A thirteen-year-old girl has been hailed as America's top texter, after winning a competition to speed-write text messages. Her crowning achievement was writing 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' in just fifteen seconds.
That's slightly quicker than two letters a second.
For that feat, Morgan Pozgar of Claysburg, Pennsylvania, received a prize of $25,000 from the sponsoring company, electronics firm LG.
'I'm going to go shopping and buy lots of clothes,' the teenager said afterwards, showing her sense of priorities.
The original hand grenade, shattering into fragments when exploding, must have put French soldiers in mind of a ripe pomegranate, filled with its dozens of seeds. Or perhaps it was simply a fancied resemblance between the outer shape of these two otherwise very different objects. Either way, it is from the Old French word for pomegranate, pome grenate, literally 'a seed-filled apple', that the French devised the name for the small hand-thrown bomb.
Taken from 'What's in a word' by John Kahn
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman arrived at a railway station in a state of inebriation just as The train was about to leave. A helpful porter managed to get The Englishman and The Scotsman aboard as The train pulled out. Then he turned to The Irishman and said, 'I'm sorry sir that I couldn't get you aboard The train.' 'My friends will be sorry too,' said The Irishman, 'they just came to see me off.'
Ordinary sea waves which are whipped up by wind, are not normally very high. The highest sea wave ever recorded was in the Pacific Ocean in 1933 and measured 34 M (112 ft) from trough to crest!
Tsunami waves, which are triggered by earthquakes, volcanoes, and landslides, are frequently much bigger. The highest recorded tsunami wave was in Lituya Bay, Alaska, on July 9, 1958. An earthquake measuring 8.3 on the richter scale caused part of a mountain to collapse into the bay, causing a monstrous tsunami. At the mouth of the bay, the wave was 524 m (1,720 ft) high!
The tallest recorded tsunami triggered by an earthquake hit Ishigaki Island, Japan, on April 4 1771. The wave was 85 m (278 ft) tall, triggered by an earthquake which measured 7.4 on the richter scale.
When Albert Einstein was making the rounds of the speaker's circuit, he usually found himself eagerly longing to get back to his laboratory work.
One night as they were driving to yet another rubber-chicken dinner, Einstein mentioned to his chauffeur (a man who somewhat resembled Einstein in looks & manner) that he was tired of speechmaking.
"I have an idea, boss," his chauffeur said. "I've heard you give this speech so many times. I'll bet I could give it for you."
Einstein laughed loudly and said, "Why not? Let's do it!"
When they arrived at the dinner, Einstein donned the chauffeur's cap and jacket and sat in the back of the room. The chauffeur gave a beautiful rendition of Einstein's speech and even answered a few questions expertly.
Then a supremely pompous professor asked an extremely esoteric question about anti-matter formation, digressing here and there to let everyone in the audience know that he was nobody's fool.
Without missing a beat, the chauffeur fixed the professor with a steely stare and said, "Sir, the answer to that question is so simple that I will let my chauffeur, who is sitting in the back, answer it for me."
Angel and I have been visiting our Grandparents in Tauranga over Easter. Mum and Dad went down to Mt. Ruapehu for the weekend.
We left for Tauranga at 5 am on Good Friday. Not suprisingly there wasn't much traffic - then. Later on in the day it was nose to tail all the way to the Thames turnoff!
One of the (main) reasons we went to Tauranga was to attend the annual Tauranga Rotary Book Sale. This sale is held every Easter, and they have thousands of books, magazines, jigsaws, videos, cds, records, and tapes. The sale opened at 9 am on Saturday, so we got up bright and early to arrive at the venue for 8 am. I'm serious! And we weren't the first people. There were about 80 people in front of us in the line. To transport the books I carried a bag - Angel had 4 plastic boxes on a trolley (otherwise known as a sack truck)!
After the first day of book buying, I had picked up 8 books for $8. Angel, on the other hand, had bought 111 books!!! At the end of the sale, which we revisited, I had 14 books for $13.50, and Angel had over 160 books.
A blog is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.
A personal or corporate website in the form of an online journal, with new entries appearing in sequence as they are written, especially as dealing with reflections or opinion.
A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of most early blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual although some focus on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and are part of a wider network of social media.
The term "blog" is a portmanteau, or, in other words, a blend of the words web and log (Web log). "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
In November 2006, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 57 million blogs.
The above was taken from Wikipedia/Wikidictionary
And you thought a blog was just . . . well, a blog?
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosnt mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
