Interesting Facts about Virgin Islands

• The history of the islands is turbulent. It is filled with warring colonial powers, slavery, and the annihilation of its native people.
• Columbus visited the islands in 1493. Spanish forces later defeated the native Caribes and claimed the territory in 1555.
• By 1596, the native population had been wiped out.
• The Danes established the first permanent settlement in the territory in 1672. They set up plantations. Later African slaves were imported to produce sugar, cotton, indigo, and other products for Denmark.
• Pirates also used the islands as bases to prey upon Spanish treasure ships, galleons, and visiting merchant ships. Henry Morgan, Sir John Hawkins, and Blackbeard are among the famous pirates who sailed the Caribbean waters.
• During the 17th century, the Danish and the English divided the archipelago into two territorial units.
• The sugar cane produced on the plantations was central to the islands' economy during the 18th and early 19th centuries.
• Slavery was abolished in 1848. When the slaves were emancipated, the plantations went into economic decline.
• In 1917, the United States purchased the islands from Denmark. This was because of their strategic position in the Caribbean passage to the Panama Canal.
• St. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John, and 50 smaller islands now comprise the U.S. territory.
• U.S. citizenship was granted to the islanders in 1927.
• In 1970, they elected a governor in a popular election.
• Since 1973, the Virgin Islands also send one non-voting member to the U.S. House of Representatives.
• The population of the U.S. Virgin Islands was 123,498 in 2002.
• The islands are 80 percent black and 15 percent white. There are also West Indian, French, and Hispanic ethnic groups.
• St. Thomas has one of the best natural deepwater harbors in the Caribbean.
• All of the islands boast beautiful beaches and a subtropical climate. There are gentle trade winds and a pleasant constant temperature. However, seasonal hurricanes do occur.
• Tourism is the primary industry in the islands in terms of both economics and employment. There are over 2 million visitors per year.
• Manufacturing dominates the rest of the islands' industry. Products made on the islands include pharmaceuticals, rum, watches, textiles, and electronics.
• One of the world's largest petroleum refineries is at St. Croix.
• Virgin Islands National Park covers more than half of St. John. The park is known for its beaches, reefs, and forests.

Interesting Facts about Texas

• Texas was inhabited by some 3,000 Native Americans when the first Europeans discovered the area in 1519. The largest tribe, the Caddo, lived in the east. Some of its members had formed the Hasinai Confederacy. The first Europeans came under the Spanish Governor of Jamaica and the leadership of Alonso Alvarez de Pinedo to explore the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico.
• The 17th and 18th centuries saw expanded Spanish settlement in Texas and the building of missions and accompanying forts. Texas had become a strong part of the Spanish colonial territory. In 1821, Mexico dissolved its relations with Spain and became independent. In 1824, Mexico became a republic under a constitutional democracy.
• In 1820, Moses Austin asked the Spanish advisors of Mexico permission to set up a small colony of Americans in Texas. The request was granted, but not until after Moses' death. Austin's son, Stephen, organized his father's dream and led 300 families into Texas in 1821, settling at Washington-on-the-Brazos and Columbus. In the next decade, several Americans established colonies in Texas. The Spanish word for these colonizers was empresarios. In 1830, due to the alarming increase in American population in Texas, Mexico ceased immigration from the United States into Mexico.
• In 1835, a year after General Lopez de Santa Anna had overthrown the government of Mexico, the Texans started a revolution to gain their independence from Mexico. Many Texans were killed at the Battle of the Alamo and at Goliad. In 1836, the Texans captured Santa Anna and gained their own independence.
• After the war, Texas became the Republic of Texas. But the new republic struggled, and in 1845, in heavy danger of collapsing due to colossal debt and danger from Mexicans and Native Americans, Texas was admitted to the United States through a joint resolution of Congress and as the last act of outgoing President John Tyler.
• In 1861, Texas abruptly left the Union to side with the other Confederate States in the Civil War. Despite strong Union feelings and a governor who refused to take oath to the Confederate constitution, Texas supplied the Confederate war effort with people and supplies, and when the Union had defeated them, underwent Reconstruction with the rest of the South.
• The twentieth century has seen a steady increase in Texan industry. Beginning with the oil booms at the beginning of the century, industry has steadily risen, accompanied by an increasing population. Today, Texas is a land of wealth, industry, and diverse people. Texans claim a rich heritage, and are rightly proud of their Lone Star State.
• The Houston Astrodome was the first domed stadium in the United States. It opened in April 1965.
• The world's first rodeo was held in Pecos, Texas on July 4, 1883.
• With over 1,000 deaths along the Gull Coast and the city of New Orleans left in chaos. Hurricane Katrina may be considered the worst U.S. natural disaster in living memory. However, on the evening of Sept. 8, 1900, an unnamed hurricane struck the low-lying Gull Coast island city of Galveston, TX, in what is still considered the most deadly U.S. natural disaster. Although they had some warning that a storm was approaching, residents were not prepared for what happened. Many reportedly had gone to the seaside to watch the rising surf, when a Category 4 hurricane, with a storm surge 15 feet or higher and wind howling at 130 mph or more, barreled into Galveston. The storm destroyed about half the homes in the city and killed 8,000 people or more, about one-fifth of the population, in just a few hours.

Interesting Facts about Puerto Rico

• Roberto Clemente was the first Puerto Rican named to baseball's Hall of Fame.
• Residents of Puerto Rico have one nonvoting delegate in the U.S. Congress.
• In addition to states, the U.S. has 12 territories and two commonwealths, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.

Interesting Facts about Pennsylvania

• The Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania took place from July 1-3, 1863 and was one of the most important battles of the Civil War. More than 50,000 soldiers died in the battle. The Union (Northern States) was victorious against the Confederacy (Southern States). After the Confederate troops retreated on July 4, 1863, the Confederacy made no more advances against the Union.
• Before President Lincoln's inauguration in March 1861, seven of the ten states that would form the Confederacy had already seceded from the Union (left the United States).
• Fort Bragg in North Carolina was established in 1918. It was named for General Braxton Bragg, a Confederate artillery officer from North Carolina.
• At the beginning of World War I, there were 403 nurses serving active duty. By the end of the war, 22,000 nurses had served. In 1947, the Army Nurse Corps was established as a part of the Department of the United States Army.
• General Colin Powell was the first African-American to head the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989. He is also the highest ranking African-American officer to have ever served in the United States Army.
• On July 28, 1866, Congress passed the Reorganization Act. Six regiments, the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry Regiments, were designated for black men.
• During the Civil War, drummer boys/men were used to lead the United States Army onto the battlefields. Drummers ranged from age 10-48. The United States Army purchased 32,000 drums between 1861 and 1865.
• Willie Johnston was the drummer for Company D of the 3rd Vermont Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He was the 7th soldier in the United States Army to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he remains the youngest soldier to receive the medal. Willie Johnston was almost twelve years old when he received the award on September 16, 1863.
• In 1964, President Johnson signed legislation that increased the corps of cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point from 2,529 to 4,147. West Point had to be expanded to hold all the new cadets.
• Though the exact day is not known, once in 1818 Abraham Lincoln was kicked in the head by a horse and almost died.
• Lincoln, who was ten years old at the time, was at Gordon's Gristmill near his family's home in Kentucky. He was performing one of his regular chores by taking some of his family's corn to the gristmill to be ground down.
• While whipping a horse to get it to move faster, the horse kicked with its hind legs, hitting Lincoln in the head and knocking him out. Noah Gordon, the mill owner, thought he was dead. Lincoln was violently ill all night and did not wake up until the next day.
• George Washington was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army in 1775. He was never paid, nor did he ask to be paid, for his services.
• Kristine Baker graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1990. She later became the first female Brigade Commander of the United States Corps of Cadets.
• John Adams was the 2nd President of the United States and the first President whose son would later hold the same office. John Quincy Adams, that son, became the 6th President of the United States in 1825.
• In 1921, an unknown American soldier, who was killed in World War I, was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This was the first soldier laid to rest in the "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier." In 1958, two more unknown soldiers (one killed during World War II and the other killed during the Korean War) were laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
• In 1984, the fourth unknown soldier (killed in the Vietnam War) was buried in the Arlington National Cemetery. In 1998, the remains of that unknown soldier were identified using DNA testing. The remains of Lieutenant Joseph Blassie were removed from Arlington National Cemetery and returned to his family in Missouri on July 10, 1998.
  Robert M. Green invented the ice cream soda in Philadelphia in 1874.
• Benjamin Franklin founded the Philadelphia Zoo. It was the first public zoo in the United States.
• Little League Baseball's first World Series was held in 1946 in Williamsport.
• The Pennsylvania Turnpike is home to 5 of the 15 longest land vehicular tunnels in the U.S. It was known as the "tunnel highway" when it opened in 1940, running through 7 former railroad tunnels along a 160-mile route. In the 1960s a campaign called "Peace, Love and the Pennsylvania Turnpike" promoted safe driving with signs such as "The road to success is always under construction" and "Spread the love, let someone merge."

Interesting Facts about New York

• Chittenago, New York is the home of L. Frank Baum, author of the "Wizard of Oz." It features a yellow brick inlaid sidewalks leading to Aunti Em's and other Oz-themed businesses. Chittenago is the location of an annual Munchkins parade.
• New York was the first state to require license plates on cars.
• While being constructed in 1929, the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan Building (now the Trump Building) in New York City were locked in a "race for the sky" to become the world's tallest building. The Bank of Manhattan Building was finished first, at 927 feet — just 2 feet taller than the announced height of its rival. However, Chrysler Building architect William Van Alen had concealed a 27-ton, 185-foot steel spire inside the structure. When it was raised into place, it brought the total height to 1,046 ft, more than 100 feet taller than the Bank of Manhattan Building.
• Of the 70 largest cities in 2004. New Orleans, LA, ranked as the place where U.S.-born residents were most likely to also be natives of their state -- 88% were. Of ail states, Louisiana and New York had the highest percentage of U.S.-born residents still living in the state where they were born-82%. The states with the lowest percentage of U.S.-born residents who were also state natives were Arizona and Nevada, each with only 28%.
• The Empire State Building turns 75 this month! The famous New York City landmark opened on May 1, 1931. President Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington, D.C., to turn the building's lights on for the first time! Not including its antenna, the skyscraper is 1,250 feet tall--among the 10 tallest buildings in the world!

Interesting Facts about Massachusetts

• Springfield physical education teacher James A. Naismith invented basketball in 1891. He did so in response to the lack of team sports that are played indoors during the winter months.
• Baseball's first World Series was played in Boston in October 1903, between the Boston Pilgrims and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Interesting Facts about California

• In four U.S. states the "minority" population (defined by the Census Bureau as all those except non-Hispanic whites) is now really the "majority." Population estimates for July 1, 2004, show that Texas had a minority population of 50.2%, joining three other "minority-majority" states. Hawaii's population was 77% minority, and New Mexico and California had minority populations of 57% and 56%, respectively. Five states had minority populations of around 40%: Arizona, Georgia. Maryland, Mississippi, and New York.

Interesting Facts about District of Columbia

• Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge "grows" about 20 acres every hundred years, as new land forms around the brush and branches that have floated down the river.

Interesting Facts about Wyoming

• When the Indians saw the first two white women in Wyoming, they were astonished that such pale creatures could survive the trip, and they killed the fattest dogs to prepare a feast for their guests.
• The Indian name for Bull Lake was "the lake that roars." The strange sound comes from the action of the wind on the ice.
• The prehistoric Medicine Wheel is similar to Stonehenge in England and one in the Gobi Desert. It remains a mystery to scholars.
• The first telephone poles in Wyoming made such attractive scratching posts for buffaloes that as many as 30 of the huge animals might sometimes be seen waiting their turn to rub against one.

Interesting Facts about Wisconsin

• Believing that he had reached China and the Far East, Jean Nicolet stepped ashore near the Winnebago village of Red Bank, shooting pistols and wearing embroidered Chinese silk robes, to the astonishment of the Indians.
• Prairie du Chien (Prairie of the Dog) was named for Chief Alim, a prominent Indian whose native name means Dog.
• During pioneering days the Wisconsin region was so sparsely settled that Justice of the Peace Pat Kelly reputedly was sometimes forced to use trees as witnesses for wedding ceremonies.

Interesting Facts about West Virginia

• The discovery of wild marijuana growing in Moorefield brought a marked increase in tourism to the town, but the weed was destroyed by officials.
• The West Virginia "panhandle" is so narrow that the city of Weirton stretches from border to border. The only U.S. city that extends from one state border to another, it is wedged in between Ohio and Pennsylvania.
• A touring circus is said to have decided the choice of Charleston as state capital. Its supporters lured voters statewide with a flamboyant circus and won handily.
• Ann Royall became the first woman journalist to interview a president. While John Quincy Adams was swimming, she stole his clothes and would not return them until he gave her a hearing.
• Entomologist Romeo D. Erdie gained fame for his bug factory. Uses for his model insects have ranged from exterminator ads to fine jewelry. He turned them out by the millions.
• The community of Shepherdstown was on George Washington's list for choice of a national capital, but it lost out in the final selection.
• Bluefield, 2,558 feet above sea level, is the highest city east of Denver.

Interesting Facts about Washington

• Point Roberts on the mainland is American territory but juts out from Canada and cannot be reached by land from the rest of the United States.
• The Indian custom of potlatch was observed at parties, when the host or hostess of the event gave away most of his or her possessions to the guests.
• The "Pig War" started when both the United States and Canada claimed the San Juan Islands, and the British threatened to place one Lyman Cutler on trial for shooting a pig owned by a Briton. The matter was settled when arbitration gave the islands to the United States.
• Early Seattle had a shortage of females. Asa Mercer went east and persuaded 11 girls of good families to return to meet the many eligible bachelors. Several prominent families trace their roots back to the Mercer girls.

Interesting Facts about Virginia

• Virginia might be considered a midwestern as well as an eastern state because it extends as far west as Detroit.
• George Washington was said to be as proud of his estate as of his public service. One of his many prizes was awarded for the largest jackass.
• The old apothecary shop in Alexandria, where Martha Washington bought castor oil in quarts, is still standing. One jokester said she probably used it to make her candy.

Interesting Facts about Vermont

• In the late 1700s, schoolteacher Justin Morgan developed the Morgan horse, the only breed originating in the United States.
• The Indians were so devoted to the chapel they had built at Swanton that when the French were driven out, the faithful Indians went with them and took the chapel apart, rebuilding it stone by stone at their new home in Canada.
• In the 18th-century dispute between Vermont and New York, the Green Mountain Boys tore the roof from the home of New York supporter Benjamin Spencer. After he took an oath to support Vermont, the "boys" restored his roof.
• Although ridiculed by some as a do-nothing president, Calvin Coolidge had the support of many Vermonters who agreed that government should interfere as little as possible in the affairs of the people.
• James Johns of Huntington printed by hand every copy of every issue of the newspaper he published for 40 years.
• At the Haskell opera house at Derby Line, the audience sits in the United States and the stage is in Canada. According to one account, an American police officer once had to sit in the audience and watch a wanted criminal performing on the stage.

Interesting Facts about Utah

• The beautiful Seagull monument at Salt Lake City pays tribute to the bird that saved the first Mormon crops.
• The Navajo banned their ancient symbol of friendship during World War II because it resembled the Nazi swastika.
• Celebrating the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, Governor Leland Stanford of California swung his sledgehammer at the gold spike--and missed.
• Zion Narrows canyon is so narrow and deep that even in bright daylight stars are visible from the canyon bottom.
• When Bishop Whipple of Minnesota asked a Utah chief if his belongings were safe in his tent, the chief replied, "Yes, there is not a white man within a hundred miles."
• Brigham Young did not choose the Salt Lake valley for its beauty but rather because it was so desolate he thought no one would ever try to take it away from his Mormon people.

Interesting Facts about Tennessee

• The only known defeat of a naval force by cavalry was carried out in a Civil War raid by Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
• On November 4, 1864, Forrest's cavalry attacked the federal supply base at Johnsonville on the Tennessee River. The base, with its fleet of 30 gunboats, transports, and barges, was virtually destroyed.
• When Tennessean Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812, his fans in Tennessee spread the word that Jackson had left immediately to conquer England.
• Confederate heroine Antoinette Polk was so close to capture by Union forces that they managed to pluck a feather from her hat, but she escaped to warn Confederate troops of Union plans.

Interesting Facts about South Dakota

• In the floods of 1881, a church at Green Islands was swept away intact. The story was told that it was seen floating down the river with its bell tolling.
• During the skirmish at the murder of Sitting Bull, his horse performed many of the tricks his owner had taught him as they traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
• On his visit to the Black Hills, President Calvin Coolidge gained a reputation as a golfer. He did not know that the greens had been altered for his benefit, so as to slope toward the holes.
• The Nystrom Bank at Wall did not close during Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 bank holiday--the only one in the country not to. No one had thought to notify the owner.

Interesting Facts about South Carolina

• When the chief of an early Indian group died, his horse was buried alive with him. There were so many such burials that Indian Hill is known as a mountain.
• A group of Seewee Indians decided to take their grievances directly to the king of England. A pirate crew spotted their canoes at sea, and they were never heard from again.
• Corporal Jesse Gillespie was wounded, then recovered in a French hospital during World War I. Meanwhile, the U.S. Army had issued a death certificate. When he returned home he was made to sign an affidavit that he was not dead.
• On the way to a Lancaster cemetery, the body of Andrew Jackson's father was taken from bar to bar on a sled, until some mourner found it had disappeared. The body turned up in a snowbank and finally reached the intended burial place.
• Theodosia Burr Alston, Aaron Burr's daughter, was the wife of South Carolina Governor Joseph Alston. In 1812 she sailed from Charleston to New York and was never heard from again. Later, a pirate confessed that she had been made to walk the plank, but his story was never verified.
• The state's first steam locomotive produced such a hiss of steam that the fireman sat on the safety valve to reduce the noise; there was an explosion, and he was killed.
• Onlookers at Beaufort Bay thought that a man named Jones had finally reached his long-sought goal of perpetual motion, as his boat dashed about the bay. However, he had hooked a stingray, was being pulled by it, and could not cut the line.

Interesting Facts about Rhode Island

• The smallest state has the longest official name, the "State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."
• Gentlemanly Indian men would serenade an Indian woman. If interested, she would throw out her moccasin, then come out for an engagement walk. Less honorable braves sometimes knocked their prospective brides unconscious and carried them off.
• Samuel Gorton fled to Rhode Island after he was banished from Massachusetts for defending his maid, who had been punished for smiling in church.
• Many protests against the British tax on tea were made in Rhode Island. One man dashed around Providence crossing out the word "tea" on every sign he found.
• A lover of good jokes, Mrs. William Astor once invited Newport society to meet the Prince del Drago, who turned out to be a tiny monkey resplendent in a full dress suit.

Interesting Facts about Oregon

• The Indians thought the squeaks of the wheels of the settlers' wagons sounded like their words "chik-chik-chaile-kikash," and that became their name for wagon.
• At 1,932 feet, Oregon's Crater Lake is the nation's deepest lake--and one of the most beautiful.
• Oregon's madrona tree sheds its bark as well as its leaves.
• The giant insect-eating cobra lily is another unusual form of plant life.
• Oregon students earn money for school by picking up the innumerable pinecones for seed.
• More than two centuries ago, the ship Manzanita foundered on the coast; beachcombers are still picking up lumps of beeswax from its cargo.

Interesting Facts about Oklahoma

• Because of its shape on the map, Oklahoma has been called "the nation's largest meat cleaver."
• With a mountain being defined as any elevation over 2,000 feet, Oklahoma claims that the 1,999-foot rise known as Cavanal is the world's highest hill.
• In an attempt to scalp an enemy, Chief Pawhuska once pulled at a man's white hair. The man's wig came off in his hand. The chief kept this powerful "magic" the rest of his life and took the name meaning "white hair."
• More languages are spoken in Oklahoma than in Europe. Each of the state's 55 Indian tribes has a separate language or its own distinctive dialect.

Interesting Facts about Ohio

• A part of one of the lead claim plates buried by Bienville in 1749 was found by small boys, and the historic relic went to a Massachusetts museum.
• If Connecticut claims in Ohio had not been settled, the present-day Ohio city might have been known as Cleveland, Connecticut.
• The design for the great seal of Ohio was inspired by the rising of the sun over the Ohio mountains after an all-night meeting of early Ohio officials.
• Technically, Ohio did not legally become a state until 1953 because Congress had up to then neglected to give its formal approval.
• Harry M. Stevens of Niles saw a cartoon of a dachshund dog as a wiener. He called his sandwich invention a "hot dog."
• The first cash register was named a "mechanical money drawer" by its inventor, James Ritty.

Interesting Facts about North Dakota

• When he signed the statehood bills for the two Dakotas on the same day, President Benjamin Harrison would not reveal which one he signed first. Consequently, no one knows whether North Dakota is technically the 39th or the 40th state.
• Seventeen years before Theodore Roosevelt was elected president, Medora storekeeper Joe Ferris publicly predicted the event.
• Among the state's interesting archaeological discoveries are the rows of carved turtles and the rings of boulders. The turtles were thought to have pointed to water sources, and the rocks probably held down the bottoms of tepees.
• A Crow Indian drew a message in the Missouri River sand. It consisted of a cluster of dots representing U.S. troops within a circle. Then he slashed out the dots with a stick. A river captain understood the message and carried the first news of the Custer massacre down the river to Bismarck.
• Inventor D. H. Houston named his new film Kodak, a variation of Dakota that became known around the world.
• A Portal golf course is probably the only place where a golfer might make a tee shot in the United States and end up in a hole in Canada.

Interesting Facts about North Carolina

• A prehistoric group known as the Early Farmers was notable for its careful burial of dogs.
• Trader John Lawson revealed that traders looked for the Indians with the smallest mouths. The Indians filled their mouths with as much rum as they could and spit it into a container before giving up a pelt.
• Colonel Benjamin Cleveland was noted not only for his courage in the Battle of Kings Mountain but also for his weight of 450 pounds.
• The women of Edenton opposed the British tax on tea by deciding not to drink it. A teapot-shaped monument pays tribute to this decision.
• Blowing Rock is a unique natural formation. When handkerchiefs are tossed over the ridge, the currents of air waft them back.
• In the course of the Civil War, General Bryan Grimes of Grimesville had six horses shot from under him.

Interesting Facts about New Mexico

• In the Four Corners region, where four states touch (New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado), visitors often sprawl out so they can say they have slept in all four at once.
• Pueblo Bonito housed as many as 1,500 people in its 800 rooms, becoming perhaps the first "condominium."
• Just before his sentence of hanging was carried out, the outlaw Black Jack Ketchum demanded of the hangman, "Hurry it up; I'm due in hell for dinner."
• One of the principal attractions of Carlsbad Caverns is the evening flight of millions of bats. Winging their way out of the cavern entrance, the swarm of bats look like a column of smoke.

Interesting Facts about New Jersey

• Johan Printz, governor of New Sweden, was so heavy (400 pounds) that the gangplank almost collapsed when he arrived at his colony. The Indians called him "Big Tub."
• When American Revolutionary heroine Molly Pitcher's husband was killed, she fought in his place at his cannon.
• The first real game of baseball (played under the Cartwright rules) was played at Hoboken in 1846.
• The first derby in the country was run at Passaic in 1864.
• One William Campbell, a non-Indian, founded a wampum mint near Hackensack; it operated until 1889.
• Colonel John Stevens of Hoboken operated an experimental railroad track of 630 feet near there.
• Standard Time was devised in 1883 by William F. Allen of South Orange.

Interesting Facts about New Hampshire

• One of the world's notable natural features is the Old Man of the Mountain. This granite profile looms 48 feet from chin to forehead.
• New Hampshire's state House is the largest of all the states, with a total of 400 members. If the U.S. Congress were in proportion, it would have 100,000 members.
• Horace Greeley learned to read while his mother read to him as he sat on her lap. But he learned upside down because of the angle at which she held the book. He was able to read the Bible by age four.

Interesting Facts about Nevada

• In order to meet a deadline for statehood, the entire constitution of Nevada was sent to Washington by telegram at a cost of $3,400.
• Virginia City was named for James Fenimore, whose nickname was "Old Virginy." He celebrated too much one night, fell, and broke a bottle of whisky. Not wishing to waste the liquid, he called out, "I baptize thee Virginia Town," and the name stuck.
• Mark Twain offended a local newspaper writer, who challenged him to a duel. The challenger backed out, but not before Twain had been charged with breaking the law and had to flee from Virginia City on his way to fame elsewhere.
• Many of the horses of Virginia City sported multicolored polka dots. Chemicals from the mineral crushing mills where they worked caused the unusual decorations.
• Once when Nevada Senator William Stewart asked to meet with President Lincoln, the president sent a note saying he would see him the next morning. Lincoln was assassinated that night, and the note probably contained Lincoln's last written words.
• The discovery of moccasins a foot and a half long caused archaeologists to consider that Nevada might at one time have been inhabited by a race of giants.

Interesting Facts about Nebraska

• During the Civil War, Nebraska had a population of only about 30,000. Of these, 3,307 served in the war.
• In 1862, Daniel Freeman of Beatrice was the nation's first recipient of land granted under the unique Homestead Act.
• President Andrew Johnson vetoed the Nebraska statehood bill of 1866, but Congress overrode his veto, and Nebraska became a state on March 1, 1867.
• President William McKinley opened the Mississippi International Exposition at Omaha in 1898.
• During World War I, 47,801 Nebraskans were called into service, and 1,000 lost their lives.
• In 1934, Nebraska became unique among the states when it installed its unicameral (one-house) legislature, consisting only of a Senate.
• Of the 120,000 Nebraskans in World War II service, 3,830 lost their lives.
• In 1992, Omaha claimed the title of "Telemarketing Capital of the U.S.A."
• On May 6, 1877, famed Chief Crazy Horse surrendered with 1,000 of his followers near Camp Robinson. On September 7, 1877, he was killed because he was said to have resisted his captors.

Interesting Facts about Montana

• On the present site of Helena, a little party of gold miners agreed that they had reached their "last chance" to find wealth. Then they made a strike on what is now the city's main street, Last Chance Gulch.
• In 1867, Montana's territorial governor, Francis Meagher, a hero of the Civil War, boarded a Missouri River steamboat at Fort Benton, went to his stateroom, and was never seen again.
• Montana Indians believed that stealing a horse was the best way to show bravery.
• Early visitors to Montana prairies noted the many mounds of earth covered with flowers and were startled to learn that these were the sod houses of the settlers.
• In a house near Frenchtown, four brothers were born, but each was born in a different territory. Before statehood Montana had been a part of five territories.
• Montana shepherds spent many lonely hours piling rocks into high stacks called cairns. Some cairns can still be seen.

Interesting Facts about Missouri

• From the first steamboat on the Missouri River, smoke poured out of a stack made like a dragon's head to frighten the Indians.
• St. Louis is perhaps the only major city to have been founded by a 14-year-old boy--Auguste Chouteau, who undertook the task at the request of his patron, Pierre Laclede Liguest.
• The ice cream cone is said by some to have originated at the St. Louis world's fair of 1904.

Interesting Facts about Mississippi

• Among geographic curiosities is the so-called Singing River, the Pascagoula. It sometimes makes a sound like the humming of bees, and this has never been explained.
• When Hernando de Soto died, his followers were so afraid of the Indians that they slipped his body into the Mississippi in the dead of night, at a spot thought to have been near present-day Natchez.
• The mother-daughter combination of Maria and Miranda Younghans manned the Biloxi lighthouse for a total of 62 years.
• The five sons of the William Henry Cox family all died tragic deaths. Among the tragedies were one son who was killed riding his horse up a stairway, one who killed his bride and committed suicide, and another who died in a wagon as it crashed over a cliff.
• Mississippi is the only state whose state flower is the blossom of the state tree.

Interesting Facts about Minnesota

• There are so many lakes in Minnesota that novel names are scarce. There are 91 Long Lakes, and other bodies of water also have identical names.
• In 1838 an unsavory character built a cabin at present-day St. Paul and called the place Pig's Eye. Fortunately, Father Lucian Galtier renamed the place after St. Paul when he built a chapel there in 1841.
• The execution of 37 Sioux for their part in the Sioux War was the largest official wholesale execution in U.S. history. The Indians went to the scaffold singing a war song.
• The Falls of St. Anthony have "traveled." Their waters have continued to cut into the soft limestone, causing them to move upstream about 4 miles since their discovery.
• Charles Mayo, of the famed Mayo medical family, began his career at age nine by administering ether during operations.
• The great Cuyuna iron range was named for Cuyler Adams and his dog Una (Cuy-Una).
• The red-colored stone of Pipestone National Monument is found nowhere else. It was a sacred place to the Indians, who carved their peace pipes from its soft redstone.

Interesting Facts about Michigan

• Chief Black Hawk passed through Detroit after the Black Hawk War, and the whole city turned out to see the well-dressed leader in a Fourth of July celebration.
• Michigan history took a peculiar turn when Mormon leader James Strang proclaimed himself King of Beaver Island. He was assassinated in 1856, and mainland forces took over the Mormon properties.
• Disguised as a man, Sarah Emma Edmonds fought through four major Civil War campaigns before her identity was discovered.
• Michigan's shoreline of 3,177 miles is second only to that of Alaska.
• Ann Arbor's name came from the habit of two wives named Ann chatting under a grape arbor. Their husbands named the town for them.

Interesting Facts about Maryland

• Near the town of Hancock, Maryland is only about 1 mile wide, the narrowest width of any state.
• The British attack on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, with its "rockets' red glare," inspired onlooker Francis Scott Key to write the poem that is now the national anthem.
• Jan Frazier of the Cumberland area was expecting a child when she was captured by the Indians. The Indians raided another settlement to get clothes for the infant, who nevertheless died. The mother escaped, walking for 300 miles and living on herbs and bark until she reached a house of friends, only to find her husband had remarried.
• One of the king's colonial grants was known as the Thumb Grant, because the grantee was given as much land as his thumb could cover on a map.
• Maryland is the only state to have developed a distinct breed of dog--the Chesapeake Bay retriever.
• Maryland has the only official state sport -- jousting.

Interesting Facts about Maine

• The first European settlers in Maine brought timber in their ships to build houses and were astonished that their new home had its own magnificent forests.
• Because Cushnoc Island in the Kennebec River at Augusta was a navigation hazard, the people there hitched 200 oxen to the island, but they failed to move it an inch.
• Thanksgiving in Maine predated the Pilgrims. The Etchimin Indians celebrated for two weeks in autumn. Their feasts included turkey, cranberries, popcorn, and other familiar delicacies.
• Barney Beal of Beal's Island was a noted strongman who could knock out a horse with one blow and who once bested 15 men in a tavern dispute.
• During the Revolution, 19-year-old Aaron Burr fell in love with Indian Princess Jacataqua; Burr moved on to later fame and notoriety.
• Samuel Francis Smith of Waterville gave the nation "America" ("My Country, 'Tis of Thee"), which many believe should be the national anthem.

Interesting Facts about Louisiana

• When the Bonnet Carre Spillway was completed, 6,000 goats were put to work keeping the grass down so that flood waters could flow without resistance.
• Shipwrecked explorer Marcos de Mena was wounded by the Indians and buried alive; a small airhole permitted him to breathe. After his followers were killed, he managed to wriggle out and make his way back to Mexico.
• Jean Lafitte and his pirate crew were pardoned as reward for their services in the War of 1812, but soon returned to their ways.
• Huey Long was noted for his brilliant mind and often spellbound his opponents with apt quotations from the Bible, Shakespeare, and innumerable other sources, related with his great eloquence.
• Membership in the Live Oak Society was limited to the trees themselves. There was a senior membership of trees 100 years old, and a junior group. The society died out with the death of its founder--a man, not a tree.
• The Indians painted a conspicuous tree bright red as a marker. The French called this tree "baton rouge" (red stick), giving the Louisiana capital its name.

Interesting Facts about Kentucky

• Captured by the Indians at Boonesborough, Elizabeth Calloway broke off pieces of brush and twigs and tore off pieces of her clothing to leave a trail for possible rescue. Following this trail, a party led by Daniel Boone caught up with her captives, who fled.
• Prehistoric bones were not so highly regarded in 1773, when explorer James Douglas used the ribs of mastodons for tent poles.
• Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Union President Abraham Lincoln were both Kentucky natives.
• The admirers of a large sycamore tree at Pippa Passes bought 36 square feet of land on which it stood and registered the tree as the landowner.
• Handicapped U.S. Senate candidate John Pope received one man's vote because "he has only one arm to thrust into the treasury."
• Because Mammoth Cave has a constant 54 degree F temperature, it "breathes" in when the outside temperature is high and "exhales" when the temperature is lower.

Interesting Facts about Kansas

• The legendary lawmen of Dodge City, such as Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp, were not always as heroic as they have been portrayed. On one occasion, Earp was said to have "amateurishly loaded all six chambers of his revolver and blasted a hole through his coat."
• Pioneering the Santa Fe Trail, the Becknell party almost died of thirst on the dry bed of the Cimarron River until they discovered by accident that the river was "flowing" beneath the sand.
• With the slaughter of the buffalo, the scattered bones became so valuable that they were collected by the tons, and Dodge City bankers and businesses accepted them as legal tender.

Interesting Facts about Iowa

• When the Fox Indians refused to do a favor for Julian Dubuque, he threatened to burn the Mississippi. At the mouth of Catfish Creek, Dubuque set fire to oil poured into the creek upstream by an assistant. The frightened Indians quickly came to terms, and Dubuque called on the fire to die just as the oil gave out.
• The honey trees of a region disputed between Iowa and Missouri were so prized that the two states almost came to blows in a territorial dispute called the Honey War.
• Iowa's Civil War Greybeard Regiment, made up of men over the legal age of 45, was the only one of its kind ever authorized.
• The first "road" in Iowa consisted of a furrow plowed by Lyman Dillon from Dubuque to Iowa City, thought to be the longest continuous furrow ever plowed.
• James "Tama Jim" Wilson of Traer holds the all-time record for service in any cabinet office--16 years as secretary of agriculture.

Interesting Facts about Indiana

• The British governor of Indiana, Henry Hamilton, was known as the "Hair Buyer" because he encouraged Indians friendly to the British to take American scalps, for which they were paid.
• Indiana's Lost River travels 22 miles underground.
• Indiana General Ambrose Burnside's bushy whiskers were originally called "burnsides" and now are known as "sideburns."
• Indiana is known for its many unusual place names, such as Gnaw Bone and Bean Blossom.

Interesting Facts about Illinois

• One of the most mysterious of all prehistoric remains is the huge figure of a monster, known as the Piasa Bird, painted high on the bluff near Alton. Its origin has never been determined.
• Lincoln, Illinois, was the only town named for Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime. Invited to dedicate the town, he christened it with watermelon juice and provided watermelon for the crowd.
• When a gang of counterfeiters tried to steal Abraham Lincoln's body from his tomb in exchange for a jailed member's freedom, quick Secret Service work foiled the bizarre ransom attempt.

Interesting Facts about Idaho

• Thirsty travelers on the brink of Hells Canyon could look down on the waters of the Snake River but had no way to get down to drink.
• Wood River is known as the Upside Down River. At one place it flows through a gorge 4 feet wide and 104 feet deep. At another point the gorge is 104 feet wide and the river 4 feet deep.
• A pioneer family of Palouse country once gave an Indian family a meal. From that time on, the pioneer family found a large salmon left at their door at the same time each year.
• During the gold boom in the early 1860s, Idaho City was a large, rip-roaring boom town, where crime and "frontier justice" ran rampant. Of the 200 people buried in the pioneer cemetery of Idaho City, only 28 died of natural causes.
• A unique Idaho attraction is Thousand Springs. Each spring spouts out from the side of a single cliff.
• The 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State brought great clouds of ash to Idaho, and the Palouse crop the next year increased 30%.

Interesting Facts about Hawaii

• As many as 100 people often crowded into a single Polynesian double-hulled canoe as the seaworthy ships sailed the thousands of stormy ocean miles from the South Pacific to populate Hawaii.
• When the Hawaiians killed Captain Cook in 1789, they prepared his body as they would have their own great chief, removing the flesh from the bones before burial.
• In 1825, Hawaiian chieftess Kapiolani defied the volcano goddess Pele and ate the sacred ohelo berries to prove that the old religion was no longer effective.
• Hawaiian kings were noted for their great size and strength. Kamehameha I once moved a 4,500-pound stone. His Queen, Kaahumanu, weighed 300 pounds.
• The Robinson family, owners of the island of Niihau, have for years done everything in their power to preserve the ways of early Hawaii, making the island an off-limits place of mystery.

Interesting Facts about Georgia

• Rivalry between Indian tribes did not always lead to war. Some disputes between Cherokee and Creek groups were settled by a ball game.
• In the 1740s, Mary Jones was the skillful and successful captain of Fort Wimberley during a Spanish attack.
• Polio victim Franklin D. Roosevelt often visited and enjoyed the waters of Warm Springs. That small community gained world fame when he became president.
• The sculpture created by Gutzon Borglum on the side of Stone Mountain was so grand that Borglum once hosted 20 guests at breakfast on the shoulder of the Robert E. Lee carving. The work was later destroyed to make way for a smaller monument.
• One of the famed incidents of the Civil War was later known as "the Great Locomotive Chase," when Confederate forces pursued and retook a captured locomotive.

Interesting Facts about Florida

• During the hurricane of 1926, the barometer at Miami reached the country's record low, causing hundreds to faint from lack of oxygen.
• When a British captain's ear was cut off in a war between Spain and England, the conflict, which was waged in Florida, became known as the War of Jenkins's Ear.
• The demand was so great for Florida property during the great land boom that investors paid up to $25,000 for lots that had not yet been dredged up from the ocean.
• Once endangered, alligators increased to become something of a nuisance, sometimes even swallowing small pets. The stomach of one was found to contain a pickle jar, dog collar, and several golf balls.
• After fishing, Florida's anhinga, or water turkey, must dry its feathers in the sun. These birds lie in groups with wings outspread, looking much like a wash left out to dry

Interesting Facts about Delaware

• Johan Prinz, capable governor of New Sweden from 1643 to 1653, was the "greatest" of all colonial governors. He weighed 400 pounds and was called the "Big Tub."
• When a ship carrying peas wrecked on a sandbar, the peas grew and collected so much sand that a new island formed, now Pea Patch Island.
• When one of the Du Pont men saw sparks flying from a machine in their blasting powder plant, he dipped his tall silk hat in water and put out the fire before a tremendous explosion could occur.
• One of the most curious exhibits to be found at the Delaware Historical Society is a cigar store white man, a carving of George Washington.
• When Shadrach Cannon of Seaford was bitten by a rabid dog, some of the town's best citizens were selected to smother him to death between two feather beds, in an early mercy killing.

Interesting Facts about Connecticut

• Early Hartford, described as a Puritan theocracy, was known for its strict religious law. Its "blue laws" called for the death penalty for any son who cursed or struck his parents. Elder Malbone once flogged his daughter Martha on the green for going on a date with a young gentleman.
• The great charter of 1662 extended Connecticut west even to the Pacific Ocean.
• During the American Revolution, Lime Rock metal workers forged a huge chain that was stretched across the Hudson River to keep British ships from sailing up that strategic waterway. Each link was three feet long.
• During the American Revolution, at the age of 15, Samuel Smedley of Fairfield became a captain of a privateer ship. By war's end he had captured more enemy prize ships than any other captain, surpassing even the small U.S. Navy.

Interesting Facts about Colorado

• Many explanations have been given for the decline of the Pueblo culture. According to one of the most interesting, the people ground their grain in stone grinders; fine stone mixed with the meal, and their teeth were ground down until they no longer could eat.
• In 1936 in a unique ceremony, Middle Park officially became a part of the United States. The area supposedly had never been included in any of the cessions of territory to the federal government.
• Mining tycoon Auguste Rische was asked to donate a large chandelier to a church he financed. He refused, saying that he could not play a chandelier, and he thought no one else in the congregation could do so.
• Mrs. James J. (Molly) Brown, socialite wife of a Colorado mining tycoon, survived the sinking of the liner Titanic. She became famous as "the Unsinkable Molly Brown" in the Broadway hit of that name. Her home is now a Denver museum.

World's Tallest Tower

The the worlds newest tallest building is about to be completed, lookx amazing, should be safer than going to space to get a better view of earth

SPECIFICATIONS - BURJ DUBAI (DUBAI TOWER) AND DUBAI MALL, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Key Data
Order year
2003
Construction start
2004
Project type
Mall, residential and retail facilities and world's tallest skyscraper
Location
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Estimated investment
Dh800 million (mall, residential and retail facilities); Dh3.9 billion (tower)
Completion
2006 (mall); 2007 (tower)
Retail space
5 million square ftІ
Shops
>1,000
Car parking
16,000 spaces
Key Players
Sponsor
EMAAR Properties PJSC
Lead contractors, designers, architects and engineers
DC Architects PTE Limited, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Bauer Spezialtiefbau, Middle East Foundations, Turner Construction Corporation, Grocon, Lerch, Bates and Associates Incorporated



this image is from BBC comparing the biggest buildings,


You can't say they don't have a vision. Remarkably, the inspiration for the tower comes from - a flower. The Hymenocallis is a plant widely cultivated in Dubai, India and around the region. It's harmonious structure is one of the organizing principles for the design.



The Foundation

Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problems

When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity (ink won't flow down to the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million.

They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.
And what did the Russians do...?? They used a pencil.

San Francisco / Safer Sex Info Goes High-Tech

The condom broke. You think you could be pregnant or been exposed to a sexually transmitted disease.

So you turn to your cell phone for help: "if u hve sex, u can get an STD + not know it. Chlamydia, gonorrhea=no symptoms most of the time Dropin get chcked FREE," reads the text message tip, followed by an address and hours of a health clinic.

This week, San Francisco becomes the first city in the country to direct safer sex advice to young people through text messages on their cell phones. Michelle Irving, a 22-year-old peer educator with the city's Department of Public Health, said young people are constantly sending text messages, and she thinks they'll respond to the privacy and immediacy of getting advice on their cell phones.

"A lot of teenagers don't go to clinics, and they're afraid to ask questions. Text messaging, it's no one's business but yours," Irving said. "They don't have to talk to someone if they think they're pregnant or their condom broke. It's confidential, so no one has to feel embarrassed or humiliated."

Users send the message "sexinfo" to one of two phone numbers set up by the health department and within seconds get a reply asking them to clarify their question by choosing one of several options, including what to do about a broken condom and how to respond to pressures to have sex.

The whole back-and-forth process takes one or two minutes, and most messages ends with a phone number to call for further help. The program is designed to be teen-friendly, and the messages are written in text message lingo that's familiar to young people.

"We wanted to design a program that would reach young people with the technology they use most often," said Jacqueline McCright, community-based STD services manager at the Department of Public Health. "Most youth get their information from their friends. ... They're winging it, trying to figure it out for themselves. We thought this would be a good way to get them information that's reliable, quick, nonjudgmental and private."

The text-messaging program, which is directed at young people ages 12 to 24, is modeled after a similar program in London. It will cost about $2,500 a month to run the automated program in San Francisco. The San Francisco program comes in response to climbing STD rates among young people in the city -- including a particularly alarming 100 percent increase in gonorrhea cases among black teenagers last year. The Public Health Department spent a year brainstorming ways to reach young people who weren't getting the information they needed from more traditional resources, such as parents, schools or even community health clinics for teenagers.

San Francisco 15-year-old Mattie Loyce said she used to get her sex education from a radio program geared to young people. But as she's gotten older, she's learning most of what she knows about sex from "experience and friends."

She's on her cell phone all the time, she said, and "it'd be cool" to be able to send a text message for safer sex advice. Her friend Chiarra Tillers, 16, agreed, especially if the information available is accurate and reliable.

"There are a lot of myths, things that aren't true, that you hear about," Tillers said. "If what they tell you is true, that's great."

The Public Health Department isn't alone in relying on new technology to reach a younger, at-risk audience about sex. Planned Parenthood Golden Gate recently began a new campaign under the slogan "safe is sexy," including ads on MTV and MySpace.

Planned Parenthood also is looking into a text-messaging program of its own that would allow patients to make appointments, or receive reminders, by sending text messages on their cell phones.

Planned Parenthood's ad campaign has come under attack by some conservative groups that promote abstinence education. In particular, conservative organizations have denounced the focus on teenagers, including a Planned Parenthood referral program that gives patients free movie tickets and enters them in a contest to win an iPod if they encourage a friend to make an appointment.

But Therese Wilson, senior vice president at Planned Parenthood Golden Gate, said it's critical that young people have as much unfettered access to safer sex information as they can get. And luring them with new technology is a method that already seems to work.

"We're trying to keep up with the technology because it's very evident that younger audiences, that's how they communicate," Wilson said. "We strive to be very smart about our advertising dollars, and I think we do a good job of that."

Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)

First Russian Laptop

This is first Russian laptop, made under the brand “Elektronika”. The production started in 1991 and lasted not very long due to the high price of the device - none of the common people could afford themselves such devices. The price for the computer was around $6000, that equals 25,000 roubles according to that time’s exchange rate, when the average salary across the country was 500 roubles (50 times less!).



As we mentioned before in the article “How the richest Russians became rich” at that time there were practicaly no people who earned a lot and could afford such hardware for personal use. It was mainly produced for larger industrial factory engineers so that they could carry it along with them and plug to the larger machines they operated.



It has been reported that not more than a thousand of such computers were produced. The exact technical specifications are not very clear.



According to people who used them the specifications were as following:

CPU, Intel 8086 clone, with the speed of 4.47 Mhz
RAM: 1mb
Videocard: CGA (It was such a video standard that supported only two colours, black and white)
Screen: Monochrome (black&white) 640×200
HDD: no exact data
Weight: approx. 10 lbs (it was heavy!)

And it seems the exterior was a kind of cloning attempt of Toshiba-3100



It’s a very rare exhibit, due to its limited production. Many people even don’t know that in the late 80s there were a laptop production in Russia.

Source: English Russia

Ten Interesting Facts about Switch Hitters & Switch Throwers

By Larry Stone of The Seattle Times

1.) The first-known switch-hitter in baseball history is considered to be Bob Ferguson, who on June 14, 1870, came to the plate left-handed for the first time in his career while playing for the Brooklyn Atlantics against the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Ferguson's motivation apparently was to avoid hitting the ball to Cincinnati's rangy shortstop, George Wright. Ferguson singled in that historic at-bat and drove in the tying run, and later scored the winning run as the Atlantics ended the Red Stockings' two-year winning streak. Ferguson also happened to have the greatest nickname in the history of baseball: "Death to Flying Things," a tribute to his ball-hawking skills in a gloveless era. (Some historians believe the nickname actually belonged to Ferguson's teammate Jack Chapman, and that Ferguson was better known as "Old Fergy." We refuse to believe that.)

2.) The first switch-hitter inducted into the Hall of Fame was infielder Frankie Frisch, "The Fordham Flash," who entered in 1947 with the highest career average (.316) in history among switch-hitters. Eight others have followed: Max Carey (1961), Dave Bancroft (1971), Cool Papa Bell (1974), Mickey Mantle (1974), Red Schoendienst (1989), George Davis (1998), Ozzie Smith (2002) and Eddie Murray (2003). Hall of Famer Miller Huggins was a switch-hitter, but he's in Cooperstown for managing the Yankees, not for his .265 career average. Conspicuously absent from the list is the all-time hits leader, Pete Rose.

3.) OK, technically, three other switch-hitters are in the Hall of Fame, but they're pitchers _ Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, Early Wynn and Robin Roberts. Other switch-hitting pitchers include Pirates' flame-thrower Bob Veale, and the current unrelated Zambranos _ Carlos of the Cubs, and Victor of the Mets. Then there's Vida Blue, answer to the ever-popular trivia question: Name the last switch-hitter to be named American League MVP.

4.) Enough about switch-hitters. The rarest talent in baseball is to be a switch-thrower. The first person to pitch righty and lefty in the same game was Louisville's Tony Mullane in 1882, against Baltimore. In modern times, the ambidextrous pioneer was Greg Harris of the Montreal Expos, who in September of 1995 threw an inning of relief against the Reds, pitching from both sides. Harris, wearing a reversible six-finger glove now displayed in the Hall of Fame, pitched right-handed to two batters and lefty to two others. (A memo on switch-pitching issued by MLB in 1994 stipulated that "the pitcher must indicate to the hitter-runner the arm he intends to use; the pitcher may change arms on the next hitter but must indicate the arm to be used; there will be no warm-up pitches between the change of arms." Baseball historian Jerome Holtzman told Bloomberg News in 2003 that major-leaguers Tug McGraw, Cal McLish and Dave "Boo" Ferriss practiced throwing with both hands but never did it in a game.

5.) Rickey Henderson's career didn't go badly; he holds the career record for stolen bases (1,406) and runs (2,295), and is one of 26 players in history with at least 3,000 hits (3,055). But imagine what Henderson could have done as a switch-hitter. He is one of a handful of players in major-league history to throw left and hit right _ making him two steps farther from first base. In his autobiography, "Off Base: Confessions of a Thief," written with John Shea, Henderson said he started hitting right-handed as a youngster to emulate his friends, and stuck with it.

Rickey contemplated becoming a switch-hitter in the minor leagues, but according to the book, "They told me to forget it. Charlie Finley didn't want me switching anything in my game. My problem was simple: I hit too well as a right-hander for them to start experimenting with switch-hitting."

6.) The Los Angeles Dodgers in 1965 had the distinction of fielding the only all-switch-hitting infield in history, with Wes Parker at first base, Jim Lefebvre at second, Maury Wills at shortstop and Jim Gilliam at third. Another team that thrived on switch-hitting was Whitey Herzog's St. Louis Cardinals in the 1980s, which made maximum effect of the speed game on the Busch Stadium Astroturf. Their pennant-winning clubs of 1985 and `87 were filled with swift switch-hitters, including Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Terry Pendleton, Vince Coleman and Tommy Herr, with Jose Oquendo off the bench. The 1991 Mets had six switch-hitting starters - Eddie Murray, Gregg Jefferies, Howard Johnson, Todd Hundley, Bobby Bonilla and Coleman. The ace of that team, Dwight Gooden, also dabbled in switch-hitting.

7.) Colorado's Aaron Miles, on April 14, 2005, became the fifth player in history to hit his first two career home runs from different sides of the plate in the same game, according to research by David Vincent. The others to accomplish the feat were Johnny Lucadello of the St. Louis Browns in 1940, U.L. Washington of the Kansas City Royals in 1979, Bret Barberie of the Montreal Expos in 1991, and Brian Simmons of the Chicago White Sox in 1998. Lucadello, by the way, had just three more home runs in his career.

8.) In a two-day span in 2003, two unlikely players made switch-hitting power history. On July 29, against the Texas Rangers, Boston third baseman Bill Mueller became the first player to hit grand slams from both sides of the plate in the same game. Mueller, hardly known as a slugger, was hitting eighth in the Red Sox lineup. The next day, White Sox shortstop Jose Valentin, mired in a 5-for-36 slump, blasted three homers against Kansas City, making him the first switch-hitter ever to have three-homer games in both the American and National Leagues.

9.) An even more unlikely switch-hitting performance came on June 8, 1989, when Philadelphia's light-hitting shortstop, Steve Jeltz, homered from both sides of the plate against Pittsburgh. Jeltz, a career .210 hitter, had only five homers in his entire career in 1,749 at-bats. Asked after the game against the Pirates if he had ever heard of Walter Mitty, the fictional character known for dreaming of performing amazing feats beyond his ability, Jeltz replied, "Nah, I've never heard of him.

He's before my time. Who'd he play for?"

10.) Against Toronto, on April 23, 2000, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada of the Yankees became the first (and so far, only) teammates to homer from both sides of the plate in the same game. The king of that feat, however, is Hall of Famer Eddie Murray, who did it 11 times, one more than Mickey Mantle, Ken Caminiti and Chili Davis. Mantle, however, had done it 10 times before anyone else in history had done it three times.

The first player to homer from both sides in one game was the Philadelphia A's Wally Schang in 1916. Carlos Baerga of Cleveland holds the distinction of homering from both sides of the plate in the same inning in 1993, a feat matched by the Cubs' Mark Bellhorn in 2002.

Caminiti holds the record for most games in one season homering from both sides of the plate (four), while Detroit's Tony Clark holds the AL record with three in 1998. Garry Templeton in 1979 became the first switch-hitter with 100 hits from each side of the plate in a season, matched by Kansas City's Willie Wilson the next year.

The Rich History of Philanthropy

If you step back a bit and take the long view of rich people and the good they've tried to do with their excess cash, you discover a few interesting facts.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

First, as ambitious as Bill and Melinda Gates are in tackling disease and hunger and poverty, history tells us that at least one big-time philanthropist of the past had even loftier ambitions.

Dr. LESLIE LENKOWSKI (Indiana University): When John D. Rockefeller created the Rockefeller Foundation, its purpose was to improve the wellbeing of mankind throughout the world.

BLOCK: That's Leslie Lenkowski. He studies what the insanely rich have done with their wealth. He teaches at the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University and he's run some foundations himself.

NORRIS: Lenkowski says that foundations can be traced back to the time of Socrates. In this country, foundations blossomed after the Civil War, when new wealth was being accumulated and there were new problems to fix.

BLOCK: Millionaire George Peabody used his and others' money to help newly- freed slaves. By the beginning of the 20th century, the first truly modern foundation was created.

Dr. LENKOWSKI: A woman named Margaret Olivia Sage inherited money from her husband Russell, who was a notoriously stingy man, and she used that money for charitable purposes.

NORRIS: The Sages were soon imitated by the Rockefellers, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie.

Dr. LENKOWSKI: Carnegie actually didn't intend to create a foundation. He had hoped to give away all his money in his lifetime, but he failed at that.

BLOCK: And while we know of Carnegie today from his name on libraries and other institutions - and in NRP funding credits - another millionaire of his day has vanished from our memories. Julius Rosenwald was a merchandising genius. In 1917, he set up a foundation to educate blacks in the south.

Dr. LENKOWSKI: Rosenwald also provided that his foundation wouldn't go on forever and he felt very strongly that when foundations become very big and are set up to exist forever, the tendency is for them to become stale and bureaucratic.

NORRIS: Leslie Lenkowski of the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University.

All Things Considered (NPR), 2006

A Few More Interesting Facts about a Fathers in the United States

There are 2.3 million single fathers - up from 400,000 in 1970. Among single parents living with their children, 18 percent are men. Among those single fathers, 11 percent are raising three or more children under age 18, about 42 percent are divorced, 39 percent were never married, 15 percent are separated and 4 percent are widowed.

Nationally, there are 143,000 stay-at-home dads. These married fathers have a total of 245,000 children under age 15 and have not worked outside the home for more than one year, primarily so they can care for their children while their wives work.

Twenty percent of fathers with employed wives report that they are the primary caregivers for their preschool-age children.

Of all fathers in the country, 26.4 million are in married-couple families that are raising children under 18.

About 84 percent of all child-support providers are men, and they provide median annual payments of $3,600.

Over at Hallmark cards, folks want to report that Father's Day is the fifth-largest card-sending holiday, with 102 million cards expected to be given this year in the U.S. Also, Hallmark says that 50 percent of all Father's Day cards are bought for dads; about 20 percent for husbands; and the rest for grandfathers, sons, brothers, uncles, someone special and even a Father's Day card for mom.

The National Retail Federation has this to say about Father's Day: Spending on Father's Day this year is anticipated to reach $9 billion, up from $8.2 billion last year. Average spending per person is expected to be $88.80, compared with $122.16 spent earlier this year on Mom. Of people buying gifts for Father's Day, women are expected to spend $90.41, on average, while men will spend an average of $87.07.

Also, most dads will get at least a card, with almost 69 percent of consumers expected to purchase at least one card. Two other favorites this year are gift certificates (27 percent) and special meals or outings (38.1 percent). Other popular categories include clothing, books and CDs, electronics or computer-related accessories, home-improvement or gardening tools, sporting goods and leisure items, and appliances.

The National Fatherhood Initiative reports that 98.5 percent of Connecticut residents agree that fathers are as important as mothers in raising well-developed children.

The initiative also found that about 40 percent of children in homes where the father is absent have not seen their father at all during the past year, and 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children. That's bad news for the children, says the fatherhood initiative, which has found that children who live without their biological fathers are, on average, at least two to three times more likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems, to be victims of child abuse and to engage in criminal behavior than their peers who live with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents.

By: Leavenworth, Jesse, Hartford Courant

Some Interesting Facts from the Veterinary World

As is true with people, pets, especially cats, can develop esophageal injury from oral medications.

Antibiotic pills are most commonly incriminated. The medications irritate the esophagus when they get stuck in the folds of tissue lining the esophagus and fail to move into the stomach.

To minimize the chance of esophageal stricture, administer 1 teaspoon of water following the administration of any medications for pets and people.

Arthritis is a common problem in older cats as well as dogs. However, many pet owners and veterinarians do not recognize it. Many cats do not show clinical signs such as limping or lameness, which makes the diagnosis and treatment more challenging.

In one recent study, 22 percent of cats that were X-rayed showed radiographic evidence of arthritis. The elbows were the most commonly affected joints in this study. In dogs, the lower back and hips are most commonly affected.

The take-home message: As with dogs, I suspect most of my older feline patients suffer from arthritis. I have all older cats begin taking joint supplements as a prevention. Any older cat exhibiting clinical signs of arthritis is placed on a variety of joint supplements plus homeopathics and herbs. If needed, NSAID medication can be used infrequently for severe pain.

By: Shawn Messonnier, Dr., Dallas Morning News

Tips for Parents on Business Trips

Map out your itinerary. Use maps and pictures to show children where the business trip will take you.

Pillow talk. Write short notes or encouraging words on white pillowcases with waterproof fabric markers. They'll see them before they go to sleep and when they wake up.

Play your cards right. Send postcards from every stop or letters on hotel stationary. Children love getting mail addressed to them.

Get the facts via fax. Fax personalized notes or greetings. Fax machines can enable a long-distance parent to help with homework too.

Phone home. Try to call at the same time each day, such as after dinner or before bedtime. Keep up routines as much as possible.

Source: 'Guilt Trips: Positive Parenting Guide for Business Travelers From MCI'

Why That Pint of Ice Cream Costs More

A shortage of butterfat has driven up the price of ice cream chocolate pastries and other rich foods and specialists predict further price increases.

Butterfat is the fatty part of milk that is processed out to make butter. It is also added to foods.

In recent months flavor began to triumph over calorie-consciousness as food manufacturers quietly added more fat to their products.

Meanwhile cows are still producing the same 3.6 pounds of butterfat for every 100 pounds of milk.

Another reason for the shortage is that the government no longer supports butter prices.

For only the second time in history the price of Grade AA butter has risen to $1.95 per pound, up 73 percent over a year ago on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Supermarket prices may top $3 per pound by year's end.

Source: Associated Press

Stats on American Teenagers

The birth rate for 15- to 19-year-old girls has been dropping since 1991, with the largest decreases among blacks.

Use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and cocaine by high school students has increased during the '90s, following periods of decreasing use in the '80s.

Seventeen-year-old students have made modest gains in mathematics and science proficiency since the early '80s.

The mortality rate for black youths age 15 to 19 increased dramatically during the late '80s and has remained at a very high level since 1991. During that same period mortality rates among white youths age 15 to 19 have declined.

Receipt of early prenatal care by teen mothers has increased steadily during the '90s.

Source: US Deportment of Health and Human Services

Dinner-Table Conversation Starters

When Rip Van Winkle awoke from his 20-year sleep he noticed that the portrait at the local inn had changed. George Washington's portrait had replaced King George IlI's. If Rip Van Winkle had missed the last 20 years and awoke today what would you tell him about first?.

Studies have supported the common observation that different colors suggest different moods. Red is usually rated as exciting, blue as serene, yellow as attention getting, green as positive and black as powerful. If you had to wear the same color for a year what color would you choose and why?

Handlebar History Tours: Top Rail Trails

These bike trails have been singled out for either their historic significance or their proximity to areas of historic interest.

Rail trails give second lives to abandoned railroad corridors.

California: Bizz Johnson Trail (25 miles) passes through the land that gave rise to the Paul Bunyan tales.
Connecticut: Farmington Canal Linear State Park Trail ( 6 miles) runs along a canal used by 18th-century New Haven merchants.
Georgia: Old Savannaho-Tybee Railroad Historic & Scenic Multipurpose Trail (6.5 miles) traverses historic districts and Civil War-era sites.
Massachusetts: Minuteman Bikeway (11 miles) parallels much of Paul Revere's famous ride.
New Mexico: Santa Fe Rail-Trail (18 miles) passes through the historically rich Southwest.
New York: Erie Canal Trail (90 miles) moves along the most famous American canal system.
Source: Rails-to-Trails Conservancy

Interesting Facts about Fire Ants

By: Jeffries, Liz, Parks & Recreation, Jan2006

• Fire ants arrived to the United States in the 1930s in soil used for ballast of a ship
• There are currently more fire ants in this country than in their native South America
• Fire ants have no natural predators in this country
• A fire ant colony can have as many as 500,000 members and multiple queens
• Currently 325 million acres across the U.S. are infested with fire ants
  

As spring approaches most people are anxious to beat their cabin fever and get outside to enjoy the weather. It's often a time to recreate and relax outside. But for those living in the southern United States, spring also means the emergence of the Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA), one of the most resilient pests in the country.

In the spring of 2004, Dan Wells, Irmo Chapin Recreation Commission executive director, had just these pests on his mind as the weather warmed. As the director of three large parks in Columbia, S.C., Wells knows one of his most challenging responsibilities is keeping his parks safe for all visitors, and that means keeping fire ant populations under control.

An Expensive Pest
For a majority of the population, mention fire ants and images of small, red insects are conjured. But for the nearly 40 million Americans living in fire antinfested states, these seemingly harmless insects have the ability to stir fear into their hearts — and not without reason. These invasive species, which were introduced to the U.S. in the 1930s through a port in Mobile, Ala., have since migrated to infest 13 southern states (known as the "Fire Ant 13"), and continue to move north and west. Americans have spent an amazing $2 billion annually in the fight against fire ants. These expenses are incurred not only through pesticide use, but also as a result of structural damage, loss of live-stock and healthcare costs.

Unfortunately, the most susceptible to fire ant bites are those who don't know any better than to step on a mound — often times children and pets.

"Each year, fire ants sting millions of people, inflicting pain, causing itching and burning, and potentially leaving behind scars," says Tim Davis, Clemson University researcher and area-wide fire ant specialist. "A full-brown colony of fire ants can number up to 500,000 members and when disturbed, hundreds, sometimes thousands of ants will attack an intruder."

Additionally, studies show that 10 to 15 percent of those stung by fire ants experience severe localized allergic reactions, 1 to 2 percent of the population can experience systemic reactions that, in rare cases, result in death.

A Park Under Attack
Luckily, Wells is familiar with these pests and has ensured that his grounds maintenance crew knows how to detect and treat fire ant infestations. Similar to common nuisance ant species, such as pavement or argentine ants, fire ants are small and reddish-brown in color. In fact, they are so similar that most cannot be differentiated without the use of a magnifying glass.

However, fire ants provide one telltale sign that they are unlike other, harmless ants — their mounds. Unlike other ant mounds, with one central opening, fire ant mounds resemble worked soil, and have no single entrance. If located in a frequently mowed area, the mounds will remain very low to the ground. However, if located in a less manicured location, mounds can reach up to three feet in height.

"With so many guests visiting our parks each year, we just can't take chances with fire ants," says Wells. "Each year, our parks are host to a number of scout troops, day camps, festivals, picnics and school trips, and we need to ensure the safety of each and every guest."

Wells knows that fire ant control is a long-term commitment due to the insect's reproductive potential and that choosing the method that best fits the needs of his environment is key.

In the past, Wells and his maintenance crew practiced the "Two Step Method," which included broadcasting a fire ant bait while ants forage, and then about a week later retreating problematic mounds with an individual mound treatment. However, when dealing with hundreds of acres, this process could be grueling.

Now, however, companies are taking fire ant prevention seriously, and have begun to research ways in which to treat large areas. Rather than using individual baits, maintenance crews can use a granular formulation of the chemical that kills fire ants for up to one year with just one application. As opposed to baits, a broadcast granular is spread over turf like fertilizer. The main advantage for Wells and his crew was that the granular lasts longer than baits, cutting their fire ant maintenance time dramatically. "We were excited to gain a new level of fire ant control," says Wells. "It also allowed us to spend our maintenance time more effectively."

The Columbia parks crew spread broadcast granular fire ant control once a year. To provide immediate protection, baits are used on grounds that will be utilized by the public within a short time period. Although broadcast granular products are more expensive up front, baits can be more expensive through the course of a season due to their weak residual.

Granular products may cost more than $200 per acre per year but provide 98 percent control. In comparison, most commercial fire ant baits cost $20-30 per acre, but require multiple applications and normally provide only temporary control.

The Ants Continue to March
Fire ant technology has come a long way in the past few decades thanks to the growing number of research dollars devoted to studying their biology and behavior. Despite technological advances, fire ants have proven to be a tough competitor, even for the entomologists who are most familiar with their daily routine. With no natural predators in this country, fire ants are one of the most resilient species in the world, able to survive, and actually flourish in natural disaster conditions.

In the case of a flood or hurricane, as water rises, fire ants form a "survival ball," with the queen safely protected inside, and will float until they hit dry ground, sometimes miles away. While in this survival mode, fire ants inject two to three times as much venom in their victims than at other times.

In a joint study by the USDA's Agricultural Research Service Center and the University of Arkansas, researchers found that the ants are making their way north and west into areas of the United States previously thought to be too coo] for fire ant activity. A separate report published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI) in 2000 indicates that fire ants are traveling north and west at a rate of about 120 miles per year.

"This migration is an indication that fire ants are more cold-tolerant than scientists previously thought," explains Dr. Nate Royalty, entomologist with Bayer Environmental Science. This means that the "Fire Ant 13" may soon be joined by other states. Already, parts of Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and Virginia are seeing fire ant activity.

For outdoor enthusiasts, awareness is the key to prevention. Although park and recreation maintenance crews are making strides in fire ant management, it's more than likely these pests will be with us for years to come. Instead of letting these pests ruin a day in the park, it's important know how to deal with them. Fire ant experts throughout the South offer the following tips:

• Survey the area — visually inspect your surroundings to determine the presence or magnitude of an infestation
• Test for foraging — Protect children — pay particular attention to areas where kids play, especially around the bases of playground equipment and sidewalks. More children are stung each year by fire ants than all other insects combined.
• Safeguard pets — kenneled or confined pests are defenseless against fire ant stings. Before placing pet food on the ground, be sure it is clear of any mounds, as fire ants will quickly swarm any food source in their vicinity.
• Seek professional advice — fire ant mounds can reach as far as two feet below the surface of the ground, and as far as eight feet in width. Attempting to control them alone can be expensive and frustrating. Professionals are trained in the latest fire ant technology and techniques.

Interesting Facts about Arkansas

• During a battle of Chickasaw versus Quapaw Indians, the Chickasaw ran out of ammunition. The Quawpaw obligingly gave half of their gunpowder to the enemy, and the battle continued.
• The Brooks-Baxter War, a dispute between two candidates for governor, actually became so fierce that ten persons were killed in the squabble.
• A newly rich oil family at El Dorado bought a home at a high price. When the owners started to take down the family portraits, the buyer shouted: "Oh no you don't. Pitchers is furniture!"
• The farm of John M. Huddleston was so poor that he was about to give up on it when he discovered the continent's only diamond mine on his property.
• Some Arkansas rivers were so shallow that steamboats were designed to operate in as little as a foot of water.
• Sam Walton founded his Wal-Mart Stores merchandising empire in Bentonville and became one of the nation's richest men.

Uncovering Malaysia's Secret

ONCE achieved in a marriage, intimacy often helps guarantee a happy and enduring union. Being shy is fine, but sometimes couples should consider adding a little spice to their marriage. And what better way to achieve this than with lingerie. Sexy, subtle or simply pretty, the choice is yours. A little variation is a good idea too. Play the vamp one day and the demure virgin another.

"People today are more open-minded and as a result we think they'll be more responsive to our products," says Kathleen Chin, managing director of on-line lingerie company, TheSaxyClub, which is part of Linear Channel Sdn Bhd, whose CEO is her husband, Joshua Chin.

Interesting facts gleaned from the couple include the fact that the Chinese tend to be a little more conservative, and that 70 per cent of their customers are males and Malay. That more of their customers are male is probably due to the fact that men are more visual creatures (since they're on-line), while women are more tactile and like to touch and feel their lingerie before making a purchase.

"I'd noticed that there wasn't a lot of choice on the Malaysian market.

I'd never come across the sort of lingerie lines we now stock and as a husband, I wanted my wife to buy or wear such lingerie styles for me,"

says Joshua.

Today, TheSaxyClub is basically the only company providing a comprehensive service supplying lingerie on-line in Malaysia. It only takes about three working days to deliver items to buyers, and those who do not have credit cards can bank their payments via Maybank or pay by cheque.

It is also Asia's largest lingerie store and besides Malaysia, has orders coming in from Indonesia and even from as far afield as the United States.

"I find that rather amusing as we acquire a lot of our styles from the US and then we are asked to ship them back to customers there," reveals Joshua with a laugh.

Kathleen and Joshua understand that Malaysian men and women are rather shy when it comes to buying such items off the rack in big shopping malls for fear of being spotted by friends or relatives. With their type of unique services, total privacy is assured. One needn't worry about faulty items either, as you can courier them back if they are damaged - as long as they have not been worn of course. The Chins will also follow up orders with a call or an e-mail in an effort to prevent fraud.

Everything to spice up your sex life can be found here. Provocative bras and panties, corsettes, negligees, garter belts, body stockings... you name it, and TheSaxyClub will probably have it. Reasonably priced evening dresses are also available.

The Chins also recently introduced fun and trendy two-piece items that look as if they can double up as bikinis. The choices offered remind you of those seen in Victoria's Secret catalogues and can easily rival products found there.

Are you someone who has looked longingly at overseas lingerie catalogues but were too afraid to place an order, worrying that items might get lost in the mail? Well, this is a good alternative as you can always contact its head office if any problems arise.

Then there's also the option of becoming a member of TheSaxyClub. All you need do is pay RM50 and you'll receive a thick copy of the latest catalogue and a 15 per cent discount each time you place an order.

We've all come across research findings which claim that a healthy sex life means a happier marriage. So ladies, do consider giving your man a special surprise. And men, if your lady is too shy, what's stopping you from buying her that intimate gift?

Lingerie can also be a fun gift to give friends who are about to get married. Do check out TheSaxyClub's offerings. You won't regret it.

Source: New Straits Times (Malaysia)

Interesting Facts about the Effectiveness of Advertising

The Star, which has been earning more advertising revenue than any other newspaper for years, had the lowest ad noting of all at only 52 per cent! By comparison, the New Straits Times had an ad noting rate of 55 per cent.

OMD Asia communication insights director Florence Oong says this clearly illustrates the shortcomings of media agencies that can only advise advertisers on the basis of a newspaper's readership.

"The Star may have the highest readership (among English language newspapers) but it clearly does not have the highest ad noting," she adds.

Berita Harian has the highest ad noting at 60 per cent. A score of 60 per cent means that three out of every five ads in Berita Harian were noticed by readers.

The survey also found that ad noting, in general, has declined from an average of 60 per cent in 2000 (in the first OMD survey) to 57 per cent in 2003.

The ad noting scores of English language newspapers were most adversely affected while those of Chinese language newspapers have remained relatively unchanged.

Oong says the decline in ad noting could be due to increased ad clutter and a general reduction in time spent reading newspapers.

After all, The Star which has the lowest ad noting also has the highest ad clutter. The newspaper carried 115,000 ads in 2002, a 33 per cent increase from 87,000 ads in the previous year.

In terms of demographics, it was found that the Malays registered the most significant drop in ad noting, falling from 64 per cent to 58 per cent.

The survey also highlighted the fact that females are more likely than males to notice advertisements. For some reason, females aged 20 to 39 had the highest ad noting score.

Professionals and executives, interestingly registered the lowest noting score of all occupational groups.

This suggests that more impactful advertising is required to grab the attention of this group of consumers, notes Oong.

Also, it was found that while right hand ads (i.e. ads placed in the right hand pages) generally command better ad noting, left hand ads in Nanyang Siang Pau, Kwong Wah Yit Poh and Utusan Malaysia actually did slightly better! Colour ads were found to be more appealing than black and white ads.

Readers paid more attention to colour ads, were more likely to read them and had better recall as well.

But, surprisingly, in the case of Berita Harian, it was found that the ad noting score for both colour, and black & white full page ads were the same at 78 per cent.

Stand alone ads do better than other ads. The ad noting score of ads that share space with editorial content drops slightly.

The ad noting rate falls further if the ad in question shares space with both editorials and other ads.

As expected, the front page which has an average readership of 98 per cent also commanded the highest ad noting.

But, in the case of the regional news section which has an average readership of 90 per cent, the ad noting rate was only 49 per cent! Sections such as technology and leisure which have far lower readership have been found to have pretty respectable ad noting rates.

"So if you want to do niche targeting, it makes sense to go into the technology, IT, lifestyle and women's sections," says Oong.

She stresses that OMD is uniquely positioned to provide quality advice to clients because it is the sole proprietor of a data-base of 35,000 ad noting responses collected during the current survey and an earlier survey that was done in 2000.

"It helps our planners provide greater accountability to our clients in terms of their advertising dollars in newspapers.

"To the savvy advertiser, just placing an ad in a newspaper is no longer enough. We need better justifications in ad positioning, in ad sizes and by readers' profile because we know that ad exposure is not the same everywhere and with everyone.

"The bottom line is to enhance the value of newspaper advertising."

The survey involved a "walk-through" of newspapers to determine whether readers saw and read a collection of 20,000 ads. A total of 1,011 people aged 15 to 54 were interviewed face-to-face in Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya, Penang, Ipoh and Johor Baru from March 19 to April 1.

The newspapers covered were Berita Harian, China Press, Guang Ming Daily, Kwong Wah Yit Poh, Nanyang Siang Pau, New Straits Times, Sin Chiew Jit Poh, The Star and Utusan Malaysia.

Source: New Straits Times (Malaysia)

Interesting Facts from the Veterinary World

Here are some important facts about animal bites.

_Dogs are responsible for 80 percent to 90 percent of animal bites, with cats being responsible for most of the remainder. Most bites are unprovoked and one-third involve the family pet.

_Children tend to be bitten on the face and neck, while adults are usually bitten on the extremities. Children with neck bites can die from trauma to the carotid artery, and their injuries are usually more severe.

_Extensive injury is often seen with pit bull bites, as they can bite with a force of up to 450 PSI. They also grind their molars when biting, which adds to the severity of the bite.

However, in my practice, most of the pit bulls I treat are very sweet dogs! While there are efforts to make laws regarding so-called "dangerous breeds," I am opposed to these laws because any dog can bite a person. In my experience, while certain breeds may be implicated in bites more than other breeds, and while bites from certain breeds can be more severe than bites from other breeds, I hate to implicate all members of a certain breed as "bad."

_Most cat bites become infected due to the deeper puncture. Dog bites are less commonly infected as these bites are usually more superficial.

_Prompt and thorough wound care plus antibiotics is important to treatment. I would also use herbs and homeopathics to boost the immune system and minimize pain, swelling and inflammation.

By: Shawn Messonnier, Dr., Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jun 06, 2006

Interesting Things

By Sebastian Smee

Degradation of taste, colour, composition ... have kept pace with moral depravity'

Denis Diderot, 18th-century critic, on Francois Boucher

An art critic's life is not just about airing opinions, writes Sebastian Smee

ART critics, like other critics, are paid to have opinions. That's their first duty. And if they can't rouse themselves to get off the fence, form an opinion and express it, they are surely in the wrong trade.

And yet, opinions on their own can become banal: they are (as you quickly discover if you try reading blogs) the opiate of the insecure. The more you discover about art, the more interesting facts become. Facts give you something you can actually hang on to.

Of course, art is not a branch of science, which is why, for critics, it can be deadly to get too carried away with facts. Nonetheless, one of the great privileges of being employed as an art critic is that you are paid each week to learn about a subject -- art -- that you already love.

Here are some of the facts, or little parcels of wisdom, I have been amused or astounded by since I took up the reins of my job in late 2004.

I learned that Vivienne Westwood once said: ``You have a much better life if you wear impressive clothes.''

I learned that Edgar Degas once said: ``What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.''

I learned that an interchange at the southern end of the new Westlink M7 in Sydney is marked by a 25m-high pile of dirt, compressed into a triangle-based pyramid. Asked why he wanted to build a pyramid at Liverpool, its designer, Colin Palworth, replied: ``Why build a pyramid at the Louvre?''

I learned from Alex Danchev, the biographer of Georges Braque, that ``if an ism can be said to be invented by a person, then cubism was invented by Georges Braque. It was Braque who painted and exhibited the first cubist pictures. It was Braque who established cubist motifs. It was Braque who established cubist space It was Braque who set the tone. And it was Braque who led a second revolution -- the move into 3-D, making the first paper sculptures in 1911 and the first papiers colles in 1912.''

I learned that in Rajasthan in the 18th century, a maharaja's paraphernalia of power included a parasol, a peacock fan, a whisk made of yak tail hair and a sun disc, surrounded by black felt or feathers, on a pole.

I was told this by Robert Storr, the curator of the next Venice Biennale in 2007: ``I think politics and art are both ill-served by bad political art. There's an ocean of it out there. I do think
the politics of our present situation are extremely dangerous for many people in many places. But I think art should be not humble about politics but aware that its grasp of politics is fragile, relative to the changes that are actually happening. I also think that artists should act politically as citizens and not simply make political art as an alibi for not doing so.''

I learned that the Australian performance and new media artist Stelarc once wrote: ``The body as an organisation is obsolete.''

I learned that Basil Burdett, the man who organised the 1939 Herald Exhibition of Contemporary French and British Art, counted among his friends Picasso, Leger, Vlaminck, Cocteau, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, and that with the help of his boss, Keith Murdoch, he was able to secure loans from curators and scholars such as Kenneth Clark, Alfred Barr and Rene Huyghe. I read that Burdett saw the success of the show as proof ``that the public here [in Australia] is far ahead of many of its alleged leaders and most of its entrepreneurs''. I also learned that one angry artist made his view clear by smuggling a pile of dog shit into the exhibition and captioning it as a piece of sculpture.

I learned that the notion that goldfish have an attention span that lasts just a few seconds is a slur on goldfish, whose memory is actually far more impressive.

I learned that on Anzac Day in 1967, a year after the Australian artist Sam Fullbrook married, when his wife Janice was expecting their first child, she killed herself. She had been staying with her mother and Fullbrook didn't find out about it until the following month. When he did, he went to pieces.

I learned from Hilary Spurling that as Henri Matisse got older, he became concerned about eye strain: ``His oculist explained that the eye could not fabricate pigment fast enough to keep up with the speed and intensity of Matisse's response to colour.''

I learned that the 18th-century critic Denis Diderot wrote this about Francois Boucher: ``I don't know what to say about this man. Degradation of taste, colour, composition, character, expression and drawing have kept pace with moral depravity.'' And elsewhere: ``That man there only takes up his brush to show me tits and arses. I'm happy enough to see them; but I don't like it when they are so brazenly touted.'' I also learned that, after Boucher's death in 1770, Diderot wrote: ``I said too many bad things about Boucher, I retract them.''

I learned that Sidney Nolan, along with his fellow art students at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in the 1930s, furtively spat on Arthur Streeton's post-1900 work when they passed it in the National Gallery.

I read that an art dealer at London's Frieze Art Fair told The Art Newspaper: ``I have to have the option to lie to collectors about what's available or quote them prices ten times what other people paid.''

I learned that Lloyd Rees called Margaret Preston ``the most naturally conceited person I ever knew'', and that Preston once said: ``This country needs its artists, writers and poetesses, and when they settle in foreign lands they are betraying the land of their birth''; and later: ``Let us have no travelling for our budding artists!''

I learned that in 1967, Picasso's La Belle Hollandaise was stolen by an art lover who had heard unfounded rumours that it was to be sold. The rumour was untrue and, a week later, it was returned to the Queensland Art Gallery unharmed.

I learned that the Art Gallery of NSW spent $2.1 million last year on a painting by an early 17th-century Italian painter I was embarrassed never to have heard of: Giulio Cesare Procaccini.

I learned that Judy Cassab once said: ``Marrying an unselfish man was the most significant moment in my life.''

I learned that Cecil Beaton came out as gay while at Cambridge, where he played, according to John Richardson, ``the parody of a 1920s sissy ... trying to lure inebriated undergraduates -- the better born, the better -- into bed''. Later, Beaton said: ``I have always hated fairies collectively. They frighten and nauseate me, and I see so vividly myself shadowed in so many of them.''

I learned from Matthew Bogdanos, the American in charge of recovering items stolen from the Iraq Museum after the fall of Baghdad, that the misreporting of the number of objects stolen (about 15,000 pieces, not 170,000 as was first reported) meant that ``once the lower numbers became known, many governmental and private organisations quickly moved on to other crises, thereby depriving the international investigation of essential resources and funding''.

I learned that, several years ago, Ricky Swallow listed these influences on his work: ``hobby stores and the techniques required to construct models; special effects used in old-style fantasy films; the changing design of entertainment technology; the timeline perspective of the film Planet of the Apes; Logan's Run with its scenes of an overgrown Washington; the bleakness of closed-down, unkempt service stations; the idea of constructing a hoax; plastic TVs and computers in IKEA; the working practices of other artists; the beautiful ability of everything we own to eventually end up as hard rubbish; stories of buried film sets; good design; good architecture/bad architecture; Power Peralta Skateboard graphics of the '80s.''

Source: Australian, The, JAN 06, 2006

Tree Facts

• The biggest tree ever known was the Lindsey Creek Tree, a massive redwood which blew over in 1905. It weighed over 3300 tons.

• The tallest living tree is the 367ft (112m) high Mendocino redwood tree in Montgomery State Reserve, California.

• The tallest known tree was a Eucalyptus on Watts River, Australia, measured at over 492ft (150m) in 1872.

• The great banyan tree in the Indian Botanical Garden, Calcutta has a canopy covering 3 acres (1.2 hectares).

• Banyan trees grow trunk-like roots from their branches.

• A European chestnut known as the Tree of the Hundred Horses on Mt Etna in Sicily had a girth (the distance round the trunk) of 190ft (57.9m) in the 1790s.

• A Moctezuma baldcypress near Oaxaca in Mexico has a trunk over 40ft (12m) across.

• The world's oldest plant is the King's Holly in southwestern Tasmania, thought to be 43,000 years old.

• The ombu tree of Argentina is the world's toughest tree, able to survive axes, fire, storms, and insect attacks.

(E)

STAR FACT

The "Eternal God" redwood tree in Prairie Creek, California is 12,000 years old.

General Sherman in California is the biggest living tree. The giant sequoia is over 272ft (38m) tall, with a trunk 36ft (11m) across.

Fun Food (Burp) and Other Jumbo Jamboree Facts

WHAT EXACTLY DOES IT TAKE TO turn you jamboree Scouts into 30,000 happy campers?

Glad you asked.

Let's start with what fuels you guys: food.

Anybody for a burger? Great!

Fire up one of the 7,516 propane gas stoves to fry up the 3,000 pounds--that's 1.5 tons--of hamburger patties.

To make sandwiches or toast or to sop up your yummy dinner gravy, grab a couple of the 1,209,000 slices of bread.

If you do not care for dry toast, no problem. Help yourself to the 20,000 pounds--the 10 tons--of butter.

Thirsty? After all that, of course you are! Say "when" with 25,000 packages of cocoa, 190,000 quarts of milk, and 250,000 pints of Gatorade.

Ouch...Medic!
Now, no one is suggesting that you will get sick or hurt or anything like that. As long as you keep everything in moderation--that means easy does it on seconds and thirds in the chow line--you will go home happier and healthier than you arrived.

But Scouts are ready for anything--Be Prepared!--so feel safe, in the fact that nearby are:

a total of more than 400 doctors, nurses, medical technicians and support staff representing private, state, Federal, and military medical and health organizations;
19 24-hour medical centers (one near every subcamp), each staffed by five physicians and four registered nurses or emergency medical technicians, and four medical orderlies;
five 24-hour jamboree headquarter medical centers, staffed by 14 physicians, eight registered nurses, and eight emergency medical technicians;
the U.S. Army's 85th Evacuation Hospital, a 24-hour, air-conditioned hospital with three wards totaling 60-plus beds;
two U.S. Army medical helicopters for emergency medical evacuation;
4,000 wool blankets;
5,000 folding steel chairs;
4,200 folding aluminum cots;
4,000 field desks;
4,200 pillows and pillowcases;
300-plus general purpose medium-size tents, 16-by-33 feet;
1,500 general purpose small tents, 17 feet 6 inches by 15 feet 6 inches;
25 complete medical chests with mask, gloves, goggles, etc.;
1,300 central showers and latrines.
And there's more, much more.

A Temporary City
All you Scouts turn Fort A.P. Hill into a miniature city. For 10 days, it ranks as Virginia's 22d biggest 'burb. The jamboree has its own daily newspaper, bus system, light and power sources, water supply, telephones, bank, fire department, post office--even its own ZIP code! (Don't believe it? Try 22428-0001.)

What? You want more? O.K., just one more. But remember, you asked for it:

• The sewage system easily handles the 40 tons of solid waste generated by the more than 80,000 visitors.

Source: Boys' Life

Some Facts About Google

Its very interesting !!!

• The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
• Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
• One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the “Did you mean…” feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
• The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
• Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn’t look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.

Astronomers May Add Planets to Solar System

Astronomers from around the world are meeting in Prague. This morning they were handed a proposal for a new definition of the word planet. As we reported last week, Pluto would qualify under the new rules despite its small size. The proposal is getting mixed reactions however. Some say it could open the door to 40 or more new planets.

NPR's David Kestenbaum reports.

DAVID KESTENBAUM reporting:

If there is an epicenter for the debate over Pluto's planetness, it might be the office of Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, which does not refer to Pluto as a planet.

Mr. NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON (Director, Hayden Planetarium): I have a fat file full of hate mail from elementary school children because they read that we have somehow kicked Pluto out of the solar system.

KESTENBAUM: There is no accepted definition for a planet. The word came from the ancient Greek term for wanderer, something that moved differently from the stars. Today, astronomers are considering a formal definition, and it says a planet has to do more than circle the sun.

Mr. RICHARD BINZEL (Planetary Scientist, MIT): We're defining a planet to be an object that is round, basically. It has enough gravity to pull it into a round shape.

KESTENBAUM: Richard Binzel is a planetary scientist at MIT and helped write the proposal. Gravity explains why the earth is round.

Mr. BINZEL: There is a limit to how high you can build a mountain on the Earth before gravity pulls it back down. And, in fact, Everest is right at that limit.

KESTENBAUM: So tiny Pluto, smaller than our moon?

Mr. BINZEL: Pluto is a planet.

KESTENBAUM: And it will have some friends.

Mr. BINZEL: If this resolution passes, there will be 12 planets in our solar system.

KESTENBAUM: Instead of the current nine. One new member, a big asteroid called Ceres discovered in 1801. Pluto would stay a planet, but a special type of planet, which the proposal dubs plutons. These would include Pluto, Pluto's moon Charon, and a recently discovered object known as Sedna(ph).

Mr. BINZEL: The definition of a pluton is that its orbital period is greater than 200 years.

KESTENBAUM: In other words, it takes more than 200 years to go around the sun, so basically anything further out than Uranus. Binzel admits this is not terribly scientific.

Mr. BINZEL: You know, you could have made it 198.1342862 years – so, yes, 200 years is an arbitrary number.

KESTENBAUM: Scientists at the International Astronomical Union meeting in Prague will vote on the proposal next week. Mike Brown, who helped discover Sedna, says if he were there, he would probably vote no. Brown is an astronomer at Caltech.

Mr. MIKE BROWN (Astronomer, Caltech University): It just doesn't quite work. If they had just basically had a one-line definition, anything round is a planet, I think that would've been much better. But the goal should've been to simplify things rather than complicate things, and I think they've just kind of made a mess.

KESTENBAUM: There's the tricky issue of moons, for instance; they're round, but are they orbiting the sun or just their own planet? The proposal counts Pluto's moon as a planet, because it's more like a twin than a moon. Earth's moon would not count. And Brown says the definition would mean adding lots more planets to the solar system; he calls it No Ice Ball Left Behind.

Mr. BROWN: I did a quick count, and right now there are 53 objects like that in the outer solar system that we know of. And the 44 new ones are so small that they could all fit inside the Earth's moon with room to rattle around.

KESTENBAUM: Many are icy objects. He says gravity makes even small ones - 250 miles across - round. The prospect of 40 new planets does not bother Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Hayden Planetarium.

Mr. TYSON: It's about time we had the word planet defined. It hasn't been defined in 2,500 years. So, sure, if it's round, let's do it. I don't have any problems with that.

KESTENBAUM: Tyson thinks this whole debate misses the point. Learning about the rich variety of things in the solar system is good. How many planets are there? He says that's possibly the least interesting question to ask.

David Kestenbaum, NPR News

Interesting Facts about Arizona

The bed of the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon lies at about the same level as it did millions of years ago. The canyon was formed as the ground continued to rise, and the river continued to carve through it as the force of the water and the sand and boulders cut away at the rising land.

The great dome of the White Dove of the Desert mission was formed over a lofty mound of earth, piled up by the Indian converts. Learning that many coins had been buried in the earth beneath the dome, the eager Indians cleared away the entire earthen form to dig up those "riches."

Arizona humorist Dick Wick Hall was noted for his tall tales about the state. According to one of his stories, potatoes were really planted so that when onions were scratched the potatoes' eyes would water and irrigate the whole garden.

Because Arizona's conditions seemed ideal for it, Edward F. Beale brought in camels, which were actually used for a time, but camel transport proved impractical. After the animals were abandoned, "wild" camels remained for years, frightening travelers and their horses.

Famed Mission San Xavier at Tucson features a carving of a cat. On the opposite side of the mission is the carving of a mouse. According to Indian legend, the world will end when that cat catches the mouse.

Based on the legend of the phoenix bird, which is burned by fire every 500 years and then rises from its ashes, the new town that rose on the "ashes" of the prehistoric Hohokam settlement was named Phoenix.

By: Carpenter, Allan, Provorse, Carl, World Almanac of the U.S.A., 1996

Interesting Facts about Alabama

• An important relic discovered in Russell Cave was the skeleton of a prehistoric man. The tip of the spear that killed him was found lying among his bones.

By: Carpenter, Allan, Provorse, Carl, World Almanac of the U.S.A., 1996

Interesting Facts about Alaska

The state of Rhode Island could fit into Alaska 425 times.

Self-emptying Lake George is the best known curiosity of its kind. A dam of ice forms each winter and the lake backs up behind it. The pressure of the water causes the dam to burst. The lake empties itself, and the process begins all over.

The last shot of the Civil War was fired in the remote region of the Bering Sea. The Confederate cruiser Shenandoah fired on a Union whaler on June 22, 1865, not knowing the war was over.

Juneau's gold made prospector Joe Juneau wealthy, but he felt that he had to spend all his money before he died. He squandered his fortune and soon got his wish, dying penniless in Dawson.

During Alaska's statehood celebration, Fairbanks attempted to turn the Chena River into gold, as a symbol of this source of wealth. However, through some chemical mistake, the river turned a lovely green.

A map maker, unfamiliar with the name of an Alaskan community, wrote "name?" on the map. His draftsman misread the notation and entered the word "Nome" at that location, literally putting Nome on the map.

By: Carpenter, Allan, Provorse, Carl, World Almanac of the U.S.A., 1996

Funny Interesting Facts

By Pat Parker

You've heard about Richard Feynman's Nobel Prize for physics in 1965 and about the cool way he demonstrated on live television the reason for the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986. But here are a few fantastic facts you may not know about this amazing man.

Q. What can you (probably) do that Feynman never learned how to do?
A. Tell left from right. When he wrote on the board during his lectures, Feynman would sometimes flip up his left hand and look at it. He explained, "I keep forgetting which is right and which is left, but I know that my left hand has two small brown spots on the back of it."

Q. What was one technique Feynman used to help him figure out difficult concepts or theories?
A. Translation. Feynman's father used to read to him from the Encyclopedia Britannica. If, for example, they read about a dinosaur that was 25 feet tall with a six-foot-wide head, his father might translate that description into familiar terms for his son: If the dinosaur stood in their yard, it would be tall enough to put its head through an upper window, but its head would be too wide to fit. Throughout his life, Feynman translated complex ideas into simple examples.

Q. What job, other than physicist, was Feynman offered?
A. Washing machine repair person. When Feynman's washing machine broke, he didn't want to pay $300 to get it fixed. He pulled a seized bearing out of the transmission, took the bearing to a washing machine store, and ordered a new one. The store owner said, "Hey, you look like someone who knows what he's doing. How about a job with me, repairing washing machines?"

Q. On what musical instrument did Feynman like to rock out?
A. Bongo drums. He loved to beat on the bongos. He also liked to draw and to decode Mayan hieroglyphics. (The ancient Maya lived in Mexico. Their written language, a form of hieroglyphics, was a series of pictures and symbols that represented sounds, words, and ideas.)

Q. How did Feynman once describe the movement of atoms?
A. As a group of friends hanging out. In a series of television films for the British Broadcasting Company called Fun to Imagine, he said: "You see a little drop of water, a tiny drop, and the atoms attract each other — they like to be next to each other; they want as many partners as they can get!" He described the atoms on the surface of the water (the "guys at the edge") as unhappy and nervous, constantly trying to get in. Cooling off the water, he said, causes the atoms to get stuck in place. "They like to be with their friends. . . . It's [called] ice."

Q. What was the ultimate reason that Feynman decided to stick with being a physicist after World War II?
A. For the fun of it. After World War II, Feynman had a hard time focusing on his work and began to think that he would never accomplish anything again. So when he was offered a job at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, he thought that they were "absolutely insane" to want him. Then, he said, "I suddenly realized, while I was shaving, 'I can't live up to what other people expect me to do.' They expected me to be wonderful to offer me a job like this, and I wasn't wonderful and therefore I realized a new principle: 'I'm not responsible for what other people think I am able to do. I don't have to be good because they think I'm going to be good.' . . .So I decided that I was only going to do things for the fun of it."

Odyssey, Nov2004, Vol. 13

Interesting Animal Facts

There are many things we can learn from the brains of animals. Knowing how animals' brains function helps scientists better understand the human brain.

Here are some interesting facts about how animals use their brains:

Honeybees are considered to be the smartest insects. Scientists have found that unlike some insects, bees often plan ahead when looking for food so they can find it easily when it is needed. Honeybees also have specific jobs to do in their hives. In addition to laying eggs, the queen bee is in charge of her colony. Worker bees have many jobs including building the hive; collecting pollen, nectar, and water; and taking care of the young.

Rhinoceroses have brains that are smaller than their noses! This may not make rhinos the most intelligent animals, but they do have a great sense of smell. As a rhino takes in a scent, its brain processes that information. This tells the animal a lot about the object it is smelling.

Groundhogs and beavers use their brains to build their homes. It is believed that these animals have an image of their future homes in mind before they start to burrow in the ground or build a lodge. Using this "mental blueprint," they plan where to put their homes and how to make sure their houses fit their needs.

Ravens are highly intelligent birds. Some of these creatures have even learned what green and red traffic signals mean. Scientists have observed ravens waiting at busy city crosswalks in Japan.

When the traffic light changes from red to green, these birds walk out to the middle of the intersection, leave nuts in the road, then return to the sidewalk before the light changes to red again. Back on the sidewalk, the ravens wait as cars run over the nuts in the road. When the light changes again, the ravens step off the sidewalk to collect their freshly-cracked-open nuts!

Chimpanzees are considered the most intelligent animals next to humans. Even at a young age, chimps learn how to use simple tools such as twigs, which they use to dig insects out of logs. These primates can also be taught to count and to use sign language to communicate. They even know about medicine! Through watching their mothers, young chimpanzees in the wild learn which berries and plants to eat when they are feeling sick.

Do animals cry? It is believed that some do. When a baby mouse is unhappy because it is cold or hungry, it will start crying. Also, some scientists believe that elephants cry when they are sad, especially at losing a calf or adult member of their herd.

Monkeyshines on Health & Science, Mar2004 Your Brain

A Few Facts about Animal Bites

By Dr. Shawn Messonnier

_Dogs are responsible for 80 percent to 90 percent of animal bites, with cats being responsible for most of the remainder. Most bites are unprovoked and one-third involve the family pet.

_Children tend to be bitten on the face and neck, while adults are usually bitten on the extremities. Children with neck bites can die from trauma to the carotid artery, and their injuries are usually more severe.

_Extensive injury is often seen with pit bull bites, as they can bite with a force of up to 450 PSI. They also grind their molars when biting, which adds to the severity of the bite.

However, in my practice, most of the pit bulls I treat are very sweet dogs! While there are efforts to make laws regarding so-called "dangerous breeds," I am opposed to these laws because any dog can bite a person. In my experience, while certain breeds may be implicated in bites more than other breeds, and while bites from certain breeds can be more severe than bites from other breeds, I hate to implicate all members of a certain breed as "bad."

_Most cat bites become infected due to the deeper puncture. Dog bites are less commonly infected as these bites are usually more superficial.

_Prompt and thorough wound care plus antibiotics is important to treatment. I would also use herbs and homeopathics to boost the immune system and minimize pain, swelling and inflammation.

Source: Dallas Morning News, The (TX), Jun 06, 2006

World Maps at a Click of The Mouse

DID you know that the Earth is estimated to be 4.6 billion years old? And that it has a population of 6,135,000,000 people occupying a total land area of 148,647,000 square kilometres? Also, are you aware that the total water area covering the Earth is 361,419,000sq km (70.9 per cent) in size and that of all the water on Earth, 97 per cent is salt water? It is rather amazing to know such facts, yet many tend to take them for granted.

Another interesting fact is that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is 40,066km with a diameter of 12,753km. It is one huge planet! Even more interesting is that the Earth orbits the sun at 66,700 miles per hour, that is 107,320km per hour. If you think of the speed of the plane, just imagine how fast the Earth travels around the sun.

I remember learning all this information in school. It was printed in geography text books. Today, I no longer study geography, but I can imagine how useful this one page of information in WorldAtlas.com can be for today's students.

What I listed above is only a small section of the page. The rest are on interesting facts about oceans, continents, islands and countries of the world.

Did you ever wonder which countries in the world are the oldest? The answers are San Marino (301AD), France (486AD), Denmark (950AD), Portugal (1143AD), Andora (1278AD) and Switzerland (1291AD). Or, which of the countries are the richest? The five richest are Luxemborg, Switzerland, Japan, Liechtenstein and Norway. The gross national product (GNP) is US$45,360 (RM172,368) for Luxembourg and US$34,515 for Norway.

For more information, go to http://www.worldatlas.com/geoquiz/thelist.htm You can also find flags of a whole list of countries.

Click on Malaysia, for example, and you will see the Malaysian flag.

From the flag page, visitors can opt to go to another page with brief information on the country and this includes other links to other maps or information provided at other Web sites.

When I clicked to get more information, I was a little taken aback when the natural hazards listed were floods and landslides.

Also useful are specialty flags such as that of the Olympics, Nato and United Nations. Who knows this might come in handy when you least expect it.

You can also get world maps and outline maps at WorldAtlas.com This should come in useful once in a while. If you want a world time zone map, it is also available here.

How about a clip art of outline maps, world maps and globe images? Would you have any use for them?

You can look for them here as well. I can imagine these could be used not only in the classroom or training environment, but also in the business world. They can be downloaded and used for free.

However, if you need a specific or customised map for your PowerPoint presentation or your Web site, for example, you can get WorldAtlas.com to do just that. I believe WorldAtlas.com is a useful one-stop centre for world maps, flags, basic information of countries, cities, regions and so on.

Atlapedia Online at http://www.atlapedia.com/ is another Web site for world or country maps. Visit it if you cannot find what you need from WorldAtlas.com

Another good Internet resource for maps can be found at http://geography.about.com/library/maps/blindex.htm?PM=ss11-geography

It seems to me that teachers teaching geography at all levels of education should find these online resources interesting and useful.

New Straits Times (Malaysia), Mar 06, 2003

Some interesting facts about the Sun

The Sun is located 93 million miles from Earth.

Light takes 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth.

The Sun's diameter is 864,500 miles, 109 times wider than Earth.

The Sun could contain 1.3 million Earths.

It weighs 330,000 times more than Earth.

It is made mostly of hydrogen gas, which it is gradually turning into helium.

The Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, the same as a hydrogen bomb.

Its surface temperature is 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit.

Its core temperature is 15 million degrees Fahrenheit.

It is approximately 4.6 billion years old, about the same as Earth.

It will burn out in another 5 billion years.

Source: NASA

Science Snacks

• Salty Snacks. When monkeys groom one another, they aren't removing fleas or other bugs. They're looking instead for loose skin encrusted with salt, which the monkeys like to eat.
• Honored Guide. One of the craters on Venus is named after Sacajawea, the Shoshone woman who helped guide the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to the Pacific Ocean.
• Chicken Nugget. Scottish scientists have turned chickens into video addicts. The scientists, who are looking for ways to control aggression among chickens, found that their birds became hooked on watching moving images of fish and flying toasters.
• Health Gain. An American born in 1990 could expect to live to age 47. An American born today can expect to live to age 75.
• Global Straddler. Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States. It is also the eaternmost state because part of it is located in the Eastern Hemisphere.
  
  Source: Current Science, 12/18/98, Vol. 84 Issue 8, p3, 1p

Surprising Facts About The Body

Your heart beats more than 100,000 times a day--or close to 3 billion times during an average lifetime.

Hiccups are caused by irritation of the diaphragm (the system of muscles between your chest and stomach that controls breathing). When the diaphragm contracts uncontrollably, it causes a sudden intake of breath, This suction causes the bit of tissue at the back of your throat, the epiglotis, to close rapidly--causing the "hic" in hiccups.

Your lungs are made up of about 300 million tiny air sacs called alveoli. If they could be laid flat, they would cover an area about the size of a tennis court. Humans have been growing taller over the last 150 years: people in the industrialized world are on average 4 inches taller than they were in the mid-1800s.

A newborn's head accounts for one quarter of its weight.

Around two-thirds of a person's body weight is water. Blood is 92% water, and your brain is 75% water.

Fingernails grow four times faster than toenails.

The human head contains 22 bones.

While babies are born with over 300 bones, adults only have 206; many bones fuse together as people grow up.

World Almanac for Kids, 2003

Animal News & Facts

Hanging Out With Clowns. Only a clown fish can safely swim among the swaying "arms" of the sea anemone. Other fish are stung by those poisonous tentacles, but clown fish are immune. And by staying close to the anemone, they also stay safe from predators. In return, clown fish help the sea anemone by cleaning its tentacles. This kind of close cooperation between two species is called symbiosis.

The Great White Way. It was once thought that real-life great white sharks stayed close to shore, like the shark in the movie Jaws. But new electronic tagging technology has shown that there is still a lot to learn about these predators. Scientists found that great whites sometimes swim thousands of miles into the open ocean, and no one knows why.

Deep-Sea Squid Discovered. If you ever get down to the bottom of the sea, you may meet the deep-sea squid, an odd creature that has been sighted for the first time, in several places in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. It has ten thin tentacles that stretch out 6 to 8 feet, nearly 10 times its body length and far longer than the arms of any other known squid! It also has two big fins that flap out like elephant ears! That's a Big Old Cockroach! About 300 million years ago, much of Ohio was a tropical swamp filled with cockroaches--some of them pretty big. In 2001, scientists identified the fossil of a 3.5-inch cockroach found in a coal mine in eastern Ohio. It's the biggest complete cockroach fossil ever found, and twice as big as the average American roach today, though a bit smaller than those that live in some tropical areas.

Pelicans in Kansas? Miles from any ocean, the marshes of Cheyenne Bottoms in central Kansas are an important stopping place for migrating saltwater birds, including gulls, ducks, swans, and pelicans. Every year tens of thousands of American White pelicans, with 9-foot wingspans, stop there on their way south to Florida, to rest and feed in the 41,000 acres of wetlands.

World Almanac for Kids, 2003

Here are some Interesting facts about cod liver oil

DID YOU KNOW THAT: Cod liver oil was first used, centuries ago, by fishermen in Iceland, Greenland, Norway and Scotland?

Back then, fishermen used it to ward off colds and coughs. However, it was more of a natural remedy passed down from generations, and its actual medicinal contents and benefits not fully known.

Cod liver oil used to smell rotten?

Because of the primitive styles of living in those days, fishermen used "gutting" and "rotting" to extract oil from cod's liver. That's why they ended up with smelly fish oil that tasted equally horrible. But why does today's cod liver oil not smell at all? That's because of Dale Alexander, the "Codfather". In the 1950s, in order to get better-tasting and - smelling cod liver oil for his mother, he cleverly thought of combining milk in the oil to disguise the fishy smell. So with this modern method, cod liver oil smelled no more.

Cod liver oil was discovered to contain beneficial nutrients only in the 1920s?

Vitamins were discovered by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins in 1912.

Before that, they were known as "food factors" that "accessorise" daily diet. Following this scientific finding, studies were conducted on many of the foods people consume, including cod liver oil. By the 1920s, it was finally concluded that cod liver oil contained essential ingredients which are hard to find in sufficient quantities in everyday foods. These ingredients were the vitamins A and D, and polyunsaturated fats.

It took 300 years before cod liver oil was recognised as a medicinal option?

Even though cod liver oil has been used for centuries, it was only "trusted" when its nutrients were scientifically proven in the 1920s.

Doctors began urging parents to give their children cod liver oil as a preventive medicine rather than a natural prescription. This step is seen as a breakthrough in cod liver oil consumption. And because of this development too, the British Cod Liver Oil Producers Organisation was formed in 1934. Since then, big-scale operations to extract and produce cod liver oil spread throughout England. And they grew and expanded until people all over the world learnt of cod liver oil and began to enjoy its many benefits.

Cod liver oil is the richest and most natural source of vitamin A and D?

Since vitamins were discovered and categorised by their importance over 50 years ago, cod liver oil has been the choice of many when it comes to vitamins A and D.

This is because even though these vitamins can be found in a variety of foods, cod liver oil remains the richest and most natural source of all.

But what are the benefits of these vitamins? Good vision, hair, skin and nails come with vitamin A. However, not many are aware of vitamin A's other beneficial aspects, which include preventing abnormal growth of children. It plays a part in the process of cell differentiation, where cells can "mature" normally, and thus encourage a strong immunity against coughs and colds. Vitamin D, meanwhile, promotes formation of bones by increasing the absorption of calcium into the blood stream and bones.

Cod liver oil can be used to treat arthritis?

Remember Dale Alexander, the "Codfather"? Well, it seems that when he was experimenting on cod liver oil back in the 1950s, he actually wanted to use it to treat his mother's arthritis. The story was that Alexander's mother suffered great pains from arthritis, and all the medicines from her doctors didn't work. So Alexander resorted to self research, and discovered findings of a Dr De Jongh who successfully treated the queen of the Netherlands for arthritis with cod liver oil, a century earlier.

Through modern, scientific researches, it was found that it's actually cod liver oil's Omega-3 fatty acids that can slow, and even reverse, the destruction of joints. What they do is switch off harmful enzymes that break down joint cartilage.

So, due to Alexander's diligence and love for his mother, many arthritis sufferers today can enjoy the benefits of cod liver oil.

When cod liver oil is taken with garlic, evening primrose oil or calcium supplements, the results are doubly good?

First, let's start off with garlic. Garlic contains blood-thinning qualities. It keeps the circulatory system healthy by preventing platelets from sticking together. Similarly, the Omega-3 fatty acids in cod liver oil have been proven to help reduce the blood concentration of fats that encourage the deposition of cholesterol along the coronary artery. In other words, they both strive to prevent the onset of heart diseases.

Then there's evening primrose oil. Evening primrose oil contains GLA (gamma linolenic acid) that help produce prostaglandins for hormonal balance. Cod liver oil contains EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) that is needed for the formation of some types of prostaglandin too. Dermatologists believe too that skin cell membranes can be enriched with Omega-3 fatty acids and other essential fatty acids like GLA to prevent inflammatory hormones and blood clotting, and to enhance immune responses towards infection.

Last but not least, calcium. Calcium is important for bone density and preventing osteoporosis, and it needs vitamin D for optimum absorption into blood and bones. Being the richest and most natural source of vitamin D, cod liver oil is of course the best choice when it comes to getting the most out of calcium.

Source: New Straits Times (Malaysia), Apr 20, 2003

Interesting Facts About Asteriods, Meteors and Comets

Scientists have predicted that every 50 to 100 million years the Earth collides with a comet or asteroid big enough to cause planet-wide destruction.

Halley's Comet circles the sun every 76 years.

Asteroids between 50 and 200 yards across will explode several miles up in an “airburst” much like an H-bomb (atomic bomb). An event like this devastated square miles of Siberian forest in 1908

In 1990, the buried remains of a 150 mile-diameter crater were discovered near the town of Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. A crater this size would have been blasted out by a 10-mile-wide comet or asteroid colliding with the earth at some 50,000 miles per hour.

‘Amun’ is the name of a mile-wide asteroid that is made of stainless steel that has been in space since the beginning of time. The iron, nickel and cobalt in this asteroid is worth about 20,000 billion dollars.

The Deccan Traps of India are the remnants of a massive upswelling of molten rock from deep within the earth 65 million years ago. The toxic fumes and dust from the eruption have been considered as a possible cause for the climate change that killed the dinosaurs. Recently, it was discovered that the Deccan Traps erupted because of the Chicxulub impact.

Edmund Halley… (1656–1742)
In medieval times the unpredictable appearance of comets caused fear and panic. Superstitious people believed that the tail of a comet looked like a sword.

The people took this as a bad omen, supposing that this strange and unexpected sighting was a sign of destruction.

When Edmund Halley began applying the laws of motion to the movement of comets, scientific explanations replaced superstitious ones. (These laws had been discovered by a friend of Halley—Sir Isaac Newton.)

As a result of his studies Halley was able to predict when a certain comet would reappear in the sky. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the comet return in 1759, just a few months away from the date he had calculated.

These objects that were once viewed with superstition and fear were shown to have a very predictable orbit.

The Meteor Crater
Try to imagine what it would be like if a chunk of rock weighing several million tons suddenly crashed to Earth at 43,000 miles per hour. The impact would be stronger than a nuclear explosion. A huge cloud of dust would rise far into the upper atmosphere and few if any living creatures for miles around would survive.

It may sound like a science fiction story yet this is exactly what happened 33,000 years ago along the flat, barren plain of the Northern Arizona Plateau.

Source: Monkeyshines on Rocks & Minerals, 2001, p15, 3p

Interesting Animal & Brain Facts

Some animals' brains function very much like human brains, and knowing how an animal's brain operates can sometimes help scientists better understand how our brains work.
A silkworm has eleven brains, but uses fewer than half of them (five).
Starfish do not have brains.
A rhinoceros's brain is smaller than its nose. The rhino's brain processes smells that tell the animal a lot about the objects it sniffs.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Blue whales have bigger brains than any other animal. The blue whale is the world's largest mammal.
What is the smartest insect? Honeybees may be the smartest. Bees often plan ahead when looking for food so they can find it easily when it is needed. Worker bees have many jobs including building the hive; collecting pollen, nectar, and water; and taking care of the young.
What are the smartest non-human animals? Chimpanzees are generally considered the most intelligent animals next to humans. Even at a young age, chimps learn how to use simple tools such as twigs, which they use to dig insects out of logs or mounds of dirt. They even know about medicine!
By watching their mothers, young chimpanzees in the wild learn which berries and plants to eat when they feel sick. In captivity, chimps can also be taught to count and use sign language to communicate.

• Can animals plan ahead? Scientists say beavers and groundhogs have an image of their future homes in mind before they start to burrow in the ground or build a lodge. Using this mental blueprint, they plan where to put their homes and make sure their houses fit their needs.

Source: Monkeyshines on Health & Science, Mar2004 Your Brain, p36, 1p

Interesting Facts

1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

2. "Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt"

3. Almonds are members of the peach family.

4. The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.

5. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

6. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

7. The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

8. "Underground" is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters "und."

9. There are only four words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

10. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

11. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosesl.

12. The longest place-name still in use is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakap- ikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakit natahu, a New Zealand hill.

13. Los Angeles's full name is "El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula" and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size, L.A.

14. An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

15. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

16. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

17. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.

18. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.

19. The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

21. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

23. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

24. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

26. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

27. It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

28. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

30. The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti

31. 'Stewardesses' is the longest English word that is typed with only the left hand.

33. The combination "ough" can be pronounced in nine different ways; the following sentence contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

34. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

35. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning "containing arsenic."

36. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian seal for that reason.

37. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

38. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means "the king is dead."

39. The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases