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

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.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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.”

Grapevine, Texas: on a quiet Christmas morning, 6 close relatives, 4 females and 2 males, had gathered in an apartment, and had just finished unwrapping their Christmas presents, when Iranian-American real estate agent Aziz “Bob” Yazdanpanah, 56, dressed as Santa Claus, unexpectedly arrived, took out his gun, shot everybody dead, then turned the gun on himself. Police found 2 handguns.

The dead were identified as:

- Nasrin Rahmaty, 55; the ex-wife of Aziz;
- Nona Yazdanpanah, 19; the daughter of Aziz;
- Ali Yazdanpanah, 15; the son of Aziz;
- Zohreh Rahmaty, 58; Nasrin’s sister;
- Hossein Zarei, 59; Zohreh’s husband;
- Sahra Zarei, 22; Zohreh and Hossein’s only daughter.

He had separated from his wife in March. They married in 1987.

While the family was Muslim, they celebrated Christmas as a cultural holiday.

Madalla, Nigeria: it was in the middle of mass on the morning of Christmas day at St Theresa Catholic Church when a bomb planted by terrorists exploded, killing 27 people and severely damaged surrounding buildings and cars. The country’s top newspaper described it as “Nigeria’s blackest Christmas ever.” In all 3 churches were bombed on Christmas Day, the second consecutive Christmas attacks in a row that the Boko Haram Islamist sect has claimed responsibility for.

Purpose: to teach how to be better lovers.

Fee: GBP1,400 per term (that’s about RM7,000).

Minimum age of admission: 16.

Modules: sexual positions, caressing techniques, anatomical features.

One could say this is one course where nobody would skip class.

Students live in a mixed gender dorm building where they’re expected to “practise their homework.”

And as with any course, there’ll be a certificate awarded in a convocation.

Its advert have already been banned by Austrian TV:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Website: aisos.at

Facebook page

Selected reactions:

New Austrian chat up line… “Do you want to see my certificate?”

Is there a discount for pensioners?

How are they examined at the end – doing it with the course leader??

It would be nice to fail, and go on and do the course again.

I bet the classes are full of old men.

I bet the most attractive girl always gets asked to help the boy’s with their homework.

Bruce Dickinson (born 1958) is best known as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. Joining the band in 1981 to replace Paul Di’Anno, he gained worldwide fame, becoming one of the most acclaimed heavy metal vocalists in history. He is also an airline pilot, fencer, broadcaster, author, screenwriter, actor and marketing director. His interests also include railway technology.

As a fencer, he has competed internationally, and have ranked as high as seventh in Great Britain. He also founded a fencing equipment company under the brand name Duellist.

As an airline pilot, he holds an airline transport pilot’s licence. He regularly flew Boeing 757s in his role as captain for the UK airline Astraeus.

Due to the wide variety of his pursuits, the Winter 2009 edition of Intelligent Life has named him as a living example of a polymath.

Brian May (born 1947) is best known as the lead guitarist and a songwriter of the rock band Queen. The classic “We Will Rock You” was composed by him. He was ranked number 39 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Top guitarist Steve Vai has been quoted as saying:

Brian May is a class act from head to toe, and it shows in his playing. I can listen to any player and pantomime their sound, but I can’t do Brian May. He’s just walking on higher ground.

He studied physics and maths at Imperial College London, graduating with an upper second class BSc (Hons) degree. He then proceeded to study for a PhD degree (on reflected light from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the Solar System) at the same place, and was part of the way through, but then abandoned his doctorate when Queen became successful. In October 2007, more than 30 years after he started his research, he finally completed his PhD thesis in astrophysics entitled A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, and officially graduated on 14th May 2008.

On 17th November 2007, he was appointed Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University, taking over from Cherie Blair.

She was 15 she was scouted by a top London hand model agency.

She gets paid up to GBP2,000 per day to let her hands double for the hands of some of the world’s top celebrities, including Kate Moss, Lily Cole, Lizzie Jager and Natalie Imbruglia.

Kate’s face, Gemma’s hands in a Rimmel London TV advert

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s so special about her hands: very long nail beds and extremely slender fingers.

Her hands are so important to her job that:
- they are insured for GBP1 million
- she wears white cotton gloves during vacations, on top of the usual sunblock so that it doesn’t get a tan or break nails
- she moisturises them 30 times a day with almond oil
- her husband does the washing up.

According to Ms Howorth, perfect hands for girls should have “long nail beds, with a good length from the tip of the nail to the cuticle. They need nice, straight, long fingers, an even skin tone with hands that are not too chubby or slim.”

As for men, they should have “quite hairless hands and arms. Their skin should be blemish free and their nail beds should be even.”

- 19 prostitutes (not registered as inmates) & 6 female inmates living in the male-only part of the jail
- 160 plasma TVs
- 63 DVD players
- 34 sound systems
- 19 cell phones
- 2 sacks of marijuana (cannabis)
- 100 cockerels for cock fighting
- 2 peacocks
- a few bottles of booze
- knives

Who knows, they might’ve also found Sun Hats in there.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The above were only discovered as the inmates were being prepared for transfer to another jail.

Needless to say, current jail warden Carlos Coronel Avitia was sacked.

Then there was the jail in Sonora (also in Mexico) that inmates had installed with air-conditioning, a refrigerator and DVD player.

She became Poland’s first transsexual Member of Parliament, and indeed the first ever transsexual MP in the history of Europe.

At the time of writing she is the only transgender MP in the whole world.

Historically, she is the third transgender MP.

The first was Georgina Bayer of New Zealand (born 1957), who used to be a man named George Bertrand. She was the world’s first openly transsexual mayor, and then later became the world’s first openly transsexual Member of Parliament, from 1999 to 2007. In 1984 she underwent sex reassignment surgery.

The second was Vladimir Luxuria of Italy (born 1965), who used to be a man named Wladimiro Guadagno. She was MP from 2006 to 2008. While she lives as a female, she has not undergone any surgery, hence she’s legally and physically is still a man.

Consisting about 3,000 individuals, they were isolated until 1970.

They have been reported to practice ritual cannibalism up to the present day, although this might not be true of clansmen who’ve had frequent contact with outsiders.

The TV show “60 Minutes” was reported to have claimed in 2006 that if someone amongst the Korowai is found guilty of being a “khakhua” (secret witch doctor), he/she is tortured, killed, and finally eaten, with unverified reports claiming that the brain is usually eaten immediately because it tastes best while still warm.

Source
Wikipedia entry on the Korowai people