Requirements: on first listen, you’d be immediately smitten by the melody, whether or not you understand the lyrics is secondary.
IMHO the catchiest of them all is La Marseillaise, the French national anthem:
It’s followed by the Soviet Union’s anthem:
Followed by Das Deutschlandlied, Germany’s national anthem:
Followed by the national anthem of Canada:
Honourable mention: it was reported that in April 2010, a poll was started by the Commonwealth Games Council for England, to ask the public which anthem should be played for Team England at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. There were 3 choices: God Save the Queen, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory. Result: Jerusalem won, garnering 52% of the vote. If indeed England decides to officially declare that this is its national anthem, then it surely is one of the catchiest national anthems in the world:
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It was reported by the BBC on 5th January 2012 that the government of Sweden has formally recognised a new religion called Kopimism just before Christmas 2011, and this has been hailed by its “spiritual leader,” Isak Gerson, 19.
The Missionary Church of Kopimism’s core “belief” is that everybody has the right to file-share i.e. “kopyacting” is a religious ceremony, and that file-sharing now has “religious protection.”
A church spokesman said they had to apply 3 times before they were successful.
Its “sacred symbols” are CTRL+C and CTRL+V (universal shortcuts for “copy and paste”).
They say the church doesn’t condone illegal file sharing but rather focuses on “the open distribution of knowledge to everybody,” and that:
For the Church of Kopimism, information is holy and copying is a sacrament. Information holds a value, in itself and in what it contains and the value multiplies through copying. Therefore copying is central for the organisation and its members. Being recognised by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of Kopimi. Hopefully this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution.
Now I wonder how members of a “church” practising this religion would get married – would they have specific requirements when it comes to prescribing personalized bridesmaid gifts?
The BBC
Wikipedia
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Guerrillero Heroico (Heroic Guerrilla Fighter) is a photograph of the the charismatic and controversial Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, then 31 years old, wearing his black beret.
It was snapped by Alberto Korda (1928-2001) on 5th March 1960 in Havana, Cuba during a memorial service for victims of the freighter La Coubre’s explosion at Havana’s port; it was carrying 76 tons of explosive material the day before and resulted in up to 100 deaths.
This is the cropped version that we see most often
By the end of the decade the photo had become a cultural icon.
Guevara was shot to death in 1967 aged 39.
Korda was quoted to have said that during the time the photo was taken, he was drawn to Guevara’s face, which showed “absolute implacability”, anger and pain, and that it emphasized Che’s firm and stoic character.
Emphasizing the image’s ubiquitous nature and wide appeal, the Maryland Institute College of Art has called the photo “the most famous photograph in the world, and a symbol of the 20th century”.
Copies of it have been painted, printed, digitized, embroidered, tattooed, silk-screened, sculpted, sketched and every other conceivable method on virtually every surface in existence, prompting the Victoria and Albert Museum to quip that the photo “has been reproduced more times than any other image in photography’s history.”
Source
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While performing at a Jewish orthodox synagogue in Slovakia, violinist Lukas Kmit was interrupted by a mobile phone ringing, that very familiar Nokia jingle.
After pausing and giving the guilty party an annoyed glare, Kmit did the unexpected: continuing his performance with an on-the-spot improvisation of that ringtone, earning him applause from the appreciative crowd.
The video was uploaded to youtube in July 2011.
It starts at 0:38 in the following video:
Yes, he definitely has made his point.
Note: while seemingly genuine, this video could very well be a viral marketing exercise by Nokia.
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In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope took an image of the “Pillars of Creation” of the Eagle Nebula, located 6,500 light-years away in the Serpens constellation. It contains NGC6611, a young hot star cluster that sculpts and illuminates the surrounding gas and dust, consequently causing a large hollowed-out hole and pillars.
The tallest pillar is around 4 light-years high!
It was probably the most iconic image of space in the 20th century.
Recently, the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory and X-ray readings from the XMM-Newton probe has produced the 21st century version of the image, showing the pillars (actually towers of gas and dust) dwarfed by the full majesty of the nebula, hence showing the Eagle Nebula as they’ve never seen before.
Can you see the pillars?
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In the third set of a men’s singles second round match in the 2012 Australian Open on 18th January 2012 between unseeded Marcos Baghdatis (world no.43) and 21st seed Stanislas Wawrinka, Baghdatis was 2 sets down (6-7, 4-6), and during a changeover, he snapped:
That’s 4 rackets destroyed in less than a minute: possibly a record for rackets destroyed in a single match at the highest level of tennis.
That meltdown somehow lifted him to win the third set 7-5, before succumbing again in the fourth 1-6.
But is he the greatest pro racket-smasher who ever lived?
Marat Safin, the 2005 Australian Open champion and former world number 1, was said to have broken about 700 rackets in his 12-year career (1997-2009). Another source said that in 2011, he said that he’d destroyed more than 1,000 in total. Apparently he destroyed 48 rackets in 1999 alone.
Then there’s sentimental favourite Goran Ivanisevic, who had to retire due to breaking all 3 of his rackets in the second round match against Lee Hyung-Taik in the 2000 Samsung Open. He didn’t have any more rackets with him, and there weren’t any suitable ones for borrowing.
Supervisor Gerry Armstrong then told umpire Kim Craven to announce the incredible:
Due to lack of appropriate equipment, game, set and match Lee.
Some people say Ivanisevic broke even more rackets than Marat Safin in total
Source
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On 16th January 2012, Ngidi Msungubana, 25 was bitten to death by a shark while surfing at Second Beach in Port St Johns, Eastern Cape province, South Africa (Eastern Cape). The beach faces the Indian Ocean.
It has been called “the world’s deadliest” due to this being the sixth death since 2007 due to sharks there.
People who saw what happened said he was in shallow water (1.5m deep) when a bull shark struck. He then wrestled with the animal for about 5 minutes while the sea around him turned red as he was bitten again and again on both his arms and stomach. Msungubana was finally dragged out of the water by a lifeguard. Unfortunately, he died on the way to a hospital.
Bull sharks hunt by themselves and are dangerously aggressive.
Previous fatal attacks:
- 2007: a lifeguard
- 2009: 3 attacks
- 2011 (15th Jan): a surfer
World shark attack stats show that only 1 in 6 attacks is fatal, but here it’s 6 out of 6.
A possible cause is that many sharks like to come there to eat animals slaughtered during traditional sacrifices.
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The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell (1847 – 1922), who has been described as one of the most influential people in history.
He was awarded the first US patent for the telephone on 7th March 1876. 3 days later came the famous first phone call, when, from his Boston lab, he uttered “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you.”
Remarkably, he felt that the telephone disturbed his real work as a scientist, and so did not want it placed in his study.
In 1878, he wrote an 8-page letter to his father. The letter has a drawing of the new gadget, as well as detailed explanations on how to safely use it.
The sketch shows 2 linked telephones:
The envelope:
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Silke Schoenfleisch-Backofen, 39, of Frankfurt, Germany is only 3′ 8″ tall but she’s been nicknamed “Power Frau” (mighty woman). She’s been working as a prosecutor at the Frankfurt State Court for 8 years, most of the time handling business law.
She reportedly decided to be a lawyer after being refused entry by a medical school due to her height, in order to sue the the health ministry.
She was quoted to have said that “what’s big for me is not the physical measurements of the body, but what’s big inside you.”
Well said indeed.
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Back in 1990, Barack Obama, then 28, was elected the first black president of Harvard Law Review. In an interview with the New York Times that year, he said he planned to spend up to 3 years working in law and then go into politics or community work.
In 1991, he presented a Black History Minute public service announcement for TBS that year, believed to be his first-ever appearance on US national TV.
In the video, he talked about Charles Hamilton Houston, the black lawyer known for teaching Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The two worked on the landmark court ruling Brown vs Board of Education, which marked the end of colour segregation in public schools:
The distinguished lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston was born in 1895, eight months before the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson. He spent his career fighting to overturn that decision.’
He signed off by saying: “I’m Barack Obama, remembering Charles Hamilton Houston and celebrating a great moment in our history.”
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Photographer: Sebastian Voltmer (Germany)
Date taken: December 2011
Place: eastern Norway
Description: wide angle & horizontally compressed
Auroras happen due to ionised solar particles thrown at us by the sun’s flares becoming trapped by the earth’s magnetism, agitating atmospheric gases into producing energy in the form of light.
Now getting this kind of photo is probably not as rare as nailing The Man on the Flying Trapeze trick if you used one of those henrys yoyos.
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…or scariest runway.
Paro Airport is the only international airport in Bhutan, located 6 km away from Paro town, in a deep valley on the bank of the Paro river at an elevation of 2,200 m.
It is surrounded by Himalayan peaks as high as 5,500m.
It is probably the world’s most difficult airport to land on – as of October 2009, only 8 pilots in the world are certified to land there. Flights are only allowed using visual cues, not automatically; and only during daytime.
As can be seen from the following video of a landing there, the plane has to make some hard banks through a narrow path of tree-covered hillsides before even seeing the runway. Add to that mix the propensity of strong winds going through the valleys, often causing severe turbulence:
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