Happy April Fools Day! Thought I would have some fun and share some interesting facts, pranks and photos about this day.
If you would like to know the history, here is a short two minute video which supplies the highlights of the history of this day. I never knew any of this, but then, I never looked or researched April Fools Day either. Then comes the fun stuff – although the history is interesting….
It appears that Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator Rick Santorum have both grabbed a hold of Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom’s comment, “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch, you can kind of shake it up and we start all over,” and ran full speed ahead with it.
All devoted dog and cat owners love arriving home to their pets. The wagging tails, the bright eyes, the wet sloppy licks, the purring and rubbing up against your legs… But sometimes…
… you come home to this…
One year ago on March 6, 2011, a trifecta of disasters hit Japan. First was a 9.0 earthquake which caused a massive tsunami to hit the shore. A tsunami so large that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suffered a triple meltdown. A combination of all three killed as many as 20,000 people, left tens of thousands of homes and businesses in ruins, and turned that area of Japan into a ghost town.
Willow, Alaska — Sixty-six mushers began their quest to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race with the competition’s official start Sunday in Willow.
The mushers and their dog teams will spend about the next eight days traveling across nearly a thousand miles of Alaska wilderness in a sled, all trying to be the first musher to reach the old gold rush town of Nome.
I am sure you have all heard by now that a powerful severe storm system moved across the United States on Friday, with a slew of tornadoes from Alabama to Indiana contributing to at least five deaths and threatening even more destruction as the day wore on.
89 days old
When Siku the polar bear cub was introduced to the public late last year, he quickly became an Internet sensation, with his own Web and Facebook pages. But with fame often comes responsibility, and officials at Denmark’s Scandinavian Wildlife Park said Siku would have an important burden to shoulder.
“Siku is going to be an ambassador for polar bears, for global warming,” park director Frank Vigh-Larsen said in December.
Saint Valentine’s Day, often simply Valentine’s Day, is a holiday observed on February 14 honoring one or more early Christian martyrs named Valentinus. It was first established by Pope Gelasius I in 496 AD, and was later deleted from the General Roman Calendar of saints in 1969 by Pope Paul VI. It is celebrated in countries around the world, mostly in the West, although it remains a working day in all of them.
David Kracov’s breathtaking sculpture entitled The Book of Life will really give you butterflies.
The metal sculpture, which stands at around half a metre tall, is a tribute to the extraordinary life of Rabbi Yossi Raichik, director of Charbad’s Children of Chernobyl organisation.
Photo credit: unknown
This video is a very well produced “mockumentary” which follows the journey of a plastic bag from a California city to the ocean with it’s final destination of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” At the bottom of this post are some photos, but I will warn you, some of them are disturbing.
The Playing with Pigs project is researching the complex relationship we have with domesticated pigs by designing a game. Designing new forms of human-pig interaction can create the opportunity for consumers and pigs to forge new relations as well as to experience the cognitive capabilities of each other. The game is called Pig Chase.
A New York Giants Super Bowl victory celebration turned ugly at UMass Amherst late Sunday night. After the Patriots lost, police say about 1,500 students rioted in the southwest residential quad area, leading to 14 arrests. Police used flash bombs, horses, and some sort of non-lethal ammunition to subdue the rowdy students.
After the scene was contained, students tried to riot again; but were quickly stopped.
McDonald’s very foolishly ran a radio ad in the midwest which said, “Trying a brand new menu item at McDonald’s isn’t risky. You know what’s risky… petting a stray pit bull…” Naturally, this created an outburst from the owners of pit bulls, formally known as American Staffordshire Terrier or the Stafforshire Bull Terrier in England. Especially angry, and rightly so, are those owners which rescued a stray or an abandoned pit.
During the late 19th and early 20th century, the few laws prohibiting child labor were moderate and rarely enforced.
In North Carolina, the age limit was 13 for employment in factories such as mills, and children under 18 were allowed to work up to a shocking 66 hours per week! Mill owners had to “knowingly and willfully” break these laws before they could be convicted.
Meet a college cheerleader who looks more like an Olympic bodybuilder.
Anna Watson of the University of Georgia does not look like a typical member of a pep squad. But thanks to a rigorous workout schedule and a disciplined diet, the 5-foot-10 inch Watson sculpted four inches of muscles on her arms in 10 months, according to Red and Black, Georgia’s student newspaper.
Here are some amazing photos of the Coast Concordia. It has been hard to grasp the size of this ship from most of the pictures I’ve seen, and the news coverage on TV and the internet. However, in a few of these photos, the rescuers look like tiny miniatures when photographed next to sections of the ship. These are some truly incredible pictures.
Clicking on a thumbnail will bring up the photo in full size and you may then toggle through at your own pace. More…
Funny weather forecast. Click to enlarge.
A state of emergency has been declared in Oregon and Washington, where a powerful winter storm brought deadly floods, heavy snows of up to 4 feet, a severe ice storm, and damaging winds Wednesday and Thursday. Heavy rains of 3 – 8 inches have fallen over a wide swath of Western Oregon since Monday, causing major to record flooding on multiple rivers and creeks. In Albany, Oregon, a family of four drove out of a supermarket parking lot and into a flooded Perwinkle Creek Wednesday night, and were swept away. Two people were rescued, but a 20-month-old boy and his mother drowned. The Marys River in Philomath rose to its highest flood on record yesterday, and will remain at major flood stage today before gradually receding tonight. The rains have tapered off over much of the region today, but renewed rains are expected later today and intermittently into early next week.
I am currently house and dog-sitting for my dear friend, Lyn. She called a few weeks back and told me that she decided to fly to Kansas City to visit her brother whom she has not seen in years, and asked if I could watch the dogs and house. How could I say “no.” Lyn has always been there for me, even allowing me to rent (very cheaply) a spare bedroom for nearly two years when I was struggling through some financial difficulties. And, fortunately for me, Lyn has always been a great sport when I pull my little wise-ass jokes on her, like borrowing one of her cars when mine was in the shop. I returned home and basically asked her out right, “Sooooo… who is your auto insurance carrier again?” You know… stupid little stuff like that all the time. But before I go into the one today, you need to understand a bit more about Lyn. More…
Rome (CNN) – At least three people were killed and scores remain unaccounted for as a giant cruise ship keeled onto its side after running aground near the Italian island of Giglio on Friday night, local emergency officials said Saturday.
Rescue teams worked through the night to evacuate more than 4,000 people from the Costa Concordia, owned by Genoa-based Costa Cruises, after it ran aground off of Italy’s western coast. More…
Okay, I cannot believe I’m posting this, but somehow stumbled across a site on how to make Unicorn Poop – which is basically a sugar cookie with rainbow colors, stars, and sparkle. I have to admit, the creativity is what caught my eye – and I found it somewhat humorous. So here are a few pictures of Unicorn Poop. If you want the recipe and more details, visit the authors site, here. I’m not “Suzy-Homemaker” so absolutely no recipe posting on this site. More…
When I first saw an image of a one-eyed shark circulating around the internet, I thought it was a photoshopped joke. I was wrong. This is an actual life form. Here is a brief description and some photos of this very odd creature. More…
As is any given year, many notables, both famous and infamous, passed on. There are far too many to list them all, but here are a few which touched our hearts in various ways. They are all listed in chronological order from January, 2011, to December, 2011. Due to the length of this, I have added a list in alphabetical order (last name, first name) tagged to anchors so you may jump to who you would like to view. More…
During the summer of 2011, which happens to be one of the worst droughts on record for those of us here in the United States Southwest, fires erupted all over causing mass destruction in many states. I reside in Albuquerque NM, and we were very fortunate here in the city. No large fires. A few small ones sprang up in the Rio Grande Bosque, but were quickly put out with little damage. However, Albuquerque, as well as a large part of the state, were victims from the mass amount of smoke and ash from the Arizona Wallow fires in June 2011. The first picture below is one I took from my back yard late one afternoon. No, it is not a setting sun… it is pink due to the thick smoke in the air. Ash covered everything for several days, choked our swamp coolers, and caused a large increase of asthma related problems in the hospitals. Below that are three photos I took from the north side of Albuquerque of the smoke pouring from the fires in Los Alamos (the Las Conchas fire), which threatened the nuclear lab facility there (home of the A-Bomb.) Los Alamos NM is approximately 70 miles how the crow flies. More…
What a year 2011 was when it came to weather. Blizzards, tornadoes, flooding, droughts and hurricanes. Here is a photo journal through the extreme weather of 2011 shown in chronological order. Geologic disasters (tsunami, earthquakes, etc) will be posted in a separate article, as well as the fires in the US Southwest (in which I live.) More…
The island of Utøya
This one was a tough one to decide. There was, as in any given year, so much tragedy throughout the world. I debated on whether or not to post a tragic remembrance for 2011, but decided I should – if anything, as a remembrance to the victims. The most tragic event I chose was the Utøya massacre in Norway.
The 2011 Norway attacks were two sequential terrorist attacks against the government, the civilian population and a summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011. More…
