Largest Man made structure on Earth

Well, most of us might say the Great Pyramids or the Great Wall of China and some smart dorks might say Mubarak al-Kabir Tower, Kuwait, but then most of us are wrong. The largest single cohesive man made structure is Fresh Kills, a rubbish dump on Staten Island, New York.

It was opened in 1948 and soon became the largest structure on earth eventually trumping the Great Wall of China in terms of volume. The site is 12 sq.km in area, and when operational 20 barges shipped in everyday, each carrying 650 tons of garbage. At its peak it was 25 m taller than the statue of liberty.

The landfill was closed in March, 2001 following protests by the local population, only to be opened again to cope with the enormous amount of debris created during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. It has now completely shut down and landscaping has also been completed. It now looks somewhat like this.

Lie and reduce your intelligence

Well, its been pretty long since I have written on my blog. After much persuasion (ahem!!) from one of my blog followers I decided, to open my pandora box, yet again for all my blog readers. This time I put my hand in to delve into a subject, about which we have very little knowledge. Its our very own brain.
You must have heard about grey cells in our brain, that does most of the thinking part. Well that is somewhat true, these cells which appear grey in a CAT scan are located on the outer periphery of our brain. In between all these cells are white cells which transfer signals from one grey cell to other. Basically they are the one which communicate with the rest of our body parts as well. When we lie, it is our white cells which become very active, since they have to communicate to all our organs to stay calm and control the emotions, so that it may appear as truth. Not much of thinking required there.
Okay, the white cells did a good job, you said a lie as if it were true but in effect a you destroyed your grey cells. Pathological liars and notorious criminals have more amount of white cells than grey cells in their brains. So the next time you decide to say a lie, you might be killing a few of your own thinking cells.

Calcutta - The city of joy

I have not been writing for a long time now. That's because I had gone to visit Kolkata(erstwhile Calcutta). This famous city came into limelight when the East India company first set its foot on this soil. This huge and wealthy nation, unable to unite against a common enemy, crumbled and soon came under the British Raj.

Calcutta (now Kolkata) became the capital of British India. Most of Central Calcutta still looks like a British City. With huge buildings, adorned with large columns and statues at the top, the entire city presents a royal look.

The city has a huge fort known as Fort William. This fort is now used by the Indian Army but it holds the dubious record for being only fort in the world which has never been attacked. There are a large number of famous monuments in Kolkata built during the British Raj. Do have a look at the pictures.

Break the sound barrier!!

Well, actually most of us have broken the sound barrier. If you feel you haven't, then just carry out this simple experiment. Moisten a handkerchief with some water, now hold it from the opposite ends and whirl it in air so that the dangling corners wind up around the diagonal forming, kind of a rope. Hold it tightly along the corners, leave one of the corners and simultaneously whip it in air.

In the first few attempts you might not get any thing, but after some time, when you get the hang of it, you'll here a crackling sound. This crackling sound is due to the tip of the wet handkerchief crossing the sound barrier and the sound produced is a sonic boom!! The tip of the chief crosses a speed of 750 mph.

For those of you not able to get it right, you can go to ebay and buy a bullwhip for yourself. Bullwhips were used in earlier times to gather the cows, not by hitting them, but by whipping it in air to produce this crackling sound. But please play safe, a bullwhip or a wet handkerchief can cause a lot of pain if it hits you.

Next to humans!!??

The rodent you see here is a Beaver, found in large parts of North America. Beavers were going extinct a few years back due to large scale hunting for their skin. Now under the wildlife protection act their population has grown tremendously.

These little creatures can create quite some problem if they end up in your backyard. The American beaver constructs solid dams and lodges to live and raise their young. Moreover, building fortress like lodges and dams helps it escape unfriendly animals.

It is a fascinating process. The beaver first chooses a site towards the narrow end of a stream. Then it starts to fell trees. The animal stands on its hind legs and gnaws at the tree trunk with its sharp chisel-like teeth. The branches are cut off and the tree is then dragged or floated to the chosen site to dam the water. The tree acts like a wall.

The beaver uses broken branches, stones and mud to make the dam watertight. On this structure it builds a large dome-shaped lodge with two underwater entrances. One is a general entrance while the other entrance helps the beaver escape the animals that could harm it.

Making such a structure causes a huge reservoir to form behind it thus raising the water table in the area which could ultimately cause your home to collapse!! THE ONLY OTHER SPECIES KNOWN TO ALTER ITS HABITAT TO SUCH EXTREME PROPORTIONS ARE HUMANS.

"Bombs away" - The last words he ever said

Well, many of us know that this is the largest canon in the world. Made in 1720, situated in Jaigarh Fort, Rajasthan, India, it weighs over 50 tonnes(100,000 pounds) and is 20 ft in length. The wheels are 9 ft in diameter.

But what most of us might not know is how is it operated. It uses 100 kilos (220 lbs) of explosives and it takes four elephants to rotate the gun. There is a huge water tank behind the canon in which the canon operator and others have to jump after lighting the fuse. When it was first test fired the canon operator died because he could not jump into the water in time and the canon ball landed 35 km(22 miles) away!!!

Well, it was never fired again, since the fort was never attacked and i wonder who took the job of the canon operator.

Did they go to moon??

Well, this debate has been raging on incessantly since 1969, when Apollo 11, the first man on moon mission, was launched. While many say they did land on the moon, there is quite a lot of evidence to support that they did not. With the recent discovery of a video of the earth, from Apollo 11, it becomes evident that the moon mission is a complete farce.
The video, taken by Neil Armstrong, is of the earth from his moon shuttle through a window when their shuttle is very close to the moon.
A complete photograph of the earth, can only be taken from a high orbit. But what the crew of Apollo 11 had ingeniously done is that they placed the camera at the far end of the shuttle and put off all the lights. The circumference of the window appears as the diameter of the earth and the dark walls as the space. Thus proving they were in a very low orbit as that of an ordinary satellite!! The photograph as shown is only a part of the earth's surface as taken from Apollo 11.
This video was first released in a documentary 'A funny thing happened on the way to the moon'