…probably not available in the Guinness Book of World Records or Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Dubbing it "the eternal embrace," Reuters reported on 6th Feb 2007 that archaeologists in the northern city of Mantova, Italy have discovered a couple buried up to 6,000 years ago, hugging each other. Apparently, there has never been a double burial found in the Neolithic period, and to find such a burial, with them hugging, is unprecedented.
Tags: archeology, archaeology
Popularity: 8% [?]
I think it’s a tie between Louis J Horvitz, 60 (pic above) and Walter C Miller (pic below). These two guys are responsible for directing the world’s most prestigious live TV shows, year in and year out. Horvitz has directed the last 11 Annual Academy Awards (also known as the Oscars) show and Miller has directed the last 8 Annual Grammy Awards show. (more…)
Popularity: 13% [?]
techchee.com reports today that UK-based zopa.com is the first web 2.0 loan shark website in the world. Why so? Because it provides a platform for lenders to lend and borrowers to borrow from the lenders. No financial institutions in the middle. That sounds very loan shark-friendly to me. Zopa (Zone of Possible Agreement) calls itself “the world’s first online lending and borrowing exchange.” Simply put, it works as follows: (more…)
Popularity: 26% [?]
Of all the best friend turnabout stories I’ve heard and read, this has got to be the worst best friend ever.
The Star reported on 25th February that in Johor Bahru, a 17-year-old school dropout tricked her best friend to be raped by four men in a desperate bid to settle her debts to them.
Granted, she was in severe stress, but surely there are other ways to settle the problem than turn in your best friend?!
She lied to her now definitely "ex best friend" 17-yr old, telling her that she needs help, please follow her, her brother was being assaulted at a car park.
Of course the other girl wanted to help. But imagine her horror when she reached the car park, the victim instead saw four lecherous men waiting in a car. There started her worst nightmare.
They then immediately grabbed her and tied her hands, then drove to a house, where she was then taken to a room where the men took turns to rape her. She was dropped off at her home several hours later.
The usual procedures were taken and within hours 5 suspects were rounded up.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Danish artist Peter Callesen and British artist Richard Sweeney make the world’s best, and definitely most difficult, paper sculptures.
Example of Callesen’s artwork:
Popularity: 9% [?]
According to thrillingwonder, the strangest plant on earth is Welwitschia Mirabilis, which looks like this:
Popularity: 3% [?]
The Star Tribune reported on 16th Feb 2007 that airline pilot Raymond Snouffer Jr won a 5/31 USD25,000 lottery jackpot two days in a row. 5/31 means you have to select 5 numbers, each between, and including 1 and 31. Numbers, once selected cannot be repeated in the same combination.
His combinations were 11-14-23-26-31 for the first draw and 3-7-11-19-28 with the second. Each have odds of about 170,000 to 1. According to the Minniesota Lottery website, this is inprecedented and the odds against it were “virtually incalculable.”
How incalculable? According to discussion at digg.com, someone mentioned that the odds for that to happen would be 170,000 x 170,000, which is 28.9 billion to 1.
Well, here in Malaysia, the most difficult lottery to win would be Sports Toto’s 6/49, which has an odds of 13 million to 1. Meaning, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than winning it.
But, if the odds are 28.9 billion to 1, you’d have to be struck by lightning several times over!
What is not clear is how heavy a gambler Mr Snouffer Jr is. He could’ve bought more than USD50,000 worth of lottery tickets in his lifetime, so in essence he could’ve still lost money.
Popularity: 2% [?]
On 15th Feb 2007, Kuppan Muniandy, 50 became the first Malaysian to expose himself in the middle of court proceedings when he suddenly dropped his trousers in full view of everyone present at a magistrate’s court in Kuala Lumpur.
Hailing from Ipoh, he was brought to court to be charged with robbing salesman Johan Razali Hang Jebat, 18 of a mobile phone worth RM200 in January. While the charge was being read, the unrepresented Kuppan suddenly dropped his trousers.
This so shocked magistrate Tasnim Abu Bakar that she adjourned the case. Upon resumption of the proceedings, she ordered Kuppan to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Popularity: 2% [?]
The most poisonous animal is neither of the above. Actually, it’s a little frog, measuring max 2 inches in length.
Now, most frogs produce skin toxins, but the dart poison frogs from Central and South America are the most potent of all. But the king among all them all is the golden poison frog, scientifically called “phyllobates terribilis.” A single terribilis contains enough poison to kill up to 100 people. In case you think this is a typo, I really meant one hundred!
Would you want to argue that it is definitely the most poisonous animal on Earth?
Pics after the jump.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Meet the real Mr Boring: Dean Boring, president of Boring Business Systems, a 50-employee company based in Florida.
Its products and services include imaging systems, imaging services, network services, office furniture and office supplies.
However, they seem to offer their services exclusively to Central Florida.
Popularity: 2% [?]
"Too tired to walk home" was the excuse given by a Japanese man who told police he stole a patrol car that had been left idling in Tokyo.
Police officers had left the vehicle in the car park with the engine running, while they were doing a short investigation at the post office, the Mainichi newspaper reported on 6th February 2007.
The man further explained, "I came out shopping by train, but I got tired walking, so I thought I would drive the police car home."
He was caught 15 minutes later in the driveway of a house, about 4 kilometres from the post office.
Popularity: 2% [?]
On Valentine’s Day in Kashmir, at least 12 women covered from head to toe in black burqas, stormed into several restaurants in Srinagar, telling couples to go home and stay away from Valentine’s Day celebrations. Some couples were even beaten up.
And the worst woman ever to send Valentine’s greetings to is surely Aasiya Andrabi, the leader of Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of Faith), the group responsible for the above exercise.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Dr Ronald Mallett, 62 (pictured above), professor of Physics at the University of Connecticut is working on creating the world’s first time machine.
He motivation started early: his dad died at the age of 33 when Mallett was 10, and he’s planning to go back in time to save him.
That might seem childish, but he’s dead serious: the machine uses a ring laser and the theory of relativity. Indeed, not light topics. He has produced several papers discussing his ideas.
At least one other scientist, Ken Olum and Allen Everett, has challenged Dr Mallett’s findings.
It remains to be seen whether Mallett will be proven right.
The BBC produced a a documentary entitled “The World’s First Time Machine” in 2003 featuring Dr Mallett’s time travel research. It can be found here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5896048467372201322
Popularity: 2% [?]
Aaron Fotheringham, 16 (b. 1991) has Spina Bifida and has been using wheelchairs and crutches since the age of 3. But that does not stop him from being the world’s premier extreme athlete. On wheelchairs, no less.
In July 2006 he became the first person to do a backflip in a wheelchair. The following video link shows Aaron showing what he’s capable of, including the backflip.
Video link after the jump.
Popularity: 7% [?]
What is this all about? I am merely returning the favour by Lorna. But what the **** is a Z-List? Its creator should know.
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Popularity: 7% [?]
I think this is even more spectacular than the Burj Al-Arab hotel in Dubai. The difference is, this is merely in design, not standing yet.
Atkins Architecture Group, one of the world’s top design firms and the largest engineering consultancy in the UK recently won the first prize award for an international design competition with this entry, which in my view is the world’s most amazing hotel design:
Popularity: 10% [?]
In Japan, it’s 78%. In the US, it’s not even 75%: projected to reach 75% by 2010.
Globally, there are 2.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions. If we simplify things and say one person has one account, then about one in six persons on the planet has a handphone.
I haven’t checked out the percentages for smaller and highly wired countries like Singapore, Korea and Finland though.
Tags: mobile phones, cell phones, handphones, cellphones
Popularity: 2% [?]
6 beers in 10 seconds!
video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpTNJDaMPZU
But someone said "The legend of the Fox" in The man show is faster
Tags: beer, beer drinking, beers
Popularity: 2% [?]
This is an old, albeit good one from 2005. The AP reported in September 2005 that fine arts Masters degree student Kittiwat Unarrom, 28 makes sculptures out of bread as his dissertation.
And not just any sculpture: they very realistically look like rotting human body parts.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Update 8th April 2007
He did it in 65 days!
According to The Star, he averaged 80 kilometres a day. If this record is confirmed by Guinness World Records, it will be the 4th time he has broken a world swimming distance record.
He battled not only exhaustion but cramps, delirium, dizziness, vertigo, high blood pressure, diarrhea, chronic insomnia, larvae infections, dehydration, nausea, 2nd degree burns on his face and forehead; and abrasions caused by the constant rubbing of his wet suit against his skin. He has had difficulty standing and was at one point ordered not to swim by his doctor, but he insisted on night swimming to finish the course. There were times in which he was in so much pain that he could not get out of the water on his.
Strel said the journey became tougher as he approached Belem. When he was still about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the finish line, he’s been swimming fewer kilometers because the ocean tides have a lot of influence on the river’s currents and sometimes they are so strong that he’s pushed backward.’
Strel was lucky to have escaped encounters with piranhas, toothpick fish and bull sharks.
He lost about 12 kilograms (26 pounds).
Asked about new adventures, Strel said he is not going to do the Nile because although it’s long, it’s not challenging enough: “it is just a small creek. The Amazon is much more mighty.”
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After reading this, you’d think that swimming across the English Channel is for wimps. Having said that, I would not want to discount what Abd Malik Mydin and Lennard Lee of Malaysia and Thum Ping Tjin of Singapore achieved. Of the 3, Lee was the fastest, having swum the channel in almost 10 hours. But Martin “The Fish Man” Strel, 52, professional ultra marathon swimmer and national hero in Slovenia swum non-stop for 84 hours (that’s more than 3 days), covering more than 500 km in July 2001 along the Danube.
Malik, Lee and Thum are person number 1,000+++ to have crossed the Channel, but Strel is the only man to have ever swum from Africa to Europe (Tunisia to Italy). (more…)
Popularity: 6% [?]
According to Kevin Hill of cracked.com, the worst rhymes in pop music history belongs to Bob Dylan on the song “Ballad of a thin man,” which goes: (more…)
Popularity: 5% [?]
The F501 PC casing / housing from AOpen is touted as revolutionary, since it claimed to be the first housing that folds and flattens for easy transportation and saving space.
Why didn’t anybody think of this before? It’s definitely a godsend for retailers and customers alike. (more…)
Popularity: 2% [?]
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