Did You Know.....

[Diane Amberg]

That is sad. As far as I know my friend's ex still has a good job.He travels, selling pharmaceuticals and is very good at it.He too would try to buy people's loyalty, but when he turned on you there was no end to his evilness,

[Warph]

....in 1962, Bernard Waber wrote The House on East 88th Street, a story about the Primms, a family who purchased a townhouse in Manhattan only to find that someone was already living there — Lyle, a crocodile. The book spawned a sequel, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, published in 1965, as well as a few others in later years.

It's possible that Antoine Yates grew up on the Lyle series. We don't know. But we do know that in 2003, the 31 year old Yates was found making Waber's works of fiction into something of a reality.

According to CNN... http://articles.cnn.com/2003-10-04/us/nyc.tiger_1_antoine-yates-wild-animal-apartment-building?_s=PM:US

....on October 1, 2003, New York City police officers responded to a dog bite complaint at a public housing apartment building in Harlem. Yates, the bite victim, was taken to the hospital and received treatment. The next day, one of his neighbors anonymously tipped off the police to the true nature of the bites — there was some sort of wild animal living in the building. After another tip and interviews of other building residents, the police cut a hole in Yates' door. Inside, they saw Ming, a two year old Bengal tiger.

The apartment was — beyond the fact that there was a 400 to 500 pound Bengal tiger living there — a disheveled mess. So police decided to rappel down the outside of the building and have a sniper, armed with a gun loaded with animal tranquilizers, shoot sedatives at the animal through one of Yates' windows. That weekend, an officer did exactly that, and the tiger apparently jumped toward the window, breaking the glass in the process. But the sniper did his job, unharmed, and the tiger was subdued.

Police entered the apartment soon after and removed the tiger, sending it to an animal shelter. But once inside, another surprise waited — a 280 pound alligator. That animal was also brought to the shelter.

Also per CNN... http://articles.cnn.com/2003-10-13/us/harlem.tiger_1_wild-animal-antoine-yates-tiger-owner?_s=PM:US

...Yates was charged with a felony charge of reckless endangerment and two counts of possession of a wild animal. He claimed that he was building an animal sanctuary and was soon to procure the requisite land for Ming and his alligator friend, Al, to frolic freely upon. The court did not buy his excuse; Yates served a six month prison stint while Ming and Al were relocated to Ohio and New Jersey, respectively. Despite this, Yates did not give up. As Gothamist noted, after his release from prison, he sued the city for $7,000 for wrongfully seizing his roommates and taking cash he allegedly had hidden in his apartment.
http://gothamist.com/2006/08/08/nypd_is_allowed.php

He lost his lawsuit.


Bonus fact: Alligators and crocodiles both are in the same biological order (crocodylia) but belong to different biological families. How can one tell them apart? The San Diego Zoo explains that alligators tend to have U-shaped jaws while crocodiles have sharper, V-shaped ones; the fourth tooth on the lower jaw of crocodiles is exposed when their mouths are closed — this is not so for alligators; and while both have glands on their tongues which allow the beasts to expell excess salt, the crocodiles' work better, so they prefer saltwater environments while alligators prefer freshwater ones. The image above? It's an alligator.
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-crocodile.html

[Warph]

The Calendar



...that in September 1752 the Julian calendar was replaced with the Gregorian calendar in Great Britain and its American colonies. The Julian calendar was 11 days behind the Gregorian calendar, so 14 September got to follow 2 September on the day of the change. The result was that between 3 and 13 September, absolutely nothing happened!



The calendar switch also influenced the way George Washington's birthday is celebrated. He was born on 11 February 1731, but the anniversary of his birth is on 22 February because of the 11 days eliminated from the calendar switch. At the same time, New Year's Day was changed from 25 March to 1 January, thus according to the new calendar, Washington was born in 1732.

The first Roman Calendar (introduced in 535BC) had 10 months, with 304 days in a year that began in March. January and February were added only later. In 46BC, Julius Caesar created "The Year of Confusion" by adding 80 days to the year making it 445 days long to bring the calendar back in step with the seasons. The solar year – with the value of 365 days and 6 hours – was made the basis of the calendar. To take care of the 6 hours, every 4th year was made a 366-day year. It was then that Caesar decreed that the year begins with the 1st of January.

In 325AD Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, introduced Sunday as a holy day in a new 7-day week. He also introduced movable (Easter) and immovable feasts (Christmas).

In 1545 the Council of Trent authorized Pope Paul III to reform the calendar once more. Advised by astronomer Father Christopher Clavius and physician Aloysius Lilius, Pope Gregory XIII ordered that Thursday, 4 October 1582 was to be the last day of the Julian calendar. The next day was Friday, 15 October. For long-term accuracy, every 4th year was made a leap year unless it is a century year like 1700 or 1800. Century years can be leap years only when they are divisible by 400 (e.g. 1600). This rule eliminates three leap years in four centuries, making the calendar sufficiently correct for all ordinary purposes.

Protestant rulers ignored the new calendar that the Pope ordered. It was not until 1698 that Germany and the Netherlands changed to the Gregorian calendar. As mentioned, Britain made the change only in 1752. Russia adopted the new calendar in 1918, China in 1949.

In spite of the leap year, the Gregorian year is about 26 seconds longer than the earth's orbital period. Thus the beginning of the third millennium should have been celebrated at 9:01pm on 31 December 1999. But considering that the Gregorian calendar starts with Year 1, and not Year 0, adding 2000 years means that the third millennium started at 21h00:34s on 31 December 2000. However, because Dionysis Exeguus – the 6th Century monk whose task it was to pivot the calendar around the birth of Jesus Christ – miscalculated the founding of Rome by about 4 years (and left out the year 0), the true third millennium actually started on 31 December 1995.

The calendars
The first day of the year in the Gregorian calendar is 1 January.
The first month in the Hindu calendar is Chait'r (March/April in the Gregorian calendar).
The Chinese New Year occurs at the second new moon after the beginning of the Northern Hemisphere winter, thus between 20 January and 20 February.
The Jewish calendar begun 3760 years before the beginning of the Christian era. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, is celebrated during September or October of the Gregorian calendar.

The 24-hour division of the day was introduced in the 4th Century BC by the Sumero-Babylonians.

In 1905 Einstein showed in his theory of relativity that time is effected by motion so that the faster one goes the slower time does.

In 1972, Atomic time became the world's official time standard, as Co-ordinated Universal Time (UTC)

In the 6th Century, the Roman monk and astronomer named Dionysis Exeguus (Dionysis the Little) reformed the calendar to pivot around the birth of Christ. He dated the Nativity 753 years from the founding of Rome, calculated to the date King Herod died. But Dionysis miscalculated, because Herod died only 749 years after the founding of Rome, thus 4BC. Dionysis also left out the Year 0. He used the Julian calendar.

[Warph]

....that in 1801, when the first complete world census was carried out, the world's population was 1 billion. China had 295 million people, India 131 million, Russia 33 million, France 27 million, Ottoman Empire 21 million, Germany 14 million, Spain 11 million, Britain 10 million, Ireland and the USA 5 million.
World population landmarks:

2 billion people : 1927

3 billion people : 1960

4 billion people : 1974

5 billion people : 1987

6 billion people : 1999

6.9 billion people : 2010

7 billion people : 2011

As in July 2010, China has a population of 1.3 billion; India 1.2 billion, USA 307 million. Britain has a population of 61 million, Russia 141 million, France 62 million, Germany 82 million.

If Facebook was a country it would be the 3rd largest country in the world, with more 500 million registered profiles... which is almost 100 million less than the number of registered users on QQ.

QQ: http://download.imqq.com/download.shtml

**************************************************************************

The US Census Bureau reported that the 6 billionth person was born at 1.24am on Sunday July 18, 1999. The United Nations however, had set that landmark at October 12, 1999.

Every second 5 people are born and 2 people die, a net gain of 3 people. At this rate, the world population will double every 40 years and would be 12 billion in 40 years, 24 billion in 80 years, and more than 48 billion in 120 years. However the United Nations estimate that world population will stabilize at 12 billion in 120 years, citing that effective family planning will result in a universally low birth rate. Education plays a key role: almost half of the 6 billion people are under age 25.

At the beginning of the second millennium (1000 AD) the world population was 400 million. In 1750 there were about 800 million people in the world. In 1850 there were a billion more, and by 1950, another billion. Then it took just 50 years to double to 6 billion. In another 50 years the world population is expected to be 9 billion, which means that a decrease in growth of the world population is expected.

The recent global population explosion is not only the consequence of increased birth rates but also the result of an unprecedented decrease in death rate. Significant advances in public health and medicine, phenomenal agricultural yields and the expanding global economy contributed to the population explosion as the lifespan average continues to increase.

Only one in ten people lived in cities in 1900. By 1994 the figure had grown to one of every two people, creating megalopolies of millions to tens of millions inhabitants. More than 400 cities have a population of more than a million people. Managing such large cities, and better management of the planet's resources, could become the most difficult problem of this century.

In spite of the population increase and desertification, famines have actually become less frequent in the past 200 years. The famines in Africa seen on TV are due to the political strife and civil wars (see current conflicts between countries) that disorganize the economy, paralyze transportation, and prevent emergency food drops. In fact, out of the 40 poorest and hungriest nations on earth, 36 actually export food to richer countries.

Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and
140,000 people die, 25,000 because of starvation

http://peopleandplanet.net/

[Warph]

WHO OWNS THE MOON???

.....that the only place in the universe where a flag flies all day, never goes up or comes down, never flies half-mast and does not get saluted, is the moon.

It is, of course, the American flag, the only country to have landed people on the moon even though British Interplanetary Society engineers had in 1939 designed a ship to carry people to the moon. Since Apollo 11 landed on moon on July 20, 1969 until 1972, 12 American astronauts walked on the moon, spending 170 hours roaming over 60 miles (100 km), planting 6 flags in total. They brought home 880 pounds (400 kilograms) of soil and rock, and 30,000 photographs.

The six American flags on the moon were planted during the missions of Apollo 11,12,14,15,16,and 17. The flags of the European Union, Russia, and India are also on the moon but they are displayed on equipment or probes.

The first landing of the moon is celebrated in the festival of Evoloterra on July 20th.

Last man on the moon

The Apollo 17 crew were the last men on the moon. With Ronald Evans in the command module, Commander Eugene Cernan and scientist Harrison H. Schmitt drove 34 km (21 miles) in the lunar buggy. On December 11, 1972 they left behind a plaque that reads: "Here Man completed his first exploration of the Moon, December 1972 A.D. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind." Cernan was the last man to have set foot on another celestial body.

Last words spoken on the moon

The first words spoken on the moon, by Neil Armstrong, are well known, but what were the last words spoken from the moon?

"America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow." – Commander Eugene Cernan, Apollo 17 Mission, December 11, 1972.

Just in case you forgot Neil Armstrong's words (when he stepped onto the moon surface with his left foot first): "One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind." On returning to Earth, he explained that he thought he had said "one small step for a man."

Who owns the moon?

Planting a flag on the moon does not mean owning it or any part of it. The United Nations Outer Space Treaty (long name: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) of January 27, 1967 states that "outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of occupation, or by any other means."

Video : Apollo 17 – Last men on the moon

[Warph]

...that Bill O'Reilly wants to know how the Moon got there?

In this clip O'Reilly defends a statement he made previously about there being no explanation for the tides (other than God's influence), after being told that the moon's gravity causes the tides. O'Reilly: "OK, so how'd the moon get there?" He challenges "pinheads" for an explanation.

Space dot com has the scientific answer:
Okay, We took that to mean us, so we decided to help him out. Bill Hartmann, an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute in Tuscon, Arizona, proposed "the giant impactor hypothesis" of the moon's formation back in 1975. Computer simulations and lunar samples have since lended a great deal of support for the theory, which is now favored by most planetary astronomers.

The giant impactor theory holds that a Mars-sized asteroid impacted Earth when it was young, making a glancing blow that knocked off mantle debris. That debris eventually coalesced to form the Moon. This theory accounts for the lack of an iron core inside the moon (since it formed from lighter surface material), for its density, and for its chemical composition. The events described by the theory have also been recreated successfully in computer simulations.

O'Reilly is right in the sense that there is not universal consensus on the theory of where the moon came from, since certain aspects of the story of its formation are still not completely understood. However, we don't think the details of the physics are quite what O'Reilly was asking about. Nonetheless, we would like to refer him, and anyone else, to "Where Did the Moon Come From?", a 2005 article by Princeton University astrophysicists Edward Belbruno and J Richard Gott III, for a thorough treatment of the question.[/font][/size]

[Warph]

....that a home-made heroin substitute is having a horrific effect on thousands of Russia's drug addicts?

It is called Krokodil.... the drug that eats junkies.

Oleg glances furtively around him and, confident that nobody is watching, slips inside the entrance to a decaying Soviet-era block of flats, where Sasha is waiting for him. Ensconced in the dingy kitchen of one of the apartments, they empty the contents of a blue carrier bag that Oleg has brought with him – painkillers, iodine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning oil, and an array of vials, syringes, and cooking implements.

Half an hour later, after much boiling, distilling, mixing and shaking, what remains is a caramel-coloured gunge held in the end of a syringe, and the acrid smell of burnt iodine in the air. Sasha fixes a dirty needle to the syringe and looks for a vein in his bruised forearm. After some time, he finds a suitable place, and hands the syringe to Oleg, telling him to inject the fluid. He closes his eyes, and takes the hit.

Russia has more heroin users than any other country in the world – up to two million, according to unofficial estimates. For most, their lot is a life of crime, stints in prison, probable contraction of HIV and hepatitis C, and an early death. As efforts to stem the flow of Afghan heroin into Russia bring some limited success, and the street price of the drug goes up, for those addicts who can't afford their next hit, an even more terrifying spectre has raised its head.

The home-made drug that Oleg and Sasha inject is known as krokodil, or "crocodile". It is desomorphine, a synthetic opiate many times more powerful than heroin that is created from a complex chain of mixing and chemical reactions, which the addicts perform from memory several times a day. While heroin costs from £20 to £60 per dose, desomorphine can be "cooked" from codeine-based headache pills that cost £2 per pack, and other household ingredients available cheaply from the markets.

It is a drug for the poor, and its effects are horrific. It was given its reptilian name because its poisonous ingredients quickly turn the skin scaly. Worse follows. Oleg and Sasha have not been using for long, but Oleg has rotting sores on the back of his neck.

"If you miss the vein, that's an abscess straight away," says Sasha. Essentially, they are injecting poison directly into their flesh. One of their friends, in a neighbouring apartment block, is further down the line.

"She won't go to hospital, she just keeps injecting. Her flesh is falling off and she can hardly move anymore," says Sasha. Photographs of late-stage krokodil addicts are disturbing in the extreme. Flesh goes grey and peels away to leave bones exposed. People literally rot to death.

Russian heroin addicts first discovered how to make krokodil around four years ago, and there has been a steady rise in consumption, with a sudden peak in recent months. "Over the past five years, sales of codeine-based tablets have grown by dozens of times," says Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia's Drug Control Agency. "It's pretty obvious that it's not because everyone has suddenly developed headaches."

Heroin addiction kills 30,000 people per year in Russia – a third of global deaths from the drug – but now there is the added problem of krokodil. Mr Ivanov recalled a recent visit to a drug-treatment centre in Western Siberia. "They told me that two years ago almost all their drug users used heroin," said the drugs tsar. "Now, more than half of them are on desomorphine."

He estimates that overall, around 5 per cent of Russian drug users are on krokodil and other home-made drugs, which works out at about 100,000 people. It's a huge, hidden epidemic – worse in the really isolated parts of Russia where supplies of heroin are patchy – but palpable even in cities such as Tver.

It has a population of half a million, and is a couple of hours by train from Moscow, en route to St Petersburg. Its city centre, sat on the River Volga, is lined with pretty, Tsarist-era buildings, but the suburbs are miserable. People sit on cracked wooden benches in a weed-infested "park", gulping cans of Jaguar, an alcoholic energy drink. In the background, there are rows of crumbling apartment blocks. The shops and restaurants of Moscow are a world away; for a treat, people take the bus to the McDonald's by the train station.

In the city's main drug treatment centre, Artyom Yegorov talks of the devastation that krokodil is causing. "Desomorphine causes the strongest levels of addiction, and is the hardest to cure," says the young doctor, sitting in a treatment room in the scruffy clinic, below a picture of Hugh Laurie as Dr House.

"With heroin withdrawal, the main symptoms last for five to 10 days. After that there is still a big danger of relapse but the physical pain will be gone. With krokodil, the pain can last up to a month, and it's unbearable. They have to be injected with extremely strong tranquilisers just to keep them from passing out from the pain."

Dr Yegorov says krokodil users are instantly identifiable because of their smell. "It's that smell of iodine that infuses all their clothes," he says. "There's no way to wash it out, all you can do is burn the clothes. Any flat that has been used as a krokodil cooking house is best forgotten about as a place to live. You'll never get that smell out of the flat."

Addicts in Tver say they never have any problems buying the key ingredient for krokodil – codeine pills, which are sold without prescription. "Once I was trying to buy four packs, and the woman told me they could only sell two to any one person," recalls one, with a laugh. "So I bought two packs, then came back five minutes later and bought another two. Other than that, they never refuse to sell it to us, even though they know what we're going to do with it." The solution, to many, is obvious: ban the sale of codeine tablets, or at least make them prescription-only. But despite the authorities being aware of the problem for well over a year, nothing has been done.

President Dmitry Medvedev has called for websites which explain how to make krokodil to be closed down, but he has not ordered the banning of the pills. Last month, a spokesman for the ministry of health said that there were plans to make codeine-based tablets available only on prescription, but that it was impossible to introduce the measure quickly. Opponents claim lobbying by pharmaceutical companies has caused the inaction.

"A year ago we said that we need to introduce prescriptions," says Mr Ivanov. "These tablets don't cost much but the profit margins are high. Some pharmacies make up to 25 per cent of their profits from the sale of these tablets. It's not in the interests of pharmaceutical companies or pharmacies themselves to stop this, so the government needs to use its power to regulate their sale."

In addition to krokodil, there are reports of drug users injecting other artificial mixes, and the latest street drug is tropicamide. Used as eye drops by ophthalmologists to dilate the pupils during eye examinations, Dr Yegorov says patients have no trouble getting hold of capsules of it for about £2 per vial. Injected, the drug has severe psychiatric effects and brings on suicidal feelings.

"Addicts are being sold drugs by normal Russian women working in pharmacies, who know exactly what they'll be used for," said Yevgeny Roizman, an anti-drugs activist who was one of the first to talk publicly about the krokodil issue earlier this year. "Selling them to boys the same age as their own sons. Russians are killing Russians."

Zhenya, quietly spoken and wearing dark glasses, agrees to tell his story while I sit in the back of his car in a lay-by on the outskirts of Tver. He managed to kick the habit, after spending weeks at a detox clinic ,experiencing horrendous withdrawal symptoms that included seizures, a 40-degree temperature and vomiting. He lost 14 teeth after his gums rotted away, and contracted hepatitis C.

But his fate is essentially a miraculous escape – after all, he's still alive. Zhenya is from a small town outside Tver, and was a heroin addict for a decade before he moved onto krokodil a year ago. Of the ten friends he started injecting heroin with a decade ago, seven are dead.

Unlike heroin, where the hit can last for several hours, a krokodil high only lasts between 90 minutes and two hours, says Zhenya. Given that the "cooking" process takes at least half an hour, being a krokodil addict is basically a full-time job.

"I remember one day, we cooked for three days straight," says one of Zhenya's friends. "You don't sleep much when you're on krokodil, as you need to wake up every couple of hours for another hit. At the time we were cooking it at our place, and loads of people came round and pitched in. For three days we just kept on making it. By the end, we all staggered out yellow, exhausted and stinking of iodine."

In Tver, most krokodil users inject the drug only when they run out of money for heroin. As soon as they earn or steal enough, they go back to heroin. In other more isolated regions of Russia, where heroin is more expensive and people are poorer, the problem is worse. People become full-time krokodil addicts, giving them a life expectancy of less than a year.

Zhenya says every single addict he knows in his town has moved from heroin to krokodil, because it's cheaper and easier to get hold of. "You can feel how disgusting it is when you're doing it," he recalls. "You're dreaming of heroin, of something that feels clean and not like poison. But you can't afford it, so you keep doing the krokodil. Until you die."

[Warph]

...that History can be... ahh.. er... fun?  Take for instance, very bizarre World War II happenings:

1. The first German serviceman killed in the war was killed by the Japanese (China, 1937), the first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940), the highest ranking American killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps.  So much for allies.

2. The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN.  He was wounded and given a Dishonorable Discharge for
lying about his age.  (His benefits were later restored by act of Congress)

3. At the time of Pearl Harbor the top US Navy command was Called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th.  Infantry division was the Swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika."  All three were soon changed for PR purposes.

4. More US servicemen died in the Air Corps than the Marine Corps.  While completing the required 30 missions your chance
of being killed was 71%.

5. Generally speaking there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot.  You were either an ace or a target.  For
instance Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes.  He died while a passenger on a cargo plane.

6. It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming.  This was a
mistake.  Tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction.  Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo.  This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy.  Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.

7. When allied armies reached the Rhine the first thing men did was pee in it.  This was pretty universal from the lowest
private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act).

8. German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort.

9. German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet.

10. Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans.  They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army
until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans
and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army.

11. Following a massive naval bombardment 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska.  21 troops were killed in the firefight.  It would have been worse if there had been any Japanese on the island.

[W. Gray]

The first person drafted in the United States after the Selective Service law was passed n 1940 was Chinese.

He was from Oakland, Ca.

[Warph]

Pfc Charles Havlat of the 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion is thought to be the very last American soldier killed in action in the European operations of World War II.  The son of Czech immigrants, he took a bullet in the head while on patrol in southern Bohemia; shot by German soldiers who were unaware that a ceasefire had been declared and whose commander later apologised.