More Trivia

The first and only Filipino to have ever played in the National Basketball Association or NBA is Raymond Townsend, whose mother is from Balayan, Batangas and whose father is an American.  Standing six feet and three inches tall, Townsend played for the NBA from 1978 to 1982 for the Golden State Warriors and later for the Indiana Pacers. What we are excited about this time is that Townsend himself announces that he has Filipino blood running through his veins.

Raymond Townsend is regarded as the first Fil-Am and only Asian American to have ever been drafted in the first round of the NBA draft, according to the articles at Wikipedia and Asian Journal.  Townsend (using rt.basketball@gmail.com), in an email to txtmania, confirmed that he is a proud Filipino.

His email reads: "My name is Raymond Townsend. I am a former UCLA All-American basketball player of Filipino-American ancestry. I am a 'proud Pinoy' who is the first and only Filipino-American to ever play in the NBA."

"I broke the barriers for other Filipinos to reach that goal of representing our culture as a player in the NBA.  I believe Eric Spoelstra should be there also as he is the first Filipino-American to ever coach in the NBA."

Here are some interesting trivia about Iligan City and Lanao del Sur province, which were contributed by Mr. Arnold Garbanzos.

FIRSTS

1. "First and largest Christian settlement in the country" -Dr. Mamitua Saber, Historian of the Sociology Department of the Mindanao State University
2. First Steel plant in Southeast Asia-National Steel Corporation
3. First hydro electric generating plant in the country-National Power Corporation
4. First city in Mindanao where the unfurling of the Guinness "largest flag" was made-Global Steel (formerly National Steel Corporation) Football ground
5. Site of the first national gathering of MBelievers
6. Site of the first Haggai National Training Seminar outside Metro Manila

The tallest bridge in the Philippines is an 89-meter-high bridge located in barangay Kahupian in the town of Sogod, Southern Leyte. The 350-meter-long bridge called Agas-Agas Bridge was constructed at a cost of more than PhP1 billion and inaugurated on August 9, 2009.

It is a part of the Daang Maharlika Highway and was built to serve as a permanent solution to the natural movements of loose soil aggregates, or landslides, in the mountainous area during rainy days reportedly due to a fault line that hinder traffic when the highway is blocked.

"Considered an engineering masterpiece, the Agas-Agas Bridge would provide a safe connection from the Daang Maharlika to Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, like the ones existing in Matnog, Sorsogon, Allen, Samar, and the Liloan Ferry Terminal, in Southern Leyte connecting all the way to Surigao," the Office of the Press Secretary said.

It was built starting 2006 by the Sumitomo Mitsui Construction Co., Ltd., with loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) under the second phase of the Philippine-Japan Friendship Highway Rehabilitation Project.

The DanceSport Team Cebu City (DTCC) has received the Guinness World Records certificate for being the "largest dance class" globally and surpassing the record earlier set by Hungary.

As of December 2008, the Philippines had 17 regions; 81 provinces; 136 cities; 1,495 municipalities or towns; and 42,008 barangays.

In the fourth quarter of 2008 alone, 13 new barangays or villages, including Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City (Metro Manila), were added in the Philippine Standard Geographic Code masterlist, according to the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB).

This brought the total number of barangays in the country to 42,008 as of December last year.

"Ten new barangays were created in Taguig City in the National Capital Region, while three barangays were created in the province of Maguindanao, Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao," the NSCB said.

As requested by our guests, here are some of the interesting inventions and discoveries by Filipino inventors and scientists.  The list is not anyway complete, and it is advised that our readers consult other materials for confirmation of the following facts.

Ampalaya solution against HIV - Maria Carlita Rex Doran
Artificial bone replacement systems - Ramon Gustilo
Artifical coral reefs - Angel Alcala
Banana catsup - Maria Ylagan Orosa

Ms. Rubilen Amit became the first female world champion in billiards from the Philippines, when she pocketed the World Women’s 10-Ball Championship held at the Block of SM North in Quezon City in June 2009.

The 27-year-old Amit of Mandaue City, Cebu beat two-time world champion Liu Shin-mei of Taiwan, 10-4, to win the crown and $20,000.

Filipinos have long dominated world billiards as champions with the likes of Efren “Bata” Reyes, Django Bustamante, Alex Pagulayan, and Ronnie Alcano, to name a few.  But it was the first time a Filipina held the world championship.

Meanwhile, a visitor in our site logged in the following information, to correct our entry on the first religious order in the Philippines.

Here are some interesting trivia from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources or DENR, which placed advertisements on several newspapers on June 5, 2009.

DENR claims that in terms of biodiversity resources, the Philippines was 5th in the world in number of plant species; 8th in the world list of endemic plants; 4th in bird endemism; 5th in mammal endemism; and 8th in endemic reptiles.  These species include Philippine tarsier, the world's smallest primate; mouse deer, the smallest deer; Pandaka pygmea, the smallest fish; Rafflesia, largest flower; whaleshark, the largest fish, and Philippine eagle, the largest bird.

The Philippines has 52,177 species of which more than half are found nowhere else in the world.  Of the 10,000 to 15,000 plant species in the Philippines, more than half are found only in the country.  There are 9,000 species of flowering plants in the Philippines.  About 558 of the 1,137 terrestrial species are unique to the Philippines.

There are 3,000 tree species in the Philippines, and 77 species of mangroves.

Anti-cancer cream

In November 2005, Filipino inventor Rolando dela Cruz won the gold medal for his "DeBCC" anti-cancer cream at the prestigious International Inventor's Forum in Nuremberg, Germany. The "DeBCC" cream, developed from cashew nuts and other local herbs, was chosen over 1,500 entries as the "most significant invention" of the year.

According to Mr. dela Cruz, the cream was a simple answer to basal cell carcinoma (BCC), the most common type of skin cancer worldwide. BCC affects around 800,000 Americans every year, according to the Skin Care Foundation. BCC also affects 500,000 Europeans and 190,000 Australians every year.

The Philippines, a group of over 7,000 islands with combined land area encompassing 300,000 square kilometres, grew into a nation under more than three centuries of Spanish conquest and 42 years of American rule. It is the first country outside the New World that closely witnessed the United States’ rise to power following the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Situated 800 kilometres southeast of mainland Asia, the archipelago, named after King Philip II of Spain, was discovered in 1521 by Ferdinand Magellan, the same explorer who had discovered the Pacific Ocean in search of the so-called “Spice Islands” and is now widely considered the first navigator to have cruised around the planet.

Ironically, the Filipinos, after having been subdued for centuries by foreign colonizers as a result of Magellan’s voyage, would emerge as the best seafarers in the world, manning a third of all international vessels today. Some 7.8 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and Filipino migrants would help rebuild cities in many countries and bring back over US$10 billion in annual remittances to their families in the Philippines.