Bird droppings are the chief export of Nauru

The Republic of Nauru is a small island country in Micronesia in the central Pacific. Covering an area of just 21 square kilometres, it is the world’s smallest republic. Nauru is a phosphate rock island having rich deposits near the surface. Its economy is essentially dependent on the phosphate deposits originating from droppings of sea birds.

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Invention of dynamite

Alfred Nobel was a Swedish industrialist, engineer and inventor. He was into construction and that led him to perform an experiment to find out ways of blasting rocks. His research led him to nitroglycerine. He found out that mixing silica with nitroglycerine would make it easy to handle. This mixture is known today as dynamite.

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