KNOW ABOUT CASTLES

A castle is a fortification that was used in the Middle Ages to protect a territory against an invasion. Castles started appearing in Europe in 1066.The first castle was built by William, the Conqueror of Normandy. He built 9 castles in London.The first one of them was Windsor Castle.It is the largest inhabited castle in the world.Together with Buckingham Palace in London and Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, it is one of the principal official residences of the British monarch.

The largest castle in existence is the castle of Prague. It averages 570 meters in length and 130 in width.Thus, containing 74100 square meters.The Prague Castle is an ancient symbol of the Czech lands and is the most significant Czech monument.It is one of the most important cultural institutions in the Czech Republic.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Prague Castle is the largest coherent castle complex in the world. Being a UNESCO World Heritage site, it consists of a large-scale composition of palaces and ecclesiastical buildings of various architectural styles. 

ABRACADABRA

Abracadabra was considered as a magic word and historically was believed to have healing powers when inscribed on an amulet. The word is thought to have its origin in the Aramaic language, in which abra means "to create" and cadabra  which means "as I say", providing a translation of abracadabra as "create as I say", thus its use in magic.

The first known mention of the word was in the second century AD in a book called Liber Medicinalis by Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of a triangle:

This diminishes the hold over the patient of the spirit of the disease. Other Roman emperors, including Geta and Alexander Severus, were followers of the medical teachings of Serenus Sammonicus and may have used the incantation as well.

The Puritan minister Increase Mather dismissed the word as bereft of power. But Aleister Crowley regarded it as possessing great power; he said its true form is abrahadabra.

The word is now commonly used as an incantation by stage magicians. A variation of the word, 'Avada Kedavra' is used as the death spell in Harry Potter series.

GUESS WHAT ARE THESE NAMES...!

• The Drummer
• The Piper
• The Green Lady
• The Pink Lady
• Earl Beardie
• The Grey Lady
• The Supernatural Knight
• The Spanish Soldier

It will sound interesting!!!

CLICK TO KNOW

STAY FAST N' FIRST

CRH380A

It is the world’s fastest train with a speed of 302.8mph and is powered by 25 kV AC overhead electrical system. This China based train is manufactured by CSR Qingdao Sifang Locomotive and Rolling Stock Company. It can carry up to 494 passengers and its route is from Shanghai to Nanjing and Shanghai to Hangzhou.

Congratulations to CSR Sifang Factory!

It started its trial operation at 11:40 AM, September 28, 2010, on Shanghai-Hangzhou reached 416.6 km/h (259 mph) breaking the previous world record of 403.7 km/h (251 mph) reached by Siemens Velaro In July 2006, and previous China record of 394.3 km/h (245mph) reached by CRH3C on June 24, 2008.

BOOMERANG'S IN ZERO GRAVITY

Hope you all would have heard of the word 'boomerang' and definitely the thing that comes to your mind would be boomerang icecreams. Most of the people like them for their variety of flavours and attractive toppings. Boomerang icecreams would be the first option whenever im given a treat. But what does the word actually mean? Let us have a look on it.

Boomerang is a  very singular missile weapon used by the natives of Australia and in some parts of India. It is usually a curved stick of hard wood when thrown from the hand with a quick rotary motion returns to the original place from where it started.
In 2008, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi verified that boomerangs also function in zero gravity as they do on Earth. He repeated the same experiment that German Astronaut Ulf Meerbold performed aboard Spacelab in 1992 and French Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy later performed aboard MIR in 1997.
Today, boomerangs are mostly used as sporting items. There are different types of throwing contests: accuracy of return, Aussie round, trick catch, fast catch and endurance.
In international competition, a world cup is held every second year. As of 2010, teams from Germany and the United States dominated international competition. The individual World Champion title was won in 2000, 2002 and 2004 by Swiss thrower Manuel Schutz. In 2006, Fridolin Frost from Germany won the title, with Manuel Schütz finishing third.

TWEAKING HAPTIC FEEDBACK

The Samsung Galaxy S is a great Android phone with more capabilities than it really needs. One of these features is haptic feedback. Pretty much everything you do with the Samsung Galaxy S has haptic feedback associated with it. Haptic feedback is the vibration that the phone does every time you do something with it. For instance, when you scroll through your contact list it vibrates or when you click on something in the menu it vibrates. Both of these things are haptic feedback.

Sprint will be the first U.S. mobile carrier to sell Samsung's Galaxy S II, starting Sept. 16. All models of the Galaxy S II will work on the 4G networks of the respective operators and will run Android 2.3, or Gingerbread. The phone will have a 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which uses technology developed by Samsung. It will have an 8-megapixel rear camera, plus a 2-megapixel front-facing camera for video conferencing.

Users will be able to record video at 1080p and connect the phone to certain TVs to view content such as videos on the larger screen.

SOIL BACTERIA HELP KILL CANCER TUMORS

A strain of harmless bacteria Clostridium sporogenes that live in soil could soon be helping to kill cancer tumors, thanks to researchers from the University of Nottingham in the UK and the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands who are presenting their work at a conference in York, England, this week.

They said they expect to test the strain in cancer patients in 2013, and if successful, hope the method can be combined with additional approaches to win the battle against cancer.

The bacterium when injected into cancer patients grows in solid tumors and releases an enzyme which triggers a separately injected "pro-drug" to kill cancer cells.

LARGEST ICECREAM EVER!!!

On 10 May 2011, Dairy Queen Canada held its 30th birthday celebration in Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Dairy Queen’s epic celebration not only saw thousands of visitors, but these visitors got to see and taste a slice of history: the world’s largest-ever ice cream cake!

                                                  

The previous record of 8,750 kg (19,290 lb) had not been broken since 16 January 2006 in Beijing. But the folks at Dairy Queen Canada didn’t back down from the challenge. They engaged food engineering students at the University of Toronto to design the cake so that it met Guinness World Records guidelines, and of course would not collapse or melt until it could be weighed, measured and served.

Dairy Queen was able to engage a scale normally used to weigh commercial airplanes, and so it could easily accommodate and weigh the cake to the nearest 0.1 pound.The final weight of the cake was 10.13 tonnes (22,333.6 lb), smashing the previous record and setting a bar that will be incredibly challenging to future record breakers.

Congratulations to the entire team involved in planning, building, and yes, eating this massive confection! And happy 30th birthday to Dairy Queen Canada!

A MESSAGE TO NOODLES' LOVER

Dear instant noodle lovers,

Make sure you break for at least 3 days after one session of instant noodles before you eat your next packet! Please read this info shared by a doctor. Instant noodles consist of a wax coating  – the wax is not just in the Styrofoam containers but it coats the noodles. This is why the instant noodles do not stick to each other when cooking.

If one were to examine the ordinary Chinese yellow noodles in the market, one will notice that, in their uncooked state the noodles are oily. This layer of oil prevents the noodles from sticking together.

There was an SBC (now TCS) actor some years ago, who at a busy time of his career had no time to cook, resorted to eating instant noodles everyday. He got cancer later on. His doctor told him about the wax in instant noodles. The doctor told him that our body will need up to 2 days to clear the wax. There was also an SIA steward who after moving out from his mother’s house into his own house, did not cook but ate instant noodles almost every meal. He had cancer, and has since died from it.

Nowadays the instant noodles are referred as ‘ cancer noodles ‘.

DEEP BLUE

Deep Blue was a chess-playing computer developed by IBM. On May 11, 1997, the machine won a six-game match by two wins to one with three draws against world champion Garry Kasparov. Kasparov accused IBM of cheating and demanded a rematch, but IBM refused and dismantled Deep Blue. Kasparov had beaten a previous version of Deep Blue in 1996.

EVOLUTION OF LOGOS

This shows the pictures of how different organisations' logos evolved by time.

When Apple was started, the logo was a complicated picture of Isaac Newton sitting under a tree. This had been designed by Jobs and Wayne. However, Steve Jobs hired Rob Janoff to simplify the logo, which turned out to be a great idea. Rob created the ‘Rainbow Apple’ which was the logo for company till 1998. When Apple launched the new iMac in 1998, they changed their logo to a monochromatic apple logo, almost identical to the rainbow logo. Now, the Apple logo comes with nice gradient chrome silver design.

The name of the search engine is derived from Googol, meaning one followed by 100 zeros. Google’s first logo was created by Sergey Brin, after he taught himself to use the free graphic software GIMP. Later, an exclamation mark mimicking the Yahoo! logo was added. In 1999, Stanford’s Consultant Art Professor Ruth Kedar designed the Google logo that the company uses today.

The Microsoft story began in 1975, when Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen named their partnership as Micro-Soft which explains the first logo of the company.

They changed the logo in that year itself and dropped the hyphen too.The employees called this as “Blibbet”. It is said that at that time, the Microsoft cafeteria even had a double cheeseburger named “”Blibbet Burger”.

When a new logo came on in 1987, there was a campaign within the company to “Save the Blibbet”. But, this couldn’t stop the company from adopting a new logo. The logo designed by Scott Baker, came to be known as “the Pacman logo” due to the distinctive cut in the O.

In 1994, they integrated their tagline ‘Where do you want to go today?’ within the logo. This was widely mocked.

The new 2008 logo has all the text in Italics (including the tagline), but the look of the logo has remained pretty much the same.

In 1888, IBM was known as The International Time Recording Company (ITR) and so in the earlier periods the logo of the company had ITR inscribed on it.

Later in 1911, ITR was merged with the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, which is why you will see that both ITR and CTR are there in the 1911 logo. In 1924, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company adapted the name International Business Machines Corporation.

In 1947, IBM decided to drop the globe from its logo and the typeface of this logo was called Beton Bold.

 In 1956, Tom Watson, the then CEO decided to project the beginning of a new era in the company, for that he changed the company’s logo as well as the actions. Paul Rand designed the new logo which represented that the changes in the company would be subtle and will not disrupt the continuity. 

Another change in the logo was designed by Paul Rand which had stripes instead of the solid font. It depicted ‘speed and dynamism’.

An open source web browser, created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross, was first of all named as Phoenix, which is visible in their first logo in 2002. Due to some trademark issues, the name had to be changed to Firebird, but the name was chosen so that they would be able to retain the same logo.

Unfortunately, this name also had trademark issues because of existing software. Then, they finally got lucky and chose the name Firefox, which has become one of the favorite and most used browser worldwide. In 2003, the now famous logo was designed by professional interface designer John Hicks.

The logo depicted a Firefox engulfing the whole world, which also signifies the global reach that the company strived for. There has been a minor change in the logo since then, with the colors of the continents using a lighter blue color, just to differentiate them better from the oceans.

BMW or Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (Bavarian Motor Works) was originally founded as an aircraft company. The aircrafts manufactured were painted with the colors of the Bavarian flag, which is the color of BMW logo.

The logo itself hasn’t changed a lot during the years, but now has a more stylish look due to the different gradients. The unchanged logo has made it easier for people to remember and has given the company more recognition.

The first logo was designed by Franz Xavier Reimspiess, a Porsche employee during an office logo design competition. The main part of the logo hasn’t changed much, but understandably after the WWII, they got rid of the design around the circle which seems to be inspired from the Nazi flag. I love the colors that were added in 2000, to the logo which was built after WWII, it depicts a positive change in the company and the ability to adapt to the new millennium.

TO GOOGLE..!

Do you know from when the term"to google" was recognised? - “˜to google’ became a verb in 2006 when both Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary as well as the Oxford English Dictionary recognized it. It of course means – to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.

APPLE STORE - FIFTH AVENUE

This picture depicts the Apple Store, fifth avenue , one of the most photographed sites in Manhattan. Apple has filed a trademark for the original design of the cube. It consists of about 90 glass panels and now they are renovating it into a new cube with just 15 panels, each panel covering the entire height of the cube. The new construction costs about $6.7 million.