Torrential rain storms in South Korea lead to flooding and landslides(7/29/2011)

 

Amazing Facts About Camels

 

 

Camels walk 3 km (1.8 mi) per day looking for food, on average 3 hours, and disperse when food is scarce. They require 10-20 kg (22-44 pounds) of fresh food daily (or 5-10 kg (12-24 pounds) of dry food), depending on the animal's size. If working, the food requirement is of 30-50 kg (70-110 pounds) per day. They spend 8-12 hours per day eating.

Camels eat from small grasses and herbs (Convulvulaceae, Plantaginaceae) to bushes, trees (Acacia) (camels can pick up leaves at heights of up to 3.5 m (12 ft)), and plants growing on salty lands (Chenopodiaceae) and, as a camel's mouth is extremely tough and pain resistant, they can eat easily thorny desert plants, avoided by other animals. Some of their spines so hard they can penetrate through a shoe's sole. Camels literally can survive on plant wastes, like an old twig basket or a mat. Bactrian camels eat wild garlic, saxaul (Haloxylon), and poplar.

Camels can chew gazelle bones (for completing minerals), and even fish waists (especially in Southern Arabia, where fish is abundant). If food has enough moisture, camels can withstand a month without drinking water.

A density of 2-3 kg (4.5-6.5 pounds) of food per hectar means good feeding condition for the camel; 1-1.5 kg (2.2-3.5 pounds) per hectar represent poor feeding conditions.

 

Spectrophobia:Fear Of ghosts

  

                  

It’s true that some people truly believe in ghosts and some don’t so this is certainly up to your interpretation. However, with the help of Hollywood with movies such as the Poltergeist movie series, the perception of ghost, whether you believe in them or not, is highly magnified; not only on the big screen, but to the public. Movies certainly help to let our imaginations go to new heights when it comes to creepy things such as ghosts.
Most people that have spectrophobia (the fear of ghosts) realize that this is an irrational fear and that there’s truly nothing to be afraid of. These people may be afraid to be in old, empty houses, dark places, or quiet woods, especially at night; even though the logical side of them says that nothing will happen.

Cold Welding

Fact: If two pieces of metal touch in space, they become permanently stuck together

This may sound unbelievable, but it is true. Two pieces of metal without any coating on them will form in to one piece in the vacuum of space. This doesn’t happen on earth because the atmosphere puts a layer of oxidized material between the surfaces. This might seem like it would be a big problem on the space station but as most tools used there have come from earth, they are already coated with material. In fact, the only evidence of this seen so far has been in experiments designed to provoke the reaction. This process is called cold welding. For those who still don’t believe it, here is the Wikipedia article on Cold Welding.

Hell Gate (Uzbekistan)

Called by locals The Door to Hell, this place in Uzbekistan is situated near the small town of Darvaz. When geologists were drilling for gas, 35 years ago, they suddenly found an underground cavern that was so big, all the drilling site with all the equipment and camps got deep deep under the ground. None dared to go down there because the cavern was filled with gas, so they ignited it so that no poisonous gas could come out of the hole, and since then, it has been burning. Nobody knows how many tons of excellent gas has been burned for all those years but it just seems to be infinite.

Great Blue Hole (Belize)

    

     

Part of the Lighthouse Reef System, The Great Blue Hole lies approximately 60 miles off the mainland out of Belize City. A large, almost perfectly circular hole approximately one quarter of a mile (0.4 km) across, it’s one of the most astounding dive sites to be found anywhere on earth. Inside this hole, the water is 480 feet (145 m) deep and it is the depth of water which gives the deep blue color that causes such structures throughout the world to be known as "blue holes."

The highest paved mountain pass in the Eastern Alps --and the second highest in the Alps, after the Col de l'Iseran (2770 m)--, the Stelvio Pass Road connects the Valtellina with the upper Adige valley and Merano. It is located in the Italian Alps, near Bormio and Sulden, 75 km from Bolzano, close to Swiss border.

While it might not be as risky as other deadly routes, it's certainly breathtaking. The tour books advise that the toughest and most spectacular climbing is from the Prato side, Bormio side approach is more tame. With 48 hairpins, this road is regarded as one of the finest continuous hairpin routes in the Alps. (Photo by Emiliano De Angeli and mcs) 

While murder, rape and robbery may not be a big problem in this part of the world, the hostile conditions are. Antarctica is home to some extreme weather conditions, with the mercury regularly dropping below -60 degrees Celsius (-100F) and winds tearing in at more than 100km/hr. If exposed to this weather for more than an hour, you will most certainly die. Antarctica has no hospitals, no food to forage and if you get lost, not a lot of hope. Stay with the tour groups. At least there is a McDonald’s at Scott Base if you manage to find it.

The Snake That Shocked The PLanet

The thread claimed the snake was one of two enormous boas found by workers clearing forest for a new road outside Guping city, Jiangxi province. They apparently woke up the sleeping snakes during attempts to bulldoze a huge mound of earth.

“On the third dig, the operator found there was blood amongst the soil, and with a further dig, a dying snake appeared,” said the post.

“By the time the workers came back, the wounded boa had died, while the other snake had disappeared. The bulldozer operator was so sick that he couldn’t even stand up.”

The post claimed that the digger driver was so traumatised that he suffered a heart attack on his way to hospital and later died.

The dead snake was 55ft (16.7m) long, weighed 300kg and was estimated to be 140 years old, according to the post.

Valley Of Flowers (India)

 

 The Valley of Flowers is an outstandingly beautiful high-altitude Himalayan valley that has been acknowledged as such by renowned mountaineers and botanists in literature for over a century and in Hindu mythology for much longer. Its ‘gentle’ landscape, breathtakingly beautiful meadows of alpine flowers and ease of access complement the rugged, mountain wilderness for which the inner basin of Nanda Devi National Park is renowned. Valley of flower is splashed with colour as it bloomed with hundreds different beautiful flowers, taking on various shades of colours as time progressed. Valley was declared a national park in 1982, and now it is a World Heritage Site. The locals, of course, always knew of the existence of the valley, and believed that it was inhabited by fairies.