UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

The most famous / most interesting X-rays that have ever been taken could very well be Marilyn Monroe’s 3 chest x-rays, one frontal, and one from the side, taken in 1954 when she was 28 years old.

At least 2 are viewable at Julien’s Auctions website:

The website had the following notes:

… As a radiology resident at Cedars [of Lebanon Hospital] a young doctor obtained these x-rays. When he taught at the school himself, he used these x-rays to ensure that students were paying attention. Monroe was said to have known about the x-rays and their use, about which she said “isn’t that sweet.”

It was reported by the BBC on 28th June 2010 that the set sold for USD45,000 recently at a movie memorabilia auction at Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas, selling for much more than its USD3,000 pre-sale estimate.

She died in 1962 aged 36.

Popularity: 1% [?]

It was reported on 10th May 2010 that the Avro Business Jet Explorer One is the first plane in the world that has a balcony, called an “Air Deck”:

The company described it as:

… transforms the rear of the aircraft into the ultimate living space, providing an elevated outdoor viewing deck combined with a luxurious indoor space incorporating a state-of-the-art entertainment system and vast open plan galley.

Still, I’d agree that having a balcony on a plane seems rather pointless, because a plane can ever only land on an airport, hence the best view you could have while lounging around on the balcony are runways and airport buildings and smells of jet engines. And airports being airports, the noise around you would be so deafening that MP3 players would come in handy.

Source
Gizmodo

Popularity: unranked [?]

Flexible Love is probably the world’s most amazing chair, made in Taiwan & designed by Chishen Chiu.

Made of honeycombed recycled paper, virgin kraft paper and post-industrial wood waste.

Words alone cannot describe the coolness:

Rearranging it looks like a good workout, as good as one of thosemuscle builders.

Here’s a video of people actually sitting on it:

There’s the intriguingly named FlexibleLove Virgin 20 model that can sit up to 16 people (priced at USD549), which, starting from 25cm wide can be extended to 9 metres! It weighs 25kg and can support 1,920 kg; meaning the average weight of the 16 people can be 120 kg!

The cheapest model sells for around USD30.

How to order.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For about 4 months starting September 2003, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) was composed from the Hubble Space Telescope, the deepest image of the universe ever taken, looking back about 13 billion years.

Some have described it in superlatives eg:

- the most important image humanity has ever taken
- the image of a millennium
- a humbling image: shows exactly how insignificantly small we are and how big the universe actually is
- anyone who understands what this image represents is forever changed by it

The telescope was pointed at a point in the sky equivalent to less than a 1mm x 1mm blob held 1 metre away; that is a tenth the diameter of the full moon as seen from Earth or one thirteen-millionth of the total area of the sky.

The point in the sky was selected due to its relative emptiness – eg, no stars visible, so that nothing from our galaxy, the Milky Way, blocks the view, so to speak.

The following is a photo with the region of sky selected i.e. the L-shaped outline:

The resulting image was astounding, for it demonstrated that “by looking at a patch of sky that appears to have nothing in it, and you stare at it long enough, you see an image full of galaxies.”

10,000 visible galaxies, in fact. Every single point of light in the picture was sure to be a galaxy:

Full resolution photo (18MB).

The following video drives the point home:

Popularity: 1% [?]

Shannon Jackson, 36 of Tennessee, USA had a restraining order against Dana Hannah in real life.

Then she went on Facebook and poked Ms Hannah virtually.

Using screenshots of that person’s Facebook page as evidence, Ms Jackson was arrested on 25th September 2009, and later jailed for it, because the court order said she can’t “telephone, contact or otherwise communicate with the petitioner”, which of course can include Facebook.

This is probably the first recorded case of a person being detained for a poke, which allows “users to make themselves known to other users of the site without sending a message” and can be used to “flirt with people they do not know.”

Source

Popularity: 2% [?]

Imhalal was developed by a company in the Netherlands, with the aim of returning only search results that are not haram (forbidden).

It works by making use of a two-layer filtering system with the end result being: only “clean” search results are displayed or none at all.

It has a 3-level rating system for words entered. The words “beer” and “pork” are at level 1, “drugs” and non-offensive sex-related terms are at level 2 while any vulgarities will be instantly slapped with level 3.

It is not clear whether reading up on slimming products like an apidexin review would also be considered “unislamic.”

Playing with it a bit, I have made some interesting observations:

- “marijuana” and “cannabis” are unrated – so not haram?
- “cocaine” is at level 1, and “heroin” at level 2 – that means heroin is a worse drug than cocaine?
- “britney” or “britney spears” is at level 1, but “Madonna” (with results showing the popular singer) unrated – that means Madonna is not haram while Britney Spears is?
- “gay” is at level 2, but “Elton John” and “George Michael” are unrated
- other celebrities I’ve tried: Pamela Anderson at level 1, Mariah Carey unrated, Beyonce Knowles unrated

I haven’t tried any other words other than English though.

Popularity: 1% [?]

UPDATE 31 Dec 2009

The USA has 101 million users, beating 2nd placed UK far behind: a mere 22 million.

Four South East Asian nations are in the top 30: Indonesia (also 4th worldwide with 14 million users), the Philippines, Malaysia (almost 4 million) and Thailand.

The 2 most populous Asian nations, China is listed as having only 63,320 active user while India has 5 million.

This time last year, the only 2 Asian nations in the top 30 are Hong Kong and India, and the top nation, the US, had 27.8 million users.

Among the top 30 nations, the Philippines posted the highest growth in the last 6 mths at more than 200%.

Source
Nick Burcher

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Founded in 2004, Facebook is now the world’s most popular social networking site, beating Myspace into 2nd place

Other interesting trivia:
- has 250 million active users as of mid 2009; compare that to 82 million in mid 2008
- 3.5% of the world’s total population is on Facebook
- there are 98 countries in the world with at least one Facebook user
- in July 2008, 11 countries had more than a million Facebook users, now that number has increased to 33

BIGGEST GROWTH RATE

From mid 2008 to mid 2009: 3000% in Indonesia.

COUNTRIES WITH MOST USERS

It should come as no surprise that the US has the most users: about 70 million.

ASIAN COUNTRIES WITH MOST USERS

Among Asian countries, Indonesia has the most user: >6 million, ranked 7th in the world; followed by the Philippines at no. 17 (>2 million), Hong Kong at no. 20 (>2 million), Malaysia at no. 21 (almost 2 million) and Singapore at no. 29 (>1.3 million).

DEEPEST PENETRATION

Iceland’s population is 320K and has >150K users, hence a penetration of 46%: that’s astounding, almost half the population is on Facebook!

ASIAN COUNTRIES WITH DEEPEST PENETRATION

Hong Kong’s population is 7 million and has 1.7 million users, hence a penetration of 25% (ranked 7th in the world): one in four Hong Kong people are on Facebook. It is closely followed by Singapore with 22% (ranked 10th in the world).

SHALLOWEST PENETRATION

China, with a population of 1.3 billion has apparently only 394K users, hence a penetration of only 0.03%.

MOST NUMBER OF FRIENDS/FANS/SUPPORTERS

Apparently the number of friends in Facebook is limited to 5,000, so I will concentrate on number of fans/supporters instead which is unlimited. At the moment Barack Obama has 6.7 million supporters and Michael Jackson has 10.2 million fans, leaving Vin Diesel (at 6.2 million fans) and Megan Fox (at 4.8 million) in his wake. The group “Facebook” has 5 million fans. The most popular game on Facebook, Mafia Wars has 4.1 million fans.

Source
Nick Burcher

Popularity: 3% [?]

UPDATE 20 January 2010

QUICKEST TO ACCUMULATE FOLLOWERS

(i) Bill Gates joined Twitter on 19th January 2010; in less than 8 hours he’s had more than 100,000 followers.
(ii) Oprah Winfrey joined Twitter in April 2009; she quickly gained 100,000 followers.

MOST FOLLOWERS (WORLD)

As of now the following has more than 4 million followers:

Ashton Kuchter, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears.

Another 2 has more than 3 million followers:

Barack Obama
Oprah Winfrey

213 users has 1 million or more followers.

MOST FOLLOWERS (MALAYSIA)

Aaron Lee is the undisputed champion, with more than 100,000 followers, leaving 2nd placed Kenneth Yu, with 50K+ followers, far behind. 14 Malaysia-based Twitter users have more than 10,000 followers.

MOST PROLIFIC (MALAYSIA)

Mellysssa Karina joined Twitter in April 2009 and already has racked up more than 40,000 updates.

——————————

Twitter is the world’s:
- most popular microblogging site
- 3rd most popular social networking site
- one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide
- fastest growing site as of March 2009: 1,382% compared to Facebook’s mere 228%
- most prominent Ruby On Rails-developed web application

Other stats:
- It has 6 million unique monthly visitors (that’s about 200,000 per day).
- 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity

MOST FOLLOWERS

As of now there are 3 twitter (tweeter?) users with more than 3 million followers: Ashton Kuchter, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears.

Then there are 7 twitter users with between 2 and 3 million followers: CNN, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest, Shaquille O’Neal, John Mayer, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama.

MOST TWEETS

Note: I read that only the last 3,200 tweets are searchable.

Probably the top tweeter is Foxnews with more than 126,000 tweets. In contrast, Ashton Kuchter has 3,000+ tweets.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Now these are what I think the ugliest cars that have ever roamed the surface of the earth.

Citroen Ami 6 (1961-1978)

Aurora safety car (original design 1950s)

Plymouth Superbird 1A (1970)

Popularity: 3% [?]

I will concentrate on relatively recent cars i.e. those produced not more than 20 years ago.

Top 4:

The ugliest car that ever roamed the streets of the world in the last 20 years could very well be the Fiat Multipla. It used to be widely used as taxis in Italy. The foglights are on the hump below the windshield.

Then there’s the Pontiac Aztec, a boxy monster that someone said looked like a Grand Am that some bully car punched in the nose and gave a wedgie to.

The Nissan cube could be the “squarest car on the planet”.

Chrysler PT Cruiser

Popularity: 2% [?]

In 2005, Charlie Rosenbury, then an undergraduate majoring in computer science, wrote a computer program “in 5 hours” that sent messages to 250,000 Facebook users across the USA asking them to add him as a friend.

According to him, within 3 weeks, he got around 75,000 friends.

It did not endear him to many people or even Facebook’s creators though.

More recently, Justine Ezarik (above), 25 of Pittsburgh has 5,000 Facebook friends, which is apparently the system limit. She also reportedly has 50,000 MySpace friends, and more than 253,000 Twitter followers as of March 2009.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Jerry Jalava, a Finnish computer programmer lost half of his left ring finger after he crashed into a deer while riding his motorcycle last year.

A doctor treating him joked that he should have a USB “finger drive”.

He then made it himself, a prosthetic replacement for the missing finger.

It’s a 2GB memory stick, accessed by peeling back the “nail”.

It can removed off the stub of his amputated his finger so that it can be left plugged into a PC.

Future plans: include more storage and wireless technology.

Source
The BBC, 17th Mar 2009

Popularity: 1% [?]

If there’s a supermodel among satellites, the GOCE would be it. It’s even been called “sexy.”

It’s supposed to be launched 16 March 2009.

GOCE = Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer

It’s mission is to measure the Earth’s gravity field and “modelling the geoid with extremely high accuracy and spatial resolution.”

Most satellites launched into space do not look very pretty at all.

However, this satellite, made by The European Space Agency (Esa) is very different, and for practical reasons too:

It is a requirement of the extremely testing environment in which it will have to operate. The arrow shape and fins are necessary to keep the spacecraft stable as it flies through the wisps of air still present at an altitude just under 270km.

The GOCE’s mission is supposed to last 20 months from the date of launch.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Or perhaps a more apt description is a presentation that evokes the highest levels of drama or involves the highest level of personal participation.

Event: Annual Symposium of the Urodynamics Society of the American Urological Association
Year: 1983
Place: Las Vegas

In brief, a Professor Dr Giles Brindley, a British physiologist showed his erect penis to a roomful of fellow doctors, even coming down off the stage, walked along the aisle, and inviting the audience to inspect it!

Popularity: 1% [?]

Update 22 April 2009

Mary Ellen Hause went to jail because of Facebook.

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Be careful what you write on Facebook.

It can be very bad for you.

Ask Kimberley Swann and Edward Richardson.

On 23 February, Swann, 16 of Clacton, Essex was fired from her job after she updated her Facebook status to:

Kimberley Swann thinks her job is boring.

She also apparently added:

It’s s***. All I do is shred, holepunch and scan paper.

Ms Swann

On the day of reckoning she was summoned by the manager and given a letter which said:

Following your comments on Facebook about the company we feel it is better that, as you are not happy, we end your employment.

She’d been working at Ivell Marketing & Logistics for all of 3 weeks.

Her boss, Steve Ivell defended his decision:

Her display of disrespect and dissatisfaction undermined the relationship and made it untenable. Ivell Marketing is a small, close-knit family company and it is very important that all the staff work together in harmony. Had Miss Swann put up a poster on the staff notice board making the same comments and invited other staff to read it there would have been the same result.

She retorted by saying:

You shouldn’t really be hassled outside work. It was only a throw-away comment. I was not given a chance to explain.

She wrote the remark after coming home from work. Somebody then told her employer about it.

Still, what she endured is nothing compared to what Edward Richardson did on 12th May 2008.

Mr Richardson

In what could be the world’s first Facebook murder, Richardson, 41 of Mayfield Road, Biddulph, became enraged when his estranged wife Sarah, 26 changed her marital status on Facebook to “single”. He went to see her at her parents’ home as she was ignoring his messages. He broke the front door window, found Sarah in her bedroom and stabbed her to death with a knife.

The late Sarah Richardson

He then tried to commit suicide.

He was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 17 years in jail.

So folks, think carefully before you update your status next time.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Pirate Bay is the world’s most high-profile file-sharing site.

Its founders are now being taken to court in Sweden by top media firms like Sony and Warner Bros because the site has links to unauthorised copies of music, films and TV programs.

The defendants are: Frederik Neij a.k.a TIAMO, 30; Gottfrid Svartholm Warg a.k.a anakata, 24; Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi a.k.a brukep, 30; and Carl Lundstorm.

TIAMO

2 of them were reported to have said:
- their site was 100 percent legal.
- they cannot be prosecuted for copyright theft because none of the content is hosted on any of their servers, and that they merely direct people to “torrent” links, allowing the file-sharing program BitTorrent and its variants to share files among thousands the world over.

anakata

If convicted, they face up to 2 years jailtime and a fine of USD143,500.

Prosecutors say:
- the 4 had made a lot of money from the site despite claiming to only being interested in “spreading culture for free”.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The British Royal Navy’s 6 Type 45 Anti Air Warfare Destroyers has been described as the most powerful and advanced in the world.

Destroyers are a class of warship.

Its primary mission is air defence, protecting against missiles.

Its primary weapons platform is the Principal Anti Air Missile System (PAAMS): a 48-cell vertical missile launcher, allowing it to engage targets from all angles.

Missiles used are Aster 15s and Aster 30s and can strike targets up to 100km away.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Marko Casalan, 8 of Skopje, Macedonia is the world’s youngest certified computer system administrator, having passed Microsoft exams so as to be awarded the Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) certification, qualifying him to maintain complex corporate computer networks even though he’s still at elementary (primary) school!

Apparently, he’d rather read Implementing and Administering Security rather than a kiddie storybook.

Unsurprisingly, he aspires to be a computer scientist.

A child prodigy, he could already read and write at 2. At school, his favourite subject is maths.

His achievement made him a local celebrity and has even met the Macedonian Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski.

No prizes for guessing where his IT genes came from: his parents are IT experts and run a computer school.

His spare time is spent browsing internet forums for IT pros discussing complex IT problems.

As for sports, he’s into Thai boxing.

Source
Times Online UK, 16 Jan 09

… would he also refuse promotional pens?

Popularity: 1% [?]

What else could be safer than a car specially designed for the new president of the USA to ride in on his inauguration day?

Enter the Beast, a souped-up in the extreme Cadillac.

It’s reputedly be even better than the one they made for President Bush.

Some said it can withstand a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attack – others joked that even an asteroid would fail to destroy it.

Specifications:

Official Name: Cadillac One

Length: 18′

Height: 5′ 10″

Engine: 6.5 litre diesel

Click here to read more

Popularity: 4% [?]

If you somewhere in Philadelphia, be sure to head to the Comcast Center to see the currently the world’s greatest video display mounted on their wall, with the ability to display images and video at a resolution 5 times that of High Definition TV (HDTV).

Apparently, it cost Comcast USD22 million to put up.

Spec:
- 10 million pixels
- over 2,100 square feet
- 4mm LED lights
- handles around 27TB of information.

The wall display gets its input from an automated control center filled with digitizers, routers and video processors.

The following is a video of it in action:

Click here to see the video

Popularity: 1% [?]

The former prime minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, 82 launched his blog on 1st May 2008. Within 1 month it has registered one million hits / views.

During his tenure as PM, he turned the country into a technology hub via projects such as Cyberjaya and the Multimedia Super Corridor, yet he said he did not foresee that one day he himself would turn into a blogger.

Interestingly, perhaps for a 80+ year old, he has been an avid blogger – updating his blog, chedet.com frequently.

In perhaps another stamp on the blogging platform’s claim to be the fifth estate, he said:

the mainstream media are now quoting from the blog and even dare to write on formerly forbidden subjects. This is to be expected as many people no longer read the mainstream papers or watch television. The NST (Umno-linked New Straits Times) circulation has been reduced to an average of 135,000 daily including free and discounted copies for hotels, schools and airlines. Unless there is instruction to spin news from certain quarters, the mainstream media might become irrelevant.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Washington Post reported on 30th October 2007 that Mosul dam, Iraq’s largest dam has been assessed by experts from the US Army Corps of Engineers and other US officials and proclaimed to be the most dangerous dam in the world in a report released recently. It said the dam is unsafe in any definition, could collapse under water pressure and has an unacceptable annual failure probability (situation continually getting worse).

Location map (in this map it’s called Barrage Saddam)

The dam is located in northern Iraq and if the worst happened, would put as many as half a million lives at risk from deluge in the cities of Mosul and Baghdad. The report said Mosul could be under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet.

The dam was originally completed in 1984.

There’s a special interest for the US military too – at least an airfield and a military hospital are in the path of the 12 billion cubic feet of water.

Not that they’ve tried to fix the problem before, however a USD27 million dam strengthening project during Saddam’s time was a failure due to incompetence and mismanagement (reportedly the dam was built with gypsum!). The US proposed building a second dam downstream, but was dismissed as unnecessary by top Iraqi officials.

The debate between US and Iraqi officials is taking place behind closed doors because doing so in the open would risk “frightening Iraq citizens”.

Some pictures of the dam:

The spillway

Click here to see more pictures of the dam

Popularity: 3% [?]

The far side of the moon is its hemisphere that is permanently turned away from the Earth. It was first photographed by the Soviet Luna 3 probe at 03:30 UTC on 7th October 1959 at a distance of 63,500 km.

The probe took a total of 29 photos, covering 70% of the far side.

One of them looked like this:

The photographs were of low resolution, still many features of this lunar view can be recognized.

Dark patch at upper right: Mare Moscoviense

Dark areas at below and left of center: Mare Marginus & Mare Smythii.

Small dark circle at lower right: Tsiolkovskiy crater.

Its first first seen via human eyes when the Apollo 8 mission orbited the Moon in 1968.

A more recent picture:

Source
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Popularity: 1% [?]

We all know Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped on the moon.

But what about the first words of the first human in space as he entered orbit and definitely the first human to look down on the big blue marble from orbit, Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968)?

I think Yuri deserved all those medals. He is surely one of the bravest people, if not the bravest, who ever lived.

His capsule looked like this:

On 12th April 1961, Gagarin, 27, got on a Vostok 1 rocket and lifted off at 06:07 UTC at Baikonur.

10 minutes later, at 06:17 UTC, the rocket’s final stage shut down. 10 seconds later the spacecraft separates and Vostok 1 reached orbit.

At this point Gagarin reports:

The craft is operating normally. I can see Earth in the view port of the Vzor. Everything is proceeding as planned.

Not as dramatic as Armstrong’s first words?

One orbit, and 1 hour and 48 minutes after lift-off, he landed at 07:55 UTC.

Unfortunately, Gagarin died in 1968 when, during training as a fighter pilot, he and his instructor died in a MiG crash.

From the wikipedia article:

A 1986 inquest suggests that the turbulence from a Su-11 ‘Fishpot-C’ interceptor using its afterburners may have caused Gagarin’s plane to go out of control. Weather conditions were also poor, which may have contributed to the inability of Gagarin and the instructor to correct before they crashed.

Source

Popularity: 3% [?]

There’s been an amazing array of living things, including animals that have been carried up to space and returned safely to earth.

Probably the first animal ever put on a rocket and fired to space is the fruit fly. These things were launched on a V2 rocket in New Mexico in July 1946. Not quite to orbit, but still “to the edge of space.” The rocket reached an altitude of about 100 miles.

Next up, 2 monkeys creatively named Albert 1 and Albert 2. They are the very first primates ever fired to near space altitudes, in 1949. They did not survive the flight.

Other animals include:

Cats
Mice

Spiders [above: Arabella the garden spider aboard Skylab-3] I wonder if they needed to bring a brown recluse spider trap to keep these at bay?
Frogs
Fish
Snails
Worms
Bees
Ants

Source
1

Popularity: 1% [?]

There had been other animals that were put on rockets and fired skyward, but it was only during the era of the famed Russian dogs that attempts to put animals to orbit were carried out.

Before Belka and Strelka became the first creatures to make it to orbit and back unharmed, 3 dogs went up on rockets and died.

The first one we all know during history / science lessons in secondary school – Laika. This is her in her space capsule:

After the cover is closed, it looks like this:

This is a mock-up of her space capsule:

Laika aka Zhuchka aka Limonchik aka Muttnik is the first living Earth-born creature, other than microbes of course, that was successfully blasted into orbit, and possibly the first living passenger to go into space. She was aboard Sputnik II. The momentous date: 3rd November 1957.

Laika died 5 to 7 hours into her flight from stress and overheating. Her cause of death was not immediately known and decades of speculation followed, until October 2002, when the Russian scientist in charge of the project told all; he also expressed regret for allowing Laika to die.

Laika stamps:

(more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Dogs Belka and Strelka spent 1 day in space aboard Sputnik 5 on 19th August 1960 before safely returning to Earth. This is about 8 months earlier than the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin who went up in April 1961.

The dogs had other companions too: a grey rabbit, 42 mice, 2 rats, flies and a number of plants and fungi.

The following are pictures of what it was like inside their capsule. The first picture is apparently of Laika, the first earth-born creature in space. Unfortunately s/he did not survive the flight:

(more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Vanguard I, the 4th artificial satellite, is the oldest one still orbiting the Earth, although it is no longer able to communicate: the last signal was received in May 1964. So it is now considered junk – the oldest piece of space junk still in orbit: has been junk for more than 40 years.

It is rather small: 1.47 kg aluminum sphere, 6 inches in diameter with six short aerials.

It was launched on 17th March 1958. At first it was estimated to be able to stay in orbit for 2,000 years but later this was reduced to only 240 years.

Its battery powered transmitter ran out 3 months after launch, and its solar powered transmitter stopped working 6 years later.

Since it can no longer communicate, it is now optically tracked.

Source
1

Popularity: 1% [?]

Dr Sheikh Muszaphar is the 458th human to go to space, and Malaysia is the 38th country to have the honour of having at least one of its citizens up in space, in whatever designation: astronaut, cosmonaut, taikonaut, spationaut, space tourist, spaceflight participant et cetera.

We’re using the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)’s guidelines, who defines “gone into space” as any flight that reaches an altitude of higher than 100 kilometres (62 miles) above the surface of the Earth.

According to this guideline, as of 10th October 2007, there have been 458 human beings from 38 countries who have gone into space. Of this, 454 people have reached Earth orbit or beyond, meaning 4 breached the 100km mark, but did not reach orbit.

Of this total, 47 are women.

14 died during their mission.

A more exclusive club is those who have completely left Earth’s orbit, like those who went on lunar missions: 24 persons. Hence those who merely went to the International Space Station are “still in orbit.”

It is only appropriate that the first humans in space are from the Soviet Union and the US. The first human in space is of course Yuri Gagarin on 12th April 1961 onboard Vostok 1. He must be the bravest human who ever lived. Less than a month later, the US sent its first man into space: Alan Shepard on 5th May 1961 onboard MR-3.

It would be 17 years before a citizen of another country other than the USSR or the USA went to space. That honour goes to Vladimir Remek of Czechoslovakia, who went up on 2nd March 1978 onboard Soyuz 28.

Malaysian is the 13th Asian country (apart from the USSR / Russia) who sent one of its people to space. The first is of course Pham Tuan of Vietnam who went up on 23rd July 1980 aboard another Soyuz.

If you’re surprised to learn that a country considered less developed than Malaysia has sent its man to space earlier than us, take this: Mongolian Jügderdemidiin Gürragchaa is the 2nd Asian into space on 22nd March 1981.

As of 10th October 2007, there have been 260 manned spaceflights that breached the 100km mark. The first was Vostok 1 in 1961. Of this total, 8 did NOT reach orbit successfully.

Source
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Popularity: 2% [?]

By “experienced astronaut” I am referring to the number of blastoffs and reentries experienced, not the total time spent in space. Robert “Hoot” Gibson, 61 who spent time in Malaysia in conjunction with the country’s first man in space has been in space 5 times: that’s a lot, but Franklin Ramon Chang-Diaz has been to space even more: 7 times on space shuttle missions. He is tied with Jerry Lynn Ross as the most experienced astronaut ever. In contrast, the most experienced Russian cosmonaut has been to space 6 times.

Chang-Díaz, DSc was born in 1950 and is a Costa Rican-American physicist and former NASA astronaut.

His father is of Chinese-Spanish descent and mother of Spanish descent. Hence he is quarter Chinese.

He was selected as an astronaut in 1980, went to space for the first time in 1986 and last in 2002. He even did 3 spacewalks in his last mission and helped with construction of the International Space Station. He retired from NASA in 2005.

He is one of the first American citizens of Latin American descent to go into space.

Source
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Popularity: 1% [?]

Evolving life forms developed oxyphotosynthesis (the ability to generate oxygen via chemical reactions) about 2.7 billion years ago, and molecular oxygen started to be produced in huge quantities.

Organisms at that time were anaerobic(does not require oxygen for growth).

300 million years later, this surge in the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere started to pose problems, because oxygen was toxic to the existing organisms.

This period is called the Oxygen Catastrophe, and also known as Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Revolution or The Great Oxidation.

However, instead of wiping out all forms of life, it enhanced existing life: life was energetically limited until oxygen was easily available. This caused a breakthrough in metabolic evolution: it greatly increased free energy supply to living organisms, hence a truly global environmental impact was felt.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Some people might think that Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor is the first South East Asian in space, but in fact Phạm Tuân (born 1947) of Vietnam achieved the feat 27 years earlier. He is the first Vietnamese, the first person from a third world country, and the first Asian (excluding Russia) in space.

Reading about him, I was amazed that back in the 70s, Vietnam actually had a space program.

Pham was on a 2-man team with Soviet Viktor Gorbatko when they went up in July 1980 on board one of the Soyuz crafts. He was in space for a full week.

He is now a Lieutenant General, Head of the General Department of Defence Industry of the Ministry of Defence, and a member of the Vietnam National Assembly.

Source

Popularity: 1% [?]

The annual International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology has a competition called the Nanofabrication Bizarre/Beautiful Micrograph Contest.

A micrograph is basically a photograph taken via a microscope to show a magnified image of an item.

Looking through the winners of several categories of the last few years, there were truly some stunning images.

The world’s smallest hand, magnified more than 50,000 times:

The world’s smallest maze, magnified 125,000 times:

The world’s smallest toilet bowl, magnified 15,000 times:

The world’s smallest chess set, magnified 17,000 times:

Click for more pictures

Popularity: 1% [?]

Looks like it’s a tussle between gaiaonline.com (Gaia Online) and the Japanese forum 2ch.com (2channel).

Big-Boards.com reports that Gaia Online is the largest on the Internet, with over a million posts made daily, over a billion posts total, and over 2.5 million unique users each month, and with almost 8 million members.

In comparison, as far as I know, jiwang.org is the biggest online forum in Malaysia, with possibly more than 50,000 members.

However, Big-Boards.com only lists forums that contain accessible members and posts counts.

According to some other source, 2channel could be the largest web forum in the world. Japan Media Review reported in August 2004 that 2channel is used by almost 8 million people a month.

Sources
wikipedia on 2channel
wikipedia on Gaia Online
big-boards.com
ojr.org

Popularity: 13% [?]

Forumer.com is probably the world’s most popular free web forum provider. Established in 2003, as at the time of writing, it claims to host a whopping 151,212 forums, 8.5 million total users / members, more than 30 million threads, and an amazing 120 million posts.

The forum software used is phpBB and IPB.

It was formerly known as FreeIB, but was bought over in 2004: new programmers hired, site redesigned and relaunched under its present name. Judging by growth in the number of new members, its popularity then enjoyed a huge 3000% surge till today.

Ad supported, it will remove the ads for USD5 per 30K pageviews.

It used to have a blog hosting service too but that’s closed to new members for at the moment.

One of the forums hosted there is the very useful Malaysia-based Renovation Talk. It is testament to the popularity of the forum that some users who joined a mere 6 months ago already made more than 20,000 posts.

Popularity: 22% [?]

According to Stan Schroeder of franticindustries.com, there are 6 blogs utilising feedburner (arguably the world’s most popular RSS feed manager at more than 600,000 feeds) with more than 100,000 subscribers. Stan focused on blogs written in the English language only.

They are, in ascending order:

108,000 subscribers: 43folders, a blog by Merlin Mann on “tricks, hacks & other cool stuff”
142,000 subscribers: Mashable, a blog about “social networking news”
151,000 subscribers: Interesting Things of the Day, which is “an ongoing series of entertaining and educational articles about unusual or intriguing topics of all kinds. Subjects include foods, places, language, ideas, history, science, and many more.”
232,000 subscribers: Simply Recipes, which is about “Healthy recipes, cooking tips, product reviews for the home cook”
385,000 subscribers: BoingBoing, a “directory of wonderful things”

And the title of the blog with the world’s most number of feedburner subscribers, with 413,000 subscribers is (more…)

Popularity: 9% [?]

Checking up on digg.com, as at 3.45pm on 3rd June 2007, the 3rd most dugg article (across all categories) is “New Digg v3 Launched” which was posted more than 300 days ago. It got more than 16,000 diggs.

The 2nd most dugg article is “Apple Announces iPhone”, submitted 144 days ago, with more than 23,000 diggs.

The most dugg article of all time, with more than 39,000 diggs is (more…)

Popularity: 1% [?]

UPDATE 25 August 2009

Since the links at limadang.com and chedet.com are now dead, how about this marriage announcement by top local blogger Raymond of raymond.cc which has had 1,129 comments as of today. And he now has an incredible 77,000+ feed subscribers!

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UPDATE 30th June 2008

Looks like a post at limadang.com is now the Malaysian champ, at 1,400+ comments, from 7th August 2007 to 4th December 2007.

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UPDATE 4th May 2008

As of now, that particular blog post by Kenny Sia has attracted 1,048 comments. But even that number has been upstaged by a formidable opponent in the ex-Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr Mahathir’s just-launched blog. His first blog post, posted on 1st May 2008 attracted 1,095 comments as at 10.54pm, 4th May 2008.

————-

As of the time of writing, I saw that Kenny Sia’s blog post entitled “an unfortunate accident” posted 18th May 2007 has had 947 comments in 7 days, from 18th May 3.20am up to 25th May 11.42pm. This could be a record for a Malaysian blog.

Then I wondered, what is the most commented blog or forum thread in the world?

According to Jason Kottke in March 2006:

He’s seen 1000+ comment threads on Dooce and that posts on political blogs like Daily Kos probably have consistently more than 1000+ comments.

MetaFilter’s longest thread, posted 24th August 2001, entitled “metafilter parody” had 1729 comments, starting 24th August 2001 until commenting was finally closed on 20th September 2002, more than a year later.

The Matrix Reloaded thread at his blog posted 15th May 2003 had 1,767 comments in 6 months. It had to be spanned into 2 threads because the blogging software he used (Movable Type) was “beginning to buckle under the pressure”.

Engadget’s “It’s our 2nd birthday and we’re giving you the presents!” post on 7th March 2006 at 1.11pm attracted 3,324 comments. The first comment was posted 2 minutes after the blog posting and the last 24 hours later, 8th March 2006, 1.24pm. Amazing.

Slashdot’s thread at the end of the 2004 US Presidential Elections entitled “Kerry Concedes Election To Bush“, posted 3rd November 2004 at 12.39 pm got an astounding 5,687 comments, with the last one coming in more than 2 weeks later, on the 18th November at 11.24 am.

However, the mother of all comment threads is (more…)

Popularity: 16% [?]

The biggest carbonado ever discovered in the world was found in Brazil, at 3,600 carats (300g short of a kilogram), but no gem-quality material could be cut from it. The biggest rough gem-quality diamond ever found in the world is the Cullinan Diamond, at 3,106.75 carats (more than half a kilogram) in 1905 at the famous Premier Mines, South Africa. It was named after the owner of the mine.

A miner posing with Cullinan – it doesn’t look like it’s worth very much, does it?

Another view – looks very ordinary, for now

A once in a lifetime chance to pose with the most precious stone ever found on the planet

The stone was broken into many pieces and the largest polished gem out of it is Cullinan I, also known as the Great Star of Africa, at 530 carats (106 g). Estimated value: over USD400 million (more than RM1 billion).

Cullinan I: now this is one diamond perhaps even Bill Gates can’t give to his wife

It is now mounted in the head of the Sceptre with the Cross, part of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

But Cullinan I is only the 2nd largest polished diamond in the world. Well, it was the biggest for about 80 years, until 1985, when the Golden Jubilee diamond was discovered from the same mine. At 545.67 carats, it’s about 15 carats heavier than Cullinan I. It now part of Thailand’s crown jewels. When the diamond was first publicly exhibited in Thailand, the queue was a mile long. It was brought to, and blessed by Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, the Supreme Buddhist Patriarch and the Supreme Imam in Thailand.

It’s of a different colour than is usually expected of a diamond

To get a general idea of its size

But wait! That’s not the end of the story. Those are the biggest diamonds on earth, but their size is pitiful compared to the biggest diamond in the universe: (more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]

It’s only fitting that that person is Prof Stephen Hawking, 65, the world’s leading expert on gravity. On 26th April 2007 he went up on a specially modified plane (vomit comets) that flew a parabolic flight 2 hours over the Atlantic from the space shuttle’s runway at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the first time 40 years, he moved freely beyond his wheelchair. The usual fee of of USD3,750 for 10-15 plunges was waived. The flight he was on plunged 8 times, meaning he experienced zero gravity eight times in 4 minutes, in 25-second spurts.

video:

(more…)

Popularity: 3% [?]

Someone tries to sell Windows XP licenses on eBay but somehow shows it in the picture:

As of the time of writing, the pictures are still available on ebay.

Full screen capture of auction:

Someone commented:

…actually, this is not so uncommon. Browse for laptops on e-bay. Many people post high-res pictures of them at the auction. What they don’t realize is that most laptops have the OS license key right on the cover. You can collect about 10 windows keys a week that way. Not just the basic XP, but also media edition and sometimes a tablet edition. Check it out yourself. People are dumb!

In fact, you don’t even need to go to ebay. A plain google search can turn out many such keys.

… Perhaps he’s in too deep about selling hardware like a laptop memory module…

source

Popularity: 4% [?]

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: 1% [?]

The greatest must be the talking vibrator, patent number 5,928,170. (more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]

…is not a Bugatti or any car exotic supercars like these:

A Bugatti Veyron (above) costs about 850,000 pounds, but Andy Frost, 45 in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom customised a 1972 Vauxhall Victor for a total cost of 100,000 pounds, resultiong in the world’s fastest street legal car, christened Red Victor One: (more…)

Popularity: 5% [?]

To qualify, this gadget must be able to do “everything” and small enough to slide casually into a back pocket:

• smartphone,
• shoot and store photos,
• surf the Web,
• check e-mails,
• listen to music files (more…)

Popularity: 8% [?]

Courier-journal.com reports on 11th October 2006:

Imagine a home-theater system with images so crisp they surpass those in a movie theater.

Or envision sitting in a classroom surrounded by movie screens and taking a virtual trip inside Egyptian pyramids. The images are so clear they blur the line between video and reality. (more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

According to bit-tech.net, Katamari Damacy is king of the crazy games:

At first glance, it seems quite normal, revolving around a King and a Prince, who are trying to put the universe back together after accidentally destroying it.

The fact that the son builds stars by rolling a big ball of junk around around does not, apparently, detract from the plotline or even make the idea of a story here unfeasible. Rolling around the world rolling up everyday objects in to a large ball of katamari results in a pile of junk large enough to make a star. The developers even decided to expand the story in the PSP game Me and My Katamari. The King and the Prince decide to go on holiday to a tropical island to take a break from all their star constructing.

However, as can be expected when dealing with the King of All Cosmos, everything goes wrong (how did this guy actually become King?) and his son has to go about rectifying things by building custom planets for the islands inhabitants, such as a tortoise and an ant. Arguments ensue, but eventually the 5cm wonder child is sent off the Sunflower Continent as that’s the best place to build planets from… Apparently. That’s without counting We Love Katamari, which has a self-referential plotline dealing with how the King reponds to his new-found fame on Earth.

The music adds to the sense of insanity, as a strange Japanese chap recites “Da dum, dee dee da da dum, dar dar, dee Katmari Damacy…” repeatedly.

source

Tags: gaming, games, videogames

Popularity: 2% [?]

A composite photo of the “Parete Gaudenziana” a fresco painted by Gaudenzio Ferrari, dated 1513 is claimed to be the largest digital photo on the Net, at 8.6 Gigapixel.

To be precise, 96,679 pixels x 89,000 pixels! (more…)

Popularity: 6% [?]

PC World reports recently that the worst computer game of all time is E.T: The Extra Terrestrial (1982) which runs on an Atari 2600.

The author of the article, Emru Townsend said that a third of the people he quizzed came up with this title almost instantly. Wow, it must be a very very bad game indeed.

Well, I wonder too, how could someone screw up an apparent guaranteed winner: the year’s most popular movie and the number one video game console at that time?

Townsend outlines 2 reasons for the debacle: a combination of poor planning and unbridled optimism. First, Warner Communications, then Atari’s parent company, gave programmer Howard Scott Warshaw only five weeks to pull the game together. Then the big bosses came in: expecting huge sales, Atari produced 4 million cartridges.

The game in action

The rest of the report:

Unfortunately for Atari–and the collective psyche of anyone who ended up buying the cartridge–the rushed development was apparent on the screen. Everyone I spoke to who singled out particular gripes mentioned the pits that the player, as E.T., fell into and would then have to slowly levitate out of, which led to horrendously monotonous game play. None of the qualitative comments I received about the game are printable, except for one: “Famously bad.”

Atari’s big gamble didn’t pay off. Less than 40 percent of the cartridges sold, one of the major financial blows that resulted in Atari’s bankruptcy in 1984.

More bad games of all time can be read at the source.

Tags: games, videogames, atari, ET, computer games, computers, computing

Popularity: 3% [?]

A nightmare scenario for network administrators is taking over from a well-worn, years-old cabling closet which have had many people in charge. One thing that has to be done is determining where all those cables go to, or linking what and what.

Consider this one, which might look a totally hopeless case:

Hair-tearing stuff? But to me, this one looks even scarier, possibly due to the Alien-black wiring:

Click here to see more pics

Popularity: 2% [?]