WORLDS LARGEST CHOCOLATE TRAIN IN HISTORY

WORLDS LARGEST CHOCOLATE TRAIN IN HISTORY 

The Chocolate Express

A train made entirely of chocolate has set a new Guinness World Record as the longest chocolate structure in the world.

The sculpture, on display at the busy Brussels South station, is 112-feet (34.05 meters) long and weighs over 2,755 pounds (1250 kilos).

Maltese chocolate artist Andrew Farrugia spent over 700 hours constructing the masterpiece.

Belgian Chocolate Festival in Bruge: "I had this idea for a while, and I said what do you think if we do this realization of a long chocolate train, you know, because a train you can make it as long as you like."Actually it was going to be much smaller than it was, but I kept on adding another wagon, and another wagon, and it's the size it is today."

Farrugia had previously built a smaller train of 12 feet for an event in Malta , which he said gave him insight about how to build this much larger version.

There are two parts to the train. The first seven wagons are modelled after the new Belgian trains, and the rest of the train is modeled after the old train wagons, including a wagon with a bar and restaurant on board.

Three days before the event, Farrugia transported the chocolate train by truck in 25 wooden boxes from Malta to Belgium.

Farrugia said the train incurred considerable damage during the drive and several of the train's walls had completely collapsed. Luckily, with hard work and little sleep, the chocolate artist was able to fix all the damages before presenting the train to the public on Monday.

After measuring the length of the train and confirming no material other than chocolate was used, officials from the Guinness Book of World Records added a new category to the collection of world records and declared the train to be the longest chocolate structure in the world.

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World's Biggest Cactus

World's Biggest Cactus

What is the biggest cactus in the world? It’s the Saguaro cactus.  The Saguaro grows to an amazing fifty feet tall!  The weight of the Saguaro can weigh up to an awesome ten tons!  Guess what? The Saguaro cactus grows beautiful flowers in the spring.  The Saguaro grows arms when it is about sixty to seventy-five years old.  The saguaro can live up to at least one hundred fifty years old.  WOW!  The Saguaro lives in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona. 

The Saguaro cactus is also a home for animals.  The Gila woodpecker drills a hole in the Saguaro to build a nest.  The Elf owl moves into the nest the Gila woodpecker made when it moves out.  Other animals eat the fruit when it falls off.  When the Saguaro dies bugs eat the dead Saguaro. The O’odham Indians use the Saguaro cactus too. People use the Saguaro by catching the fruit when it falls.  The O’odham’s make candies and juices. They also make syrups, jams, and wines.  People make a lot of foods with the fruit. The Saguaro is the king of the desert. Maybe you can go and see one some day too. 

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The World’s First And Only Tilting Bridge-The Gateshead Millennium Bridge

The World’s First And Only Tilting Bridge-The Gateshead Millennium Bridge

Interactive, multi-dimensional effects help pedestrians find their way The Gateshead Millennium Bridge (top), the world’s first and only tilting bridge, features colorful light shows from sunset to 1 am daily . In the Clink Street Bridge tunnel , strands of iColor Flex MX create complex, fireworks-like effects that react to changes in pedestrian activity.  

The Gateshead Millennium Bridge links Gateshead to Newcastle, England, across the River Tyne. Primarily intended as an overpass for pedestrians and cyclists, the bridge features unique curved arches that mimic the movements of an eyelid as they tilt to make way for the maritime traffic below. Because of its unusual design and masterful engineering, the bridge is a popular tourist attraction. The 164 x 413 ft (50 x 126 m) bridge also required illumination that could create dazzling full-color effects while minimizing light pollution. Eight ColorReach Powercore fixtures saturate the arches with colorful light. To illuminate the underside of the arches, four ColorReach Powercore fixtures were installed on either side of the river and positioned side by side, parallel to the river’s edge. 

Each half of each fixture is addressed and controlled separately for flexible, directional control of light dispersion, allowing the light to be projected exactly where needed and minimizing waste and spill light. To alert pedestrians and cyclists to the bridge’s opening and closing, custom-designed green LEDs were embedded in the ground in the shape of a “go” arrow when the bridge is open, while red LEDs create a no entry symbol when the bridge is closed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateshead_Millennium_Bridge

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Lil Bub, World's Largest Kitten

Lil Bub, World's Largest Kitten

With more than 70,000 Facebook fans, 2.5 million YouTube views, and an appearance on Good Morning America, Bloomington’s Lil Bub is taking the world by storm. This “perma-kitten,” who will maintain kitten-like features for the rest of her life, was born with several abnormalities: She has extra toes, unusually small limbs, and no teeth. While some would see these oddities as a hardship, Lil Bub uses her uniqueness to charm her many fans. 

"She's the best living thing on the planet," says Bub's owner, Bub (yes, the same name) Bridavsky of Bloomington, Ind.,of his truly one-of-a-kind cat. Bub's dwarfism keeps her limbs are disproportionately small relative to the rest of her body, thus her short, stubby legs and a weird, long, serpent-like body ...

Her lower jaw is very short compared to her upper jaw, and her teeth never grew in, which is why hertongue is usually hanging out. Poor Lil' Bub.

Not that anyone loves her any less for it. In fact, the cute cuddly ball of fur already has many clicking on videos of her and following her on Twitter.
Bub's Facebook page is blowing up too. Gotta love the web.
Bridavsky says Bub was not bred to be small, it just happened, and that she "squonks, squeaks, gurgles, snorts, hiccups, purrs and sometimes even growls."
"She also occasionally meows, but even those sound kinda funny."

Source:   http://lilbub.com/

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The AK-47: the world’s favourite killing machine

The AK-47: the world’s favourite killing machine

The first Kalashnikov assault rifle was invented by Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov whilst recovering from injuries sustained during fighting in the Second World War. Its first incarnation was the AK-47, named to coincide with the year of its entry into active service (1947) 4. Whilst production of the original AK-47 largely ceased in the mid 1950s, modern variants continue to be produced in many parts of the world. It is
estimated that there are somewhere between 50 and 70 million Kalashnikov assault rifles spread across the world’s five continents.

The Kalashnikov remains the preferred weapon for many armed forces, rebel groups and armed gangs because of its proven reliability and widespread availability. The AK-47 in particular is robust and simple to operate, with only minimal working parts. AK-47 weapons are produced in their tens of millions throughout the world, and were also supplied in their millions to various regimes during the Cold War, making them cheap and obtainable from numerous sources. Production and supply of ammunition (7.62 x 39 mm) is
equally prolific, including hundreds of millions of units stored in surplus stockpiles in many parts of the world.

The AK-47 is a semi-automatic military assault rifle and is designed to be operated by highly disciplined and well-trained infantry. However, in untrained and unaccountable hands it is used dangerously and abusively – when this occurs in populated areas it can often result in civilian carnage. It can be fired in single shot mode or can be set for automatic fire by the simple operation of a lever located near the trigger mechanism. In
automatic mode, the AK-47 can be fired at a rate of 600 rounds per minute as long as the trigger remains depressed, although its magazine can only store 30 rounds, which will empty in a little over 3 seconds. The weapon has a maximum range of 800 to 1,000 metres, but is only really guaranteed to be accurate when used by a trained marksman up to a range of about 400 to 600 metres. At excessive ranges (over 1,000 meters), an assault rifle can still cause tremendous  injuries, due to the severe wounding and maiming effects of slow moving unstable bullets on the human body.

In Afghanistan for example, the severe ‘yawing’ effect of the Kalashnikov bullet when it enters the body can be seen clearly on the streets of Kandahar, Heart, and Kabul, where non-fatal wounds resulting from the turning of the round in human flesh have produced thousands of disabled people and amputees. In 1959, the AK-47 was upgraded by its original Russian manufacturers to the AKM model, which made it slightly lighter and cheaper to produce. In 1974 a new variant was introduced, the AK-74 which was basically a re-chambered AKM variant to take the newer 5.45 x 39 mm calibre ammunition, the Russian equivalent to the standard 5.56 x 45 mm NATO standard round .The most modern family of Kalashnikov weapons is the AK-100 series.

The Kalashnikov assault rifle was designed during the Second World War and produced originally as the AK-47, for use against conventional armies by soldiers subject to military law. Since then the AK-47 has been diverted from its intended purpose and is now part of an often unregulated flow of assault weapons which has catastrophic consequences for civilian populations in the developing world.

‘People often ask me whether I feel guilty about human suffering that is caused by the attacks with AK-47. I tell them that I designed the gun to defend the Russian Motherland from its enemies. Of course I feel sad and frustrated when I see armed skirmishes with the use of my weapon also for conduct of predatory wars and for terrorist and criminal purposes. But it is not the designers who must ultimately take responsibility for where guns end up; it is governments who must control their production and export.’ 

General Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47 assault rifle.

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