RoboCup China Open 2007 kicked off on Friday (Oct 26) in Jinan, east China’s Shandong Province. RoboCup is an international event to promote robot research, education and competition in China. This year it managed to attract over 400 teams (local and international) to compete in 34 different categories.
A fisherman from Grand Cayman recently landed a small fish that had swallowed a much bigger fish that is 4 times bigger than its size.
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A Singapore Airlines’ Airbus A380 took off on a historic journey Thursday (Oct 25) – the first commercial flight by the world’s largest jetliner that boasts luxurious suites, double beds and the quietest interior ever.
Airbus 380 takes off from the runway
With 455 passengers, some of whom paid tens of thousands of dollars for a seat in aviation history; the superjumbo soared into the sky on a 7 and 1/2 hour flight to Sydney that launches a new era in air travel. Also on board flight SQ380 are a crew of about 30 including four pilots.
Passengers clapped as the plane disengaged from the dock on schedule at 8am (0000gmt) and taxied to the runway that was widened and lengthened to accommodate the huge plane.
More cheers broke out 16 minutes later as the double-decker aircraft, powered by four Rolls Royce Trent 900 engines, lifted smoothly into the nearly cloudless sky tinged pink by the light of the early morning sun.
An amazing picture of more than 10,000 king penguins standing shoulder to shoulder at St Andrew’s bay on the island of South Georgia (near Antarctica), preparing to breed.
The king penguins lay their eggs in late November, with a peak around mid-December. They don’t build nests – instead the male and female of each mating couple take it in turns to incubate a single egg on their feet over the course of two months.
Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi, a 24-year-old physics undergraduate in northern Nigeria, takes old cars and motorbikes to pieces in the back yard at home and builds his own helicopters from the parts.
Mubarak and his homemade helicopter
The chopper, which has flown briefly on six occasions, is made from scrap aluminium that Abdullahi bought with the money he makes from computer and mobile phone repairs, and a donation from his father, who teaches at Kano’s Bayero University.
It is powered by a second-hand 133 horsepower Honda Civic car engine and kitted out with seats from an old Toyota saloon car. Its other parts come from the carcass of a Boeing 747 which crashed near Kano some years ago.
For a four-seater it is a big aircraft, measuring twelve metres (39 feet) long, seven metres high by five wide. It has never attained an altitude of more than seven feet. [Yahoo]
An illustration about the ownership, shareholding, or a joint venture in the worldwide automobile industry; it is suggested that the chart was accurate as of December 2005 when the article was first published in a car magazine. [Source]
Lovely photos of workers harvesting organic cranberries at Canneberges Quebec farm in St-Louis-de-Blandford, Canada.
A man threw a bucket of red paint or dye into Rome’s Trevi Fountain on Friday (Oct 19), colouring the waters of the famous monument bright red in front of an astonished crowd.
The man managed to escape, leaving a box near the fountain containing leaflets by a group that claimed responsibility for the act. The leaflets said the red paint was a protest for expenses incurred in organizing the Rome Film Festival and symbolically referred to the event’s red carpet.
Police arrived and technicians briefly shut off the water before restoring a clear flow; experts said the baroque fountain was not permanently damaged and the marble statues depicting the sea deity Neptune on his chariot had not absorbed the colour.