Putin then ran again for President successfully in 2012.

# The grandfather of Vladimir Putin worked as the chef for Stalin and Lenin, and Rasputin.

# The average Russian company paid US$ 23,000 in bribes annually when President Putin took office in 1999. In 2003, the average company paid $135,000 in bribes annually after he had been in office for four years.

# Of all the countries celebrating an independence day, 58 are independent of the United Kingdom, 26 are independent of France, 21 are independent of Russia, and 21 are independent of Spain.

# Prisoners in Soviet Russia used to get Lenin & Stalin tattoos because guards were ordered not to shoot images of national leaders.

# Postnik Yakovlev constructed St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. Legend has it that he was subsequently blinded by Ivan the Terrible, so he could not construct anything to rival it.

# In Russia, the oldest plant ever to be regenerated was grown from 32,000-year-old seeds.

# Russian State Library in Moscow is Europe's largest library and the world's 2nd largest library, after the Library of Congress.

# The most radioactive and polluted lake in the world is Lake Karachay, in Russia.

# The Trans-Siberian Railway is the world's longest railway, connecting Moscow and Vladivostok.

# The first Russian child to receive the smallpox vaccine was named "Vaccinov," who received a pension and observed his entire life.

# In Russia, 64 percent of journalist deaths have been murders since 1992.

# In fact, Russia is ranked the 5th deadliest country in the world to be a journalist.

# Putin banned the adoption of Russian children in July 2013 to anyone who lives in a country where marriage equality exists in any way.

# Driving around in a dirty car in Russia is a criminal offense.

# Russia built analog water computers as far back as 1928 which was used for highly complex computations, and remained in use until the 1980s.

# In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite in the world, called Sputnik.

# In 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first human to venture out into space.

# Around 1975 to 1982, Russia space program landed six probes on Venus' surface, surviving temperatures up to a Fahrenheit of 855 degrees, and taking pictures successfully.

# The name of Red Square in Moscow has nothing to do with communism, or with many of its buildings' color. It comes from the word "krasnyi," meaning "beautiful" once.

# Vladimir Lenin's corpse, the founder of communism in Russia, is on display at a tomb on Red Square in Moscow. Despite the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, embalming and injections of an unknown "balsam" keep Lenin looking incredibly well-preserved.

# The Museum of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, consists of six buildings with 3 million exhibits. It would take six years if you spent 2 minutes at each exhibit to see everything. The museum also houses around 70 cats as part of a decree first instated in 1745 by Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter, to protect the priceless displays from rodents.

# The laboratory mouse has a monument in Siberia, Russia.

# In Russia, there is a theatre, where all the actors are cats.

# At Ploshchad Revolutsii metro station, there is a bronze sculpture of a dog with a shiny nose - it's shiny because it is supposedly good luck to touch it.

# In Russia there is the monument to Laika, the hound the went into space in 1957.

# A facility called the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Russia has been selectively breeding domesticated red foxes for around the last 50 years. They're so tame and friendly they sell them even as pets.

# In 1908, the Imperial Russian Olympic Team arrived twelve days late for the games in London because they were not using the Gregorian calendar yet.

# Russia is planning to invest 65 billion USD to construct the longest tunnel in the world (103 km or 64 miles) called the TKM-World Link. The tunnel would pass under the Bering Strait, connecting Russia to Alaska.

# In Moscow, stray dogs ride the subways every day on the same schedule to find food in more populated areas.

# Since 1959, the Russian scientists have domesticated foxes like dogs.

# Kora Borehole dug by Russia which is almost 8 miles deep for research purposes. Further excavation was stopped, because the mud started to boil after reaching that point.

# Russians often purchase an odd number when giving flowers. They only give an even number of flowers at a funeral.

# Boris Yeltsin was found drunk by the White House secret service when he was president of Russia, and in his underwear on Pennsylvania Ave, trying to call a cab to get some pizza.

# There is a "Temple of all Religions" in Russia which serves as a peaceful combination of different cultures.

# There are cafes in Russia, where everything is free. You pay according to how long you stay.

# The word "bargain" in English can not be adequately translated into Russian.

# Russia gave 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer to Pepsi in exchange for their Pepsi products. It was the seventh-largest submarine fleet in the world at that time.

# George Koval was a Soviet master spy, who infiltrated the Manhattan project, stole almost all nuclear secrets of the United States, and single-handedly provided the key technology for Russia’s nuclear arsenal. He was only discovered to be a spy in 2002.

# A volcano eruption in Peru in 1600 caused a famine in Russia which killed around two million people.

# Russian President Vladimir Putin brought a large dog with him to a round of negotiations with Germany's Angela Merkel, well knowing she had a pathological fear of dogs, just to gain a psychological edge.

# There are some fascinating artistic pursuits about Russian leaders. Mikhail Gorbachev has recorded a romantic ballad album while current leader Vladimir Putin has a judo DVD.

# A heat wave in Russia in 2010, resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 people, most of whom drowned as a result of swimming while they were drunk.

# The notorious murderer of Russia, Vladimir Nikolayev, ate some of the body of his victim, then gave the rest of the meat to a friend whose wife served it to his family, believing it was a kangaroo.

# In the 1980s, underwater sounds were detected by the Swedish Navy which they suspected were hostile Russian submarines. The suspicion escalated to the point where Sweden and Russia were in a diplomatic conflict. It later turned out that those sounds were coming from fish farts, a discovery that led to the Ig Nobel Prize.

# On the Russian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" the audience misled the contestants so often they avoided the lifeline of "ask the audience."

If you are interested then check out our "Facts About Germany"

Please share these Facts About Russia with your friends and on your social network sites. #Legacyfacts.

Source: 1

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4