Interesting Things with JC #370: "Indonesia Independence Day" is a national holiday that commemorates the proclamation of Indonesia's independence on August 17, 1945. The government declared it a national holiday in 1946.

Interesting Things with JC #261: “Kiribati” is made up of 33 atolls, these are ring-shaped reefs or a series of islands caused by submerged volcanos. Out of the 33 islands that all straddle the equator, and only 20 are inhabited. Although it only takes up a total of 811sq kilometers, Kiribati spans a distance equal to an area that is roughly the size of India, and it's the only country to fall within the northern, southern, eastern and western hemispheres. Kiribati is the third-least visited country in the world. Around 6,000 visitors come here annually. Only the Pacific island-nations of the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu receive fewer tourists.

The four leaf clover is one of the most common good luck symbols of the Western world. An independent study carried out by Swiss researchers looked at 5.7 million clovers and found that the likelihood of finding one four-leaf clover was one in 5,076.

March 6, 1945, George Nissen of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, received a patent for the first modern trampoline. He sold so many trampolines to the military, to help pilots experience weightlessness, that he had to postpone his enlistment in World War II to fulfill the orders. Interestingly, trampoline only became an Olympic sport during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The Library of Congress in Washington DC is essentially both the national library of the U.S. and the country's oldest federal cultural institution. Though it consists of only three buildings, it is the largest library in the world with more than 170 million items.

The Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division holds 600,000 volumes in the non-Roman script languages of the region. The oldest written material in the Library is a cuneiform tablet dating from 2040 B.C.