My Science School

The Mediterranean principality of Monaco has the highest number of millionaires per capita. One in every three people is a millionaire. It has the highest population density of any country in the world with an area of 2.02 sq km and a population of about 38,400. It boasts a reputation as a tax haven and playground for the world's super rich.

Monaco’s reputation as a tax haven for billionaires has been emphasised by the continuing furore over Tina Green, wife of the controversial former BHS boss Phillip Green, who has been resident in the principality since 1998. The Greens say the companies behind their retail empire are based in offshore locations because of their “strong regulation”, and not for tax reasons.

Investment bank Credit Suisse, in its annual research into global wealth last last year, said that in inequality is growing worldwide, with half the planet’s wealth now in the hands of just 1% of the population.

The middle classes have been squeezed at the expense of the very rich, according to the research, which also found that for the first time, there were more individuals in the middle class in China – 109 million – than the 92 million in the US.

At the start of 2015, Oxfam had warned that 1% of the world’s population would own more wealth than the other 99% by the end of 2016.

Credit : The Guardian 

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The world's largest cuckoo clock houses a cuckoo that is 14 feet long and weighs 330 pounds. The construction of the clock, found in Eble Uhren-Park, Triberg, Germany, was based on a 100-year-old cuckoo clock, but at a scale of 60 to 11! The clock is 15 feet tall and weighs 6 tons while the pendulum is 26 feet long and weighs 220 pounds, earning the clock a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Visitors can walk inside the clock to see the impressive mechanics in action and hear it chime twice an hour.

The huge clock in Triberg is now a magnet for visitors. While for a long time cuckoo clocks were considered the epitome of parochialism and kitsch, these days something of a cult has grown up around them. Whether with carved wooden figures, plain and linear or colorful and trendy, they are now more widely sought-after than any other souvenir, especially among foreign tourists. When they take a Black Forest cuckoo clock home with them, they're taking a little of piece of Germany too.

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Saltwater crocodiles enjoy "catching a wave" and can travel hundreds of kilometres by surfing on ocean currents. This current riding behaviour allows for the conservation of energy. Estuarine or saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus), found in Southern Asia and Australia, are the world's largest reptiles and can grow up to 5.5 metres in length.

Working at the remote Kennedy River in northeastern Australia, the team of scientists — which included the late Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter" — tagged 27 adult seawater crocodiles with sonar transmitters, employing 20 underwater receivers deployed along a 39-mile-long stretch of the river (63 km) to track the reptiles' every move for more than 12 months. They found both male and female adult crocodiles undertook long-distance journeys, regularly traveling more than 30 miles (48 km) from their home area to the river mouth and beyond into open sea.

The scientists also discovered the "salties" always began long-distance travel within an hour of the tide changing, allowing them to go with the flow. They halted their journeys by hauling out onto the river bank or diving to the river bottom when the currents turned against them.

The researchers originally were just aiming to investigate the territorial habits of the crocodiles and how they divvied up land among themselves.

Credit : Live Science 

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A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, a two-seater coupe, was auctioned off in California for a record-breaking $48.4 million the highest auction price ever for a vehicle. Only 36 of the Ferrari 250 GTO were made between 1962 and 1964, making it a rarity and highly desirable for collectors. This particular Ferrari raced in the 1962 Italian GT Championships and won. The car has a top speed of 174 mph.

This was the third 250 GTO made and it comes with a strong lineage of racing wins and achievements. The new owners now have access to highly exclusive auto events. Fancy.

While this weekend's auction sale was a record, it doesn't beat the sale price of a 1963 version of the Ferrari that sold earlier this year for a whooping $70 million.

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The 61st Cavalry Regiment of the Indian Army, a horse-mounted unit of the Indian Army, is the world's largest operational mounted cavalry unit and one of only three mounted cavalry regiments remaining in existence. On Republic Day each year the 61st Cavalry and the President's Bodyguard parade in full dress uniform in New Delhi, in what is probably the largest assemblage of traditional cavalry still to be seen in the world. The regiment has a strong polo playing tradition, producing some of India's best polo players; members have won the Arjuna Award four times for polo.

The 61st Cavalry was formed immediately after India’s independence in 1947 following the amalgamation of the princely states with India. All regular and irregular erstwhile state forces’ cavalry units were disbanded to raise a new Horse Cavalry Regiment.

In 1954, the Gwalior Lancers, Jodhpur/Kachhawa Horse and Mysore Lancers, which were the cavalry regiments, were merged to form the 61st Cavalry.

Over the years, the regiment has performed ceremonial, equestrian as well as operational roles. 

The regiment also participated in the battle of Haifa in Israel. Haifa Day is celebrated every year on 23 September to pay tribute to the Indian cavalry regiments of Mysore, Hyderabad and Jodhpur, which helped liberate Haifa in 1918. 

The decorated regiment has also earned a Padma Shri, 11 Arjuna Awards, 9 Asian Games medals, a gold medal in Polo World Cup against Pakistan, silver in Jakarta Asian Games, among other accolades in equestrian sports.

“The regiment is a symbol of India’s heritage,” Colonel Atul Gupta (retired), who has served in the regiment, told ThePrint.

“61st Cavalry plays an important ceremonial and sports role. It has been leading the contingents during the Republic Day parade and plays a significant role in the Independence Day function and the Beating Retreat ceremony. It has been at the forefront at the equestrian and polo field,” he said. 

“But, on several occasions, the regiment has been deployed for critical operational roles,” he said. 

Credit : The Print

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The Siachen Glacier is the highest battlefield in the world where India and Pakistan have fought intermittently since 1984. It is located in the Eastern Karakoram Range in the Himalayas at an altitude of 18,875 feet above sea level; temperatures here can dip to -55°C. At 76 km long, it is the longest glacier in the Karakoram; it is the second-longest in the world's non- world polar areas and is often called the 'third pole'. 'Sia' refers to a rose plant widespread in the region while 'chun' means abundance'; the name 'Siachen' thus refers to a land with an 'abundance of roses'. The entire glacier with all major passes is under the administration of India. The glacier also boasts of the world's highest helipad built by India at Point Sonam, 21,000 feet above sea level.

The final leg of the expedition from Siachen Base Camp to Kumar Post, at an altitude of 15,632 feet, will commence on September 1, 2021, Major Ambathy added.

This is the land world record expedition part of ‘Operation Blue Freedom Triple World Records’ being undertaken, CLAW Global said. Those selected will undergo all the three stages of acclimatisation and training at Leh (Stage 1), Siachen base camp (Stage 2) and North Pullu (Stage 3) after which the final expedition team would be selected.

CLAW Global was set up in January 2019 by Major Vivek Jacob, a retired Para Special Forces officer, with the aim of teaching life skills to adventurers and people with disabilities.

Credit : The Hindu

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When spaghetti meets money

Italian Americans have a tradition of seasoning their spaghetti with the most unusual condiment. The oldest woman in the family stirs the tomato gravy and spaghetti along with a healthy dose of dollar bills contributed by different members of the family! Those who have earned well or received a nice raise are expected to sprinkle high denomination bills generously so that the luck spreads to others when the spaghetti gets served with the money! Three guesses for the toast... "You have to eat money to make money!"

God loves spicy salsa

In rural Mexico, farmers carry out an old Aztec tradition to please their god of harvest, XocotlHuetzi. The ancient Aztecs strongly believed that the god of harvest was fond of spice. What better way to show love and respect to the god of harvest than to dig a hole in the fields and fill it up with some nice, spicy salsa? If the crops failed even after that, the farmers deduce that it's because the salsa was too spicy or probably not spicy enough.

Sweet revenge

Do you wish to teach someone who's been particularly rude or obnoxious a lesson? Eastern Europeans have just the right thing to do. Take the oldest, sweatiest sneaker or shoe, fill it up with honey and leave it at their doorstep! The symbolism of replacing the stinky nature with some sweetness is assumed to be enough to fill the person with remorse. The person is supposed to use that honey to bake a cake and leave it by the windowsill as a sign of forgiveness!

Give your wish some wings

In Japan, there is a beautiful tradition wherein children write down their wishes on lanterns and let them float up into the night sky. Desires are also carved on yams or radishes and planted in the ground to teach an important lesson about not forgetting one's roots and the importance of humility.

It's confetti time

In Argentina, when you have loads of old documents and paper at home, New Year's Day is the time to make creative use of them. People get busy shredding the paper into thin strips to use as confetti for throwing from their windows.

Onion meteorology

In Romania, there is an interesting tradition on New Year, also called St Vasile's Day. Farmers like to predict how the year's climate conditions would be with the help of onions! You heard that right. Twelve onions are chosen, peeled and salted. Then the experts observe the level of salty liquid left behind and the skins of onions to make predictions for the year ahead.

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In Switzerland, it is illegal to own only one guinea pig because they're social animals prone to loneliness. Pet ownership laws don't stop there. Dog owners have to take classes before getting a furry friend. A cat owner has to let it outside or give it a window from which it can see another cat. Sick fish cannot be flushed down the toilet; special chemicals must be used for euthanasia.

The law was part of a legislative push to grant “social rights” to pets that tend to get lonely. Guinea pigs, for example, are herd animals, so having at least one furry companion to share a cage with should supposedly boost their quality of life.

Because it’s unlikely that two guinea pigs will die at the exact same time, pet owners can find themselves in a legally sticky situation when one of their animals passes away. Fortunately, there are now rent-a-guinea pig services in the country that provide partners to live with lonesome guinea pigs for the remainder of their lives.

There are other pets in Switzerland that are forbidden from living in isolation. Goldfish are also required to have at least one tank-mate and parrots must either live or have the opportunity to socialize with other birds on a regular basis. And though most cats may seem like solitary creatures to their owners, their social wellbeing is also protected in Switzerland; the law doesn’t go so far as to say that pet owners must have more than one cat, just that single cats should be able to see other cats when prowling outside or staring though a window.

Credit : Mental Floss 

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In the 1700s the pineapple was seen as a symbol of wealth and power; a single pineapple could cost the equivalent of $8,000 today! Pineapples were discovered by Christopher Columbus on one of his voyages to the Caribbean. When he brought them to Spain, European royalty were the only ones who could afford the fruit as it had to be imported. The pineapple made its way to England, and by the 18th century, being seen with one was an indicator of wealth. Craftsmen adopted the fruit as a motif, sculpting it into gateposts, railings and door lintels. The Dunmore Pineapple in Scotland represents a spectacular architectural use of the motif.

The pineapple has always been associated with prestige and luxury due its exotic appearance. It first appeared in Britain in 1668, gaining notoriety when Charles II used it as part of a public relations opportunity.

At the time, England and France were involved in a heated debate over rights to the island of St Kitts. When the French ambassador visited Charles II to discuss matters, the king ordered a pineapple to be imported from Barbados and perched it at the top of a pyramid of fruit at dinner. He then proceeded to cut it up and eat it. In doing so, Charles II asserted the reach of England’s global power.

The king christened the pineapple “King Pine” and even commissioned a painting of himself being presented it by his royal gardener: an early form of the food selfie.

By the Georgian era, the first pineapples were being cultivated in Britain. The efforts it took to produce meant that by the time a fruit bloomed, it was valued at £60 (roughly £5,000). Concerned that eating such high-value fruit was a waste, owners opted to display pineapples as dinnertime ornaments, passing them from party to party until they rotted.

In response, ceramics companies began to manufacture pineapple stands and pedestals. These devices enabled the pineapple to be slotted into a central hole, with slices of other fruits laid around the edge to serve to guests. Catalogues of the period are filled with unique designs for consumers to browse.

Many still lifes were also commissioned by owners keen to flaunt their pineapples. Pineapple rental shops sprung up across the country for those who could not afford to cultivate them and people even started to carry pineapples under their arm as a sign of status.

Such was their symbolic worth that maids who transported them were deemed at great risk of being accosted by thieves. In 1807, there were several court cases for pineapple theft at the Old Bailey, the most notorious being that of Mr Godding, who was sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia for stealing seven pineapples.

Credit : Fruitnet.com 

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Finland has 3.3 million saunas for a population of 5.3 million! They can be found in homes, offices, sports centres, hotels, ships and even mines. For the Finnish people, the sauna (a room for dry or wet heat sessions) is not a luxury, but a necessity. The only Finnish word to make it into English is "sauna".

Finland has a tradition of giving birth to children while inside a sauna. Finland’s historical culture believes that natural bacteria soot lines traditional smoke sauna walls. Therefore, this makes saunas the cleanest rooms in the house. Women also used to stay inside the sauna after giving birth to the child to recover from childbirth’s mental and physical stresses. 

Although most women give birth to children in hospitals, some traditional Finnish women still give birth to children inside saunas even though doctors strongly advise against it. Nevertheless, this shows the cultural importance of saunas in Finland.

Sauna helps alleviate anxiety and depression in the human mind. Various studies show that constant sauna use will decrease depression, mental complaints, and increase appetite over time. In addition, studies show that whole-body heat treatment lessens depression in cancer patients. 

Finnish people have believed that saunas increase mental health for centuries, despite most research only occurring in recent decades. Moreover, the rise in endorphins created by the rise in heart rate increases mental well-being and clarity. 

Credit : BZB Cabins and Outdoors 

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Eucalyptus deglupta or the "rainbow eucalyptus" is the most colourful tree in the world. The previous season's bark peels off in strips to reveal a brightly coloured new bark below, with vertical streaks of red, orange, green, purple, blue and grey. Its original homes are the Philippines (particularly Mindanao Island), Indonesia and New Guinea. Now, it thrives in nearly every tropical and subtropical region of the world; Central America, the Caribbean, and South Pacific islands. It is the only eucalyptus species indigenous to the northern hemisphere. It grows quickly, reaching a trunk diameter of 6 feet and soaring to over 200 feet!

What makes these trees intriguing is their colorful bark that looks like a color pencil that’s been sharpened. It starts off as a typical tree with a brown bark until the bark starts to shed in summer, and then the magic of nature happens. As it slowly sheds, it reveals a bright green inner bark that changes color as it ages. At some point, it turns purple, and then after some time it turns orange, and after it has been exposed to the air some more it turns a shade of maroon or blue.

The colorful streaks happen because parts of the bark don’t shed all at once, the entire bark doesn’t peel at the same time. Instead, it peels part by part, little by little,  so others that have just recently started peeling would appear green, the rest could be orange or any other color of the rainbow (hence its name) depending on how long it has been exposed to the environment. Once this process of shedding is complete, it goes back to its original brown color until the next cycle. However, people have observed rainbow trees that grow in tropical climates have a brighter and much more colorful bark than those that grow elsewhere.

They are mainly cultivated for its wood used as construction lumber, particle boards, and plywood for making cabinets. As it is also a good source of pulp, some use the tree to produce paper although the product is pure white and not rainbow-colored. In recent years people have also been using these colorful trees as an ornament used mainly for landscape design to add color to an otherwise purely green scenery in the park, and home or botanical gardens.

Credit : World Atlas 

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Only seven people in the world have the keys to the Internet'. In the event of a catastrophe, the DNSSEC (domain name system security) could be damaged or compromised and we'd be unable to verify if a URL was pointing to the correct website. These seven people from Britain, U.S.A., Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, China and the Czech Republic - would then be called upon to restart the World Wide Web. A minimum of five people are needed because each card contains only a fraction of the recovery key. No single person holds all the power to resetting our cyber world.

The keyholders have been meeting four times a year, twice on the east coast of the US and twice here on the west, since 2010. Gaining access to their inner sanctum isn't easy, but last month I was invited along to watch the ceremony and meet some of the keyholders – a select group of security experts from around the world. All have long backgrounds in internet security and work for various international institutions. They were chosen for their geographical spread as well as their experience – no one country is allowed to have too many keyholders. They travel to the ceremony at their own, or their employer's, expense.

What these men and women control is the system at the heart of the web: the domain name system, or DNS. This is the internet's version of a telephone directory – a series of registers linking web addresses to a series of numbers, called IP addresses. Without these addresses, you would need to know a long sequence of numbers for every site you wanted to visit. 

Credit : The Guardian 

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Beijing's Tianzi Hotel holds the Guinness Record for the world's biggest image building. The trio of bearded, old men in colourful, traditional garb is intended to resemble three Chinese gods, the personifications of the three attributes for a good life. The red-robed Fu is linked with the fortune, the green-robed Lu represents prosperity, while the white-haired figure at far left is Shou associated with longevity. The entire body of each figure is a hotel building, and the rooms go all the way from head to feet. In traditional Chinese iconography, Shou always carries a peach, and in the Tianzi Hotel, the peach room is available for rent!

Despite consistently ranking among the upper echelon of one bizarre hotels in the world, precise details regarding the interior of this turn-of-the-millennium masterpiece is scarce; rather tales of visits are passed down from traveler to traveler. In an age where the Internet allows us to find most lodging’s details down to their exact metrics before booking – let alone arrival – staying inside a row of legendary gods based on a mixture of word of mouth and your favorite fluent friends playing translator makes the Tianzi Hotel all the more delightfully, magically mysterious.

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Estadio Milton Correa, known as Zerao, is a stadium located in Macapa, Brazil. It seats 10,000 people, and is the home stadium of seven football clubs. It is so named because the midfield line lies exactly on the equator; zero latitude. This means that during games, each football team defends one hemisphere.

The stadium name Zerao is related to the field’s neighbourhood – Marco Zero which means ‘marking 0’ in English language, simply due to it being located on the Equator. However, Zerao means ‘Big Zero’, that denotes to the zeroth latitude of the Equator. 

The stadium was constructed back in 1990 and is officially known as the Estadio Milton Correa. The stadium is actually now named after Milton de Souza Correa, who was once the president of the Amapa state football federation. Zerao hosts home fixtures of Brazilian clubs Amapa Clube, Esporte Clube Macapa, Ypiranga Clube, Oratorio Recreativo Clube, Trem Desportivo Clube, Santos Futebol Clube (AP), and Sao Paulo Futebol Clube (AP). The 10,000 capacity stadium’s ownership belongs to Amapa state government. Previously, it was known as Estadio Ayrton Senna, as a tribute to the legendary Formula One racer.

Credit : Inuth 

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There are more statues of the king of the jungle across the world than actual wild lions. In the last 50 years the lion population has declined nearly 95%. These amazing creatures are victims of habitat loss and degradation as well as human conflict.

The temporary statue is built entirely from clockwork mechanics, representing how time is running out for many big cats. It joins the four famous bronze lions which have been based in Trafalgar Square since 1867.

Tigers are undergoing a similarly drastic decline with a wild population which was 10,000 strong in 1900 now down to just 3,500, whilst Cheetah numbers have fallen from 100,000 in 1900 down to less than 10,000.

Co-founder of the Big Cats Initiative Dereck Joubert said: “We no longer have the luxury of time when it comes to big cats.

Credit : Mirror

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