The Vespa 150 TAP is an Italian Vespa scooter modified to transport a M20 75 mm recoilless rifle, which was used in the 1950s by the French Airborne Forces. It was produced by Ateliers de Construction de Motocycles et Automobiles (ACMA), a licensed assembler of Vespas in France, in 1956 and 1959.

Its mounted M20, a U.S.-made light anti-armour cannon, was very light when compared to a standard 75mm cannon but was still able to penetrate 100 mm of armour. The recoil is counteracted by venting propellant gases out the rear of the weapon which eliminated the need for a mechanical recoil system or heavy mounts, enabling the weapon to be fired from the Vespa frame.

The scooters would be parachute-dropped in pairs, accompanied by a two-man team. The gun was carried on one scooter, while the ammunition was loaded on the other. Due to the lack of any kind of aiming devices the recoiless rifle was never designed to be fired from the scooter, the gun was mounted on a tripod which was also carried by the scooter, before being fired.

The "Bazooka Vespa" was relatively cheap: Vespas cost roughly $500 at the time, and the M20s were plentiful. Roughly 800 of these scooters were deployed in the Algerian War.

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A group of Australians is planning to helicopter out to an iceberg off the New Zealand coast, camp on it while they carve out an ice bar, and then stage a party - complete with a DJ who will produce a music track.

Reynold Bierman, 38, a Sydney builder, told NZPA today his team was still firming up details of the project.

Glaciologists would make a safety assessment of the potential for their chosen iceberg to suddenly split or turn turtle, he said.

A flotilla of icebergs, one estimated to be about 30m high, has been tracked drifting out of Antarctica and up past Australia's Macquarie Island, 1000km southwest of New Zealand.

They are thought to have come from the break-up of part of the Ross Sea Ice Shelf in 2000 - which also was the source of a group of icebergs which reached New Zealand three years ago.

The first batch in the latest flotilla passed the Auckland Islands, 400km south of Bluff last week.

Within the next 10 days several are expected to come close enough to the mainland for a likely site for the "ice party" to be chosen.

After carving out an "ice bar" inside the iceberg the men want to fly in party guests for several hours of music and drinks.

One member of the group, Phil Meadows, hopes to create a new entry for the Guinness book of records by producing a music track on the iceberg.

The group is negotiating to provide a live feed from the iceberg to an Australian TV channel (Channel 9) and is planning internet promotions on YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook, using a satellite phone.

It is predicting 50 million "views" via broadcasts, print and social networking websites.

The group has claimed one part of the project will be to boost awareness about climate change.

But Australian glaciologist Neal Young has cautioned against linking the appearance of the icebergs in New Zealand waters to global warming. He said the phenomenon depended as much on weather patterns and ocean currents as on the rate at which icebergs broke away from Antarctic ice shelves.

Three years ago, a flotilla of icebergs - including one 1km long - drifted to Southland's Catlins coast, with some coming as close as 25km to land for the first time since 1931.

Aviation companies ran sightseeing trips, with one Otago helicopter company charging $500 a seat for flights to the ice.

Several publicity stunts were organised, including fitting crampons on the feet of a celebrity sheep, Shrek, so that it could be shorn on an iceberg.

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Although Antarctica has only a tiny population, its inhabitants come from around the world, and include followers of numerous religious faiths.

According to The Association of Religion Data Archives, 72.00% of personnel in Antarctica adhere to Christianity, 23.60% are non-religious, 2.71% are Muslim, 1.00% are Hindu, and 0.70% are Buddhist. With a small human population of roughly 5,000 in summer months and 1,000 in winter, religious affiliation surveys may not represent a static reflection of current trends among the personnel on the continent.

Antarctica has several religious buildings used for worship services: the Chapel of the Snows, Antarctica (a non-denominational Christian chapel at McMurdo Station), Trinity Church, Antarctica (a Russian Orthodox church at Bellingshausen Station), Santa Maria Reina de la Paz Church at the Villa Las Estrellas, and a permanent Catholic chapel made entirely of ice at Belgrano II Base. The Worldwide Antarctic Program proposes building a Catholic chapel at Mario Zucchelli Station, Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica; while the first Catholic chapel (named after Saint Francis of Assisi) was built in 1976 at the Argentine Esperanza Base. The southernmost Catholic chapel lies at the Argentine Belgrano II Base.

There are also churches on some of the Sub-Antarctic islands, including Grytviken on South Georgia; and Port-aux-Français on the main island of Kerguelen, and St. Ivan Rilski Chapel (a Bulgarian Orthodox chapel at St. Kliment Ohridski Base), San Francisco de Asis Chapel at Esperanza Base, South Shetland Islands.

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Forget cookies and milk. US Santas want the swine flu vaccine.

Many of America's Santas want to be given priority for the vaccine and not just because of those runny-nosed kids. There's also the not-so-little matter of that round belly. Research has suggested obesity could be a risk factor.

Swine flu has become such a worry that the Amalgamated Order of Real Bearded Santas featured a seminar on the illness at a recent conference. The group also urged its members to use hand sanitiser and take vitamins to boost their immune systems.

The president of the organisation said he also hopes parents will keep sick kids away.

"We don't want any child to go without seeing Santa, but it's not worth bringing your child to the mall, infecting the Santa and infecting the other children," Nicholas Trolli said.

He recalled a boy who informed him last year that he had a fever and had stayed home from school. But, the child said, his mother thought it was a good day to visit Santa.

Ernest Berger, president of another group called Santa America, asked an Alabama congressman last week to designate Santas a priority group for the swine flu vaccine, like health care workers or caregivers for infants.

A spokesman for Republican Rep Jo Bonner confirmed Berger's request and said staff members were looking into it.

Berger hopes Santas will use hand sanitisers and encourage children to do the same, without turning the experience into a hygiene lecture.

"It's a delicate balance here. This is not an exercise in health care. This is visiting Santa," he said.

Berger estimates that about two-thirds of all American Santas are overweight, and about a third are morbidly obese.

That raises health concerns because some research has suggested obesity could be a risk factor for severe swine flu.

A high proportion of those who have gotten severely ill from swine flu have been obese or extremely obese. But health officials also have said that might be due to heavy people tending to have asthma and other conditions that make them more susceptible.

The 200 or so Santas who volunteer to visit sick or grieving children through Santa America will be washing their suits daily instead of weekly and will not be wearing gloves this year so they can wash their hands frequently, Berger said.

Santa John Scheuch said he might suggest to parents that they come back another time if a child is visibly ill.

"The kids are in the strollers, sniffling and coughing and hacking. ... In the meantime, they're interacting with other kids in line."

Scheuch, executive director of Santa America, has taken some personal precautions. "I've had my H1N1. I've had my seasonal flu shot. This is my year for my pneumonia booster," he said. "I don't know what else I can do except encapsulate myself in plastic."

In Nashua, New Hampshire, hand-sanitising stations have been set up around the Pheasant Lane Mall, including just outside the picket fence surrounding the Santa Claus area. But on a recent Saturday, not one of the dozen or so families who passed through used it.

Susen Mesco, owner of American Events and Promotions in Denver, Colorado, which runs a five-day Santa school, said her Santas will be wearing gloves but changing them every three hours and washing them in anti-bacterial soap.

Dr Jodie Dionne-Odom, New Hampshire's deputy state epidemiologist, said going gloveless and using gel between each child would be the best option. She cautioned that viruses can live on unwashed hands for two to eight hours.

"If your hand was warm and moist, it could live longer," she said. "It depends on whether you have a glob of mucus on your hand where it's going to live happily versus a tiny speck. It's kind of disgusting, but it would depend on what was on your hand."

Dr Jack Turco, director of health services at Dartmouth College, said Santa might consider greeting children from a few feet away rather than holding them on his lap, or asking children with coughs to stand in a separate line.

"If we take this really seriously, and I think we should because people are dying, it wouldn't be inappropriate to say this is a year maybe we shouldn't do these mass gatherings," he said.

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The Anglo-Zanzibar War was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar on 27 August 1896. The conflict lasted approximately 38 minutes and is the shortest war in history. The immediate cause of the war was the death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini on 25 August 1896 and the subsequent succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash. The British authorities preferred Hamud bin Muhammed, who was more favourable to British interests, as Sultan. In accordance with a treaty signed in 1886, a condition for accession to the sultanate was that the candidate obtain the permission of the British Consul, and Khalid had not fulfilled this requirement. The British considered this a casus belli and sent an ultimatum to Khalid demanding that he order his forces to stand down and leave the palace. In response, Khalid called up his palace guard and barricaded himself inside the palace.

The ultimatum expired at 09:00 East Africa Time (EAT) on 27 August, by which time the British had gathered three cruisers, two gunships, 150 marines and sailors, and 900 Zanzibaris in the harbour area. The Royal Navy contingent were under the command of Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson whilst their Zanzibaris were commanded by Brigadier-General Lloyd Mathews of the Zanzibar army. Around 2,800 Zanzibaris defended the palace; most were recruited from the civilian population, but they also included the Sultan's palace guard and several hundred of his servants and slaves. The defenders had several artillery pieces and machine guns which were set in front of the palace sighted at the British ships. A bombardment which was opened at 09:02 set the palace on fire and disabled the defending artillery. A small naval action took place with the British sinking a Zanzibari royal yacht and two smaller vessels, and some shots were fired ineffectually at the pro-British Zanzibari troops as they approached the palace. The flag at the palace was shot down and fire ceased at 09:40.

The Sultan's forces sustained roughly 500 casualties, while only one British sailor was injured. Sultan Khalid received asylum in the German consulate before escaping to Tanganyika. The British quickly placed Sultan Hamud in power at the head of a puppet government. The war marked the end of Zanzibar as a sovereign state and the start of a period of heavy British influence.

Origins

Zanzibar was an island country in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Tanganyika; today it forms part of Tanzania. The island had been under the nominal control of the Sultans of Oman since 1698 when they expelled the Portuguese settlers who had claimed it in 1499. Sultan Majid bin Said declared the island independent of Oman in 1858, which was recognised by Great Britain, and split the Sultancy from that of Oman. The subsequent Sultans established their capital and seat of government at Zanzibar Town where a palace complex was built on the sea front. By 1896, this consisted of the palace itself; the Beit al-Hukm, an attached harem; and the Beit al-Hajaib or "House of Wonders"—a ceremonial palace said to be the first building in East Africa to be provided with electricity. The complex was mostly constructed of local timber and was not designed as a defensive structure. All three main buildings were adjacent to one another in a line, and linked by wooden covered bridges above street height.

Britain had had a long period of interaction with Zanzibar and had recognised the island's sovereignty and its Sultancy in 1886. As a result Britain generally maintained friendly relations with the country and its Sultans. However, Germany was also interested in East Africa and the two powers vied for control of trade rights and territory in the area throughout the late 19th century. Sultan Khalifah had granted rights to the land of Kenya to Britain and that of Tanganyika to Germany, a process resulting in the prohibition of slavery in those lands. Many of the Arab ruling classes were upset by this interruption of a valuable trade, which resulted in some unrest. In addition, the German authorities in Tanganyika refused to fly the flag of the Zanzibar Sultancy, which led to armed clashes between German troops and the local population. One such conflict in Tanga claimed the lives of 20 Arabs.

Sultan Khalifah sent Zanzibari troops led by General Lloyd Mathews, a former Lieutenant of the Royal Navy, to restore order in Tanganyika. The operation was largely successful, but anti-German feeling amongst the Zanzibari people remained strong. Further conflicts erupted at Bagamoyo where 150 natives were killed by German military forces and at Ketwa where German officials and their servants were murdered. Khalifah then granted extensive trade rights to the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) who, with German assistance, ran a naval blockade to halt the continuing domestic slave trade. Upon Khalifah's death in 1890 Ali bin Said ascended to the Sultancy. Sultan Ali banned the domestic slave trade (but not slave ownership), declared Zanzibar a British protectorate and appointed a British First Minister to lead his cabinet. The British were also guaranteed a veto over the future appointment of Sultans.

The year of Ali's ascension also saw the signing of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty between Britain and Germany. This treaty officially demarcated the spheres of interest in East Africa and ceded Germany's rights in Zanzibar to the United Kingdom. This granted the British government more influence in Zanzibar which they intended to use to eradicate slavery there, an objective they had held as early as 1804.

Sultan Ali's successor was Hamad bin Thuwaini, who became Sultan in 1893. Hamad maintained a close relationship with the British but there was dissent amongst his subjects over the increasing British control over the country, the British-led army and the abolition of the valuable slave trade. In order to control this dissent, the British authorities authorised the Sultan to raise a Zanzibari palace bodyguard of 1,000 men, but these troops were soon involved in clashes with the British-led police. Complaints about the bodyguards' activities were also received from the European residents in Zanzibar Town.

25 August

Sultan Hamad died suddenly at 11:40 EAT (08:40 UTC) on 25 August 1896. His 29 year-old nephew Khalid bin Bargash, who was suspected by some of his assassination, moved into the palace complex at Zanzibar Town without British approval, in contravention of the treaty agreed with Ali. The British government preferred an alternative candidate, Hamud bin Muhammed, who was more favourably disposed towards them. Khalid was warned by the Consul and Diplomatic Agent to Zanzibar, Basil Cave, and General Mathews to think carefully about his actions. This course of action had proved successful three years earlier when Khalid had tried to claim the sultancy after the death of Ali and the British Consul-General, Rennell Rodd, had persuaded him of the dangers of such an action.

Khalid ignored Cave's warning and his forces began mustering in the Palace Square under the command of Captain Saleh of the palace bodyguard. By the end of the day, they numbered 2,800 men armed with rifles and muskets. The majority were civilians but the force included 700 Zanzibari Askari soldiers who had sided with Khalid. The Sultan's artillery, which consisted of several Maxim machine guns, a Gatling gun, a seventeenth century bronze cannon and two 12 pounder field guns, was aimed at the British ships in the harbour. The 12 pounders had been presented to the Sultan by Wilhelm II, the German Emperor. The Sultan's troops also took possession of the Zanzibari Navy which consisted of one wooden sloop, the HHS Glasgow, built as a royal yacht for the Sultan in 1878 based on the British frigate HMS Glasgow.

Mathews and Cave also began to muster their forces, already commanding 900 Zanzibari askaris under Lieutenant Arthur Edward Harington Raikes of the Wiltshire Regiment who was seconded to the Zanzibar Army and held the rank of Brigadier-General. 150 sailors and marines were landed from the Pearl-class protected cruiser HMS Philomel and the gunboat HMS Thrush which were anchored in the harbour. The naval contingent, under the command of Captain O'Callaghan, came ashore within fifteen minutes of being requested to deal with any rioting caused by the general population. A smaller contingent of sailors under Lieutenant Watson of Thrush were put ashore to guard the British consulate, where British citizens were requested to gather for protection. HMS Sparrow, another gunboat, entered the harbour and was anchored opposite the palace next to Thrush.

Some concerns were raised among the British diplomats as to the reliability of Raikes' askaris, but they proved to be steady and professional troops hardened by good military drill and several expeditions to East Africa. They would later become the only land troops to be fired upon by the defenders. Raikes' troops were armed with two Maxim guns and a nine pounder cannon, and were stationed at the nearby customs house. The sultan attempted to have the US consul, Richard Dorsey Mohun, recognise his accession but the messenger was told that "as his accession had not been verified by Her Majesty's Government, it is impossible to reply."

Cave continued to send messages to Khalid requesting that he stand down his troops, leave the palace and return home but these were ignored and Khalid replied that he would proclaim himself Sultan at 15:00. Cave stated that this would constitute an act of rebellion and that Khalid's sultancy would not be recognised by the British government. At 14:30, Sultan Hamad was buried and exactly 30 minutes later a Royal Salute from the palace guns proclaimed Khalid's succession. Cave could not open hostilities without government approval and telegraphed the following message to the Foreign Office of Lord Salisbury's administration in London: "Are we authorised in the event of all attempts at a peaceful solution proving useless, to fire on the Palace from the men-of-war?" Meanwhile, Cave informed all other foreign consuls that all flags were to remain at half mast in honour of the late Hamad. The only one that did not was a large red flag flying from Khalid's palace. Cave also informed the consuls not to recognise Khalid as Sultan, to which they agreed.

26 August

At 10:00 on 26 August, the Archer-class protected cruiser HMS Racoon arrived at Zanzibar Town and was anchored in line with Thrush and Sparrow. At 14:00, the Edgar-class protected cruiser HMS St George, flagship of the Cape and East Africa Station, steamed into the harbour. Onboard were Rear-Admiral Harry Rawson and further British marines and sailors. At around the same time Lord Salisbury's reply arrived authorising Cave and Rawson to use the resources at their disposal to remove Khalid from power. The telegraph read: "You are authorised to adopt whatever measures you may consider necessary, and will be supported in your action by Her Majesty's Government. Do not, however, attempt to take any action which you are not certain of being able to accomplish successfully." Cave attempted further negotiations with Khalid but these failed and Rawson sent an ultimatum, requiring him to haul down his flag and leave the palace by 09:00 on 27 August or he would open fire. During the afternoon, all merchant vessels were cleared from the harbour and the British women and children removed to St. George and a British-India Steam Navigation Company vessel for their safety. That night, Consul Mohun noted that: "The silence which hung over Zanzibar was appalling. Usually drums were beating or babies cried but that night there was absolutely not a sound."

27 August

At 08:00 on the morning of 27 August, after a messenger sent by Khalid requested parley from Cave, the consul replied that he would only have salvation if he agreed to the terms of the ultimatum. At 08.30 a further messenger from Khalid declared that "We have no intention of hauling down our flag and we do not believe you would open fire on us"; Cave replied that "We do not want to open fire, but unless you do as you are told we shall certainly do so." At 08:55, having received no further word from the palace, aboard St George Rawson hoisted the signal "prepare for action". At exactly 09:00, General Lloyd Mathews ordered the British ships to commence the bombardment. At 09:02 Her Majesty's Ships Racoon, Thrush and Sparrow opened fire at the palace simultaneously, Thrush's first shot immediately dismounted an Arab 12-pounder cannon. 3,000 defenders, servants and slaves were present in the largely wooden palace and even with barricades of crates, bales and rubber, there were many casualties from the high explosive shells. Despite initial reports that he had been captured and was to be exiled to India, Sultan Khalid escaped from the palace. A Reuters news correspondent reported that the Sultan had "fled at the first shot with all the leading Arabs, who left their slaves and followers to carry on the fighting", but other sources state that he remained in the palace for longer. The shelling ceased at around 09:40, by which time the palace and attached harem had caught fire, the enemy artillery had been silenced and the Sultan's flag cut down.

During the bombardment a small naval engagement occurred when, at 09:05, the obsolete Glasgow fired upon the St George using her armament of 7 nine-pounder guns and a Gatling gun which had been a present from Queen Victoria to the Sultan. The return fire caused Glasgow to sink, though the shallow harbour meant that her masts remained out of the water. Glasgow's crew hoisted a British flag as a token of their surrender and they were all rescued by British sailors in launches. Thrush also sank two steam launches whose Zanzibari crews shot at her with rifles. Some land fighting occurred when Khalid's men fired on Raikes' askaris, with little effect, as they approached the palace. The fighting ceased with the end of the shelling. The British controlled the town and the palace and by the afternoon Hamud bin Muhammed, an Arab favourable to the British, had been installed as Sultan with much reduced powers. The British ships and crews had fired around 500 shells, 4,100 machine gun rounds and 1,000 rifle rounds during the engagement.

Aftermath

Around 500 Zanzibari men and women were killed or wounded during the bombardment, most of the dead a result of the fire that engulfed the palace. It is unknown how many of these casualties were combatants, but Khalid's gun crews were said to have been "decimated". British casualties amounted to one Petty Officer severely wounded aboard Thrush who later recovered. Although the majority of the Zanzibari townspeople sided with the British, the town's Indian quarter suffered from opportunistic looting and around twenty inhabitants lost their lives in the chaos. To restore order 150 British Sikh troops were transferred from Mombasa to patrol the streets. Sailors from St George and Philomel were landed to form a fire brigade to contain the fire which had spread from the palace to the nearby customs sheds. There was some concern about the fire at the customs sheds as they contained a sizeable store of explosives, but fortunately no explosion occurred.

Sultan Khalid, Captain Saleh and around forty followers sought refuge in the German consulate following their flight from the palace, where they were guarded by ten armed German sailors and marines whilst Mathews stationed men outside to arrest them if they tried to leave. Despite extradition requests the German consul refused to surrender Khalid to the British as his country's extradition treaty with Britain specifically excluded political prisoners. Instead, the German consul promised to remove Khalid to German East Africa without him "setting foot on the soil of Zanzibar". At 10:00 on 2 October, SMS Seeadler of the German Navy arrived in port; at high tide, one of Seeadler's boats made it up to the consulate's garden gate and Khalid stepped directly from consular grounds to a German war vessel and hence was free from arrest. He was transferred from the boat onto the Seeadler and was then taken to Dar es Salaam in German East Africa. Khalid was captured by British forces in 1916, during the East African Campaign of World War I, and exiled to Seychelles and Saint Helena before being allowed to return to East Africa, where he died at Mombasa in 1927. Khalid's supporters were punished by being forced to pay reparations to cover the cost of shells fired against them and for damages caused by the looting which amounted to 300,000 rupees.

Sultan Hamud was loyal to the British and acted as a figurehead for an essentially British-run government, the Sultancy only being retained to avoid the costs involved with running Zanzibar directly as a crown colony. Several months after the war, Hamud, with British prompting, abolished slavery in all its forms. The emancipation of slaves required them to present themselves to a government office and proved a slow process—within ten years only 17,293 slaves had been freed, from an estimated population of 60,000 in 1891.

The badly damaged palace complex was completely changed by the war. The harem, lighthouse and palace were demolished as the bombardment had left them unsafe The palace site became an area of gardens whilst a new palace was erected on the site of the harem. The House of Wonders was almost undamaged and would later become the main secretariat for the British governing authorities. During renovation work on the House of Wonders in 1897 a clocktower was added to its frontage to replace the lighthouse lost to the shelling. The wreck of the Glasgow remained in the harbour in front of the palace where the shallow waters ensured that her masts would remain visible for several years to come; it was eventually broken up for scrap in 1912.

The British protagonists were highly regarded by the governments in London and Zanzibar for their actions leading up to and during the war, and many were rewarded with appointments and honours. General Raikes, leader of the askaris, was appointed a First Class (Second Grade) member of the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar on 24 September 1896, a First Class member of the Zanzibari Order of Hamondieh on 25 August 1897 and later promoted to Commander of the Zanzibar armies. General Mathews, the Zanzibari army commander, was appointed a member of the Grand Order of Hamondieh on 25 August 1897 and became First Minister and Treasurer to the Zanzibari government. Basil Cave, the consul, was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 1 January 1897 and promoted to Consul-General on 9 July 1903. Harry Rawson was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for his work in Zanzibar and would later be Governor of New South Wales in Australia and receive promotion to Admiral. Rawson was also appointed a first class member of the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar on 8 February 1897 and the Order of Hamondieh on 18 June 1898.

Perhaps due to the effectiveness shown by the Royal Navy during the bombardment, there were no further rebellions against British influence during the remaining 67 years of the protectorate. The war, lasting around 40 minutes, is considered the shortest in recorded history.

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The Antonov A-40 Krylya Tanka was a Soviet attempt to allow a tank to glide into a battlefield after being towed aloft by an airplane, to support airborne forces or partisans. A prototype was built and tested in 1942, but was found to be unworkable. This vehicle is sometimes called the A-40T or KT.

Instead of loading light tanks onto gliders, as other nations had done, Soviet airborne forces had strapped T-27 tankettes underneath heavy bombers and landed them on airfields. In the 1930s there were experimental efforts to parachute tanks or simply drop them into water. During the 1940 occupation of Bessarabia, light tanks may have been dropped from a few metres by TB-3 bombers, allowing them to roll to a stop with the gearbox in neutral.

The biggest problem with air-dropping vehicles is that their crews drop separately, and may be delayed or prevented from bringing them into action. Gliders allow crews to arrive at the drop zone along with their vehicles. They also minimize exposure of the valuable towing aircraft, which needn't appear over the battlefield. So the Soviet Air Force ordered Oleg Antonov to design a glider for landing tanks.

Antonov was more ambitious, and instead of building a glider added a detachable cradle to a T-60 light tank, bearing large wood and fabric biplane wings and twin tail. Such a tank could glide into the battlefield, drop its wings, and be ready to fight within minutes.

One T-60 was converted into a glider in 1942, intended to be towed by a Petlyakov Pe-8 or Tupolev TB-3. The tank was lightened for air use by removing armament, ammunition, headlights and leaving a very limited amount of fuel. Even with the modifications, the TB-3 bomber had to ditch the glider during its only flight on September 2, 1942 to avoid crashing, due to the T-60's extreme drag (although the tank reportedly glided smoothly). A-40 was piloted by the famous Soviet glider experimental pilot Sergei Anokhin. The T-60 landed on a field near the airdrome, and after dropping the glider wings and tail, the driver returned it to its base. Due to the lack of sufficiently-powerful aircraft to tow it at the required 160 km/h, the project was abandoned.

The Soviet Union continued to develop methods to efficiently deploy airborne vehicles. By the mid-1970s they were able to para-drop BMD-1 fighting vehicles with crew members aboard.

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Police in the Australian state of Victoria have helped an elderly NSW man find his way home, after an epic nine-hour road trip that took him more than 600km off course and far into the wrong state.

The 80-year-old identified as Eric, from Pambula, near Merimbula on the NSW south coast, set off from a friend's house at Yass, on the Hume Highway southwest of Sydney, about 7.15am on Monday for the 613km trip home.

Police believe Eric took a wrong turn and stayed on the Hume Highway, taking him across the Victorian border at Albury-Wodonga and on towards Melbourne.

Constable Tom Windlow and Leading Senior Constable Clayton Smith of the police drug and alcohol section found Eric when they pulled into a roadhouse on the Princes Freeway at Lara, near Geelong, about 3.45pm.

Eric was 630km west of Pambula, and 654km away from Yass, when his adventure ended.

"I was stretching my legs, waiting for Tom to come back to the car when this little old man came up to me saying he was lost," Sen Const Smith said.

"He handed me his mobile and asked if I could speak to his wife."

The man's wife was frantic with worry, telling police he had been on the road for nine hours.

"Believe me, we never expected for her to say he had driven from Yass," Sen Const Smith said.

The members took Eric to Sunshine police station to meet family friends, who drove from Mount Eliza to meet him.

"He was such nice gentleman, full of stories and very grateful for our help," Sen Const Smith said.

"Although we had to laugh. When we asked him why he hadn't stopped earlier he replied, "I just like to drive."

Eric, who suffers slight dementia, and his wife were reunited on Tuesday afternoon, police said.

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Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso...serine is the third chemical name for "Coat Protein, Tobacco mosaic virus, Dahlemense Strain". In its complete form, the chemical name contains 1185 letters and is one of the longest words in English.

The term was published in the American Chemical Society's Chemical Abstracts in 1972, and is considered by some to be the longest real word. It does hold the record for the longest word published in an English language publication in a serious context — that is, for some reason other than to publish a very long word — but there are bigger proteins which would generate larger words if written.

In its complete form, the 1185-letter word is:

acetylseryltyrosylserylisoleucylthreonylserylprolylserylglutaminyl-phenylalanylvalylphenylalanylleucylserylserylvalyltryptophylalanyl-aspartylprolylisoleucylglutamylleucylleucylasparaginylvalylcysteinyl-threonylserylserylleucylglycylasparaginylglutaminylphenylalanyl-glutaminylthreonylglutaminylglutaminylalanylarginylthreonylthreonyl-glutaminylvalylglutaminylglutaminylphenylalanylserylglutaminylvalyl-tryptophyllysylprolylphenylalanylprolylglutaminylserylthreonylvalyl-arginylphenylalanylprolylglycylaspartylvalyltyrosyllysylvalyltyrosyl-arginyltyrosylasparaginylalanylvalylleucylaspartylprolylleucylisoleucyl-threonylalanylleucylleucylglycylthreonylphenylalanylaspartylthreonyl-arginylasparaginylarginylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylvalylglutamyl-asparaginylglutaminylglutaminylserylprolylthreonylthreonylalanylglutamyl-threonylleucylaspartylalanylthreonylarginylarginylvalylaspartylaspartyl-alanylthreonylvalylalanylisoleucylarginylserylalanylasparaginylisoleucyl-asparaginylleucylvalylasparaginylglutamylleucylvalylarginylglycyl-threonylglycylleucyltyrosylasparaginylglutaminylasparaginylthreonyl-phenylalanylglutamylserylmethionylserylglycylleucylvalyltryptophyl-threonylserylalanylprolylalanylserine

The letter combination yl appears in the word 166 times.

Etymology

While this term may seem daunting in its length, its construction is actually simple because it describes a relatively simple yet lengthy organic molecule. Single-chain organic molecules are constructed of numerous functional groups connected together. The name of any single-chain organic molecule is constructed by simply stringing all the names of the composite functional groups together in the order in which they are found in the molecule itself. All functional groups excluding the last one in the chain are named using their base form with the suffix replaced by yl. Thus, to form the name, all one must do is:

• List the name of each functional group in the molecule,
• Replace the suffixes of all functional groups but the last with yl, and
• Connect all the strings together.

As the molecule becomes larger the name becomes larger as well; a chemical formula may be necessary. The formula for this term can be written (comparatively) much more easily in IUPAC notation as shown next (where abbreviations for all functional groups present in the molecule are connected by hyphens):

Acetyl-Ser-Tyr-Ser-Ile-Thr-Ser-Pro-Ser-Gln-Phe-Val-Phe-Leu-Ser-Ser-Val-Trp-Ala-Asp-Pro-Ile-Glu-Leu-Leu-Asn-Val-Cys-Thr-Ser-Ser-Leu-Gly-Asn-Gln-Phe-Gln-Thr-Gln-Gln-Ala-Arg-Thr-Thr-Gln-Val-Gln-Gln-Phe-Ser-Gln-Val-Trp-Lys-Pro-Phe-Pro-Gln-Ser-Thr-Val-Arg-Phe-Pro-Gly-Asp-Val-Tyr-Lys-Val-Tyr-Arg-Tyr-Asn-Ala-Val-Leu-Asp-Pro-Leu-Ile-Thr-Ala-Leu-Leu-Gly-Thr-Phe-Asp-Thr-Arg-Asn-Arg-Ile-Ile-Glu-Val-Glu-Asn-Gln-Gln-Ser-Pro-Thr-Thr-Ala-Glu-Thr-Leu-Asp-Ala-Thr-Arg-Arg-Val-Asp-Asp-Ala-Thr-Val-Ala-Ile-Arg-Ser-Ala-Asn-Ile-Asn-Leu-Val-Asn-Glu-Leu-Val-Arg-Gly-Thr-Gly-Leu-Tyr-Asn-Gln-Asn-Thr-Phe-Glu-Ser-Met-Ser-Gly-Leu-Val-Trp-Thr-Ser-Ala-Pro-Ala-Ser

Note that this molecule contains only 158 functional groups (not 167 as predicted by the yl count and a terminal functional group) because of multiple occurrences of phenylalanine, which contributes the yl string twice per occurrence (in the form -phenylalanyl-).

credited to wikipedia

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Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house.

Suspicions were raised when dismembered parts of a human body were found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the Russian city of Perm, 1,150 km (720 miles) east of Moscow.

Three homeless men with previous criminal records have been arrested on suspicion of setting upon a foe with knives and a hammer before chopping up his corpse to eat, local investigators said in a statement on their www.susk.perm.ru Web site.

"After carrying out the crime, the corpse was divided up: part was eaten and part was also sold to a kiosk selling kebabs and pies," the Prosecutor-General's main investigative unit for the Perm region said in a statement issued Friday.

It was not immediately clear from the statement if any of the corpse had been sold to customers.

credited to reuters

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An image captured in a baby scan has been claimed to be the 'double' of Michael Jackson.

Parents-to-be Dawn Kelley and William Hickman were looking at the ultrasound scan of their unborn baby when they realised it looked like the late pop singer.

Mr Hickman, 29, a window cleaner, said: “I showed my daughter Ami, who’s six, and she saw it straight away, so I thought 'well if she can see it too it’s not just me seeing things’.”

Mother-of-six Miss Kelley, 34, went for her 20-week scan at Sunderland Royal as normal last month, but doctors could not see the foetus’s stomach or diaphragm.

A few weeks later she was sent to Grindon Lane Walk in Centre for a closer look.

The more powerful scanner there is normally used to examine internal organs so the images it produces much more detailed.

Mr Hickman said: “We were looking at the pictures again, and I just saw Jacko there.

“None of us are really Michael Jackson fans. I mean I like him, but we’re not crazy about him or anything.”

The children Chris, 16, Amanda, 15, Jason, 13, Alisha, 10, Ami-Lee, six, and Kye, four, all see the famous singer’s face in the scan photo too.

But the new family member will not be called Michael – the couple already know they are having a girl.

Miss Kelley is 24 weeks pregnant and due to give birth to her daughter in March. She said: “I’ve had plenty of scans before and none of the photos have ever looked like this one. It’s a bit spooky really.

“But it is my seventh child, and they say seven is a mythical number.”

credited to telegraph.co.uk

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The Montauk Project was alleged to be a series of secret United States government projects conducted at Camp Hero or Montauk Air Force Station on Montauk, Long Island for the purpose of developing psychological warfare techniques and exotic research including time travel. Jacques Vallee describes allegations of the Montauk Project as an outgrowth of stories about the Philadelphia Experiment, a conspiracy theory and urban legend that has been thoroughly debunked.

Conspiracy theories about the Montauk Project have circulated since the early 1980s. According to astrophysicist and UFO researcher Jacques Vallee, the Montauk Experiment stories seem to have originated with the account of Preston nicyhds, who claimed to have recovered repressed memories of his own involvement.

There is no definitive version of the Montauk Project narrative, but the most common accounts describe it as an extension or a continuation of the Philadelphia Experiment, alleged to have taken place in 1943. According to proponents, the Philadelphia Experiment supposedly aimed to render the USS Eldridge invisible to radar detection with disastrous results. Surviving researchers from the Philadelphia Experiment met in 1952-1953 with the aim of continuing their earlier work on manipulating the "electromagnetic shielding" that had been used to make the USS Eldridge invisible to radar and to the naked eye, and they wished to investigate the possible military applications of magnetic field manipulation as a means of psychological warfare.

Common versions of the tale have the researchers' initial proposals rebuffed by the United States Congress due to fears over the potential dangers of the research. Instead, the researchers bypass Congress and receive support from the Department of Defense, after promising the development of a weapon that could instantly trigger psychotic symptoms. The conspiracy theory relates that the funding came from a large cache of Nazi gold found in a train by U.S. soldiers near the Swiss border in France. Proponents allege that the train was destroyed, and all the soldiers involved in the discovery were killed as part of a coverup.

Various conspiracy theorists claim that experiments began in earnest from 1982 through to 1987-1988. They claim that during this time one, some or all of the following occurred at the site. The following claims are entirely unverified:

• Experiments were conducted in teleportation, parallel dimensions and time travel.

• On or about on August 12, 1983 the time travel project at Camp Hero interlocked in hyperspace with the original Project Rainbow back in 1943. The USS Eldridge was drawn into hyperspace and trapped there. Two men, Al Bielek and Duncan Cameron both claim to have leaped from the deck of the USS Eldridge while it was in hyperspace and ended up after a period of severe disorientation at Camp Hero in the year 1983 at Montauk Point. Here they claim to have met John von Neumann, a famous physicist and mathematician, even though he died in 1957. John Von Neumann had supposedly worked on the original Philadelphia Experiment, but the United States Navy denies this.

• A “porthole (portal) in time” was created which allowed researchers to travel anywhere in time or space. This was developed into a stable “Time Tunnel.” Underground tunnels with abandoned cultural archives were explored on Mars using this technique where apparently some kind of “Martians” had once lived many thousands and thousands of years earlier.

• Contact was made with alien extraterrestrials through the Time Tunnel and advanced kinds of ‘etheric technology’ was exchanged with them which enhanced the Montauk Project. This allowed broader access to hyperspace. Stewart Swerdlow also developed the “language of hyperspace”, utilizing archetypes and glyphs as well as colour and tone, in other words, a “non-linguistic language”, the language of the Creator, that is God itself. However many researchers have questioned the validity of Swerdlow and what he actually did within the Montauk Project.

• Enrico Chekov, a Spanish-Russian dissident, reported in 1988, after defecting to America, that satellite surveillance captured during the 1970s showed the formation of a large bubble of space-time centered on the site, lending further support to the D1 Base Time Tunnel research. After Chekov shared photographs with a reporter from the The New York Times, his apartment in Manhattan was burgled and the photos were all that was taken.

• People had their psychic abilities enhanced to the point where they could materialize objects out of thin air. Stewart Swerdlow claims to have been involved in the Montauk Project, and as a result, he says, his “psionic” faculties were boosted, but at the cost of emotional and psychological instability, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other issues, including being programmed with microchips, and also through the use of “psychotronic mind control”. An alien supposedly designed a chair, which an individual could sit in to boost his mental and precipatory powers. A prototype duplicate was given to Britain and put in a facility on the River Thames.

• The facility was expanded to as many as twelve levels and several hundred workers. Some reports have the facility extending under the town of Montauk itself and interconnected with vast maglev tunnel networks to other “Deep Underground Military Bases”, also known as “D1 Bases”.

• Nikola Tesla, whose death was faked in a conspiracy, was the chief director of operations at the base (which if they started in the 80s would make him 120+).

• Mass psychological experiments, such as the use of enormous subliminal messages projects and the creation of a “Men in Black” corps to confuse and frighten the public, were invented there.

After funding was in place, work allegedly began at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on Long Island, New York under the name of the "Phoenix Project", but the project soon required a large and advanced radar dish. The United States Air Force had a decommissioned base at Montauk, New York, not far from BNL, which had a complete SAGE radar installation. The site was large and remote, with Montauk Point not yet a tourist attraction. Water access supposedly allowed equipment to be moved in and out undetected. Key to the Montauk Project allegations, the SAGE radar worked on a frequency of 400 MHz - 425 MHz, providing access to the range of 410 MHz - 420 MHz signals said by theory proponents to influence the human mind.

Equipment was moved to Camp Hero at Montauk AFS in 1967-1968, and installed in a "Deep Underground Military Base" that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) were redeveloping and expanding beneath Montauk AFS on the surface at Montauk Point. According to conspiracy theorists, to mask the nature of the project the site was closed in 1969 and donated as a wildlife refuge, with the provision that everything underground within the "D1 Base" would remain the property of the United States Air Force.

However, Montauk AFS remained in operation until the early 1980s. The site was opened to the public on September 18, 2002 as Camp Hero State Park. The radar tower has been placed on the State and National Register of Historic Places. There are plans for a museum and interpretive center, focusing on World War II and Cold War-era history.

credited to wikipedia

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Manjit Singh, a 59-year-old security consultant from Leicester, England known as the "Ironman," on Thursday pulled a double-decker bus weighing more than eight metric tons over a distance of 21.2 meters with his hair.

The new record was set in central London to coincide with the fifth annual Guinness World Records Day, which organizers said prompted thousands of people around the world to set some bizarre benchmarks of their own.

For Singh, his latest achievement makes up for the disappointment of 2007, when he failed to break the record for the furthest distance to pull a double-decker bus with the ears.

"I will never be discouraged by defeat, because I know that success can be waiting around the next corner," he said. "The only way to get there is to try again and stay positive."

Also in London, 112 commuters put aside their English rush-hour reserve to set a record for the most people hugging for a minute, while Shaun Jones won the title for the fastest hot water bottle burst at 18.81 seconds.

In Italy, a new fastest time was set for eating a bowl of pasta (one minute 30 seconds) and in Norway the largest ever gingerbread man was made weighing 651 kg (1,435 lb). In Finland, people from 76 nationalities fitted into a single sauna.

Not everyone was successful, however. In Australia, 228 people were not enough to break the largest bikini parade record. Guinness World Records is considered the authority on world records, and its book has sold over 100 million copies.

credited to reuters.com

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The Georgia Aquarium, located in Atlanta, Georgia at Pemberton Place, is billed as the "world's largest aquarium" with more than 8.1 million US gallons (31,000 m³) of marine and fresh water housing more than 100,000 animals of 500 different species. The aquarium's notable specimens include four young whale sharks, three beluga whales and two manta rays.

Funded mostly by a $250 million donation from Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, the aquarium was built on a 20 acre (81,000 m²) site north of Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta. Marcus credited his 60th birthday dinner at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in 1990 as among the inspirations behind his desire to build an aquarium in Atlanta.

In November 2001, Bernard Marcus announced his idea to build an aquarium as a present to Atlanta, Georgia that would encourage both education and economic growth. Marcus and his wife Billi visited 56 aquariums in 13 countries to research and design a structure, and finally donated $250 million toward Georgia Aquarium’s construction. An additional $40 million dollars in financial contributions was donated by major corporations including the Coca-Cola Company, Turner Broadcasting, Home Depot, UPS, AirTran Airways, BellSouth, Georgia Pacific, Time Warner, SunTrust and Southern Company. The corporate donations allowed the aquarium to open debt free.

Marcus hired Jeff Swanagan, the then CEO of the Florida Aquarium, as the Georgia Aquarium's first employee in 2002. Swanagan had been credited with turning around the financially troubled Florida Aquarium during his tenure as CEO. Swanagan would become the Georgia Aquarium's founding president and executive director, and is largely credited with the creation of the aquarium. He oversaw every aspect in the creation of the aquarium, from the design of the structure to the procurement of animals for the exhibits.

After 27 months and with 60 animal habitats, 16,400 square feet (1,520 m2) of ball room space, 2 food service kitchens, gift shops, a 4-D theater, an on-site restaurant, and a parking lot, the Georgia Aquarium opened first on November 21, 2005 to annual pass holders and then on November 23, 2005 to the general public. At $26 per adult, $21.50 for Seniors, and $19.50 for Children, the price of admission to the non-profit aquarium is among the most expensive in the country. The aquarium has nevertheless far exceeded visitor expectations, welcoming its 1 millionth guest on March 1, 2006, only ninety-eight days after opening. The aquarium sold over 290,000 annual passes for its first year, before sales were halted (to avoid a "private club" atmosphere, according to Aquarium Executive Director Jeff Swanagan). The Georgia Aquarium welcomed its three millionth guest on August 24, 2006, its five millionth on May 23, 2007, and its ten millionth guest on June 25, 2009.

Jeff Swanagan remained the president and chief executive of the Georgia Aquarium until 2008, when he departed to join the Columbus Zoo. He was succceeded as president by Anthony Godfrey. Godfrey had originally been hired by Swanagan in 2004 as the aquarium's chief financial officer.

The Georgia Aquarium contains between 100,000 and 120,000 fish and other sea creatures, representing more than five hundred species. On June 14, 2005, the total number of specimens was unveiled after having previously being reported as "over 55,000". Marcus was quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as saying: "I have been saying that we would have more than 55,000 fish; I just never said how many more." The fish were transported from Taiwan to the aquarium by UPS in 42 tanks aboard an MD-11. UPS donated the cost of the shipping, estimated at over $200,000 US currency.

The aquarium's most famous specimens were four young whale sharks from Taiwan named Ralph, Norton, Alice and Trixie, after the primary characters from The Honeymooners. Ralph died from peritonitis on January 11, 2007, and Norton followed on June 13, 2007 when the aquarium made the decision to euthanize him after he had shown signs of erratic swimming and had stopped eating. Ralph and Norton were with the Georgia Aquarium at its opening; Alice and Trixie joined the aquarium June 3, 2006.

The Georgia Aquarium is the only institution outside of Asia to house whale sharks. The sharks are kept in a 6.3 million gallon (24,000 m³) tank, and the aquarium was actually designed around the whale shark exhibit. The importation of the whale sharks from Taiwan, which was overseen by Jeff Swanagan and staff biologists, was "top secret" and had never been attempted previously. The move required the use of large aircraft, trucks and boats to ship the massive aquatic animals to Atlanta. The four whale sharks were taken from Taiwan's annual fishing kill quota, which the country has since abolished. Under the quota, the whale sharks would have been killed and eaten if they had not been purchased by the Georgia Aquarium.

On May 25, 2007, Taiwan's Fisheries Agency announced the Aquarium had been approved to receive two more whale sharks before Taiwan bans the animals' capture in 2008. On June 1, 2007 the two new whale sharks arrived at the aquarium. The two sharks, caught earlier in 2007, are named Taroko, commemorating Taroko Gorge National Park, and Yushan after Taiwan's Jade Mountain.

The aquarium is currently one of only two aquariums in the United States to exhibit a Great Hammerhead Shark, the other is the Adventure Aquarium. The aquarium was also home to five 11 foot (3 m) long beluga whales. Two males named Nico and Gasper were rescued from a Mexico City amusement park where they lived under a roller coaster. Because of insufficient weight, skin lesions, and a bone disease, on January 2, 2007, Gasper was euthanized. Marina died on December 1, 2007 of what may have been natural causes (she was 25 years old). Nico died unexpectedly on October 31, 2009 after being relocated to SeaWorld San Antonio temporarily during an aquarium construction project. The remaining females (Natasha and Maris) are on breeding loan from the New York Aquarium. The aquarium is among six other US aquariums, including Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, with belugas in their collections.

Continuing its drive to display marine animals rarely seen in the United States, the aquarium acquired a manta ray from an aquarium facility in Durban, South Africa. Named "Nandi," the manta was caught by accident in nets meant to protect the coast from sharks. Officials at the Durban facility determined that the manta had outgrown its home, and offered the manta to the much-larger Georgia Aquarium. Nandi first went on display in the Ocean Voyager exhibit on August 25, 2008 as the first manta ray on display in the country, and making the aquarium one of only four in the world to display one. A second manta ray was added to the collection in September 2009.

The aquatic animals are displayed in five different galleries: Georgia Explorer, Tropical Diver, Ocean Voyager, Cold- Water Quest, and River Scout. Each corresponds to a specific environment. At the left as one enters the aquarium is the Georgia Explorer exhibit, geared especially towards children. It features a number of touch tanks with rays and sharks as well as exhibits featuring sea turtles and the wildlife of Gray's Reef – a National Marine Sanctuary off the Georgia Coast. The second exhibit, River Scout, also reflects regional environments. It features an overhead river where visitors can see North American fish from the bottom up. In addition to local specimens, this exhibit displays piranha, electric fish, and other unusual freshwater life. The third section of the aquarium, Cold Water Quest, features animals from the polar regions of the world and contains most of the mammals in the aquarium's collection. This exhibit includes beluga whales in the aquarium's second largest habitat, California sea lions, Japanese spider crabs, and African black-footed penguins. The fourth exhibit, entitled Ocean Voyager, includes the vast majority of the aquarium's water and almost 100,000 fish. This exhibit is designed to feature the life of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, and showcases the aquarium's whale sharks, as well as a 100 foot (30 m) underwater tunnel and the world's second largest viewing window. The final exhibit takes an artistic turn, as the Tropical Diver exhibit features many curious and haunting forms of aquatic life, including a living reef with live coral. The aquarium also features a "4D" movie "Deepo's Undersea 3D Wondershow", and other attractions, including the Ocean Voyager – Journey With Giants exhibit hall where the Chedd-Angier-Lewis production company, with Electrosonic Inc., has produced the Open Ocean Touchwall, a dynamic, interactive projection for species identification. This is a virtual aquarium where larger than life, fully articulated 3-D renderings of Open Ocean fish swim across six panels assembled to simulate a tank. Guests are invited to reach out and place hands or fingers on the fish. As they do so, fun and informative content bubbles appear to educate the guest about the particular species they have chosen. Also, in 2009, the "Titanic Aquatic" exhibit opened, which features a walkthrough of what it was like on the ship RMS Titanic. The exhibit will only be at the aquarium until September 7, 2009.

The aquarium development was managed by Heery International who served as the Program Manager / Owner's representative for the Georgia Aquarium. The base building was designed by Atlanta-based architecture firm tvsdesign, formerly Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates. In addition, tvsdesign also did the interior design of the facility as well as the design of the two retail shops located inside the aquarium. The aquarium galleries were designed by the St. Louis based firm of PGAV.

According to aquarium founder Bernard Marcus, the aquarium's conservation and environmental mission is just as important as its status as an attraction. Long before opening, the aquarium was already working with Georgia Tech and Georgia State University in Atlanta and the University of Georgia in Athens to help save endangered species through education and research programs.

The acquisition of the male beluga whales, previously suffering in an inadequate environment, was hailed by Marcus as a prime example of the type of conservation activities the Aquarium should be involved with. Approximately 100 tarpon stranded in a tidal pool at Skidaway Island, off the Georgia coast, were rescued for the collection. Coral used in exhibits at the Aquarium is manmade in a collaboration between Georgia Tech and the University of the South Pacific, produced by suspending blocks of pumice over a reef near the village of Tagaqe, Fiji for eight months so that seaweeds and reef invertebrates could establish colonies.

The Georgia Aquarium, the world’s largest at the time of its opening in November 2005, encompasses 550,000 square feet (5.1 ha; 13 acres) of covered space and includes 328 tons of acrylic windows, 290 plumbing fixtures, 200 floor drains, 53 roof tops, 61 miles (98 km) of wires and pipes and 100,000 yards (91,000 m) of concrete in the structure. It holds 8,000,000 US gallons (30,000 m3) of fresh and salt water (conditioned with 1,500,000 pounds (680 t) of "Instant Ocean" sea salt mix) and houses more than 100,000 fish and animals. The blue metal and glass exterior of the aquarium was designed to resemble a giant ark breaking through a wave. The ship’s hull appears to emerge from two large buildings that feature curved, flowing roofs that were designed to represent ocean swells. The record for largest aquarium in the world is highly contested; however, Dubai's three story Dubai Mall aquarium claims it will be the world's largest when it opens in the new Burj Dubai project.

With an accelerated 27-month schedule, the project timeline for the construction of the aquarium was aggressive. To facilitate the phased construction activities that were essential to meeting the project schedule, two-ply asphalt BUR was installed over a lightweight concrete deck. This temporary roof allowed for expedited construction and the associated roof traffic. The final stage included installation of the light gray FiberTite roofing system, which was selected to match the gray wall panels. Construction of the aquarium was contracted by Brasfield & Gorrie, a general contractor headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama.

In addition to the massive habitats that are the core of the aquarium, the facility includes the 16,400 square feet (1,520 m2) Oceans Ballroom – a banquet hall that can host events for up to 1100 seated or 1600 at a reception. The hall features two 10 by 28 feet (3.0 m × 8.5 m) windows into the exhibits housing the whale sharks and beluga whales. It can also be subdivided into three smaller spaces for events. Chef Wolfgang Puck's company will manage catering services for this facility. The aquarium also includes a fairly large food court with tables extending into the main lobby. The costs of building the aquarium escalated beyond Marcus' original US$250 million donation. To complete the facility without scaling back plans, six local companies — AirTran Airways, BellSouth, Georgia-Pacific, The Home Depot, Southern Company, and SunTrust Banks — signed on as presenting sponsors for exhibits.

In May of 2008, the Georgia Aquarium announced plans to build a $110 million expansion to the facility for a new dolphin exhibit. The expansion will occupy an area of 84,000 square feet (7,800 m2) and will contain 1,300,000 US gallons (4,900 m3) of water. Located on the west side of the facility, the exhibit will feature space for live presentations, observation windows and opportunities for visitors to interact with the animals, which are being lent by Marineland on a breeding loan. This expansion will be self funded by the aquarium, possibly with the help of a corporate sponsor.

Construction began later in 2008, and the scheduled completion date is November 2010, five years after the aquarium first opened. During part of the construction, the aquarium's three beluga whales were temporarily relocated to SeaWorld San Antonio. Beluga whales are very sensitive to sound, and while officials had not noted any excessive amounts of stress, it was decided to remove them anyway and eliminate the possibility. Unexpectedly, one of the three belugas, Nico, died at SeaWorld on October 31, 2009; a preliminary necropsy was unable to determine if Nico's death was caused by the move or by something else.

Originally proposed for the Atlantic Station development in Midtown Atlanta, the Georgia Aquarium is located in downtown Atlanta, just north of Centennial Olympic Park. In addition to the Park and the Aquarium, within a short distance are the Georgia Dome, the Georgia World Congress Center, Philips Arena, and CNN Center. The Coca-Cola Company donated 9 acres (40,000 m²; 4 ha) of land to the site and opened a new World of Coca-Cola attraction on property adjacent to the aquarium. The site is named Pemberton Place in honor of Coca-Cola creator John Pemberton.

Even before opening, the Georgia Aquarium helped drive new development in the area aiding efforts by the City of Atlanta and Central Atlanta Progress, a group of local business leaders, to revitalize downtown. In December 2004, a $300 million office and hotel development was announced for a nearby site. The complex is named Allen Plaza in commemoration of former Atlanta mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., and includes office space for the Southern Company and accounting firm Ernst & Young, as well as W Hotel.

credited to wikipedia

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New Zealand's champion rabbit thrower is a 19-year-old female German tourist.

Lisa Lutz could not believe her luck when she out-threw a Waitomo local by the name of "Butch" at the world rabbit throwing championship in Waitomo yesterday.

More than 70 people took part in the event, according to organiser Barry Woods, who said it was great to see people of all ages rolling up their sleeves and taking part.

"Basically this was a stand against the PC brigade who think there is something wrong with what goes on in the real world," Mr Woods said.

Competitors selected a dead rabbit from a pile and threw it into a trailer attached to a motorbike which, Mr Woods said, was exactly how it's done on the farm.

"Why shouldn't kids be able to see how it's done, handle a dead animal and learn about pests which destroy the environment?" he said.

Miss Lutz won a trip for two on the Waitomo Riverjet and a $100 meal voucher for her throwing ability but admits to being embarrassed about the win. "I couldn't believe it, I just laughed. It was very funny."

Miss Lutz is in New Zealand on a 12-month working holiday.

credited to stuff.co.nz

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The end of the world is near—December 21, 2012, to be exact—according to theories based on a purported ancient Maya prediction and fanned by the marketing machine behind the soon-to-be-released 2012 movie.

But could humankind really meet its end in 2012—drowned in apocalyptic floods, walloped by a secret planet, seared by an angry sun, or thrown overboard by speeding continents?

And did the ancient Maya—whose empire peaked between A.D. 250 and 900 in what is now Mexico and Central America—really predict the end of the world in 2012?

At least one aspect of the 2012, end-of-the-world hype is, for some people, all too real: the fear.

NASA's Ask an Astrobiologist Web site, for example, has received thousands of questions regarding the 2012 doomsday predictions—some of them disturbing, according to David Morrison, senior scientist with the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

"A lot of [the submitters] are people who are genuinely frightened," Morrison said.

"I've had two teenagers who were considering killing themselves, because they didn't want to be around when the world ends," he said. "Two women in the last two weeks said they were contemplating killing their children and themselves so they wouldn't have to suffer through the end of the world."

Fortunately, with the help of scientists like Morrison, most of the predicted 2012 cataclysms are easily explained away.

2012 MYTH 1

Maya Predicted End of the World in 2012

The Maya calendar doesn't end in 2012, as some have said, and the ancients never viewed that year as the time of the end of the world, archaeologists say.

But December 21, 2012, (give or take a day) was nonetheless momentous to the Maya.

"It's the time when the largest grand cycle in the Mayan calendar—1,872,000 days or 5,125.37 years—overturns and a new cycle begins," said Anthony Aveni, a Maya expert and archaeoastronomer at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

The Maya kept time on a scale few other cultures have considered.

During the empire's heyday, the Maya invented the Long Count—a lengthy circular calendar that "transplanted the roots of Maya culture all the way back to creation itself," Aveni said.

During the 2012 winter solstice, time runs out on the current era of the Long Count calendar, which began at what the Maya saw as the dawn of the last creation period: August 11, 3114 B.C. The Maya wrote that date, which preceded their civilization by thousands of years, as Day Zero, or 13.0.0.0.0.

In December 2012 the lengthy era ends and the complicated, cyclical calendar will roll over again to Day Zero, beginning another enormous cycle.

"The idea is that time gets renewed, that the world gets renewed all over again—often after a period of stress—the same way we renew time on New Year's Day or even on Monday morning," said Aveni, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012.

2012 MYTH 2

Breakaway Continents Will Destroy Civilization

In some 2012 doomsday prophecies, the Earth becomes a deathtrap as it undergoes a "pole shift."

The planet's crust and mantle will suddenly shift, spinning around Earth's liquid-iron outer core like an orange's peel spinning around its fleshy fruit.

2012, the movie, envisions a Maya-predicted pole shift, triggered by an extreme gravitational pull on the planet—courtesy of a rare "galactic alignment"—and by massive solar radiation destabilizing the inner Earth by heating it.

Breakaway oceans and continents dump cities into the sea, thrust palm trees to the poles, and spawn earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and other disasters.

Scientists dismiss such drastic scenarios, but some researchers have speculated that a subtler shift could occur—for example, if the distribution of mass on or inside the planet changed radically, due to, say, the melting of ice caps.

Princeton University geologist Adam Maloof has extensively studied pole shifts, and tackles this 2012 myth in 2012: Countdown to Armageddon, a National Geographic Channel documentary airing Sunday, November 8.

Maloof says magnetic evidence in rocks confirm that continents have undergone such drastic rearrangement, but the process took millions of years—slow enough that humanity wouldn't have felt the motion.

2012 MYTH 3

Galactic Alignment Spells Doom

Some sky-watchers believe 2012 will close with a "galactic alignment," which will occur for the first time in 26,000 years (for example, see the Web site Alignment 2012).

In this scenario, the path of the sun in the sky would appear to cross through what, from Earth, looks to be the midpoint of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which in good viewing conditions appears as a cloudy stripe across the night sky.

Some fear that the lineup will somehow expose Earth to powerful unknown galactic forces that will hasten its doom—perhaps through a "pole shift" (see above) or the stirring of the supermassive black hole at our galaxy's heart.

Others see the purported event in a positive light, as heralding the dawn of a new era in human consciousness.

NASA's Morrison has a different view.

"There is no 'galactic alignment' in 2012," he said, "or at least nothing out of the ordinary."

He explained that a type of "alignment" occurs during every winter solstice, when the sun, as seen from Earth, appears in the sky near what looks to be the midpoint of the Milky Way.

Horoscope writers may be excited by alignments, Morrison said. But "the reality is that alignments are of no interest to science. They mean nothing," he said. They create no changes in gravitational pull, solar radiation, planetary orbits, or anything else that would impact life on Earth.

The speculation over alignments isn't surprising, though, he said.

"Ordinary astronomical phenomena are imbued with a sense of threat by people who already think the world is going to end."

Regarding galactic alignments, University of Texas Maya expert David Stuart writes on his blog that "no ancient Maya text or artwork makes reference to anything of the kind."

Even so, the end date of the current Long Count cycle—winter solstice 2012—may be evidence of Maya astronomical skill, said Aveni, the archaeoastronomer.

"I don't rule out the likelihood that astronomy played a role" in the selection of 2012 as the cycle's terminus, he said.

Maya astronomers built observatories and, by observing the night skies and using mathematics, learned to accurately predict eclipses and other celestial phenomena. Aveni notes that the start date of the current cycle was likely tied to a solar zenith passage, when the sun crosses directly overhead, and its terminal date will fall on a December solstice, perhaps by design.

These choices, he said, may indicate that the Maya calendar is tied to seasonal agricultural cycles central to ancient survival.

2012 MYTH 4

Planet X Is on a Collision Course With Earth

Some say it's out there: a mysterious Planet X, aka Nibiru, on a collision course with Earth—or at least a disruptive flyby.

A direct hit would obliterate Earth, it's said. Even a near miss, some fear, could shower Earth with deadly asteroid impacts hurled our way by the planet's gravitational wake.

Could such an unknown planet really be headed our way in 2012, even just a little bit?

Well, no.

"There is no object out there," NASA astrobiologist Morrison said. "That's probably the most straightforward thing to say."

The origins of this theory actually predate widespread interest in 2012. Popularized in part by a woman who claims to receive messages from extraterrestrials, the Nibiru doomsday was originally predicted for 2003.

"If there were a planet or a brown dwarf or whatever that was going to be in the inner solar system three years from now, astronomers would have been studying it for the past decade and it would be visible to the naked eye by now," Morrison said.

"It's not there."

2012 MYTH 5

Solar Storms to Savage Earth

In some 2012 disaster scenarios, our own sun is the enemy.

Our friendly neighborhood star, it's rumored, will produce lethal eruptions of solar flares, turning up the heat on Earthlings.

Solar activity waxes and wanes according to approximately 11-year cycles. Big flares can indeed damage communications and other Earthly systems, but scientists have no indications the sun, at least in the short term, will unleash storms strong enough to fry the planet.

"As it turns out the sun isn't on schedule anyway," NASA astronomer Morrison said. "We expect that this cycle probably won't peak in 2012 but a year or two later."

2012 MYTH 6

Maya Had Clear Predictions for 2012

If the Maya didn't expect the end of time in 2012, what exactly did they predict for that year?

Many scholars who've pored over the scattered evidence on Maya monuments say the empire didn't leave a clear record predicting that anything specific would happen in 2012.

The Maya did pass down a graphic—though undated—end-of-the-world scenario, described on the final page of a circa-1100 text known as the Dresden Codex. The document describes a world destroyed by flood, a scenario imagined in many cultures and probably experienced, on a less apocalyptic scale, by ancient peoples.

Aveni, the archaeoastronomer, said the scenario is not meant to be read literally—but as a lesson about human behavior.

He likens the cycles to our own New Year period, when the closing of an era is accompanied by frenetic activities and stress, followed by a rebirth period, when many people take stock and resolve to begin living better.

In fact, Aveni says, the Maya weren't much for predictions.

"The whole timekeeping scale is very past directed, not future directed," he said. "What you read on these monuments of the Long Count are events that connected Maya rulers with ancestors and the divine.

"The farther back you can plant your roots in deep time the better argument you can make that you're legit," Aveni said. "And I think that's why these Maya rulers were using Long Count time.

"It's not about a fixed prediction about what's going to happen."

credited to news.nationalgeographic.com

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