The story of the 256 old year man
In our today world it is impossible for one to believe that a man can live up to the age of 150 years let alone 256 years. According to Time magazine and the New York Times that were published in the year 1933, there died a man whose age was 256 years. I am not sure if he was lucky to have lived up to this age or not.
He went by the name of Li Ching-Yun. In his lifetime he was able to bury 23 wives. He was able to get 180 descendants by the time of his death. If he were in Africa he would have been the role model of many men as the worth of a man was measured by the number of wives and children one had.
Li Ching-Yun claimed that the secret to his long life was sitting like a tortoise, sleeping like a dog, walking sprightly like a pigeon and keeping a quiet heart. He shared this information with a warlord that wanted to know what to do to live that long. Li insisted that peace of mind and calmness were the main contributors to his long life. For those that wonder what the man ate, you will be surprised to learn that he mainly consumed rice and wine.
Not much is known about the early life of Li Chung. The information that is known would be that he was born in the same town where he died. This would be in the province of Szechwan in China. He was literate by the age of ten and often traveled to Shansi, Tibet, Kansu and Manchuria to get herbs.
He continued selling herbs for almost 100 years. He sold his own herbs and also other peoples herbs. Time magazine also indicates that his fingernails were six inches long.
Many people by the age of 80 are usually shriveled and cannot do a lot of things for themselves. Surprisingly Li was very youthful and could do a lot for himself. This lead to many people doubting if he was that old.
Li admitted that he was born in the year 1736 and us this would make him only 197 years contrary to the supposed 256 years. It is a professor at the Minuko University that proved that Li was born in the year 1677. He was able to proof this by producing records that show that the Chinese government honored him on his 200th birthday.
This leads to the huge question if Li had forgotten his own age or was he even the legit Li. Looking at it from a medical perspective, it seems impossible for one to be able to live for that long. The age of Li has surpassed the official record by more than 130 years. It is claimed that he looked like a sixty year old.
The only reasonable conclusion would be that he either had a superhuman body or all this stories are mere exaggerations. Problem is we may never know the complete truth.
Tallest Man Ever
The world's tallest man ever recorded in the history of mankind - Robert Wadlow, was born in Alton, Illinois, in 1918, and was 6 feet tall by the time he was even eight years old. He suffered from the disorder Gigantism that makes the lower portions of the body extremely large, while the head and torso remain at normal sizes. This is caused by a pituitary gland tumor that excretes large amounts of growth hormone, resulting in the disorder that is technically called as acromegalic gigantism. He reached a final height of 8 feet 11 inches at the age of twenty-one years, and finally died of an inflamed leg.
Wadlow was an American celebrity; he was well-known due to his 1936 U.S. tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus and his 1938 promotional tour with the INTERCO. He continued participating in tours and public appearances.
Wadlow was a Freemason. In 1939, he petitioned Franklin Lodge #25 in Alton, Illinois, and by late November of that year [4] was raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Illinois A.F & A.M.
An estimated 40,000 people attended Wadlow's funeral on July 19. He was buried in a 10-foot-long (3.0 m), half-ton coffin that required twelve pallbearers to carry and was interred in a vault of solid concrete. It was believed that Wadlow's family members were concerned for the sanctity of his body after his death, and went to these lengths to ensure it would not be disturbed or stolen.
When the star ten times more massive than our own Sun, explodes (Supernova) it leaves behind the strangest phenomenon in the Universe. The Black Hole. After explosion what is left behind is heavy core of subatomic particles, a Neutron Star. It can be very small, but with enormous density. Scientists calculated that approximately one teaspoon of Neutron Star would weight around billions of tons. The gravitational pressure of this highly dense object is so large that it can bend fabric of time and space. This theory is based on Einstein's proposition that space and time are woven together in a flexible fabric. Massive objects like Sun warp the fabric of space and time and pull smaller objects like Earth. Very large Neutron Star can warp time and space fabric so much that it could create a hole where gravity is so strong that not even light could escape. Black Holes are pulling everything around them closer to the center of the hole. In some sense black holes are creators of the galaxies since they are pulling planets and stars towards the spiral center. Each galaxy has a Black Hole and occasionally galaxies collide together because of the gravitational pull from the larger black holes. It is expected that in 5 billion years Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way galaxy.
In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above a certain limiting mass (now called the Chandrasekhar limit at 1.4 solar masses) must have an infinite density. In other words, the object must have a radius of zero.[9] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[10] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[11] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[12]
Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[13] because an outside observer would see the surface of the star frozen in time at the instant where its collapse takes it inside the Schwarzschild radius.
Praying Mantis
Praying Mantis a master of disguise is carnivorous insect with a very colorful appetite. They can turn their triangular heads up to 180 degrees in search for an insect. An interesting praying mantis fact is that, while they are mating, the female praying mantis eats the males head. No one knows for sure why, but it could be that protein from male body helps the eggs develop. When little mantis hatch they look like their parents tiny replicas.
Praying mantis have excellent eye sight and they can see up to 18 meters (60 feet) away. They are not dangerous creatures (well at least not to the humans) and their average lifespan is around 12 months. They look like they are praying because they are resting their spiky forelegs. Who wants to be a mantis?
Facebook Facts
Facebook was originally named TheFaceBook and it was developed by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. The first use of the FaceBook was on the Harvard campus and it was limited only to Harvard students. Soon the FaceBook spread like wild fire around the other major U.S. Universities. Mark Zuckerberg dropped the Harvard and pursued his facebook dream to become one of the 4th most-trafficked websites in the world with more than 90 million active users. The FaceBook website is built on PHP-MySQL technology and it is probably the most popular PHP website ever built. Interesting fact is that the facebook.com domain was purchased for $200,000 and FaceBook has more than 24 million photos uploaded daily.
Facebook generally has a lower clickthrough rate (CTR) for advertisements than most major websites. Banner advertisements on Facebook have generally received one-fifth the number of clicks compared to those on the Web as a whole. This means that a smaller percentage of Facebook's users click on advertisements than many other large websites. For example, while Google users click on the first advertisement for search results an average of 8% of the time (80,000 clicks for every one million searches), Facebook's users click on advertisements an average of 0.04% of the time (400 clicks for every one million pages).
Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales Operations Manager, confirmed that successful advertising campaigns can have clickthrough rates as low as 0.05% to 0.04%, and that CTR for ads tend to fall within two weeks. Competing social network MySpace's CTR, in comparison, is about 0.1%, 2.5 times better than Facebook's but still low compared to many other websites. Explanations for Facebook's low CTR include the fact that Facebook's users are more technologically savvy and therefore use ad blocking software to hide advertisements, that users are younger and therefore are better at ignoring advertising messages, and that MySpace users spend more time browsing through content, while Facebook users spend their time communicating with friends and therefore have their attention diverted away from advertisements.
On pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts. Involver, a social marketing platform, announced in July 2008 that it managed to attain a CTR of 0.7% on Facebook (over 10 times the typical CTR for Facebook ad campaigns) for its first client, Serena Software, managing to convert 1.1 million views into 8,000 visitors to their website. A study found that, for video advertisements on Facebook, over 40% of users who viewed the videos viewed the entire video, while the industry average was 25% for in-banner video ads.
Facebook's homepage features a login form on the top right for existing users, and a registration form directly underneath for new visitors.Users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and "like pages" (formerly called "fan pages", until April 19, 2010), some of which are maintained by organizations as a means of advertising.
To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile. The website is free to users, and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads. Facebook requires a user's name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings.
Profile shown on Facebook in 2011.The media often compare Facebook to MySpace, but one significant difference between the two websites is the level of customization. Another difference is Facebook's requirement that users give their true identity, a demand that MySpace does not make. MySpace allows users to decorate their profiles using HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), while Facebook only allows plain text. Facebook has a number of features with which users may interact. They include the Wall, a space on every user's profile page that allows friends to post messages for the user to see; Pokes, which allows users to send a virtual "poke" to each other (a notification then tells a user that they have been poked); Photos, where users can upload albums and photos; and Status, which allows users to inform their friends of their whereabouts and actions. Depending on privacy settings, anyone who can see a user's profile can also view that user's Wall. In July 2007, Facebook began allowing users to post attachments to the Wall, whereas the Wall was previously limited to textual content only.
Facebook mobile graphical user interfaceOn September 6, 2006, a News Feed was announced, which appears on every user's homepage and highlights information including profile changes, upcoming events, and birthdays of the user's friends. This enabled spammers and other users to manipulate these features by creating illegitimate events or posting fake birthdays to attract attention to their profile or cause. Initially, the News Feed caused dissatisfaction among Facebook users; some complained it was too cluttered and full of undesired information, while others were concerned it made it too easy for others to track individual activities (such as relationship status changes, events, and conversations with other users).
In response, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent user-set categories of friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.[81]
On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent[82] on certain aspects of its News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds in which links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user.[83] The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that violate its patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.[84]
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.[85] Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album.
Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album. For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user's friends can see the album, while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the Photos application is the ability to "tag," or label, users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo.
Profile shown on Thefacebook in 2005 
Facebook profile shown in 2007Facebook Notes was introduced on August 22, 2006, a blogging feature that allowed tags and embeddable images. Users were later able to import blogs from Xanga, LiveJournal, Blogger, and other blogging services. During the week of April 7, 2008, Facebook released a Comet-based instant messaging application called "Chat" to several networks, which allows users to communicate with friends and is similar in functionality to desktop-based instant messengers.
Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift. On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads. Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are seen only by users in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.
On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look. After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008.On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.
On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, whereby pages can be linked with simpler URLs such as
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new "Facebook Messages" service. In a media event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's true that people will be able to have an @facebook.com email addresses, but it's not email." The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time before the announcement, with some calling it a "Gmail killer." The system, to be available to all of the website's users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services. Codenamed "Project Titan," Facebook Messages took 15 months to develop.
In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events' venues, enabling the extraction of details to users' own calendar or mapping applications.
As of April 2011 Facebook users now have the ability to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. This feature which is provided free through T-Mobile's new Bobsled service lets the user add voice to the current Facebook Chat as well as leave voice messages on Facebook.
In Colonial Virginia, Washington was born into the provincial gentry in a wealthy, well connected family that owned tobacco plantations using slave labor. He was home schooled by his father and older brother, but both died young, and he became attached to the powerful Fairfax clan, who promoted his career as a surveyor and soldier. Strong, brave, eager for combat, and a natural leader, young Washington quickly became a senior officer of the colonial forces, 1754–58, during the first stages of the French and Indian War. Indeed, his rash actions helped precipitate the war. Washington's experience, his military bearing, his leadership of the Patriot cause in Virginia, and his political base in the largest colony made him the obvious choice of the Second Continental Congress in 1775 as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army to fight the British in the American Revolution. He forced the British out of Boston in 1776, but was defeated and nearly captured later that year when he lost New York City. After crossing the Delaware River in the dead of winter, he defeated the enemy in two battles, retook New Jersey, and restored momentum to the Patriot cause. Because of his strategy, Revolutionary forces captured two major British armies at Saratoga in 1777 and Yorktown in 1781. Negotiating with Congress, governors, and French allies, he held together a tenuous army and a fragile nation amid the threats of disintegration and invasion. Historians give the commander in chief high marks for his selection and supervision of his generals, his encouragement of morale, his coordination with the state governors and state militia units, his relations with Congress, and his attention to supplies, logistics, and training. In battle, however, Washington was repeatedly outmaneuvered by British generals with larger armies. Washington is given full credit for the strategies that forced the British evacuation of Boston in 1776 and the surrender at Yorktown in 1781. After victory had been finalized in 1783, Washington resigned rather than seize power, and returned to his plantation at Mount Vernon, proving his opposition to dictatorship and his commitment to republican government.
Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention that drafted the United States Constitution in 1787 because of his dissatisfaction with the weaknesses of Articles of Confederation that had time and again impeded the war effort. Washington became the first President of the United States in 1789. He attempted to bring rival factions together to unify the nation. He supported Alexander Hamilton's programs to pay off all state and national debt, implement an effective tax system, and create a national bank, despite opposition from Thomas Jefferson. Washington proclaimed the U.S. neutral in the wars raging in Europe after 1793. He avoided war with Britain and guaranteed a decade of peace and profitable trade by securing the Jay Treaty in 1795, despite intense opposition from the Jeffersonians. Although never officially joining the Federalist Party, he supported its programs. Washington's "Farewell Address" was an influential primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against partisanship, sectionalism, and involvement in foreign wars.
Washington had a vision of a great and powerful nation that would be built on republican lines using federal power. He sought to use the national government to improve the infrastructure, open the western lands, create a national university, promote commerce, found a capital city (later named Washington, D.C.), reduce regional tensions and promote a spirit of nationalism. "The name of American," he said, must override any local attachments. At his death, Washington was hailed as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen". The Federalists made him the symbol of their party but for many years, the Jeffersonians continued to distrust his influence and delayed building the Washington Monument. As the leader of the first successful revolution against a colonial empire in world history, Washington became an international icon for liberation and nationalism. His symbolism especially resonated in France and Latin America. Historical scholars consistently rank him as one of the two or three greatest presidents.
Jesus Christ Lizard
A part of the Iguana family, the Jesus Christ lizard is known so, because of a special ability it has. Upon, seeing danger, the lizard can run on the surface of water at a break neck speed. Also, known as the basilisk, the lizard comes with well equipped with webbed hind legs. While, their tread upon water surfaces is more of an appearance, it does not usually last for more than 10-20 meters in a stretch, and in the case of older lizards, it's smaller. With very sharp toes and elongated toes, basilisks are seen scurrying around during day time. Much alike its other reptile cousins which remain active during day time. Basilisks, which grow up to a foot's length, usually do not weigh anything more than 600 hundred grams in their life span of around 8 years. The females are known to lay around 2 dozen eggs, five to eight times annually, which hatch after about three months of gestation. With an excellent camouflage to hide themselves, the new born lizards are extremely well hidden, not weighing more than 2gms.
He went by the name of Li Ching-Yun. In his lifetime he was able to bury 23 wives. He was able to get 180 descendants by the time of his death. If he were in Africa he would have been the role model of many men as the worth of a man was measured by the number of wives and children one had.
Li Ching-Yun claimed that the secret to his long life was sitting like a tortoise, sleeping like a dog, walking sprightly like a pigeon and keeping a quiet heart. He shared this information with a warlord that wanted to know what to do to live that long. Li insisted that peace of mind and calmness were the main contributors to his long life. For those that wonder what the man ate, you will be surprised to learn that he mainly consumed rice and wine.
Not much is known about the early life of Li Chung. The information that is known would be that he was born in the same town where he died. This would be in the province of Szechwan in China. He was literate by the age of ten and often traveled to Shansi, Tibet, Kansu and Manchuria to get herbs.
He continued selling herbs for almost 100 years. He sold his own herbs and also other peoples herbs. Time magazine also indicates that his fingernails were six inches long.
Many people by the age of 80 are usually shriveled and cannot do a lot of things for themselves. Surprisingly Li was very youthful and could do a lot for himself. This lead to many people doubting if he was that old.
Li admitted that he was born in the year 1736 and us this would make him only 197 years contrary to the supposed 256 years. It is a professor at the Minuko University that proved that Li was born in the year 1677. He was able to proof this by producing records that show that the Chinese government honored him on his 200th birthday.
This leads to the huge question if Li had forgotten his own age or was he even the legit Li. Looking at it from a medical perspective, it seems impossible for one to be able to live for that long. The age of Li has surpassed the official record by more than 130 years. It is claimed that he looked like a sixty year old.
The only reasonable conclusion would be that he either had a superhuman body or all this stories are mere exaggerations. Problem is we may never know the complete truth.
Tallest Man Ever
Later years
Wadlow's size began to take its toll: he required leg braces to walk, and had little feeling in his legs and feet. Despite these difficulties, Wadlow never used a wheelchair. On June 27, 1940 (eighteen days before his death), he was measured at 8 ft 11.1 in (2.72 m) by doctors C. M. Charles and Cyril MacBryde of Washington University in St. Louis.Wadlow was an American celebrity; he was well-known due to his 1936 U.S. tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus and his 1938 promotional tour with the INTERCO. He continued participating in tours and public appearances.
Wadlow was a Freemason. In 1939, he petitioned Franklin Lodge #25 in Alton, Illinois, and by late November of that year [4] was raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Illinois A.F & A.M.
Death
On July 4, 1940, while making a professional appearance at the Manistee National Forest Festival, a faulty brace irritated his ankle, causing a blister and subsequent infection. Doctors treated him with a blood transfusion and emergency surgery, but his condition worsened and on July 15, 1940, he died in his sleep, at age 22.An estimated 40,000 people attended Wadlow's funeral on July 19. He was buried in a 10-foot-long (3.0 m), half-ton coffin that required twelve pallbearers to carry and was interred in a vault of solid concrete. It was believed that Wadlow's family members were concerned for the sanctity of his body after his death, and went to these lengths to ensure it would not be disturbed or stolen.
Today
A life-size statue of Wadlow stands on College Avenue in Alton, Illinois, across from the Alton Museum of History and Art. The statue was erected in 1986 in honor of the hometown schoolboy.[5] Another statue of him stands in The Guinness Museum in Niagara Falls and the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum in Myrtle Beach, New York City and Genting Highlands . A group of 6 life-size models, made before his death by artist James Butler, exist, and are shipped and displayed in replica caskets.
Black Hole
When the star ten times more massive than our own Sun, explodes (Supernova) it leaves behind the strangest phenomenon in the Universe. The Black Hole. After explosion what is left behind is heavy core of subatomic particles, a Neutron Star. It can be very small, but with enormous density. Scientists calculated that approximately one teaspoon of Neutron Star would weight around billions of tons. The gravitational pressure of this highly dense object is so large that it can bend fabric of time and space. This theory is based on Einstein's proposition that space and time are woven together in a flexible fabric. Massive objects like Sun warp the fabric of space and time and pull smaller objects like Earth. Very large Neutron Star can warp time and space fabric so much that it could create a hole where gravity is so strong that not even light could escape. Black Holes are pulling everything around them closer to the center of the hole. In some sense black holes are creators of the galaxies since they are pulling planets and stars towards the spiral center. Each galaxy has a Black Hole and occasionally galaxies collide together because of the gravitational pull from the larger black holes. It is expected that in 5 billion years Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way galaxy.
General relativity
In 1915, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, having earlier shown that gravity does influence light's motion. Only a few months later, Karl Schwarzschild found a solution to Einstein field equations, which describes the gravitational field of a point mass and a spherical mass.[6] A few months after Schwarzschild, Johannes Droste, a student of Hendrik Lorentz, independently gave the same solution for the point mass and wrote more extensively about its properties.[7] This solution had a peculiar behaviour at what is now called the Schwarzschild radius, where it became singular, meaning that some of the terms in the Einstein equations became infinite. The nature of this surface was not quite understood at the time. In 1924, Arthur Eddington showed that the singularity disappeared after a change of coordinates (see Eddington–Finkelstein coordinates), although it took until 1933 for Georges Lemaître to realize that this meant the singularity at the Schwarzschild radius was an unphysical coordinate singularity.[8]In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using general relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above a certain limiting mass (now called the Chandrasekhar limit at 1.4 solar masses) must have an infinite density. In other words, the object must have a radius of zero.[9] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[10] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[11] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately three solar masses (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[12]
Oppenheimer and his co-authors interpreted the singularity at the boundary of the Schwarzschild radius as indicating that this was the boundary of a bubble in which time stopped. This is a valid point of view for external observers, but not for infalling observers. Because of this property, the collapsed stars were called "frozen stars,"[13] because an outside observer would see the surface of the star frozen in time at the instant where its collapse takes it inside the Schwarzschild radius.
Praying Mantis
Praying Mantis a master of disguise is carnivorous insect with a very colorful appetite. They can turn their triangular heads up to 180 degrees in search for an insect. An interesting praying mantis fact is that, while they are mating, the female praying mantis eats the males head. No one knows for sure why, but it could be that protein from male body helps the eggs develop. When little mantis hatch they look like their parents tiny replicas.
Praying mantis have excellent eye sight and they can see up to 18 meters (60 feet) away. They are not dangerous creatures (well at least not to the humans) and their average lifespan is around 12 months. They look like they are praying because they are resting their spiky forelegs. Who wants to be a mantis?
Facebook Facts
Facebook was originally named TheFaceBook and it was developed by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. The first use of the FaceBook was on the Harvard campus and it was limited only to Harvard students. Soon the FaceBook spread like wild fire around the other major U.S. Universities. Mark Zuckerberg dropped the Harvard and pursued his facebook dream to become one of the 4th most-trafficked websites in the world with more than 90 million active users. The FaceBook website is built on PHP-MySQL technology and it is probably the most popular PHP website ever built. Interesting fact is that the facebook.com domain was purchased for $200,000 and FaceBook has more than 24 million photos uploaded daily.
Company
Ownership
Mark Zuckerberg owns 24% of the company, Accel Partners owns 10%, Digital Sky Technologies owns 10%, Dustin Moskovitz owns 6%, Eduardo Saverin owns 5%, Sean Parker owns 4%, Peter Thiel owns 3%, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners own between 1 to 2% each, Microsoft owns 1.3%, Li Ka-shing owns 0.75%, the Interpublic Group owns less than 0.5%, a small group of current and former employees and celebrities own less than 1% each, including Matt Cohler, Jeff Rothschild, Adam D'Angelo, Chris Hughes, and Owen Van Natta, while Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus have sizable holdings of the company, and the remaining 30% or so are owned by employees, an undisclosed number of celebrities, and outside investors. Adam D'Angelo, chief technology officer and friend of Zuckerberg, resigned in May 2008. Reports claimed that he and Zuckerberg began quarreling, and that he was no longer interested in partial ownership of the company.Management
Key management personnel comprise Chris Cox (VP of Product), Sheryl Sandberg (COO), and Donald E. Graham (Chairman). As of April 2011, Facebook has over 2,000 employees, and offices in 15 countries.Revenue
Most of Facebook's revenue comes from advertising. Microsoft is Facebook's exclusive partner for serving banner advertising, and as such Facebook only serves advertisements that exist in Microsoft's advertisement inventory.Year | Revenue | Growth |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | $52 | — |
| 2007 | $150 | 188% |
| 2008 | $280 | 87% |
| 2009 | $775 | 177% |
| 2010 | $2,000 | 158% |
Sarah Smith, who was Facebook's Online Sales Operations Manager, confirmed that successful advertising campaigns can have clickthrough rates as low as 0.05% to 0.04%, and that CTR for ads tend to fall within two weeks. Competing social network MySpace's CTR, in comparison, is about 0.1%, 2.5 times better than Facebook's but still low compared to many other websites. Explanations for Facebook's low CTR include the fact that Facebook's users are more technologically savvy and therefore use ad blocking software to hide advertisements, that users are younger and therefore are better at ignoring advertising messages, and that MySpace users spend more time browsing through content, while Facebook users spend their time communicating with friends and therefore have their attention diverted away from advertisements.
On pages for brands and products, however, some companies have reported CTR as high as 6.49% for Wall posts. Involver, a social marketing platform, announced in July 2008 that it managed to attain a CTR of 0.7% on Facebook (over 10 times the typical CTR for Facebook ad campaigns) for its first client, Serena Software, managing to convert 1.1 million views into 8,000 visitors to their website. A study found that, for video advertisements on Facebook, over 40% of users who viewed the videos viewed the entire video, while the industry average was 25% for in-banner video ads.
Mergers and acquisitions
Main article: List of acquisitions by Facebook
On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced it had acquired FB.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation for an undisclosed amount. On January 11, 2011, the Farm Bureau disclosed 8.5 million in "domain sales income", making the acquisition of FB.com one of the ten highest domain sales in history.Operations
A custom-built data center with substantially reduced ("38% less") power consumption compared to existing Facebook data centers opened in April 2011 in Prineville, Oregon.Website
Main articles: Facebook features and Facebook Platform
To allay concerns about privacy, Facebook enables users to choose their own privacy settings and choose who can see specific parts of their profile. The website is free to users, and generates revenue from advertising, such as banner ads. Facebook requires a user's name and profile picture (if applicable) to be accessible by everyone. Users can control who sees other information they have shared, as well as who can find them in searches, through their privacy settings.
In response, Zuckerberg issued an apology for the site's failure to include appropriate customizable privacy features. Since then, users have been able to control what types of information are shared automatically with friends. Users are now able to prevent user-set categories of friends from seeing updates about certain types of activities, including profile changes, Wall posts, and newly added friends.[81]
On February 23, 2010, Facebook was granted a patent[82] on certain aspects of its News Feed. The patent covers News Feeds in which links are provided so that one user can participate in the same activity of another user.[83] The patent may encourage Facebook to pursue action against websites that violate its patent, which may potentially include websites such as Twitter.[84]
One of the most popular applications on Facebook is the Photos application, where users can upload albums and photos.[85] Facebook allows users to upload an unlimited number of photos, compared with other image hosting services such as Photobucket and Flickr, which apply limits to the number of photos that a user is allowed to upload. During the first years, Facebook users were limited to 60 photos per album. As of May 2009, this limit has been increased to 200 photos per album.
Privacy settings can be set for individual albums, limiting the groups of users that can see an album. For example, the privacy of an album can be set so that only the user's friends can see the album, while the privacy of another album can be set so that all Facebook users can see it. Another feature of the Photos application is the ability to "tag," or label, users in a photo. For instance, if a photo contains a user's friend, then the user can tag the friend in the photo. This sends a notification to the friend that they have been tagged, and provides them a link to see the photo.
Facebook launched Gifts on February 8, 2007, which allows users to send virtual gifts to their friends that appear on the recipient's profile. Gifts cost $1.00 each to purchase, and a personalized message can be attached to each gift. On May 14, 2007, Facebook launched Marketplace, which lets users post free classified ads. Marketplace has been compared to Craigslist by CNET, which points out that the major difference between the two is that listings posted by a user on Marketplace are seen only by users in the same network as that user, whereas listings posted on Craigslist can be seen by anyone.
On July 20, 2008, Facebook introduced "Facebook Beta", a significant redesign of its user interface on selected networks. The Mini-Feed and Wall were consolidated, profiles were separated into tabbed sections, and an effort was made to create a "cleaner" look. After initially giving users a choice to switch, Facebook began migrating all users to the new version beginning in September 2008.On December 11, 2008, it was announced that Facebook was testing a simpler signup process.
On June 13, 2009, Facebook introduced a "Usernames" feature, whereby pages can be linked with simpler URLs such as
http://www.facebook.com/facebook as opposed to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=20531316728.[100] Many new smartphones offer access to the Facebook services either through their web-browsers or applications. An official Facebook application is available for the iPhone OS, the Android OS, and the WebOS. Nokia and Research In Motion both provide Facebook applications for their own mobile devices. More than 150 million active users access Facebook through mobile devices across 200 mobile operators in 60 countries.On November 15, 2010, Facebook announced a new "Facebook Messages" service. In a media event that day, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "It's true that people will be able to have an @facebook.com email addresses, but it's not email." The launch of such a feature had been anticipated for some time before the announcement, with some calling it a "Gmail killer." The system, to be available to all of the website's users, combines text messaging, instant messaging, emails, and regular messages, and will include privacy settings similar to those of other Facebook services. Codenamed "Project Titan," Facebook Messages took 15 months to develop.
In February 2011, Facebook began to use the hCalendar microformat to mark up events, and the hCard microformat for the events' venues, enabling the extraction of details to users' own calendar or mapping applications.
As of April 2011 Facebook users now have the ability to make live voice calls via Facebook Chat allowing users to chat with others from all over the world. This feature which is provided free through T-Mobile's new Bobsled service lets the user add voice to the current Facebook Chat as well as leave voice messages on Facebook.
George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775–1783, and he presided over the writing of the Constitution in 1787. As the unanimous choice to serve as the first President of the United States (1789–1797), he developed the forms and rituals of government that have been used ever since, such as using a cabinet system and delivering an inaugural address. As President, he built a strong, well-financed national government that stayed neutral in the wars raging in Europe, suppressed rebellion and won acceptance among Americans of all types, but also saw the advent of contentious political parties. Washington was universally regarded as the "Father of his country".
In Colonial Virginia, Washington was born into the provincial gentry in a wealthy, well connected family that owned tobacco plantations using slave labor. He was home schooled by his father and older brother, but both died young, and he became attached to the powerful Fairfax clan, who promoted his career as a surveyor and soldier. Strong, brave, eager for combat, and a natural leader, young Washington quickly became a senior officer of the colonial forces, 1754–58, during the first stages of the French and Indian War. Indeed, his rash actions helped precipitate the war. Washington's experience, his military bearing, his leadership of the Patriot cause in Virginia, and his political base in the largest colony made him the obvious choice of the Second Continental Congress in 1775 as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army to fight the British in the American Revolution. He forced the British out of Boston in 1776, but was defeated and nearly captured later that year when he lost New York City. After crossing the Delaware River in the dead of winter, he defeated the enemy in two battles, retook New Jersey, and restored momentum to the Patriot cause. Because of his strategy, Revolutionary forces captured two major British armies at Saratoga in 1777 and Yorktown in 1781. Negotiating with Congress, governors, and French allies, he held together a tenuous army and a fragile nation amid the threats of disintegration and invasion. Historians give the commander in chief high marks for his selection and supervision of his generals, his encouragement of morale, his coordination with the state governors and state militia units, his relations with Congress, and his attention to supplies, logistics, and training. In battle, however, Washington was repeatedly outmaneuvered by British generals with larger armies. Washington is given full credit for the strategies that forced the British evacuation of Boston in 1776 and the surrender at Yorktown in 1781. After victory had been finalized in 1783, Washington resigned rather than seize power, and returned to his plantation at Mount Vernon, proving his opposition to dictatorship and his commitment to republican government.
Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention that drafted the United States Constitution in 1787 because of his dissatisfaction with the weaknesses of Articles of Confederation that had time and again impeded the war effort. Washington became the first President of the United States in 1789. He attempted to bring rival factions together to unify the nation. He supported Alexander Hamilton's programs to pay off all state and national debt, implement an effective tax system, and create a national bank, despite opposition from Thomas Jefferson. Washington proclaimed the U.S. neutral in the wars raging in Europe after 1793. He avoided war with Britain and guaranteed a decade of peace and profitable trade by securing the Jay Treaty in 1795, despite intense opposition from the Jeffersonians. Although never officially joining the Federalist Party, he supported its programs. Washington's "Farewell Address" was an influential primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against partisanship, sectionalism, and involvement in foreign wars.
Washington had a vision of a great and powerful nation that would be built on republican lines using federal power. He sought to use the national government to improve the infrastructure, open the western lands, create a national university, promote commerce, found a capital city (later named Washington, D.C.), reduce regional tensions and promote a spirit of nationalism. "The name of American," he said, must override any local attachments. At his death, Washington was hailed as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen". The Federalists made him the symbol of their party but for many years, the Jeffersonians continued to distrust his influence and delayed building the Washington Monument. As the leader of the first successful revolution against a colonial empire in world history, Washington became an international icon for liberation and nationalism. His symbolism especially resonated in France and Latin America. Historical scholars consistently rank him as one of the two or three greatest presidents.
Jesus Christ Lizard
A part of the Iguana family, the Jesus Christ lizard is known so, because of a special ability it has. Upon, seeing danger, the lizard can run on the surface of water at a break neck speed. Also, known as the basilisk, the lizard comes with well equipped with webbed hind legs. While, their tread upon water surfaces is more of an appearance, it does not usually last for more than 10-20 meters in a stretch, and in the case of older lizards, it's smaller. With very sharp toes and elongated toes, basilisks are seen scurrying around during day time. Much alike its other reptile cousins which remain active during day time. Basilisks, which grow up to a foot's length, usually do not weigh anything more than 600 hundred grams in their life span of around 8 years. The females are known to lay around 2 dozen eggs, five to eight times annually, which hatch after about three months of gestation. With an excellent camouflage to hide themselves, the new born lizards are extremely well hidden, not weighing more than 2gms.
