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Saturday 15 October 2011

33 Useless Facts

  1. Most lipstick contain fish scales!  
  2. A crocodile always grows new teeth to replace the old teeth!  
  3. Porcupines float in water! 
  4. A hummingbird weighs less than a penny! 
  5. A cockroach can live several weeks with its head cut off - it dies from starvation! 
  6. One in every 4 Americans has appeared on television! 
  7. Thomas Edison, lightbulb inventor, was afraid of the dark! 
  8. Marie and Pierre Curie refused to patent their process of making radium, declaring it belonged to the world – no one had the right to profit from it. 
  9. The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is over 9000 years old! 
  10. The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump! 
  11. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying! 
  12. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave! 
  13. You can't tickle yourself. 
  14. You can't trademark surnames. 
  15. The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from  the air. 
  16. In most watch advertisments the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch and make it look like it's smiling. 
  17. Charlie Chaplin won third place in a Charlie Chaplin look alike contest. 
  18. India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history. 
  19. Walt Disney was afraid of mice. 
  20. The word "listen" contains the same letters as the word "silent". 
  21. Hummingbirds are the only animal that can fly backwards. 
  22. It is impossible to lick your elbow. 
  23. Insects consume 10% of the world's food supply every year. 
  24. The term karaoke means "empty orchestra" in Japanese. 
  25. More than 60 million people annually visit France, a country of 60 million people. 
  26. All the planets in the solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise. 
  27. A snail can sleep for 3 years. 
  28. Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire. 
  29. The water we drink is three billion years old. 
  30. Ants don't sleep. 
  31. Camel milk does not curdle. 
  32. The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat. 
  33. There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
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Bizarre Chairs

Image source : weburbanist.com
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Wednesday 12 October 2011

City Under Rocks

Setenil de las Bodegas is a town (pueblo) in the province of Cádiz, Spain, famous for its dwellings built into rock overhangs above the Rio Trejo. According to the 2005 census, the city has a population of 3,016 inhabitants. It has an exact antipodal city: Auckland, New Zealand.
This small town (pueblo) is located 157 kilometers (98 mi) northeast of Cadiz. It has a distinctive setting along a narrow river gorge. The town extends along the course of the Rio Trejo with some houses being built into the rock walls of the gorge itself, created by enlarging natural caves or overhangs and adding an external wall.Modern Setenil evolved from a fortified Moorish town that occupied a bluff overlooking a sharp bend in the Rio Trejo northwest of Ronda. The castle dates from at least the Almohad period in the 12th century. However, the site was certainly occupied during the Roman invasion of the region in the 1st century AD. Setenil was once believed to be the successor of the Roman town of Laccipo, but it was subsequently proved that Laccipo became the town of Casares in Malaga.



Given the evidence of other nearby cave-dwelling societies, such as those at the Cueva de la Pileta west of Ronda, where habitation has been tracked back more than 25,000 years, it is possible that Setenil was occupied much much earlier. Most evidence of this would have been erased by continuous habitation.



Tradition holds that the town's Castilian name came from the Roman Latin phrase septem nihil ('seven times nothing'). This is said to refer to the Moorish town's resistance to Christian assault, allegedly being captured only after seven sieges. This took place in the final years of the Christian Reconquest. Besieged unsuccessfully in 1407, Setenil finally fell in 1484 when Christian forces expelled the Moorish occupants. Using gunpowder artillery, the Christians took fifteen days to capture the castle whose ruins dominate the town today.Due to the strategic importance of Setenil, the victory was celebrated widely in Castile and was the source of several legends in local folklore. Isabella I of Castile is said to have aborted during the siege with the ermita of San Sebastian being built as a tribute to the dead child, who was named Sebastian. However, there appears to be no historical basis to this story.
The full name of Setenil de las Bodegas dates from the 15th century, when new Christian settlers, in addition to maintaining the Arab olive and almond groves, introduced vineyards. The first two crops still flourish in the district but the once flourishing wineries—bodegas— were wiped out by the phylloxera insect infestation of the 1860s, which effectively destroyed most European vine stocks.Over the intervening centuries, Setenil also gained a reputation for its meat products, particularly chorizo sausage and cerdo (pork) from pigs bred in the surrounding hills. As well as meat, it has a reputation for producing fine pasteles (pastries), and its bars and restaurants are among the best in the region. Its outlying farms also provide Ronda and other local towns with much of their fruit and vegetables.

Article source : www.wikipedia.org,
Image source  : www.environmentalgraffiti.com; www.odditycentral.com
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Saturday 8 October 2011

Dolphins : Non-human persons

Dolphins are believed to be the most intelligent of all animals.  Comparatively, a dolphin is as intelligent as a two-year-old human.

 Dolphins can leap above the water surface and perform acrobatic figures (e.g. the spinner dolphin). Scientists aren't quite certain about the purpose of this behavior, but it may be to locate schools of fish by looking at above water signs, like feeding birds. They could also be communicating to other dolphins to join a hunt, or attempting to dislodge parasites. Perhaps they just do it for fun. Play is a very important part of dolphins' lives and they can often be observed playing with seaweed or playfighting with other dolphins. They have even been seen harassing other creatures, like seabirds and turtles. Frequently dolphins will accompany boats, riding the bow waves.They are also famous for their willingness to occasionally approach humans and playfully interact with them in the water. There have been reports of dolphins protecting swimmers against sharks by swimming circles around the swimmers.Dolphins are social animals, which live in pods (also called "schools") of up to a dozen animals. In places with a high abundance of food, schools can join temporarily, forming an aggregation called a superpod; such groupings may exceed 1000 dolphins. The individuals communicate using a variety of clicks, whistles and other vocalizations. They also use ultrasonic sounds for echolocation.

 Membership in schools is not rigid; interchange is common. However, the animals can establish strong bonds between each other. This leads to them staying with injured or ill fellows for support.Because of their high capacity for learning, humans have employed dolphins for any number of purposes. Dolphins trained to perform in front of an audience have become a favorite attraction, for example Sea World. Dolphin/Human interaction is also employed in a curative sense at places where dolphins work with autistic or otherwise disabled children. The military has employed dolphins for various purposes from finding mines to rescuing lost or trapped persons
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