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Interest 
i * Green, fun and free *Roman coins * Card slices through cucumber * Big catch * Man who gave Che to the world * Carp the weight of Kilie Minogue * Amazon cloud roll * Spooky... Britain's 10 most haunted places * Stalin's grandson in court to clear the dictator's name * Lake Iseo * Italian Frecce Tricolori perform at Moscow International Airshow * Taichi performance breaks Guiness World Record * Record-braking kayak waterfall drop * V is for very exciting * Bird uses body as dam to stop drainpipe soaking chicks * Super Hornet breaks the sound barrier * To the struggle against World Terrorism * Walking with dinosaurs * Cleopatra's sister * World's most expensive carpet * Pot of gold...? * Dormouse * Now that's what I call a river dance * The Pirate Hunter * Blackbeard * Rare fragments * Theo Paphitis - 12 Rules for Success in Business * C B Song * Stolen by the Nazis * Christmas lights (UK) & Santa competition
Green, fun and free: How to dance and make merry without spending a penny
Fretting endlessly about your carbon footprint is no fun. So relax. The Moneyless Man knows how to party for free
 Forest-walking, foraging and wild-swimming - all fun, all free. Photograph: Mark Boyle
There's got to be more to life than carbon footprints, climate
change and peak oil. The new design for society many of us want
shouldn't just be better for the environment, it should be a shedload
more fun into the bargain. As Emma Goldman, a hugely influential early
20th-century political philosopher and activist, once said: "If I can't
dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."
If life doesn't inspire me to get up and do a little Irish jig every morning before breakfast, what the hell is the point of it?
Living without money and having a great time are by no means
mutually exclusive. If anything, it wasn't until I gave up using money
in November 2008 that I started to really enjoy life, not just
two-sevenths of it. In hindsight, my old Groundhog Weekend was
incredibly boring – mundanely going for a few drinks to the pub, a nice
restaurant or to see a movie at the cinema. Worse still, spending 3.8
hours of each precious day – or an entire 11 years of my time on this
planet – watching TV. Where's the adventure in any of that?
Necessity really is the mother of invention. Instead of going for a
pint, why not make your own booze? Organise a day out with friends
foraging wild apples for cider – any variety will do – but the sweeter
the better (Jonagolds and Red Delicious are perfect). Ideally find some
windfalls, as these have natural yeasts already on them, meaning that
apples are the only ingredient you'll need. If you see any neighbours
with unused apple trees, don't be afraid to ask if you can do the work
for them; you can always surprise them with a share once its made.
Alternatively, grow your own hops, check out some recipes on Self-sufficientish, and forage your own flavourings (such as yarrow) before brewing your own beer.
Now you've got your alcohol supply, you're going to want to party.
Anyone can organise a house party, but these often just end up pissing
off the neighbours. Getting them involved is a much better idea, and
instead of making sworn enemies you'll make a load of friends.
One of my favourite organisations for this are Streetsalive,
who will guide you through the process of organising the mother of all
street parties, and can often even help you to get your council to
agree to close your road for the day.
Being moneyless in the winter can seem really unappealing to most
people, I admit, but you'd have to be bonkers to at least not try it –
even for a week – in the summer. Long evenings walking in the woods,
camping by the beach at the weekend, cooking food al fresco that you've
grown and picked yourself, cycling, playing – or listening to –
acoustic music by a camp fire, wandering in the wilds foraging berries
and nuts, skinny-dipping (swimming naked) in the lake and sleeping under the stars.
If you like art, there are always free exhibitions in and around big
towns and cities. Some even have a free bar – this doesn't fit in with
the philosophy of the Freeconomy community,
however, so go easy on it. If movies are more your thing, there really
is no need to go to the cinema (except to watch mindless Hollywood
crap). I live near Bristol and there are constantly free films night
showing online movies such as Money as Debt or Earthlings.
If they aren't happening where you live, why not organise one yourself?
They're a great way of sharing information and getting like-minded
people together.
Music is my thing, so I often go along to free open-mic nights at
a local venue. These events are not just great entertainment but a
wonderful way to support new local talent playing acoustic music. If
you are even slightly musically-gifted, work up the courage and get on
stage yourself.
And instead of watching the TV, turn off the light, stick on a few
beeswax candles (from local bees, of course, who haven't been fed
sugar), and fritter the hours away making love. It increases your
health, will strengthen your relationship and is infinitely more
pleasurable than EastEnders. If you're single, abandon fear and ask the
one you've got your eye on to come out for a wild food forage. Who
cares if you don't know your ramsons from your rosehips, you'll have
them exactly where you want them: in the bush.
So if you were thinking of doing something nice and comfortable
this weekend, shame on you. Put your credit card away (better still,
cut it up), dust off your tent, get on your bike and go and put the
adventure back in your life.
• Mark Boyle is the founder of the Freeconomy Community and has lived moneyless for the last 19 months. His book, The Moneyless Man, is out now, published by Oneworld – sales from the book will go to a charitable trust for the Freeconomy Community. A total of 52,500 bronze and silver coins dating from the 3rd century AD found by hobby metal detectorist Dave Crisp
Just a small selection of the Roman coins found by Dave Crisp in a field near Frome, Somerset. Photograph: British Museum/PA
The largest single hoard of Roman coins ever found in Britain has been unearthed on a farm near Frome in Somerset.
A total of 52,500 bronze and silver coins dating from the 3rd
century AD – including the largest ever found set of coins minted by
the self proclaimed emperor Carausius, who lasted seven years before he
was murdered by his finance minister – were found by Dave Crisp, a
hobby metal detectorist from Devizes, Wiltshire.
Crisp first dug up a fingernail-sized bronze coin only 30cm below
the surface. Even though he had never found a hoard before, when he had
turned up a dozen coins he stopped digging and called in the experts,
who uncovered a pot bellied pottery jar stuffed with the extraordinary
collection, all dating from 253 to 293 AD – the year of Carausius's
death.
Just giving them a preliminary wash, to prevent them from sticking
together in a corroded mass as the soil dried out, took conservation
staff at the British Museum a month, and compiling the first rough
catalogue took a further three months.
How they got into the field remains a mystery, but archaeologists
believe they must represent the life savings of an entire community –
possibly a votive offering to the gods. A Roman road runs nearby, but
no trace of a villa, settlement or cemetery has been found.
Roger Bland, a coins expert at the British Museum, said: "The
whole hoard weighs 160 kilos, more than two overweight people, and it
wouldn't have been at all easy to recover the coins from the ground.
The only way would have been the way the archaeologists had to get them
out, by smashing the pot that held them and scooping them out.
"No one individual could possibly have carried them to the field in the pot, it must have been buried first and then filled up."
Bland, who heads the Portable Antiquities service which encourages
metal detectorists to report all finds, said the hoard had already
absorbed more than 1,000 hours of work. He admitted his first stunned
reaction when he saw the coins in the ground in April, was "oh my god,
how the hell are we going to deal with this? Now I think it will see me
out, the research will keep me going until my retirement."
"This find is going to make us rethink the nature of such hoards,"
he said. "The traditional thinking was that they represent wealth
hidden in times of trouble and invasion – the Saxons were coming, the
Irish were invading as always – but that doesn't match these dates."
The archaeologists praised Crisp for calling them in immediately,
allowing the context of the find to be recorded meticulously. When a
coroner's inquest is held later this month in Somerset, the coins are
likely to be declared treasure, which must by law be reported. Somerset
county museum hopes to acquire the hoard, which could be worth up to
£1m, with the blessing of the British Museum
Card slices through cucumber
Bai
Dengchun (L), 23, cuts a cucumber in half by flinging a poker card at
it from two meters away during a show in Ji'nan, capital of East
China's Shandong province, on Friday July 2, 2010. Bai has practiced
this since he was 6 years old, adding to it martial arts techniques.
Cucumbers, water melons and eggs all fall to pieces before his
lightning-speed poker card. [Photo/CFP]
 Korda looking at a 3 Cuban Peso banknote, which also bears his famous photograph.
The man who gave Che to the world
Moves to protect Alberto Korda's iconic image from exploitation
"Guerrillero Heroico,"
photograph, 1960.
HIS remarkable photograph of Che Guevara became an
icon for revolutionaries everywhere. When Alberto Korda pointed his
Leica camera at the bearded Latin American freedom fighter, he
unwittingly created an image that became a legend of the twentieth
century.
Now, following the death of Korda in Paris on Friday at the age of
72, a battle has begun to protect the extraordinary picture from
commercial exploitation, and to ensure that the photographer's legacy
to the world is not besmirched by a battle to cash in.
For more than 30 years, Korda turned a blind eye to its use on
T-shirts and posters by students and radicals all over the world. But
he firmly resisted a string of lucrative offers to hand over the rights
to the image he saw as sacred.
Last year he successfully sued Lowe Lintas, a British advertising
agency, and picture agency Rex Features for using the picture in a
Smirnoff vodka campaign. The British-based Cuba Solidarity Campaign
helped Korda to fight the action, in which he won undisclosed damages.
'If Che was still alive, he would have done the same,' Korda said
after the settlement was reached. 'To use the image of Che Guevara to
sell vodka is a slur on his name and his memory. He never drank. He was
not a drunk, and drink should not be associated with his immortal
memory.'
Now the campaign has launched a new battle to defend the 'heroic
guerrilla' amid fears it will be used by firms eager to cash in on its
popularity.
Dr Stephen Wilkinson, the group's national co-ordinator, told The
Observer : 'The family [Korda] have asked us to continue policing the
picture and all inquiries about its use should be addressed to us. Our
most abiding memory of him was in November last year when we took him a
large sum of money from the sale of the photograph and he immediately
had us hand it over to the Cuban Health Ministry to purchase much
needed antibiotics for children.'
The picture was taken on 5 March 1960 at a memorial service for
more than 100 crew members of a Belgian arms cargo ship, killed in an
attack for which Cuba blamed counter-revolutionary forces aided by the
US. Korda was assigned by the magazine Revolución to cover the
ceremony, whose guests included Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul
Sartre.
'Che was standing on the row behind Fidel [Castro] on the
platform,' said Korda. 'You couldn't see him. Then suddenly he stepped
forward to the edge of the platform. I was standing below. I saw him
step forward with this absolute look of steely defiance as Fidel spoke.
It was only a brief moment that I had. I managed to shoot two frames
and then he was gone.'
Korda's newspaper was more interested in his pictures of Castro,
but the photographer liked the image of Guevara and hung it on the wall
in his Havana studio.
Seven years later, yellowed by tobacco smoke, the picture was
still on the wall when an Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli,
called, brandishing a letter of introduction from a senior official in
the Cuban administration and asked Korda for a copy. Korda handed the
visitor two prints, for no charge. Guevara was killed a few months
later and was immediately hailed as a martyr to the revolution.
There are conflicting stories of how the photograph came to gain
such currency, but it became a rallying image in the student revolts in
Paris in 1968, and Feltrinelli was quick to capitalise on its value. Of
the millions of posters featuring the image that appeared around the
world, some, Korda has said, even bore the notice 'copyright
Feltrinelli'. Yet Korda did not bear a grudge against the
enterprising publisher. 'I still forgive him, because by doing what he
did he made it famous.'
'It is one of the great icons of the twentieth century,' said the
artist Peter Blake, who designed the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant
Pepper album. 'You can compare its visual impact with Warhol's Marilyn
or with Roy Lichtenstein's comic book pictures.'
So powerful is the legacy of Guevara that this year, together with
the publication of new editions of the revolutionary's personal
diaries, Mick Jagger and Robert Redford are producing rival films about
his life.
Jagger, whose student bedroom at the London School of Economics
was one of those decorated by a Che poster, is hoping that Antonio
Banderas will star, while Redford has Benicio Del Torro signed up.
Argentine-born Guevara became a popular hero in Cuba after helping
to lead Fidel Castro's rebel army to victory against Fulgencio
Batista's dictatorship in 1959. But his mythic status - and the
enduring power of Korda's photograph - was sealed when he was killed in
October 1967 during an abortive attempt to foment a Cuban-style
socialist uprising in Bolivia.
For many years Korda claimed to have made no money from the
picture. This was chiefly because Cuba was not a signatory to the Berne
Convention on intellectual property until the early 1990s and so Korda
could not take legal action to establish official copyright.
He wore a reproduction in a medallion strung around his neck: 'It will stay with me until I die,' he said.
Korda, whose real name was Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, was born on 14
September 1928 in Havana. He got his first taste of photography when he
took his father's Kodak 35 and began taking pictures of his girlfriend.
During the Fifties he worked as a fashion photographer.
But his career changed direction after Castro came to power in Cuba.
After the revolution, he took pictures of demonstrations, sugar
cane harvests and factory scenes. For 10 years he served as the Cuban
leader's official photographer, accompanying Castro on trips and in
meetings with foreign personalities.
Other less-known images by Korda include shots of Castro staring
warily at a tiger in a New York zoo, playing golf and fishing with
Guevara, skiing and hunting in Russia, and with Ernest Hemingway.
Korda's work also includes remarkable pictures of Castro's rebels
riding into Havana after their triumph, and one known as 'The Quixote
of the Lamp Post' showing a Cuban wearing a straw hat and sitting on a
lamp post against a sea of people during a rally.
'[Korda's death] is a great loss for Cuban culture. He was one of
the top chroniclers of the revolution,' said Liborio Noval, a
photographer for Cuba's official Communist Party newspaper Granma who
was also one of Alberto Korda's contemporaries. Korda was visiting
Paris last week attending an exhibition of his works when he died.
'We had expected him to come home tomorrow,' said his daughter, Norka
Korda, one of his five children, on Friday.
His body is expected to be returned to Havana.
Man catches carp the weight of Kylie Minogue Angler Martin Locke braved sub-zero temperatures in just a T-shirt to break the world record for catching the biggest ever carp.
Martin Locke with the Carp that got him out of his bed Photo: BNPS
Brit
Mr Locke jumped out of his lakeside tent at 6am in temperatures of -3C
to net the monster fish that tipped the scales at 94lbs. The enormous
mirror carp weighed the same as Kylie Minogue and beat the previous
record by 3lbs.
The
fish - nicknamed Lockey's Lump - was the first and only bite Mr Locke,
47, had during the week-long freezing fishing trip to the Rainbow Lake
near Bordeaux in France.
Mr Locke was alerted to the catch when his rod alarm sounded during the early hours.
Wearing only a T-shirt and trousers, he jumped in his boat and motored 200 yards out to the fish and began reeling it in.
At
first he thought he had hooked a sunken tree trunk due to the weight of
it but was gobsmacked when he heaved the carp to the surface.
Getting
it in his landing net was like 'trying to land a small hippo with a
tennis racket,' but after succeeding he towed it to the shore to weigh
it.
Despite the early hour and freezing temperatures, many other anglers gathered round to celebrate with the new record holder.
Mr
Locke, from South Darenth, Dartford, Kent (England), left the fish in
the shallows until daylight when he photographed the aquatic beast
before returning it to the lake in good health.
Amazing cloud roll captured on camera 06.01.2010.
This
amazing picture shows a rare phenomenon called a roll cloud which tend
to form ahead of a cold front and can stretch for miles.
Photographer Daniela Eberl took this snap at Las Olas Beach in Maldonado, Uruguay. Photo: NATIONAL NEWS
They
are most common when an advancing storm front causes moist air to rise,
then cool to the point where it becomes a cloud known as the dew point.
When
this happens along a front, a roll cloud can form, often with air
actually circulating along the horizontal axis of the cloud.
Although it looks like a sideways tornado, these clouds cannot become one.
Photographer Daniela Eberl took this snap at Las Olas Beach in Maldonado, Uruguay.
Spooky!... Britain's 10 most haunted places
1. Highgate Cemetery, London
By
night, Highgate Cemetery is like something out of a horror movie. Eerie
crooked gravestones, headless angles covered in ivy, dark overgrown
passages between the tombs, it's no wonder this is Britain's number one
ghost spot. Despite its chilling atmosphere, by day Highgate Cemetery
showcases some of the Britain's most spectacular Gothic architecture,
offers fascinating guided tours and is also the burial place of Karl
Marx.
Search for more information
2. Borley Rectory, Essex
The
stories of Borley Rectory mainly come from the work of famous
18th-century ghost hunter, Harry Price. Price got involved in a case at
the rectory after a newspaper ran a story about a phantom nun in 1929.
His investigations led to the rectory being named 'The Most Haunted
House in England'. The building was destroyed by a fire in 1939, but
this has done nothing to dispel stories of spooky happenings, or deter
ghost hunters from visiting the site.
Search for more information
3. Pendle Hill, Lancashire
The
area known as Pendle Witch Country in the Lancashire Pennines is
dominated by the dark brooding mass of Pendle Hill. Nearby is the site
of Britain's most famous (and most grim) witch trial – the case of the
'Witches of Pendle'. In 1612 ten so-called witches were hanged at
Lancaster Castle and they are said to still haunt the local area. The
hill itself has even featured on Living TV's Most Haunted.
Search for more information
4. Red Lion, Avebury, Wiltshire
Pubs
in Britain are often said to be haunted. This might be because they are
often in ancient buildings, or it could just be that ghosts like a pint
as much as the rest of us. The 400-year-old Red Lion Inn in Wiltshire
is one Britain's most haunted pubs and is actually situated inside Avebury Stone Circle – the largest stone circle in Europe and a World Heritage Site.
The pub is never short of weird shadows, orbs or light, ghostly
figures, sudden cold spots and unexplained noises in the night...
should you dare to stay over.
Search for more information
5. Ancient Ram Inn, Wotten-under-Edge, Gloucestershire
Whether
you believe in ghosts or not, a trip to the Ancient Ram Inn is an
unsettling experience. Its creaky floorboards, cold bare walls, musty
smells and dimly lit nooks and crannies epitomise everything a haunted
house should be. And the stories attached to this creepy building are
not for the fainthearted: Murder, satanism and child sacrifice are just
a few of the dark deeds said to have occurred here, oh and did we
mention apparently it's built on a pagan burial ground?
Search for more information
6. Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland
The
spires, turrets, towers and statues seize your attention immediately.
Glamis Castle is one of Scotland's most impressive castles, but not
just for the amazing architecture and 600 years of royal history.
Glamis is also one of Scotland's most haunted castles. Among the many
spirits said to inhabit the place is the ghost of the Monster of Glamis
– a hideously deformed child who was kept locked up in a hidden room
his entire life.
Search for more information
7. Tower of London, London
Not only is the Tower of London
a World Heritage Site and one of the capital's favourite attractions,
it's also home to many inhabitants of the undead variety. Which is no
surprise really when you consider the number of beheadings, hangings
and tortures that have gone on there. Some of the most-sighted ghouls
include the Princes in the Tower, allegedly murdered by their uncle
Richard III, Anne Boleyn and the White Lady, who apparently brings a
strange perfume smell with her on her hauntings.
Search for more information
8. Culloden Moor, near Inverness
On
the 16 April 1746 the last-ever battle to take place on British soil
was fought on Culloden Moor. Here the Jacobite rebellion, vastly
outnumbered, was massacred there on the moor. And as you might think,
any battle as bloody as this is bound to leave a few tormented souls.
Legend has it that every year on the battle's anniversary, war-cries
can still be heard as the warriors battle on in the after world.
Search for more information
9. Llancaiach Fawr Manor, near Caerphilly
The
peaceful, rural setting of Llancaiach Fawr Manor gives no clue to the
turmoil of its history and the bloody civil war that was fought there.
And these great battles have left no shortage of spectres wondering
around the manor. In fact, strange things have been experienced in
almost every room, along corridors and on stairs. Things seen, heard or
felt, or sometimes odours in the air of violets or lavender - and on
some occasions, roast beef!
Search for more information
10. Berry Pomeroy Castle, near Totness, Devon
The
14th-century Berry Pomeroy Castle has two famous female ghosts; the
White Lady and the Blue Lady. According to legend the White Lady is the
spirit of Margaret Pomeroy, who starved to death while imprisoned in
the dungeons by her jealous sister. Apparently she haunts the dark
dungeons and rises from St Margaret's Tower to the castle walls. The
Blue Lady is not confined to specific areas and is supposed to lure
people into hidden parts of the ruin. Lake Iseo: Italy's secret treasure: Tourist feature
Iseo is not the most famous of the Italian lakes, but it could be the most charming, says Annie Deakin. By Annie Deakin. 2009.08.20.
The countryside surrounding the lake is dotted with immaculate vineyards, medieval castles and monasteries Photo: GETTY IMAGES
Little
known outside Italy, Lake Iseo is smaller than Lake Como but
considerably quieter and more charming. With fewer sun-blotched
tourists, and situated just north of the cities of Brescia and Bergamo,
it is the unsung gem of northern Italy.
An
hour's train journey north east of Milan brings travellers to
Franciacorta, an area in the heart of Lombardy's wine-growing region –
and the gateway to Lake Iseo. The countryside surrounding the lake is
dotted with immaculate vineyards, medieval castles and monasteries.
From
the lakeside towns of Sale Marasino or Iseo, you can take the short
ferry ride – almost empty even during high season – to Monte Isola, the
largest inhabited lake island in southern Europe. Three kilometres in
length and with only 2,000 residents and no cars, the remote island has
a quiet calm. Walk along its cobbled waterside track and admire the
blue and white paper flowers that are strung across paths and tied to
doorways.
In
the island's picturesque fishing village, Peschiera Maraglio, faded,
hand-woven fishing nets are draped above sleepy cafés. When people
think of the Italian lakes, it is Lake Como or Lake Garda that spring
to mind. Few consider Lake Iseo, so go now before this secret jewel
becomes too well known.
Travel by…
Stay at...
L'Albereta (0039 030 776 0550, www.albereta.it)
in Erbusco, if you're after sophisticated indulgence. This 19th-century
villa has long been a favourite with the jet set, who make good use of
the helipad. The bedrooms are supremely comfortable – one even has a
retractable roof for a night under the stars – and the bathrooms are
exquisite. Double rooms from £176.
A more modest option is the Iseo Lago Hotel (0039 030 98891, www.iseolagohotel.it) in Iseo town. A three-minute walk to the lakeshore, it offers comfortable double rooms from 139 euros.
Spend the morning...
Exploring
the beautiful countryside by foot, bike or horseback. Lake Iseo, the
seventh largest in the country, is big enough for swimming, fishing,
diving and sailing. The region is famous for its sparkling wines, so be
sure to taste the local fizz on a tour of the Contadi Castaldi winery (www.contadicastaldi.it)
Have lunch at...
Any of the lakeside restaurants on Monte Isola. Order tinca al forna, a speciality of baked fish with garlic, parsley and parmesan. For ferry times to the island, call 0039 035 971483 or visit www.navigazionelagoiseo.it
Spend the afternoon...
Being
pampered in the Albereta's Henri Chenot spa, which has a large swimming
pool, sauna, Turkish bath, hydrotherapy area and gym.
Shop for...
Bargain
ballet pumps and designer labels in Brescia, where there is an antique
market under the porticoes of Piazza Vittoria every second Sunday of
the month.
Dine out at...
The
Gualtiero Marchesi restaurant – whether you stay at L'Albereta or not.
The first Italian chef to win three Michelin stars, Marchesi is deadly
serious about food. Last year a scandal erupted when the Michelin Guide
stripped him of two of his stars, and he was so incensed that he "gave
back" the third. His food, however, remains Michelin-worthy. Order
risotto with saffron and pure gold leaf, followed by lobster; and drink
Franciacorta Bellavista, the hotel's own sparkling wine.
For a lighter dinner, head to the trendy Dispensa Pani e Vini (0039 030 745 0757, www.dispensafranciacorta.com), in a winery 2km from Lake Iseo, for tapas in miniature tea cups and fresh pasta.
At all costs avoid…
Milan during August, when many restaurants and boutiques are shut.
For more information visit...
 Italian Frecce Tricolori
at Moscow International Airshow
Taichi performance breaks Guinness World Record
2009-08-08 12:58 BJT from CCTV
The
2008 Beijing Olympics brought China to the world, and featured a number
of stunning performances. One year after, the people of China have
turned in their own stunning performance.
This
morning, a new Guinness World record was set as 33 thousand, 9 hundred
and 96 people performed taichi at the National Stadium. The rain didn't
dampen the enthusiasm of people who turned out to celebrate the
anniversary of the Beijing Olympics.
Almost
34 thousand people from all walks of life gathered at the bird's nest
for a 6 minute taichi performance. They successfully created a new
Guinness World Record, breaking the record that was made by 30 thousand
and 648 people in 2004 in Henan province.
 | This morning, a new Guinness World record was set as 33 thousand, 9 hundred
and 96 people performed taichi at the National Stadium. |
Record-breaking kayaker who risked life and limb in a 61m waterfall drop. Agencies: 2009.07.27.
Tyler
described the moment he went over as 'acceleration, speed, and impact
unlike anything I've ever felt before. I wasn't sure if I was hurt or
not. My body was just in shock'
Perched
on the brink of a 61m (186ft) drop, this was the moment when Tyler
Bradt probably felt the urge to start frantically paddling backwards. Less than four seconds later, he was celebrating a world record for kayak descents.
Tyler
Bradt tumbles down the 61m (186ft) waterfall in 3.7 seconds, at speeds
of 160km / 100miles per hour, shattering the previous world record of
42m (127ft) he'd set weeks earlier
Here I go: off Palouse Falls in eastern Washington Raging torrent: There's no way back for Tyler as he tips over the Falls
Bird uses body as dam to stop drainpipe soaking chicks. 2009.05.28.
Card slices through cucumber
Bai
Dengchun (L), 23, cuts a cucumber in half by flinging a poker card at
it from two meters away during a show in Ji'nan, capital of East
China's Shandong province, on Friday July 2, 2010. Bai has practiced
this since he was 6 years old, adding to it martial arts techniques.
Cucumbers, water melons and eggs all fall to pieces before his
lightning-speed poker card. [Photo/CFP]
Korda looking at a 3 Cuban Peso banknote, which also bears his famous photograph.
The man who gave Che to the world
Moves to protect Alberto Korda's iconic image from exploitation
"Guerrillero Heroico,"
photograph, 1960.
HIS remarkable photograph of Che Guevara became an
icon for revolutionaries everywhere. When Alberto Korda pointed his
Leica camera at the bearded Latin American freedom fighter, he
unwittingly created an image that became a legend of the twentieth
century.
Now, following the death of Korda in Paris on Friday at the age of
72, a battle has begun to protect the extraordinary picture from
commercial exploitation, and to ensure that the photographer's legacy
to the world is not besmirched by a battle to cash in.
For more than 30 years, Korda turned a blind eye to its use on
T-shirts and posters by students and radicals all over the world. But
he firmly resisted a string of lucrative offers to hand over the rights
to the image he saw as sacred.
Last year he successfully sued Lowe Lintas, a British advertising
agency, and picture agency Rex Features for using the picture in a
Smirnoff vodka campaign. The British-based Cuba Solidarity Campaign
helped Korda to fight the action, in which he won undisclosed damages.
'If Che was still alive, he would have done the same,' Korda said
after the settlement was reached. 'To use the image of Che Guevara to
sell vodka is a slur on his name and his memory. He never drank. He was
not a drunk, and drink should not be associated with his immortal
memory.'
Now the campaign has launched a new battle to defend the 'heroic
guerrilla' amid fears it will be used by firms eager to cash in on its
popularity.
Dr Stephen Wilkinson, the group's national co-ordinator, told The
Observer : 'The family [Korda] have asked us to continue policing the
picture and all inquiries about its use should be addressed to us. Our
most abiding memory of him was in November last year when we took him a
large sum of money from the sale of the photograph and he immediately
had us hand it over to the Cuban Health Ministry to purchase much
needed antibiotics for children.'
The picture was taken on 5 March 1960 at a memorial service for
more than 100 crew members of a Belgian arms cargo ship, killed in an
attack for which Cuba blamed counter-revolutionary forces aided by the
US. Korda was assigned by the magazine Revolución to cover the
ceremony, whose guests included Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul
Sartre.
'Che was standing on the row behind Fidel [Castro] on the
platform,' said Korda. 'You couldn't see him. Then suddenly he stepped
forward to the edge of the platform. I was standing below. I saw him
step forward with this absolute look of steely defiance as Fidel spoke.
It was only a brief moment that I had. I managed to shoot two frames
and then he was gone.'
Korda's newspaper was more interested in his pictures of Castro,
but the photographer liked the image of Guevara and hung it on the wall
in his Havana studio.
Seven years later, yellowed by tobacco smoke, the picture was
still on the wall when an Italian publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli,
called, brandishing a letter of introduction from a senior official in
the Cuban administration and asked Korda for a copy. Korda handed the
visitor two prints, for no charge. Guevara was killed a few months
later and was immediately hailed as a martyr to the revolution.
There are conflicting stories of how the photograph came to gain
such currency, but it became a rallying image in the student revolts in
Paris in 1968, and Feltrinelli was quick to capitalise on its value. Of
the millions of posters featuring the image that appeared around the
world, some, Korda has said, even bore the notice 'copyright
Feltrinelli'. Yet Korda did not bear a grudge against the
enterprising publisher. 'I still forgive him, because by doing what he
did he made it famous.'
'It is one of the great icons of the twentieth century,' said the
artist Peter Blake, who designed the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant
Pepper album. 'You can compare its visual impact with Warhol's Marilyn
or with Roy Lichtenstein's comic book pictures.'
So powerful is the legacy of Guevara that this year, together with
the publication of new editions of the revolutionary's personal
diaries, Mick Jagger and Robert Redford are producing rival films about
his life.
Jagger, whose student bedroom at the London School of Economics
was one of those decorated by a Che poster, is hoping that Antonio
Banderas will star, while Redford has Benicio Del Torro signed up.
Argentine-born Guevara became a popular hero in Cuba after helping
to lead Fidel Castro's rebel army to victory against Fulgencio
Batista's dictatorship in 1959. But his mythic status - and the
enduring power of Korda's photograph - was sealed when he was killed in
October 1967 during an abortive attempt to foment a Cuban-style
socialist uprising in Bolivia.
For many years Korda claimed to have made no money from the
picture. This was chiefly because Cuba was not a signatory to the Berne
Convention on intellectual property until the early 1990s and so Korda
could not take legal action to establish official copyright.
He wore a reproduction in a medallion strung around his neck: 'It will stay with me until I die,' he said.
Korda, whose real name was Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, was born on 14
September 1928 in Havana. He got his first taste of photography when he
took his father's Kodak 35 and began taking pictures of his girlfriend.
During the Fifties he worked as a fashion photographer.
But his career changed direction after Castro came to power in Cuba.
After the revolution, he took pictures of demonstrations, sugar
cane harvests and factory scenes. For 10 years he served as the Cuban
leader's official photographer, accompanying Castro on trips and in
meetings with foreign personalities.
Other less-known images by Korda include shots of Castro staring
warily at a tiger in a New York zoo, playing golf and fishing with
Guevara, skiing and hunting in Russia, and with Ernest Hemingway.
Korda's work also includes remarkable pictures of Castro's rebels
riding into Havana after their triumph, and one known as 'The Quixote
of the Lamp Post' showing a Cuban wearing a straw hat and sitting on a
lamp post against a sea of people during a rally.
'[Korda's death] is a great loss for Cuban culture. He was one of
the top chroniclers of the revolution,' said Liborio Noval, a
photographer for Cuba's official Communist Party newspaper Granma who
was also one of Alberto Korda's contemporaries. Korda was visiting
Paris last week attending an exhibition of his works when he died.
'We had expected him to come home tomorrow,' said his daughter, Norka
Korda, one of his five children, on Friday.
His body is expected to be returned to Havana.
Man catches carp the weight of Kylie Minogue Angler Martin Locke braved sub-zero temperatures in just a T-shirt to break the world record for catching the biggest ever carp.
Brit Mr Locke jumped out of his lakeside tent at 6am in temperatures of -3C to net the monster fish that tipped the scales at 94lbs. The enormous mirror carp weighed the same as Kylie Minogue and beat the previous record by 3lbs.
The fish - nicknamed Lockey's Lump - was the first and only bite Mr Locke, 47, had during the week-long freezing fishing trip to the Rainbow Lake near Bordeaux in France.
Mr Locke was alerted to the catch when his rod alarm sounded during the early hours.
Wearing only a T-shirt and trousers, he jumped in his boat and motored 200 yards out to the fish and began reeling it in.
At first he thought he had hooked a sunken tree trunk due to the weight of it but was gobsmacked when he heaved the carp to the surface.
Getting it in his landing net was like 'trying to land a small hippo with a tennis racket,' but after succeeding he towed it to the shore to weigh it.
Despite the early hour and freezing temperatures, many other anglers gathered round to celebrate with the new record holder.
Mr Locke, from South Darenth, Dartford, Kent (England), left the fish in the shallows until daylight when he photographed the aquatic beast before returning it to the lake in good health.
Amazing cloud roll captured on camera 06.01.2010.
This amazing picture shows a rare phenomenon called a roll cloud which tend to form ahead of a cold front and can stretch for miles.
They are most common when an advancing storm front causes moist air to rise, then cool to the point where it becomes a cloud known as the dew point.
When this happens along a front, a roll cloud can form, often with air actually circulating along the horizontal axis of the cloud.
Although it looks like a sideways tornado, these clouds cannot become one.
Photographer Daniela Eberl took this snap at Las Olas Beach in Maldonado, Uruguay.
Spooky!... Britain's 10 most haunted places
1. Highgate Cemetery, London
By night, Highgate Cemetery is like something out of a horror movie. Eerie crooked gravestones, headless angles covered in ivy, dark overgrown passages between the tombs, it's no wonder this is Britain's number one ghost spot. Despite its chilling atmosphere, by day Highgate Cemetery showcases some of the Britain's most spectacular Gothic architecture, offers fascinating guided tours and is also the burial place of Karl Marx.
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2. Borley Rectory, Essex
The stories of Borley Rectory mainly come from the work of famous 18th-century ghost hunter, Harry Price. Price got involved in a case at the rectory after a newspaper ran a story about a phantom nun in 1929. His investigations led to the rectory being named 'The Most Haunted House in England'. The building was destroyed by a fire in 1939, but this has done nothing to dispel stories of spooky happenings, or deter ghost hunters from visiting the site.
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3. Pendle Hill, Lancashire
The area known as Pendle Witch Country in the Lancashire Pennines is dominated by the dark brooding mass of Pendle Hill. Nearby is the site of Britain's most famous (and most grim) witch trial – the case of the 'Witches of Pendle'. In 1612 ten so-called witches were hanged at Lancaster Castle and they are said to still haunt the local area. The hill itself has even featured on Living TV's Most Haunted.
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4. Red Lion, Avebury, Wiltshire
Pubs in Britain are often said to be haunted. This might be because they are often in ancient buildings, or it could just be that ghosts like a pint as much as the rest of us. The 400-year-old Red Lion Inn in Wiltshire is one Britain's most haunted pubs and is actually situated inside Avebury Stone Circle – the largest stone circle in Europe and a World Heritage Site. The pub is never short of weird shadows, orbs or light, ghostly figures, sudden cold spots and unexplained noises in the night... should you dare to stay over.
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5. Ancient Ram Inn, Wotten-under-Edge, Gloucestershire
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, a trip to the Ancient Ram Inn is an unsettling experience. Its creaky floorboards, cold bare walls, musty smells and dimly lit nooks and crannies epitomise everything a haunted house should be. And the stories attached to this creepy building are not for the fainthearted: Murder, satanism and child sacrifice are just a few of the dark deeds said to have occurred here, oh and did we mention apparently it's built on a pagan burial ground?
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6. Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland
The spires, turrets, towers and statues seize your attention immediately. Glamis Castle is one of Scotland's most impressive castles, but not just for the amazing architecture and 600 years of royal history. Glamis is also one of Scotland's most haunted castles. Among the many spirits said to inhabit the place is the ghost of the Monster of Glamis – a hideously deformed child who was kept locked up in a hidden room his entire life.
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7. Tower of London, London
Not only is the Tower of London a World Heritage Site and one of the capital's favourite attractions, it's also home to many inhabitants of the undead variety. Which is no surprise really when you consider the number of beheadings, hangings and tortures that have gone on there. Some of the most-sighted ghouls include the Princes in the Tower, allegedly murdered by their uncle Richard III, Anne Boleyn and the White Lady, who apparently brings a strange perfume smell with her on her hauntings.
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8. Culloden Moor, near Inverness
On the 16 April 1746 the last-ever battle to take place on British soil was fought on Culloden Moor. Here the Jacobite rebellion, vastly outnumbered, was massacred there on the moor. And as you might think, any battle as bloody as this is bound to leave a few tormented souls. Legend has it that every year on the battle's anniversary, war-cries can still be heard as the warriors battle on in the after world.
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9. Llancaiach Fawr Manor, near Caerphilly
The peaceful, rural setting of Llancaiach Fawr Manor gives no clue to the turmoil of its history and the bloody civil war that was fought there. And these great battles have left no shortage of spectres wondering around the manor. In fact, strange things have been experienced in almost every room, along corridors and on stairs. Things seen, heard or felt, or sometimes odours in the air of violets or lavender - and on some occasions, roast beef!
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10. Berry Pomeroy Castle, near Totness, Devon
The 14th-century Berry Pomeroy Castle has two famous female ghosts; the White Lady and the Blue Lady. According to legend the White Lady is the spirit of Margaret Pomeroy, who starved to death while imprisoned in the dungeons by her jealous sister. Apparently she haunts the dark dungeons and rises from St Margaret's Tower to the castle walls. The Blue Lady is not confined to specific areas and is supposed to lure people into hidden parts of the ruin. Apparently it's a very bad idea to follow her!
Stalin grandson in court fight to clear dictator's name.
 A toppled statue of Joseph Stalin is surrounded during the 1956 Hungarian uprising. The former Soviet leader is now enjoying a popular revival in Russia. Photograph: Arpad Hazafia/AP
Sitting in his front room at home in Moscow, surrounded by shelves of books on 20th-century history, Leonid Zhura recounts how life was better under Stalin. "It was a heroic epoch. It was the first time in human history that a society was founded on fair principles," he says, adding that Stalin did not commit any crimes.
Zhura's views are not greatly unusual in today's Russia. What distinguishes the amateur historian from other Stalin fans is that he is going to court to prove his assertion that Stalin never killed anybody. And he claims to have an impeccable witness – Stalin's 73-year-old grandson.
At lunchtime tomorrow Yevgeny Dzhugashvili – the offspring of Stalin's ill-fated son Yakov, from the dictator's first marriage – is due to appear at Moscow's Basmanny court. Dzhugashvili lives in Tbilisi, Georgia. But at Zhura's invitation, he is flying to Moscow to take part in a libel action against Novaya Gazeta, Russia's leading liberal newspaper.
"He's retired and normally lives with his family in Georgia. But he's decided he wants to make a stand on this," said Zhura, 63, a former trade official.
Dzhugashvili is demanding $299,000 (£180,000) in damages from the paper after it said that his grandfather personally signed politburo orders to execute civilians. Author Anatoly Yablokov – who wrote the piece – says such a legal case would have been unthinkable until recently, but is now depressingly possible. "There is a change in society's view of Stalin," Yablokov said last month at a preliminary court hearing. "We hear much more now about how much of an effective manager Stalin was, much more than in the 1990s, and much less about the repression."
According to Zhura, however, Stalin created a society superior to its capitalist rivals, not just in the field of scientific endeavour but also on the football pitch. "During a tour of Britain in November 1945, Moscow Dynamo FC thrashed Manchester United. We even beat your Arsenal," Zhura noted.
Zhura also insists that the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop pact – under which Hitler and Stalin secretly carved up eastern Europe in August 1939 – was not the cause of the second world war. Instead, he blames another less well-known agreement, signed in the same month: the Anglo-Polish agreement between Britain and Warsaw.
(Under it Lord Halifax, the British foreign secretary and Count Raczynski, Poland's ambassador in London, agreed that their countries would aid each other in the event of attack. Hitler invaded Poland six days later, with Stalin following suit 17 days later.)
Furthermore, Zhura also claims that the Nazis carried out the notorious massacre in Katyn in 1940 of Polish officers – a crime hushed up by Moscow for 50 years, but now acknowledged as the work of the Soviet NKVD. "This isn't how Stalin writes. It's a fake!" Zhura said yesterday, passing the Guardian a facsimile document approving the Katyn operation, with Stalin's signature.
According to Zhura, Stalin's associates were behind the Great Terror - the murderous purges of 1937-1938, during which tens of thousands of people, including most leading Bolsheviks, were summarily shot. He admits that Stalin created the gulag system, but says those imprisoned in it – including Alexander Solzhenitsyn – deserved their lot. "He was a criminal," he says of the writer.
"I accept there were some judicial mistakes. But every country has to defend itself from fifth columnists," he said. "Look at Britain. You arrested Oswald Mosley, Mrs Mosley and 20,000 British fascists. There was no investigation or due process. You interned them in your own concentration camps. You've forgotten that bit."
It would be easy, but wrong, to dismiss Zhura as an unrepresentative crackpot whose defence of Stalin says little about contemporary Russian opinion. But many Russians from all social classes appear to share his views, and to yearn for the days when Soviet Russia was a great power, ruled by a strong, if sometimes brutal, tsar-leader.
Last year Joseph Stalin came third in a nationwide poll to name Russia's greatest historical figure, amid widespread suspicions that he had actually beaten the official winner, the medieval warrior prince Alexander Nevsky. topped the "Everyone knows the figures were manipulated," Zhura said.
The libel hearing comes at a time when Russia, under its twin heads Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, has launched a campaign to rehabilitate Stalin. In school textbooks he is described not as a mass murderer, but a great, if flawed, leader who defeated the Nazis and industrialised a backward and agricultural Soviet Union.
The opposition historian Vladimir Ryzhkov points out that the Kremlin's revisionism is an attempt to justify its own authoritarian model, known as "sovereign democracy". Some half a century after Stalin's death, the dictator continues not only to divide Russians but to spoil the country's relations with its former satellites.
Over the summer Russia has been involved in a bitter dispute with eastern Europe over the causes and origins of the second world war. This month, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, dismissed the claim that the Soviet Union shared responsibilty for the conflict, together with Germany as an "absolute lie".
During a visit to Poland to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the war, the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, admitted the Nazi-Soviet pact had been immoral, but added that other powers – including Britain and France – had also struck deals with the Nazis.
For Zhura, however, one thing is indisputable. "Stalin was a kind, generous, and magnanimous man, a genius," he asserts. "Under Stalin people were confident of the future. If he killed millions of people why do so many people still love him?"
Tragic Origins
Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is the son of Yakov, one of Stalin's four children produced by Stalin during a love life that included two wives and many mistresses. Yakov's relationship with Stalin, above, was little short of disastrous. The two didn't get on. He shot himself because of Stalin's callousness towards him, but survived. The Germans captured Yakov during the early stages of the second world war, while he was serving with the Red Army. Hitler offered to swap him for Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, who had surrendered at Stalingrad, but Stalin refused. Yakov – who had two children, Yevgeny and Gallina – died in a German concentration camp in 1943.He was probably shot, but may have run into an electric fence. Yevgeny Dzhugashvili – Stalin's grandson – is suing the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta after it claimed Stalin personally ordered the execution of civilians. Now 73, Yevgeny lives in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital a short drive from Gori, Stalin's birthplace. During his career, Dzhugashvili served as a colonel in the Soviet and Russian air force. He briefly toyed with politics and in 1999 stood for Russia's state Duma as a representative of a group of communist parties.
Britain's smallest pub? Time is called on the watering hole set up in the front room of a cottage 70 years ago
Lake Iseo: Italy's secret treasure: Tourist feature
Iseo is not the most famous of the Italian lakes, but it could be the most charming, says Annie Deakin. By Annie Deakin. 2009.08.20.
Little known outside Italy, Lake Iseo is smaller than Lake Como but considerably quieter and more charming. With fewer sun-blotched tourists, and situated just north of the cities of Brescia and Bergamo, it is the unsung gem of northern Italy.
An hour's train journey north east of Milan brings travellers to Franciacorta, an area in the heart of Lombardy's wine-growing region – and the gateway to Lake Iseo. The countryside surrounding the lake is dotted with immaculate vineyards, medieval castles and monasteries.
From the lakeside towns of Sale Marasino or Iseo, you can take the short ferry ride – almost empty even during high season – to Monte Isola, the largest inhabited lake island in southern Europe. Three kilometres in length and with only 2,000 residents and no cars, the remote island has a quiet calm. Walk along its cobbled waterside track and admire the blue and white paper flowers that are strung across paths and tied to doorways.
In the island's picturesque fishing village, Peschiera Maraglio, faded, hand-woven fishing nets are draped above sleepy cafés. When people think of the Italian lakes, it is Lake Como or Lake Garda that spring to mind. Few consider Lake Iseo, so go now before this secret jewel becomes too well known.
Travel by…
Stay at...
L'Albereta (0039 030 776 0550, www.albereta.it) in Erbusco, if you're after sophisticated indulgence. This 19th-century villa has long been a favourite with the jet set, who make good use of the helipad. The bedrooms are supremely comfortable – one even has a retractable roof for a night under the stars – and the bathrooms are exquisite. Double rooms from £176.
A more modest option is the Iseo Lago Hotel (0039 030 98891, www.iseolagohotel.it) in Iseo town. A three-minute walk to the lakeshore, it offers comfortable double rooms from 139 euros.
Spend the morning...
Exploring the beautiful countryside by foot, bike or horseback. Lake Iseo, the seventh largest in the country, is big enough for swimming, fishing, diving and sailing. The region is famous for its sparkling wines, so be sure to taste the local fizz on a tour of the Contadi Castaldi winery (www.contadicastaldi.it)
Have lunch at...
Any of the lakeside restaurants on Monte Isola. Order tinca al forna, a speciality of baked fish with garlic, parsley and parmesan. For ferry times to the island, call 0039 035 971483 or visit www.navigazionelagoiseo.it
Spend the afternoon...
Being pampered in the Albereta's Henri Chenot spa, which has a large swimming pool, sauna, Turkish bath, hydrotherapy area and gym.
Shop for...
Bargain ballet pumps and designer labels in Brescia, where there is an antique market under the porticoes of Piazza Vittoria every second Sunday of the month.
Dine out at...
The Gualtiero Marchesi restaurant – whether you stay at L'Albereta or not. The first Italian chef to win three Michelin stars, Marchesi is deadly serious about food. Last year a scandal erupted when the Michelin Guide stripped him of two of his stars, and he was so incensed that he "gave back" the third. His food, however, remains Michelin-worthy. Order risotto with saffron and pure gold leaf, followed by lobster; and drink Franciacorta Bellavista, the hotel's own sparkling wine.
For a lighter dinner, head to the trendy Dispensa Pani e Vini (0039 030 745 0757, www.dispensafranciacorta.com), in a winery 2km from Lake Iseo, for tapas in miniature tea cups and fresh pasta.
At all costs avoid…
Milan during August, when many restaurants and boutiques are shut.
For more information visit...
Italian Frecce Tricolori
at Moscow International Airshow
Taichi performance breaks Guinness World Record2009-08-08 12:58 BJT from CCTV
The 2008 Beijing Olympics brought China to the world, and featured a number of stunning performances. One year after, the people of China have turned in their own stunning performance.
This morning, a new Guinness World record was set as 33 thousand, 9 hundred and 96 people performed taichi at the National Stadium. The rain didn't dampen the enthusiasm of people who turned out to celebrate the anniversary of the Beijing Olympics.
Almost 34 thousand people from all walks of life gathered at the bird's nest for a 6 minute taichi performance. They successfully created a new Guinness World Record, breaking the record that was made by 30 thousand and 648 people in 2004 in Henan province.
| This morning, a new Guinness World record was set as 33 thousand, 9 hundred
and 96 people performed taichi at the National Stadium. |
Record-breaking kayaker who risked life and limb in a 61m waterfall drop. Agencies: 2009.07.27.
Tyler described the moment he went over as 'acceleration, speed, and impact unlike anything I've ever felt before. I wasn't sure if I was hurt or not. My body was just in shock'
Perched on the brink of a 61m (186ft) drop, this was the moment when Tyler Bradt probably felt the urge to start frantically paddling backwards. Less than four seconds later, he was celebrating a world record for kayak descents.
Tyler Bradt tumbles down the 61m (186ft) waterfall in 3.7 seconds, at speeds of 160km / 100miles per hour, shattering the previous world record of 42m (127ft) he'd set weeks earlier
 Super Hornet jet breaking sound barrier. 2009.05.27. A F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet, with a ring of water vapour around it as it comes within 200mph of breaking the sound barrier.
When aircraft approach the sound barrier, a sudden visible vapour cloud appears around it, offering quick-fingered photographers the chance to capture a spectacular sight. The fighter aircraft, piloted by Lt Justin Halliga n and Lt Michael Witt, which has been used by the US Navy since 1999, was performing at the Jones Beach Air Showin Wantagh, New York.
To the Struggle Against World Terrorism.  Variously known as "The Tear of Grief," "The Teardrop Memorial," and "The Memorial at Harbor View Park" — as well as by its official name, "To the Struggle Against World Terrorism" — this monument to the victims of 9/11 was built by Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli on the waterfront of Bayonne Harbor, New Jersey and publicly dedicated on September 11, 2006. It was, in the words of Vladimir Putin, "a gift from the Russian people."
The monument comprises a 100-foot-tall bronze tower with a jagged split down the middle and a 40-foot-long stainless steel teardrop suspended in the gap. It stands on an 11-sided slab of black marble carved with the names of every person who died in the September 11 attack, as well as the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The brightly lit memorial is visible even at night from the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, the Staten Island Ferry, and other locations around the Hudson River.
Floral tributes placed on the marble base are reflected on the bottom of the Teardrop, symbolising active participation in the process of grieving for loved ones.
Though not well known in the United States, Zurab Tsereteli is renowned for his work in Russia, as well as public sculptures he has erected all around the world. He reportedly spent $12 million of his own money to complete the Bayonne Harbor Monument.Now that's what I call a river dance. It’s the kind of scene that most anglers, wearied from hours sitting on the bank with barely a nibble to show for it, can only dream about. This is a 'superswarm' of silver carp, caused by the hum of a fishing boat's electric motor. The carp react to the vibrations as they would to a predator - jumping up to 10ft out of the water. Jumping silver carp in the Mississippi river.The jumping is a collective reaction to perceived danger, which in the Mississippi comes from boat engine noise The aerial dance - captured by documentary makers in August on the Illinois river, a tributary of the Mississippi - is a spectacular sight as the water churns with fish. But the frenzied silver carp, which weigh up to 40lb (18kg), can swamp boats and cause serious injury to anyone in their path. Film-maker John Downer said the ferocity of the swarm astonished the team. 'It was like all hell had broken loose, they had to return with better protected equipment. 'For a fisherman it's like paradise. They don't even have to drop a line, the fish just jump into the boat.'Why are pirates called pirates?....because that's their name! Ahhh...ha! My preference for relaxing reading are biogaphies. I came across this new publication about one of our most famous pirate hunters, Captain Woodes Rogers and Blackbeard, probably Britain's most notorious pirate of the 18th century. A second feature gives more information of his background and escapades.PIRATE HUNTER:The Life Of Captain Woodes Rogers by Graham A. Thomas (Pen & Sword Ltd). He beheaded Blackbeard and hanged cut-throats by the dozen... the life of history's most ruthless pirate hunter. By Andrew Roberts 6th December 2008Despite the calm sea, the chase was on. Sand was thrown across the decks to stop them becoming slippery with blood, and the men set up nets under the masts in case rigging came tumbling down, shot off by cannon fire. To stop flying splinters, hammocks and bedding were stuffed in the netting, while sheets of lead were laid out ready to plug leaks from small arms fire and cannon shot at the waterline. To prevent the men from scuttling to safety below deck while the fight was on, hatches were shut tight.The date was December 21, 1709, and after 16 months at sea, two tiny British frigates under the command of Captain Woodes Rogers had finally caught sight of one of the richest prizes afloat - the 500-ton Spanish galleon, the Encarnacion, on her way to Acapulco A painting by the artist Jean Leon Jerome Ferris depicts the capture of notorious pirate Blackbeard (left The Encarnacion was loaded down with bejewelled snuffboxes, pearls, rich tapestries and priceless china made for the Queen of Spain, as well as laced ivory fans, embroidered silk gowns, more than 1,000 pairs of silk stockings, chests of musk, tons of rare spices and other plunder valued at more than £1 million on the London market - equivalent to several hundred million pounds todayCaptain Woodes Rogers was a privateer - a pirate in all but name - whose expeditions were funded by British businessmen in return for a share of the booty, and sanctioned by the Navy on condition that he confined his attacks to enemy vessels.
And he was so successful, so consummately aware of the tricks of the trade, that he was eventually persuaded by George II to turn from poacher to gamekeeper. In an age when brutality and ruthlessness were the law of the ocean, he become the most successful pirate hunter of all time. Utterly fearless, he circumnavigated the globe, overcoming mutiny, scurvy, tornadoes and starvation, not to mention the cutlasses, grapeshot and broadsides of the vessels he attacked.
He discovered the real Robinson Crusoe - a Scots seaman named Alexander Selkirk, who had been marooned on an uninhabited island off Chile for four-and-a-half years after a row with his captain - and it was his friendship with the writer Daniel Defoe that led to the novel. By the end of his career, he had become Governor of the Bahamas, charged with stopping the 2,000 or more pirates who were decimating British trade in the area.
Following intense hand-to-hand fighting, his men killed and beheaded the infamous Blackbeard, leaving the body of the world's most feared pirate riddled with pistol balls and slashed raw by 20 cutlass wounds.
Such was their triumph in his death, they displayed his 'glowering head' on the bowsprit of one of their vessels.
Now, 300 years after he captured that fabulous Spanish galleon the Encarnacion, a new book, The Pirate Hunter, by the veteran military historian Graham A. Thomas, tells Woodes Rogers' remarkable story.
Nor does the author attempt to romanticise the tale: he rightly points out that then - as now - piracy was a murderous, vicious way of life, based on heartless plunder, terror and rape.
 James Purefoy portrays Blackbeard in the 2006 BBC docu-drama
Born in Bristol in 1679, the son of a sea captain, Woodes Rogers married the daughter of an admiral. Before the age of 30, he had shown such seamanship and leadership that a consortium of Bristol merchants raised the money to buy two frigates - the Duke (320 tons and 36 guns) and the Duchess ( 260 tons and 26 guns) - with the commission to capture, ransom and rob any ships he found anywhere in the world.
As a privateer, Woodes Rogers was bound by no laws beyond his own morality. It was agreed that the plunder he brought home would be split two-thirds for the expedition's backers, and one-third to his officers and the crew of 340. On August 22, 1708, Rogers weighed anchor from Bristol, first setting sail for the Canaries. He was fortunate enough to have secured the services of William Dampier, an explorer who had twice circumnavigated the world and whose experience was to be invaluable.
Unfortunately, he was also forced to take along Dr Thomas Dover, who, as a major investor in the enterprise and the representative of the Bristol merchants, had to be given a major say in decision-making during the expedition. Woodes Rogers told his merchant backers that he hoped 'the blessing of God may bring vast riches to Great Britain'. As a precaution, he took 36 officers, twice the usual number, 'to prevent mutinies, which often happen in long voyages, and that we might have a large provision for a succession in case of mortality'.
Within a month, the little fleet had captured their first prize off Tenerife - a Spanish vessel loaded with two butts of wine and a hogshead of brandy. 'Now we are well stocked with liquors we shall be better able to endure cold when we get the length of Cape Horn,' Woodes Rogers wrote in his journal.
It took the two tiny ships - hardly bigger than modern fishing trawlers - ten days to round Cape Horn in January 1709, being buffeted by high gales that sent them rolling from beam to beam. Sails were lost and icebergs narrowly avoided, with every sailor soaked to the skin for days on end; but, nonetheless, they made it around the most treacherous sea lane in the world.
They were in the South Seas of the Pacific Ocean, and desperately short of food and fresh water. Going ashore on Juan Fernandez Island for new provisions, they found an 'abundance of crawfish and a man in goat's skins who looked wilder than the first owners of them'.
This was Alexander Selkirk, who had been put ashore on the island four years and four months previously, by a Captain Stradling with whom he had fallen out. He had been allowed to take his clothes, bedding, a pistol and some powder, tobacco, a hatchet and knife, a kettle, the Bible and some mathematical instruments - but no food.
He expected it to be a short visit, as he was convinced he would soon be picked up. Sadly, he was mistaken. Although ships visited the island during Selkirk's lonely sojourn, they were mostly Spanish and their crews had fired on him. Selkirk built a camp of goatskin tents. He found the first eight months the worst, but had succeeding in making fire by rubbing together two sticks of pimento wood, and had lived off goats that inhabited the island after they had escaped - along with cats and rats - from the ships and pirate vessels that had anchored there.
He devoured the turnips which grew plentifully; he exercised, ate well and became extraordinarily fit. When his knife broke, he made replacements out of the hoops of rotten barrels left by earlier ships that had come in for water.
To keep down the island's rat population after he had woken one night to find them gnawing his feet, he used goat meat to lure more than 100 cats into his compound, where they slept every night.
In 1709, he saw sails and a British flag on the horizon, and then Woodes Rogers' men came ashore in long boats. They were startled by the 'wildman' running at them along the beach. 'He ran with wonderful swiftness through the woods and up the rocks and hills,' said Woodes Rogers later. 'We had a bulldog, which we sent with several of our nimblest runners to help him in catching goats; but he distanced and tired both the dog and men.'
At first it was hard to understand what Selkirk was saying, because he had not heard English spoken in more than four years. The terror of being alone 'in such a wild and desolate place,' he said, had been dulled by regular prayer and psalm-singing.
He told how he had danced with his pet cats and goats in the moonlight to avoid the near- suicidal loneliness that fell upon him, and how he had 'diverted himself sometime by cutting his name on trees'.
On his rescue, Selkirk joined the expedition and was soon given command of one of the vessels Rogers captured. He was introduced to foreigners as 'the Governor of Juan Fernandez Island', which in a way he had been. History sadly does not relate what passed between him and Captain Stradling when next they met, if ever they did.
After three months of waylaying ships off the west coast of South America, Rogers' fleet had increased to eight vessels, as well as the Duke and Duchess. Sadly, his 20-year-old brother Thomas was killed, shot through the head in one engagement against the Spanish.
On April 22, 1709, Rogers conceived a plan to capture and pillage the Peruvian town of Guayaquil, which he had learned contained a rich treasury.
'Rogers ordered his pinnace forward, heading for the shore, fully confident that the other boats would follow,' records Graham Thomas. Yet at the key moment, cowardly Dr Dover, representing the investors, argued that the town had been warned - bells were being rung and fireworks were going off - and that the assault was therefore hopelessly compromised. By the time they realised the next day that Guayaquil had merely been celebrating a saint's day, the town was, indeed, warned, and carried a vast fortune in gold inland to be buried in secret.
Rogers attacked nonetheless, but when they captured the town by a brave frontal assault, all they found was 'flour, peas, beans and jars of wine and brandy'. So, they negotiated with the Spanish not to raze it to the ground and managed to extract 22,000 silver pieces of eight out of the authorities before sailing away.
Throughout his piratical career, Rogers enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for treating his prisoners with respect. They were ransomed for the maximum possible price, it was true, but the women were treated with civility, and the men allowed to retain their dignity, often being invited to dine with Rogers.
The ultimate prize for all English pirates between 1565 and 1815 was the Manila galleons. These vast, well-armed ships carried huge riches on both legs of their journey between Manila and Acapulco.
Going westwards, they carried silver pesos, rubies, pearls, jade, gold and silver plate. Those sailing eastwards towards New Spain (Mexico, California and Central America) carried spices and silks for the European markets.
For a privateer to capture a well-laden Manila galleon meant never having to work again. By late November 1709, things were going badly for Rogers' fleet. Water was low, all the turtles (their emergency rations) had been eaten, many of the crew were ill and sailors were stealing each other's bread, even at the risk of being flogged and then clapped in irons in the hold.
Rogers knew they could not backtrack southwards to Cape Horn because the Spanish, with hugely superior forces, were waiting for them there. 'We are now something dubious of seeing the Manila ship,' he wrote disconsolately. 'It's nearly a month after the time they generally fall in with this coast.'
Yet just as doubt was giving way to despair, at 9am on December 21, off the coast of California, a lookout in the crow's nest spotted a sail seven leagues (21 miles) away, and the fleet gave chase.
Rogers had spent the many months at sea drilling his gun-crews so that they could fire faster and more accurately than any enemy. That way, he hoped the British pirates would be able to take on the larger, 500-ton, 50-gun Encarnacion. After a long chase, 'both ships were parallel, and firing broadsides at each other at point-blank range.
'Thickening, choking smoke from the roaring guns filled the air, shrouding both ships with a black gloom, while above the whine of shot, the splintering of wood and the ripping of sails came the whip-crack sounds of small arms fire as the snipers in the rigging of both ships opened fire, trying to pick off the officers on the decks of each ship.' Rogers later wrote of how 'They return [fire] as thick for a while, but they did not ply their guns as fast as we'.
'Surgeons lit their lanterns below decks,' records Graham Thomas, 'spreading canvas on the wooden operating tables and laying out their instruments, knives, saws, probes, ligatures and gags to stop the men screaming as they cut off arms or legs while assistants brought boiling pitch to cauterise the men's wounds.'
At one time, a 12lb cannonball hit and split the mizzenmast of the Duke. Had it come down, it would have spelled the end for the ship, with the crew winding up prisoners of the Spanish. Luckily, it held. Soon afterwards, Rogers was hit in the left cheek by a musket ball which tore away a large part of his upper jaw and knocked several teeth out onto the deck. He stayed conscious and fought on, however, writing out his orders 'to prevent the loss of blood and because of the pain I suffered by speaking'. The Spanish struck their colours - or surrendered - soon afterwards.
Rogers' capture of the Encarnacion was a great feat of leadership and seamanship, but after long legal wranglings once he had returned home with his plunder, he wound up with only £1,600 of the prize money. It hardly covered the debts his wife had notched up in the three years of his absence.
For this reason, he decided to accept George II's commission to sail to the West Indies as Governor of the Bahamas, to root out the piracy that was threatening to strangle all trade in the Caribbean. Rogers landed at Nassau in 1718 and conducted a vicious, but ultimately successful war against the 'disorderly, unwashed bunch of cutthroats' he hunted down there.
On one occasion, he hanged eight pirates in one day (although he spared a ninth at the last minute when he discovered his 'loyal and good' parents came from Weymouth.)
Understanding well the mind of a pirate, he was the scourge of the Jolly Roger until his death in 1732.
Shipwreck clues could clear Blackbeard of sinking his ship to swindle his crew
He was history's most feared pirate, striking terror into seafarers as he cut a bloodthirsty swathe through the Caribbean and North Atlantic. By Jasper Copping
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New research has found that Blackbeard may be innocent of one of the most notorious charges against him. For almost 300 years, the British pirate captain has stood accused of deliberately sinking his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, so he could swindle his crew out of their share of loot they had plundered.
Marine archaeologists, who are conducting a diving expedition on the vessel's presumed wreck, now believe it may have run aground by accident. They have even found evidence suggesting that Blackbeard made repeated attempts to rescue the stricken craft.
They have discovered a large pile of ballast, including anchors and several cannon, in the middle section of the ship. They believe Blackbeard ordered the crew to move the heavy items from their original positions, near the bow of the vessel, back towards the stern in an effort to lift the vessel's bows from the submerged sandbank onto which it had run.
It follows the discovery of an anchor on the sea bed, 450ft (137m) away from the ship, which experts believe would have been used to try to winch the boat free.
Chris Southerly, chief archaeologist for the project, said: "If Blackbeard had intended to sink the ship on purpose, this seems an awful lot of labour and effort to make it look good to the crew, to allay their fears that he was abandoning them. "The main ballast pile, which has two large anchors and at least six cannon and a huge pile of ballast stones, is just about amidships, roughly where the upper aft deck would have started. "It would have been very hard to move things further aft than that, because the deck is on a different level and there is a wall in the way. They may have moved things as far aft as could easily be done, to try to save the ship and then abandoned the effort, realising it still wouldn't save the ship. The impression, from what I have seen, is that it was an accident."
The ship ran aground on a sandbank about a mile from shore on June 10 1718, as Blackbeard's flotilla of four vessels was heading for Beaufort Inlet, in the British colony of North Carolina. Days earlier, Blackbeard had blockaded the major port of Charleston, South Carolina, and knew that the Royal Navy would be closing the net around him. Historians have long believed that he deliberately grounded his largest vessel so that he could split up his followers in the ensuing chaos, thus "downsizing" his crew and ensuring the loot was transferred to another vessel.
In the event, that is precisely what he did, escaping with the treasure and stranding 30 men on a nearby island. But Mr Southerly added: "I think he probably just made the most of a bad situation."
Blackbeard is believed to have been born Edward Teach, or Edward Thatch, in Bristol, in 1680. He fought as a privateer for the British, attacking Spanish and French ships in the War of the Spanish Succession before turning to piracy. His troop captured a French slave ship called La Concorde near the Caribbean island of St Vincent in November 1717 and renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge.
It became his flagship, sailing alongside three smaller sloops. His flotilla is said to have taken 45 ships. Blackbeard's striking appearance and character has inspired many subsequent depictions of pirates, most recently in Pirates of the Caribbean, the Hollywood trilogy starring Johnny Depp. He is said to have had 14 wives and would tie burning fuses into his long beard during battle, to give himself a demonic appearance.
On one occasion, while playing cards with a member of his crew, he is said to have shot him in the kneecaps under the table. After the loss of the Queen Anne's Revenge, Blackbeard sought and was granted a pardon. But he continued to seize ships, and the Royal Navy were sent to track him down. He was killed in a battle with the Royal Navy in November 1718.
Blackbeard's head was cut off and his body tossed overboard. According to legend, his headless body swam around his ship five times before he finally died. His head was attached to the bowsprit of a Navy ship and his skull was later used as a punch bowl.
The wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge lies in about 23 feet (seven metres) of water. It was first discovered in 1996 but the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources is now funding a project to excavate and recover items from the ship, as it is feared they could be lost as sand around the wreck is eroded away.
Previous expeditions have recovered items from the stern section and the current project, which started last month and is expected to continue until November, is examining the mid section, where the ballast pile is located.
The team have so far recovered 9,000 flecks of gold, which add up to just a quarter of an ounce (seven grams), suggesting that Blackbeard was able to get the treasure off the ship. Mark Wilde-Ramsing, project leader, added: "The crew don't seem to have been in survival mode. They were able to get most things they wanted off."
Items recovered so far include navigational instruments, carpentry tools and bells. The new findings have provoked controversy among experts. Angus Konstam, author of Piracy: The Complete History, welcomed the research but said the discoveries could still be consistent with Blackbeard having deliberately run the ship aground.
"Blackbeard would have had to try to dupe his crew," he said. "When the ship went aground, it was in his interest to make it look as if it was an accident, to avoid getting lynched by his own crew. But the great thing about archaeology is that it can come up with new ways to stand theories on their head."By Jasper Copping
Space walk factfile
In more than 40 years since the first space walk, astronauts have turned the science of weightlessness into an art - and learned lessons which will help China's first man to follow suit today.
Here are some fascinating facts which the Chinese astronauts may have learned before they set off from Earth:
During space walks, astronauts wear adult nappies described by Nasa as "maximum absorbency garments".
The longest excursion was eight hours and 56 minutes, performed by the American astronaut Susan Helms on 11 March 2001.
A backpack propulsion unit, incorporating small nitrogen thrusters controlled by hand and moderated by computer, is worn to allow astronauts to return if they become separated from the space station. Otherwise they might drift away for ever.
Apart from floating away, the biggest danger during space walks is collision with the growing volume of space debris floating in orbit from earlier missions.
The first human to walk in space was Russian Alexy Leonov on March 18, 1965. His outing lasted only 24 minutes. Since then the feat has been repeated almost 300 times.
The first untethered space walk was by American Bruce McCandless on February 7, 1984. Until then, astronauts were always attached to the space craft by reins.
Astronauts who perform space walks risk suffering from "the bends", much like divers returning too quickly to the surface of the sea, because of the lower air pressure in their space suits. To help adjust more slowly, many "camp out" the night before in an airlock on the spacecraft, where the pressure is gradually reduced.
Russian Alexey Leonov nearly got locked out after a space walk in 1965 because his suit became so highly pressurised and rigid that he could not get back through the door. Affter switching his suit to a lower pressure setting and with immense effort, he was finally able to pass through into the airlock and secure himself inside.
The first woman to perform a space walk was Russian cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, on 25 July 1984.
The first black astronaut to perform a space walk was Texan Bernard Harris Jnr, on February 9, 1995.
One US astronaut suffered a potentially deadly spacesuit puncture but was saved because the object that made the hole stayed in place, avoiding decompression that would have caused anoxia and rapid death.
The first American to walk in space, Ed White, floated at the end of a 25 foot golden tether for 22 minutes. He even tried a small "zip gun," powered by compressed nitrogen, to propel himself through space. White found spacewalking so easy and enjoyable that he joked over the radio transmission to the space craft that he wasn't coming back inside.
Not all early space walks were so easy. Gene Cernan found it impossible to turn the knobs on his propulsion unit because the lack of gravity meant his weightless body turned instead. He became so overheated that his visor clouded over with moisture.
Feeling under the weather?* It appeared in the sky for the briefest of moments.
Rare: Dr Mitton photographed this unusual upside-down rainbow, a circumzenithal arc, near her home in Cambridge
But unlike a rainbow, the sky has to be clear of rain and low level clouds for it to be seen. Relatively rare in Britain, the arc only appears when sunlight shines at a specific angle (22 degrees) through a thin veil of wispy clouds at a height of around 20,000 to 25,000 feet. At this altitude the cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals, the size of grains of salt.
Meteorologists say the clouds must be convex to the sun with the ice particles lined up together in the right direction to refract the light.This results in the sunlight bouncing off the ice crystals high in the atmosphere, sending the light rays back up and bending the sunlight like a glass prism into a spectrum of colour.
* 'Feeling under the weather' is an English expression which means to feel a little unwell
Alexander the Great | 
Alexander, bust from Delos (Louvre) | 
Alexander the Great (*356; r. 336-323): the Macedonian king who defeated his Persian colleague Darius III Codomannus and conquered the Achaemenid Empire. During his campaigns, Alexander visited a.o. Egypt, Babylonia, Persis, Media, Bactria, the Punjab, and the valley of the Indus. In the second half of his reign, he had to find a way to rule his newly conquered countries. Therefore, he made Babylon his capital and introduced the oriental court ceremonial, which caused great tensions with his Macedonian and Greek officers. A short biography can be found here.
see - http://livius.or |
Confucius has many descendants.
Kong Deyong, a 77th generation descendant of Confucius, founded the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee. It is based in the family's hometown, Qufu, in eastern China.
Mr Kong, a senior member of the Confucius clan, fled to Hong Kong after the Cultural Revolution when he and members of his family were persecuted, the sage's home vandalised, and family tombs, destroyed. He is now compiling a massive register of descendants, with the backing of the Chinese Government, who have restored the family's home, and turned it into a tourist attraction.
Confucius was little honoured during his lifetime, and his work has been rejected at times since his death 2,500 years ago. However, he has been regarded as the founding father of Chinese political and ethical thought throughout most of that time.
It is thought that the clan may have more than 3 million members, all of whom are united by the family name 'Kong', also written as 'Kung' and 'Hung'. Confucius's proper name was 'Kong Zi'.
2008.02.20.
Traditions : The Mayan Indians of Mexico.
Edited and revised from '21st Century' - 2006.11.01 Agencies.
Eighty-three-year-old Maya Indian, Cenorio Colli, gazed lovingly at his wife's long brown hair and recalled how carefully she combed it when she was still alive.
Then he returned to cleaning her skull and every bone she left behind.
Grieving Maya Indians in a sweltering village deep in the limestone flatlands of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, painstakingly clean the remains of their late loved ones during a unique annual family reunion with the dead on November 1st and 2nd.
In a tradition dating back centuries, families exhume their ancestors after three years in the grave, and transfer their dried bones and skulls - often with hair attached - to wooden crates on permanent display in open funeral niches. Families gather at the brightly painted tombs to replace the box's embroidered cloth linings. The festival brings back floods of memories for mourning relatives, struggling with the loss of life companions.
'I was talking to her', Colli, a widower of nine years, recalled as he lifted his dead wife Concepcion's brittle pelvis from a large pile of bones and dusted it off with a cloth. 'She lowered her head and that was it.' But the retired farmer said he took solace from knowing she was at peace. 'I feel happy because she died happy.'
The Next World: According to Maya beliefs - Mayan Indians are decended from the Aztec's, an ancient civilisation that ruled Central America, death is a stage in life in which the deceased evolve into higher, more spiritual beings.
In the village of Pomuch, the dead are believed to be 'purified' during the first three years after their death. They are then exhumed and welcomed back as highly respected members of extended families, in which past and present generations merge.
Old women in colourfully patterned traditional dresses chattered in the Maya language on Monday, as they fussed over the bones of long lost mothers and the skulls of babies who barely lived a day. Marta Helena Chipool, 35, lovingly cleaned the remains of a mother- in -law she never met, and the twin girls who died with her 40 years ago in childbirth.
'(When)..you go to the cemetery and you can see your dead sister, mother and father and talk to them,' said Lazaro Tuz, an anthropologist from Pomuch who has spent years documenting the ritual. 'This keeps the family together. The dead person is no longer dead because you can touch him,' he said.
'She is not dead to me, she lives in my heart,' said Maria Euan, a 52-year-old woman with braids and bright cross-stitch flowers, spread across her white blouse, as she and her husband arranged her dead mother's bones. 'This is her party,'
Origins. The origins of the ritual, which is celebrated almost exclusively in Pomuch, are murky, and it is unclear whether the practice predates the Spanish Conquest during the late 16th Century.
One theory suggests that villagers, faced with an overflowing cemetery, may have begun digging up their dead for health reasons.
Some fear the tradition is dying out as pomuch's youth, increasingly hooked on video games, action films and reggae music, embrace modern culture. According to village folklore, the spirit of a Pomuch native can become angry and wander lost through the streets if proper care is not taken of his or her remains.
Martin de Porras cleaned his dead father's thigh bone, still bearing the shiny metal joint that made his last months after a road accident miserable, and wondered whether his children would do the same for him.
'I can't make them do it,' he said. 'but if they don't, I don't know where I'm going to end up.'
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Photo: Dr Jaqueline Mitton - Astronomer
Once upon a time, in the far, far away land of Techgeeks lived two university pals named Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They spent long hours dreaming of a company that one day would be the biggest search engine in the world, offering mere mortals the opportunity to traverse the great plains of the planet without moving their lazy a****.
Information would be available at the touch of a square key and people could search for the most bizarre, beautiful, weird and wonderful images relayed by satellites dotted around the globe. This would make for a very happy life.